Australians at War Film Archive

That’s right.

Well I was born in Liverpool in England on the 12th of the 11th 1920 and in Liverpool there’s a

about 11 miles of docks and when I was a little boy I virtually reared myself. And I used to go down the street, cross over the dock road and there was a big marshalling yard, a big iron bridge over a marshalling yard. And I used to look through the steel girders on the side of this bridge

at these engines down below shunting backwards and forward, up and down with the trucks. I’d be there for hours and then I used to wander across the dock road and watch the ships. In those days all the ships were coal burners and they used to pick the railway trucks up with the coal in and tip it in the bunkers. And when I came home my mother’d say, my father’d say, “Where have you been?” And I’d say I thought they were treacle engines because they’d have these

big tank cars taking oil out of them and I used to think it was treacle and I went down to treacle engines. Well I used to come back as black as the ace of spades, all this smoke coming up from these. On one occasion my father sat me on the bench in the kitchen and he washed half my face, one hand and one leg you know and he said now go up across the road to see your aunty so anyway. So that, I can remember that part of it.

Well then we moved from that area to another area where there was a playground, Sefton Park, a big park and a playground and we used to play cricket in this playground. In England in the summer you can play cricket until 10 o’clock of a night, it would be twilight. And we never ever got, you know, ran foul

of the law. We were good kids in that sense. And we used to make toffee, that was another thing we used to make, make our own toffee and, but I went to a school there, Sefton Park Council School, and when I got to the age of fourteen my father said to me, you know, “Do you want to go to

college or do you want to go to sea?” and I said, “Oh I want to go to sea.” Cause my father was at sea all his life, in fact he was in the days of the rubber trade, he used to go up the Amazon to places like Prahah and Manis because that’s where all the rubber came from, it was until somebody stole the rubber trees, the young plants from Brazil and

took them to Malaya. And anyway he said, “Do you want to go?” I said, “Go to sea,” so anyway he said, “Right.” He saw the company and they said, “Yeah we’ll take him on,” cause you know my father had good standing in the company and the ship I was to go on was a ship called the Hector. Well when that came in they weren’t changing any of the crew so I had to wait another month, cause these ships used to run every month

from Liverpool, to get another ship. Well in a month’s time a ship came in called the Aeneas, they were all passenger boats, they carried cargo as well but there was only one class of passenger, first class, 150 passengers. And the accommodation was superb, the meals were equivalent or better than what you get in the best hotel

ashore. And the people that travelled on these ships were invariably people with plenty of money, but you know, well-to-do people. And I honestly feel like in later life, mixing with these people, and that it stood me in good stead you know. And the ship used to leave Liverpool, go out into the Mersey,

go down the coast of England down towards the English Channel and then go down past Portugal and then turn through what we used to call the Pillar of Hercules, that’s at the entrance to the Mediterranean, you had Gibraltar on one side and Tangiers or something on the other side. And then we would go up from there through the Pillar of Hercules to Marseilles in southern France. We were there for

a few days and then we’d go from Marseilles through the Mediterranean to Port Said. Well of all the places I’ve been to it was, Port Said was the most mysterious place, I mean all these fellows running round with these nightshirts on and all that. But it was like, you know, with the history of Egypt, the pyramids and the pharaohs. Anyway we’d be in Port Said for so long then we’d go

through the canal, it would take about…. We used to take a boatman aboard through the canal and these boatmen would pull a boat up on the ship, a little rowing boat. And through the canal the homeward bound boats would have the right of way I think it was. So only two ships, one ship could pass, so when you got to the place in the canal these boatmen would go lower over the side, take a rope, tie you to the bollard on the bank, the homeward bound ship

would come through and you know get back aboard the ship. And then we used to go to Suez, we’d be in Suez for about a day or so and then we’d go down the Red Sea, three days down the Red Sea to Aden. And then from Aden we’d cross the Indian Ocean and we’d go to Colombo but it’s not called Colombo today, it’s called Sri Lanka. And then from Colombo we’d go down to Malaya, we’d go to Port Strattenham,

Penang, Penang, Port Strattenham and then Singapore. And then we’d leave Singapore and go into the China Sea to Hong Kong. Well it was on this leg between …

Right well,

it was on this leg that my father’s ship, he was on a ship called the Ajax, and the shipping company, because it was the same company, they had their own set routes so we’d pass through very, very close you know within cooee of a ship. And he would send me a cable, a telegram across and he would say that, “There’s been money left for you in Hong Kong,” you know, pocket money. Any rate we’d go up

to Hong Kong and then we’d go up to Shanghai, up the Yangtze and then from Shanghai we’d go to a place called Taku Ba. Well at Taku Ba you never saw the land, you were anchored out in this estuary and then from Taku Ba we got to … At Taku Ba it was very cold up there, this is, I think it’s part of Manchuria and these Mongolians or whoever they were

they used to wear these kapok suits and they never used to change them for six months in the year you know and they used to eat these rolls, of garlic rolls of bread and between that and not changing the suits they used to smell to high heaven. Well then from Taku Bar we went to a place called Tsingtao and that was a peculiar place because all the officials there were Japanese, like their doctors, their immigration

people and all the buildings there were a German type of architecture but the Chinese, or whoever they were, they were the tallest Chinese I’ve ever seen. Anyway one night there, a big tall Chinese on the gangway said, “What are you doing tonight?” and I said, “Oh staying aboard the ship,” and he said, “Why don’t you go up the town?” and I said, “What for?” He said, “Oh the public executions up there,” he said, “they’re cutting these fellows’ heads off.” And I thought, ‘I don’t want a bar of that.’

So then we go from Tsingtao, we go across the Sea of Japan to Yokohama, we’d do Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Nagasaki, Chelamopo, Kobe and then you know we’d turn round and come home. And I can remember all that very well and as I say the passengers on the ship were well-to-do people.

Well I kicked off on the ship as a bellboy and on the next voyage I went as an assistant steward and this went on for about six voyages and I was starting to move up in the line.

Well he waits on tables,

you know what I mean, in the dining room and, well mainly that really and, but when I got back from one trip my, I found out that my father who was in the same company, the company had two ships on the West Australian Coast between Fremantle and Singapore, there was the ship called the Gorgon and a ship called the Centaur

and they wanted to build, the trade was that much they wanted another ship so they built this ship, a ship called the Charon and all these names are names in Greek mythology, the Charon, it was the Charon that ferried the dead across the river Styx, anyway he accepted this job on the ship and they said, “We’ll move the family and all your furniture out and you’ll either go to Singapore or to

Fremantle,” thank God they picked Fremantle. So I said, “Well I’m not staying here on my own because if you go I’m going.” The company wanted me to stay with them because they had big things in mind for me and I said, “I’m coming.” So I came out on the Charon as a supernumerary and we came through the canal to Singapore and we stayed in Singapore for about a month because the ship really, the carpenters was still working on the ship, fitting

it out and then we left Singapore and we came through Java, Banjowini, Surabaya, Batavia and you don’t realise it until you get just off the coast that you can smell Australia before you can see it, you can smell the gums, all the gum trees oh yeah. And we arrived at Fremantle and

after being you know in a big seaport like Liverpool I thought, “What the hell have they hit here?” it was like a glorified English village. There was only one speed cop in Fremantle, the traffic was you know nothing at all and, but the thing, when we arrived it was about 35 degrees, it was in February, it was 35 degrees in the shade and I wondered, “What the hell?” of this. But anyway I’d never seen so many

blue skies in all my life and of a night I’d never seen so many stars, you know what I mean. So it was a Cinderella state, that’s what they called it because there was nothing here but all they had was gold mining, sheep and wheat and wool but that was it, there was no oil, no gas project or iron ore or anything like that. And of course jobs are not hard to

get, very hard to get so I’d take anything you know to get a job so I pulled on a job at a biscuit factory and I was the best dressed bloke in this factory. You know, I used to turn up in polished shoes and all the rest so the management could see that I could do better than making biscuits so they promoted me. And the next over a week they put me in the store.

It was Mills and Works, they got bought out by Arnott’s.

Well I, in the store we were loading all the biscuits and all that you know onto the trucks. And so in those days everybody had rifles. All the young fellows all had a .22 rifle you know,

just had them. We used to go shooting rabbits and roos and foxes and I became quite a good shot with the rifle you know there’s no doubt about that, ‘Deadeye Dick’. Anyway we, with motorbikes and we weren’t into drugs or anything like that and not even into smoking. Anyway everything went along all right. Then the war broke out in 1939.

Oh right, we used to, as I say, we used to either go down the beach, go down the beaches in those days or you’d mainly, one of the fellows had a car and we used to all go out the bush shooting rabbits and roos and we’d go to a farmhouse and the farmer was quite good you know, he was glad you were going up there to shoot the rabbits and we’d stay in the farmhouse

overnight, sleep on the, a blanket in front of his fire and you know we never bothered with girls, we weren’t interested in girls, no, we just did our own thing and we were quite happy. And in those days you could leave the front door of your house open, you could put a big sign on the front door, ‘The bread money’s under the mat and I’ll be back at 4 o’clock’. And you’d come and everything was in, you know, place.

And then the war broke out, although I came from England I realised that what was going on over there but it was so far away from here, it didn’t concern us all that much.

Oh right, yeah. Well my father used to say he was on the ships in the early days to Brazil on the

rubber trade. And then he went, from that he went into the Blue Funnel Line, that was line we were in, and they did, they went to the Far-East, Japan, America, Boston, New York and then also Australia, and I’ve got his discharge books down there, and he was coming to Australia during the First World War

and in his discharge books it’s got trooping and he went from Australia with Australian troops to the Dardanelles in the Middle-East. And I remember him telling me one time, there was a young Australian soldier on the ship and he was drunk the night before they landed and he was smashing up all the stuff on the ship, the glasses and the crockery and you know. And

the next day they went ashore, he bought it on the beach, you know he just got to the beach. But then later on the Americans came into the war and he went across the North Atlantic to pick up American troops. And at first light in the morning they were silhouetted against the night sky and the German U-Boat [Unterseeboot – German submarine] had been sitting pretty in the periscope and

they didn’t fire the torpedo because the submarine was on the surface and they were firing shells from the gun on the submarine and one of the early shells from the submarine it was, it hit the steam pipe, see in those days the ships were steamships and the rudder was on the, the midshipman at the wheelhouse turned the wheel that opened the valve and this steam worked the winch

that turned the rudder. Well one of the early shells hit the steam pipe and the ship was just going round in circles and the U-Boat was just pumping shells into it and it wasn’t until they got a white flag up that the submarine ceased fire. And in those days they were taking the captains prisoners on the U-Boat. So they hid him in one of the lifeboats and the mate’s lifeboat was the first to go across

to the submarine and he said to the submarine – the Germans in those days they were not Nazis, they were gentlemen – and he said, “I’m sorry, this is war,” and he said, “Have you got many wounded?” He said, “Do you want a loan of the submarine’s doctor?” and they said, “No, we’ve got our own doctor.” And he said, “Where’s the captain?” and they said, “Oh he got killed in the action,” and he said, “I’m very sorry to hear that.” So he said, “You’re the Blue Funnel boat, Diomed,” he said, “You’re on a maiden voyage,” this is how much they knew with spies

in England. “You’re on a maiden voyage out of the Herculaneum Dock at Liverpool,” and he said, “Don’t go away from here, all keep together and in about two hours’ time you’ll be picked up by a Dutch oil tanker that’s bearing down from such and such direction.” And sure enough they were picked up by this oil tanker and they were landed in New York at three o’clock in the afternoon. Some of the fellows only had pyjamas, pyjama pants on,

but that’s what happened to my father and then as I say he got onto this coast in World War II.

He was the chief steward on the ship and he went from, he used to operate in the war from Sydney to Noumea to New Guinea and other places, New Caledonia. And

as I say, one day when I was up in New Guinea somebody said to me the ship was in and, you know, a fellow gave me a lift down to the wharf in a jeep and I went aboard the ship. He gave me a decent meal; I hadn’t sat at a decent table you know since I’d joined up. And when I left, after two days, he gave me a crate of eggs to take back because all we were getting in that air force was, it

was criminal really, the food they gave us, bully beef and beans and these dog biscuits, you never saw any bread. And the dog biscuits, if you didn’t soak them in your tea or water you’d break your teeth, and another thing now there was these goldfish this herring or something or other, we used to call them goldfish, they were terrible things. Anyway he gave me this crate of eggs and a whole piece

of bacon all sliced thin, well I took it back to the camp with me and we were having bacon and eggs. You could smell the bacon and eggs all over the jungle you know but all the other fellows had bully beef and beans. But that was that. Then the other ship on the island, the Centaur, that was the one that got sunk off Brisbane, it was a hospital ship and then another time the other ship,

the Gorgon, she was up there and that was the day that the 170 bomb, 170 aircraft raid. It was Zero escort, there was dive bombers and there was the normal Japanese heavy bombers and the dive bombers went for the ships, the Zeros went for us and the bombers went for us. They didn’t do all that much damage but in New

Guinea we used to never, we used to stack the pack of all the 100 Aviation Octane fuel to be dumped, but we never put them all in one heap. We’d stagger the heaps so if they hit that heap then it would survive. And I looked out of the trench and I thought, “Holy God, the island’s on fire!” because there was all this black smoke going up from one of these dumps, I think they hit two dumps. But that night, oh that’s right they dropped a bomb,

a dive bomb and it didn’t go off but it went through the cattle deck doors on the Gorgon into the ship and the chief officer and the mate, they carried this bomb up onto the deck and they threw it over the side, it was a silly thing to do really, cause you know it hadn’t been defused but they got away with it. But the Gorgon suffered damage but she managed you know to get back to Australia for repairs. But that night on the radio, Tokyo Rose she

called us ‘the butchers of Milne Bay’ and she said, “The debt has been paid today to the butchers of Milne Bay,” because we did butcher them when they landed initially, cause this was the second time we went to Milne Bay for this, and they’d been wiped off the face of the earth. And she also said that they could nominate the coconut trees they’d be tied to to be used for live bayonet practice, you know, when they

take the place again. Because after Milne Bay we lost, we went up there with about 26, 27 aircraft, Kittyhawks, B40s, and we came out with about, I think around was about three. See you’ve got to appreciate, although the strips were made of this Marsden matting it was, all the rain we used to get up there. I mean before that battle

it rained for four days and four nights, solid rain and when it rains up there, it rains. And the mud used to ooze through the matting and it used to play havoc with the undercarriage of the aircraft on landing and taking off. So we went south for new aircraft and that’s where, well we went to Horn Island first. I think the idea of going to Horn Island, it was only about six weeks,

was to get all the malaria out of the fellows because Milne Bay is the worst place that’s known, the worst place of the whole of New Guinea and it’s a big island, New Guinea, for malaria. And I got malaria, the whole squadron got malaria. And we, I might be able to remember a story a bit here because what happened with the…

Well what happened, I was in 22 Squadron in Richmond, New South Wales, and we had the Boston bombers and I was there for, there for about two months, I think, and one night when I reported in to the guard room for duty the flight sergeant said to me, “Oh, you’re detailed

tomorrow,” he said, “for prisoner escort,” he said, “I want you to be in the guard room at the main gate with your uniform on, sidearms at half past six, seven o’clock,” and I said, “All right.”

Oh well I’ll start

from the very beginning I think. Yeah I joined the air force. What happened, I was working for this biscuit company and I was manpower, in other words, if you’re manpower you can’t join up, you know what I mean, cause you’re manpower. But I went behind their back, I didn’t tell the fellow in the air force that I was working for them.

That’s right,

we were, they considered these army biscuits they were giving the troops that, you know, were war effort so I couldn’t join up. So I didn’t tell the fellow, the recruiting officer with the air force, where I worked. And I went up, he passed me, I wanted to get into air crew and he passed me for the air crew, I passed all the air crew tests cause I’m no fool you know…

I wanted to fly, I always wanted to fly a Spitfire you know, we were mad at motorbikes and speed and all that, I wanted to fly a Spitfire. And he said, “Well look,” he said, “Now,” he said, “there’s a little bit of study you’ve got to do,” he said, “before we can put you into that category.” So, “I can’t do that,” and he said, “Why’s that?”

“Well,” I said, “I get up of a morning at five o’clock, I catch the first tram into Fremantle and go to work and I work till 11 o’clock at night, six nights a week,” I said, “You know there’s no way in the world that I can do it.” He said, “Well look, join up and study in our time,” so I said, “All right.” He said, “Well join up as a guard,” he said, “and you can

study,” and I said, “All right.” So I signed on the dotted line, swore an oath of allegiance and of course once you’ve done that there’s nothing the biscuit company could do about it you know, I was in, so they didn’t like it but still.

Oh it was about ‘I swear to serve the – ’, it was the King I think then, ‘I swear to serve the King George and – ’

somebody else you know. So I got in the air force. And I went to Pearce and we did our rookies’ training you know all the….

Well first of all they had you on this parade ground you know, marching up and down, rifle drill and all the rest of it. Then we got into the shooting range, well that was a piece of cake to me you know,

‘Deadeye Dick’. And we went through all that, .303 rifles, there were Bren guns, Bren guns were very accurate, fire a Bren Gun off a tripod, put a hole in the target and you could put all the other bullets in the same hole you know. Then we had to strip a Vickers machine gun blindfolded, take the breech block out of it and strip it blindfolded and reassemble it

blindfolded. And then we used to have grenade practise. I know the first grenade I threw, I was amazed at the damn noise of it you know and then we had bayonet practise and unarmed combat and all this and I did that for a month, six weeks I suppose. And then I got a posting to Number 2 Air Observers’ School at Mount Gambier but…

Oh right yeah, well we slept in huts on the floor on these palliasses and they used to get us up at I think it was 7 o’clock of a morning and you’d get up and have your breakfast and then you’d come back and then you’d go down and have your drill and all this training and that would go on until lunchtime.

And then after lunch you go back again and start again and then the aircraft there were these Voltee Vengeance dive bombers and then you’d have to do your turn cleaning all these damn spark-plugs, I think each aircraft had 32 spark- plugs in an engine. So you’d have to clean all the sparkplugs and they’d put them in the motor, they used to run them on

a stand and after a while they’d stop, and take it out and of course you had to clean all the sparkplugs again.

Well that was all part of the training you sort of, although you was a guard and everything else you’re sort of a, not a handyman, but you know you had to assist them with all the work that had to be done with the aircraft. And …

Oh yeah it was, you know I was

young and keen then and energetic, never thought that anything could harm me, you know what I mean but, and all the fellows you seem to get on pretty well with them and you know, just like a big happy family really. And …

Yeah, made a few mates then but in the air force they split you up, you know what I mean, you’re never sort of in the one unit all the time.

And then they posted me to Mount Gambier. And I was only there for about two days and then they said, “You’re posted to 22 Squadron Richmond.”

I think really it was just to get me out of WA [Western Australia] and get me on the road to, you know, to the front line really, that’s what it boils down to.

Mainly training air observers you know for aircrew so it was, that wouldn’t have got me in

air crew so it was no good me staying there. So they moved me onto 22 Squadron Richmond and as I say well then I was in the Boston Bombers Squadron Richmond and until one day I went across, I had the day off and I went across on the Ferry to Taronga Park and got back to Circular Quay about, oh it would have been about 6 o’clock

at night and I got the train from Sydney out to the unit, the squadron at Richmond on the Parramatta line I think it was. And when I got to the unit all the lights were on on the station and all the Bostons were taking off and I said to the guard on the gate, “What’s happened?” He said, “Oh they’re after these bloody Jap submarines in Sydney Harbour,” he said, “The Bostons are trying to get them.”

Well I must have crossed Sydney Harbour that afternoon when the midget submarines were there. Well then it was long after that as I say that the flight sergeant said to me, “You’re detailed for prisoner escort,” so I said, “Okay, I’ll be there.” So this chap, Jimmy Munroe, I used to stay with him, he lived in Bondi and I used to stay with him when I went on leave, sleep on a camp stretcher in his lounge, and

he said, “Oh Bill, I’d love to do that,” and I said, “Look Jim, if you want to do it, you see the sergeant, the flight sergeant. If he okays it, it’s all right with me.” Well he came back and he said, “Yeah, he said I can take your place,” and I said, “All right, now don’t forget to get up,” I said, “I don’t want you dicking me out, you bastard!” and, “No,” he said, “I’ll be up.” Well that’s virtually the last time I saw him alive. Because the next morning I went down the

strip, down the hanger and one of the fitters said to me, “Hey,” he said, “you ought to go and buy a ticket in the Golden Casket,” and I said, “Why is that?” and he said, “Munroe’s bought it.” So that was about 10 o’clock in the morning, a runner came up from the orderly and he said to me, “You’re posted,” and I said, “Oh.” So I went down the orderly room

and I said to the fellow down at the orderly room, “Where am I posted to?” He said, “You’re posted to 75 Squadron …”

So, 75 Squadron, so I said, “Where are they?” He said, “Well if I knew, I couldn’t tell you,” he said, “At a place called Fall River – it’s a code name.” Well Fall River was the code name for Milne Bay. So he said, “You’ve got to be on the

train for Brisbane tonight,” this afternoon for the, not night. So I just got all my clearances signed and everything and off I went to Brisbane on the train, I was in Brisbane overnight and when I got to Brisbane there was sort of a bit of a war going on up there between Americans, the Australians and the Americans. And I got on this, I slept in an air force place in Brisbane

overnight and the next day I got on this, on the narrow gauge line, the train and alongside of us pulled in a train with Americans on it and you know the two carriages were side by side. And these Americans had come into the country from up the north and they were coming down the south. And these Americans said yelling out from the train, “Righto Aussie, you go up there and fight the Japs

and we’ll you know fix your women.” Well I think this is what caused all the trouble. Cause when we got up to Townsville, before we got into Townsville the train stopped, there was sort of a station outside a tunnel just outside of Townsville and the engine crew shot through, the engine had a full head of steam on it and in the searchlights was these Japanese flying boats and it was the first air raid on

Townsville. And you could see, this fighter was going up with these flying boats in the searchlight and you could see like little red beads from the fighter tracers going into the flying boat. And anyway, when the air raid was over the train proceeded into Townsville. Well when I got to Townsville I camped in a house on the foreshore.

And nobody would go, you wouldn’t be game to go into Townsville proper because the Australian Commandos, they were gunning for the Americans up there, it was like a war going on.

Well the Australians were after the Americans, you know what I mean, the way they were carrying on with the women and that. And so I, the fellow there said, “Look mate,” he said, “in the air force,” he said, “you’ve missed the

squadron by a week or a couple of days,” so they took all me gear off me, all my you know blue uniform and coat, great coat and that and they said, “You go up on a ship in a week’s time,” well sure enough the ship came in called the Zwarte Hond and then I went up the gangway and I said to the Dutch bloke on ship, “What does that

mean in Dutch?” and he said, “Oh it means Black Dog.” So anyway this was a filthy ship, it was a coal burning ship and the previous cargo in the hold had been bags of onions and most of them must have been rotten, so much so we couldn’t sleep in between decks so we all slept on deck for the four day voyage to New Guinea. And when we got to

Milne Bay it was about five o’clock in the afternoon, just starting to get dusk, 6 o’clock, and I thought, “Good God, look at this place.” It reminded me of a movie I’d seen a few years earlier, it’s called Devil’s Island where the French penal colony was in this jungle with all these palm trees and all this mist over the top

of the palm trees. Any rate the escort we had was the HMAS Swan, and at Milne Bay you don’t go in of a night time, you anchor at the mouth of the bay and you go in at daylight. And from nowhere, four aircraft dived on this HMAS Swan and she opened up with all anti-aircraft armament and after a while they flew off to the north. So then the next day we went in and the ship tied up to the coconut trees on, you know,

on a makeshift wharf, it was the wharf the Australians must have made. And I went down the gangway of the ship onto the dock and who should I run into but a fellow by the name of George Mills and he’d done his training with me in WA and he was, before the war he was a wheat farmer and he hailed from Marwangella in Western Australia. And I said, “What the hell are you doing here George?” “Oh,” he said, “I came up

with the main body of 75 Squadron,” he said, “a week ago.” “Oh,” I said, “How far’s the Nips from here?” “Oh,” he said, “about 50 miles to the north.” Well that would have been around about Buna. I said, “Do you get any air raids here?” “No,” he said, “they don’t even know we’re here.” Well I went back aboard the ship and it wouldn’t have been ten minutes after seeing George on the dock and all hell broke loose.

There was about seven or eight of these Zeros flying …

End of tape.

Beg your pardon?

Oh right, when I was a little boy my grandmother, we used to call her Min, I used to call her Min, she had a lodger and his name was Old Tom. I don't even know his second name,

Old Tom, and he used to look after me, he used to take me to the park and feed the ducks, he used to take me here, take me there, take me everywhere and there must have been a film star in those days called Jackie Coogan and he used to call me Jackie Coogan. And I honestly feel that it's old Tom because after the Munroe affair, that was just the start of it. I mean,

I'll go into later on you know what my guardian angel did. But I definitely have a guardian angel; with this thing with the cancer recently it proves it you know. But as I say at Milne Bay I went back aboard the ship when these Zeros hit and they were lowering a tray down the hatch with four wires on each, like four wires on each corner

for Australian troops to do down to work the cargo and when the Zeros hit, the crew member on the winch he shot through and these fellows yell out, "For God's sake, get it down, get it down, get it down!" Somebody went over and worked the winch and swung them round and put them down on the deck and I was on the foredeck of this ship by the foremaster. And there was a locker there with a steel door, a paint locker or lamp trimmer's locker.

So I hopped in the locker and I closed the door and I'd no sooner closed the door and it opened and a face of a black American Negro appeared and apparently these fellows were working with, the American Engineers were up there building another airstrip, and he come down to get cargo. And he said to me, "Hey buddy," he said, "You've been in an air raid before?" and I said, "No, this is my first air raid on a ship mate," and he just slammed the door and he was off. Well

eventually somebody came down from the squadron with a truck and picked us up and took us back to the campsite. Well I wouldn't have been in the camp any more than ten minutes, 15 minutes at the most, and all hell broke lose. Seven, eight Zeros flying at treetop height strafed the whole area with cannons and machine gun fire. They were silver in colour, very manoeuvrable, not like out planes with the camouflage coloured

paint. And they destroyed a Kittyhawk on the strip but fortunately nobody was killed. Well that night in a clearing in the jungle, which was our campsite, the squadron leader, Les Jackson, gathered us all together around him in pouring tropical rain, I can remember that. I had a fur felt hat on and a cape and the rain was pouring down over my face and he said, "Well chaps,"

he said, "We're here for one purpose and one purpose only and that's to kill Japanese." He said, "They killed my brother at Port Moresby and my mates," he said, "Today," he said, "the bastards caught us with our pants down." He said, "As from tomorrow," he said, "we'll have eight Kittyhawks up at a ceiling," and this included 76 Squadron, they were there at the same time, same kind of aircraft. He said, "We'll have six, eight Kittyhawks up

at the ceiling and when they're low on fuel, eight more will take off to relieve them so that the eight coming in to land will avert their cover protection to land." And this went on as normal everyday routine and it paid off handsomely next time the Japanese came back. It was just after that, there was four Zeros and a dive bomber on the Rahn reconnaissance of the Milne Bay area and they shot down

the dive bomber. And it wasn't long after that we had about, I think we had about 20 Kittyhawks up on a red alert and they ran into, I think they ran into 12 Zeros and they were well aware of the numbers that day, we paid dearly with some of the young inexperienced pilots. We got, four of them were shot down and killed and they shot down four Zeros. But

the intelligence reports coming in indicated that the Japanese were going to make another big push and we didn't know where it was going to be. We didn't know whether it was going to be at Port Moresby or whether it was going to be Guadalcanal on the Solomon Islands or us at Milne Bay. So because of this impending threat, number 6 Squadron Hudsons bombers they were moved into place at Horn Island,

that was to the South of us in the Torres Strait. The Hudsons have got a much longer flying range than the Kittyhawk. They posted more coast watchers on these outlying islands. I mean these coast watchers were very brave men because they're virtually on the Japanese doorstep and if they got captured they'd get beheaded. And a coast watcher at the northern entrance of Ward Hunt Strait,

he sighted two Japanese landing, 50 foot landing barges, filled with Japanese troops moving down the coast towards Milne Bay. That was on the 24th of August and then on the 25th of August in response to a coast watcher on Goodenough Island. Goodenough Island's not far from Milne Bay, it's about 20 minutes' flying in a Kittyhawk I suppose.

In response to the coast watcher at Goodenough Island, he sighted these two barges putting ashore at Goodenough Island, well two flights of Kittyhawks, one led by Squadron Leader Johnny Piper and the other by Flying Officer Adam, they moved in for the kill. One flight acted as top cover while the other went in at ground level and strafed the barges. Well after about, I think they made about four passes on the barges,

they not only set all the barges on fire and killed a few of the Japanese but, unbeknown to the pilots, they'd taken out all of the Japanese radio equipment. And the Nips couldn't communicate with the main invasion fleet heading towards Milne Bay. And in later life I was reading a book, the Japanese version on the war battle and what they intended to do was after the initial

invasion, these landing barges were going to land at another part of the bay and if they had have done this the Australians would have been fighting on two fronts. You see you didn't want that to happen. We knew then that the Japanese invasion fleet was two cruisers, I think it was three destroyers, two transports full of troops and two submarine or minesweeper chasers or whatever it is.

And we had no searchlights at Milne Bay, we had no shore batteries, we had no navy. All the navy was in [the] Solomons or wherever it was, and we just couldn't stop them. So the next day the Kittyhawks took off and they put two 50 pound bombs where the belly tanks go underneath the

aircraft. And they attacked the convoy but without success and you've got to appreciate here that the Kittyhawk's a fighter squadron, they've got no bombsights and dropping a bomb from where the belly tank is it's just hit and miss. And then just after that the Hudsons and the other Kittyhawks they attacked the squadron, the invasion fleet and they had a near miss on the transport but they hit one of these

submarines, chasers or whatever it was, minesweeper. And that didn't go into Milne Bay. Well as I said it had been raining for four days and four nights solid. They landed and because of the terrain, the Australian Army never thought that tanks would be any good in that sort of terrain but the Japanese landed these damn tanks and they had a searchlight on them. You couldn't shoot, the army couldn't shoot the searchlights out because it was reflected,

the light was reflected off a plate.

In response to the barges being sighted at Goodenough Island, two flights of Kittyhawks, one led by Squadron Leader Johnny Piper, Flight Lieutenant Johnny Piper and the other led by Flying Officer Adams moved in for the kill. One flight acted as top cover while the other went in at ground

level and strafed the barges. And after about three or four passes the barges were on fire, they'd killed quite a few of the Japanese but, unbeknown to the 75 Squadron pilots, they'd taken out all of the Japanese radio equipment. And they couldn't communicate with the main fleet heading towards Milne Bay. And apparently what the Japanese intended to do was to land these barges with troops at another part of the Bay

and wait for the initial landing and of course the Australians would have been fighting on two fronts. The next day a flight of Kittyhawks took off to attack the convoy and they, each aircraft had a 250 pound bomb where the belly tanks go but without success and you've got to appreciate of course that

the Kittyhawk's a fighter plane and not a bomber, and no bombsights, it was just hit and miss. And then they, in the afternoon Kittyhawks and Hudson bombers, they moved in and they had a near miss on the transport and a direct hit on a submarine chaser which, didn't you know, followed the ship into Milne Bay. At Milne Bay we had no searchlights, no shore batteries and no navy

and the Japanese landed tanks and we never thought, the Australian Army never thought that tanks could operate in such a terrain but after four days of heavy rain, you know, the place was a real quagmire and they had a light on these tanks, you couldn't shoot it out, it was sort of reflected off the plate and they were shining the searchlight on the tanks on Australian troops at the base of the trees, coconut trees and other trees and

machine gunning them and our fellows, apparently they raced out with these sticky bombs, they were lipid bombs to put on the tanks but unfortunately because of all the rain and all the damp conditions these damn things didn't go off.

Well it's a bomb, it's like a limpet bomb but it's got a magnetic thing on it and it sticks onto the side of metal and you know to blow the tanks up. Well

the next, the morning of the invasion we found that the Japanese had landed 15 of these big steel landing barges and these were all moored inshore and they offloaded them in a hurry, a whole heap of drums of petrol, and these were all floating in the water and the first target of our aircraft were these barges because we knew if we could get them

and take them out you know, the Japanese couldn't use them to go you know from the shore and their ships or go around the Australians like they did in Malaya and Loops. And the Kittyhawks took all these barges out and Johnny Piper he saw a truck there and it was loaded with ammunition, he didn't know it was loaded with ammunition, but a load of ammunition and he attacked it and the damn thing blew up and one of the bombs in the Hudsons hit some of these petrol drums and it started a big huge

fire. Well the next, I think it was the next day, Squadron Leader Peter Turnbull, commanding officer of the 76th Squadron, he took off to try and find these Japanese tanks but he couldn't find them because they were, you know it was such thick terrain. But he did detect a detachment of Japanese in a clearing

and he went in and they don't even know to this day whether he was shot down by small arms fire or whether he hit a tree with the wing. But eight days later, forward troops found his plane and body in the jungle. Well we knew the Japanese wanted to capture the airstrip, that was their prime target, and we demolished a whole

campsite for fear of falling into their hands. We slashed all the tent ropes, you know flattened everything and there was about, I think there was about 20 of us and we went over to fight with the army and we went over to them, the army said, "Just keep the gear that you're wearing," it was like long sleeve shirt, long khaki pants, army boots

a fur felt hat, a water bottle, a ground sheet and the Owen guns we already had and he said, "Bring all the ammunition you could possibly carry," and he stressed on us, "Under no account," he said, "no account take any prisoners, you do not take any prisoners." So they dug in on the side of the hill, it wasn't all that far from the campsite. And they dug this trench about , oh it would have been about third from the top I

suppose but they did what the New Zealanders did in Crete.

They put all the dirt, not in front of the trench they put it at the bottom of the hill in a row and you'd think there's a trench behind the dirt. And we'd done all this work of digging the trench, this army brass come along and, "No," he said, "we're not going to take up position here." He said, "We're going to defend the strip from the back side, not from the

ocean side, from the back side." So we all moved onto this high ground at the back of the strip and they placed us all in pairs along the high ground and they put two men on listening posts at the bottom of the hill. Of course muggins he also got one of the best marbles in the barrel you know, I picked the listening post at the end,

at the very end.

Well you're the first target at the bloody listening post down there. And I was with a fellow called, I think it was the wood butcher, Vic Anderson.

Well he was the fellow that carved the Blue Emperor out of wood that time

and this fellow came along with a butterfly net and you know he thought he got a Blue Emperor. But all in front of us was this tall high kunai grass, it's about, oh about six foot high, and it was just starting to break light and we heard this talking and these voices in the long kunai grass. It was not in English, they weren't talking in English. We both pulled our cock

on our Owen guns and we were going to put the whole magazine into whoever came out of that damn grass. And this is where my guardian angel came again because I just, I had first pressure on the trigger and just about to open up and the black faces of men, women and children appeared out of the grass. So, we beckoned them over to where we were at the footslope of the hill

and I said to Vic, "You stay, I'll take them up." So I took them up to our command, we had a bit of a command post at the top of the hill on the ridge. And when they were interviewed, apparently they were fleeing from the advancing Japanese and you know if I'd have pulled that trigger and killed those people I'd never forgive myself and you know, thank God, my guardian angel came to my assistance. Well that was all right and then we were detailed, you were detailed on a regular basis to,

you couldn't light a fire, no you couldn't light a fire, you were detailed on a regular basis to go back to the old campsite to scrounge some food. The drinking water that we had, well it wasn't purified you know you just took some water bottles and immersed them in the creek and filled them up. And the,

but it was going along all right until about the 5th of September I think it was, it was about 10 o'clock at night and the whole jungle behind us, it lit up with this purple light, very bright purple light. It was so bright with the low cloud,

in fact not the low cloud, you could have with no trouble at all read a newspaper, you could have read a newspaper in the jungle. And we thought, "Oh holy hell, they'd landed more damn tanks," well then we could hear all this firing in the distance and then the light went off and then about, oh it would be about half an hour later the light came on again. And then it went off and then in the night sky we saw 'flash, flash, flash, flash' like

salvos at three. And these damn shells come right up, some landed in front of us, some over the top and some landed either side. And it was a terrible experience; yeah I'd say that would be the worst experience we had up there with these shells. And what it was when the light first came on was when they came, two Japanese cruisers,

it was the Tanru and another one called the Tatta, and they shone their light on this ship alongside the wharf, the Hamshun, and they put shells into the waterline and the ship just heeled over with the funnels pointing out to sea. And then they put the light off, she swung the light on, that's right, on the hospital ship Manunda in the bay but they didn't, she had all

her lights on and they didn't touch her and then they put the lights off. And when they came back they knew they'd lost the battle so they were going to destroy the airstrip because they never, ever made any attempt to damage the airstrip, they never bombed the airstrip, they always strafed it, they never bombed it. And they were firing in the right direction you know for the strip but they were overshooting the strip and of course we were right at the back of the strip. Well next day when it got

light we had a look to see what these damn, what damage these shells had done and they'd cut the coconut trees off about a foot from the ground, like a giant had come along with a big sword but not only that, they were using high explosive in the shells and the holes they'd blown you could have put a small car down them like on end. And that was the main aim

you know, to damage the strip. Well I don't remember any more about what happened up there, I've lost my memory, I don't know what it was because all I remember is going back to the squadron but I could never make out why I had all these souvenirs, not souvenirs, these things taken off dead Japanese like photographs and all that, and I don't know how I come to get them.

Anyway it wasn't until 50 years after the battle, the Sunday Times did this full page thing on Milne Bay and the phone at home never stopped ringing that morning, people ringing in. You know, "Yeah I was there mate." Well one fellow rang me up, he was an army bloke and he said, "Oh yeah, I remember you air force fellows." He said, "Aerodrome Defence blokes."

He said, "You came with us." And I thought, "Yeah I remember that." And he said, "Oh yeah," he said, "you came out on patrols and mopping up operations." I couldn't remember that. That was a complete blank and it still is to this day you know, a complete blank. But we got back to the camp and we got taken over by an American pursuit, they don't call their fighter

squadrons, 'fighter squadrons' they call them 'pursuit squadrons'. We got taken over by Pursuit Squadron number 35 and they had Airacobra aircraft and they are no match really, no more than just a notch up on the Kittyhawk but not a match for the Zeros. The Zeros would eat you up. I mean the COs [Commanding Officers] used to drum into the pilots, "Whatever you do, don't mix it with the Zeros," you know, "Get up on an altitude dive on them and get out but don't dogfight with them."

Well the Kittyhawks were a heavy aircraft, they had armour plate behind the pilot, the pilots used to fly with flying boots and all that. The Japanese for lightness, they were so light, the Zero could virtually turn on a ten cent piece you know, it could manoeuvre sharply

where our planes had to take the bigger turn. And the Kittyhawk, it was a really good fighter plane, it was a strong plane, it had a very reliable engine in the Alison, you could rev the planes up and it would still fly. But the six forward firing guns in the wings, three in each wing, they were fifty calibre Brownings, they were very, very destructive,

very destructive. They used to fire, I think it was, so many ball ammunition and an amour piercing and a tracer. And they really, it was really the Kittyhawk that was the decisive factor in the battle because the Japanese came with climbing irons to climb up the trees and they used to snipe from these trees, they killed a lot of our fellows from these trees. And one of the

army chaps at forward post, one of the army chaps, he said, "Under the Kittyhawk gunfire," cause they used to fire this colour smoke, what do you call it, not a rocket, but they used to fire this colour smoke, "Under the Kittyhawk gunfire bullets and palm fronds and Japanese snipers," he said, "they're pouring down like rain."

And where these Kittyhawks were hitting these Japanese, it was a small hole where it went in but when it came out the back of them it was about the size of a dinner plate you know. But how the hell they stayed up these trees, cause these trees are full of ants, these little brown ants you know, they'd bite the hell out of you.

Oh there was a lot of them, oh yeah. A lot of

Nips up the trees.

Oh I wouldn't know, I wouldn't know a number on them, but you know. But as I say then the American Pursuit Squadron came in to take over and they're the best. There's no doubt about the Yanks, we'd been living, we saw bread the, all the time we were up there, everything was out of a tin no fresh food or vegetables. In fact we were all

yellow, we were the same colour as the Japanese because we used to take these Atebrin tablets. Whenever you got your food, they'd give you two of these Atebrin tablets to take. And the Americans moved in from the war and they brought these big mobile army kitchens, they looked like big steel caravans. And the fuel they used to fuel the stoves and ovens was this 100 octane aviation fuel because it was always readily available in the fighter squadron.

And they put this, they didn't call it lunch they called in chow, and they put this meal on, they put these trestles down and they put one great big aluminium bowl with the brown sausages, another big aluminium bowl with the red frankfurter sausages, another big bowl with the fried onions and another big bowl with mashed potatoes, they'd made these with dehydrated potatoes, milk powder and butter, tinned butter.

Then they put another bowl down with tinned peaches, tinned apricots, tinned pears and another big bowl with custard, they made that with powdered milk. And all these condiments on the table, tomato ketchup and mustard pickles and all this and then, what made our eyes really light up, they brought these big stacks of these freshly cooked bread rolls, you could smell them, the yeast you know.

We'd never seen bread. And this American lieutenant, he could see our mouths were watering. He said, "Righto you guys," he said, "Get in on the end of the chow line," and we went through with the meagre things that we had left over after the battle. It was too much, we couldn't eat it all you know but it was the best food we'd seen, yeah. Well then I was standing by two of these pilots, American pilots and our fellows with the three aircraft we had left, they buzzed the

campsite you know, flying in at low, victory roll and loop the loops and all the rest. And this American said to the other fellow, he said, "Howdy." He said, "The bastards sure can fly these goddamn things." Well anyway we pulled out of there and it was a funny thing that happened when we pulled out. It never happened anywhere else before, the

squadron you know on parade in the squad and the army chaps were in two columns either side of us. And as we moved out, I don't know whether we marched down the wharf or we got into trucks but as we moved off they clapped and cheered you know either side of the air force. And my

interpretation of the Australian soldier you know that fought up there, well he was magnificent you know, you could always rely on the men guarding your rear or your flank and one of the things that got me up there, I wouldn't have had his job for all the tea in China, when we were on this bridge this little army corporal, he was like a roving picket and he used to come out of the dark and he would always approach you from

the left hand side and he'd put his hand over your mouth and he'd say, "Everything okay, dig?" and then he'd just drift off into the night. Well I mean there was that many blokes up there that was so trigger happy you know what I mean I wouldn't have put on if anything. But I can honestly say the men up there, they were a special breed of Australian. I mean I doubt if you'll every see, you know, such men.

I'd rate the Australian jungle fighter as the best in the world. The Americans used to smoke these cigars, they used to use aftershave lotion, they used to talk a lot and of course you could smell it all over the jungle. The Australians you never saw them, you never heard them, you never smelt them you know. But

then I, after the battle of Milne Bay I wrote a poem, when we stopped to get our breath, I wrote a poem, The Heroes of Milne Bay is dedicated to the officers and NCOs [Non Commissioned Officers] and men of the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] that fought at Milne Bay. It went:

\n[Verse follows]\n'We shall remember them, battle stained and torn,\n Into that jungle of death, on that rainy dawn,\n

Gallantly they fought through hell and swamp,\n

They progress sure and slow,\n In mud and filth, they battle on against the cunning foe,\n Low in the stagnant mangroves throughout the night they lay,\n Waiting for these yellow swines, their one and only prey,\n Lurking down in every palm these green clad fronds did lie,\n But still our boys went forward in spite some would die.\n

Their courage and valour was only theirs and life so dear to pay,\n

Those gallant lads that fought so well in the battle of Milne Bay.'\n

That was that one and the other poem I wrote up there, was straight after the battle, was I don't know why in the hell I wrote My Dream Girl. And it was:

\n[Verse follows]\n 'Jungle, jungle, jungle, humid wet and green,\n

Entangled vines and creepers, like some horrid awful dream,\n

The order it was given, the advance stops for a spell,\n You fall fatigued and tired in this jaded jungle hell,\n As you sit there in the jungle your mind drifts into space,\n In a mud pool filled with water you see a charming face,\n Of a pretty dark-haired lady, her smile is soft and sweet,\n

Her eyes are gay, alluring, her face is small and neat,\n

Her eyes they seem to sparkle like a elegant morn in June,\n It lingers in your memory like the strain of a haunting tune,\n You bend down to her closer to kiss those ruby lips,\n Instead of scented lipstick just muddy water sips,\n Your dream girl she has vanished, the pool is stirred and black,\n

You wish that pretty lady through that mud pool would come back.'\n

Why I wrote that, I don't know, but I wrote it you know.

I don't know, it could have been. But that was one of the many poems I wrote up there. I wrote another one, The Men in Green.

These jaded sons of ANZACS [Australian and New Zealand Army Corps], valiant in ever deed,

Their daring and their courage an example we might lead,

\n[Verse follows]\n From Milne Bay and Buna, of Lae and Kokoda fame,\n Their blood on the beaten jungle has written their glorious name,\n Through rivers, creeks and jungles and land that no one knew,\n They overcame the setbacks these men in nature's hue,\n A cross stands in the jungle, a tin hat on its frame,\n It bears the scribbled letters of a fallen hero's name,\n Perhaps a kiddie's daddy, perhaps a mother's son,\n

Lies down beneath that heap of earth, his life and duty done,\n

Nippon scattered remnants retreat before their might,\n Broken in disorder they leave the bloody fight,\n Onwards ever onwards their work and fight unseen,\n These gallant sons of ANZACS who wear the jungle green.'\n

That was that one and I did another about, am I boring you with these?

When we left Horn Island we went to Cairns to get new aircraft and we camped on the banks of the Baron River in Cairns. And we were in these plywood huts because there use to be a plywood mill not far from where we were. And I think each hut held two men and it was there I got my first dose of malaria, at Horn Island, that was bad enough

but it wasn't bad you know, violent headache and everything else. But I went down with my second dose with malaria at Cairns and they didn't hesitate, they put me on a stretcher, they put me in the ambulance and they took me to the Cairns Public Hospital and I went in there and I had this army corporal with me all night and I could hear all these other fellows, it was a big ward. There was about a dozen beds down there, I was at the top end. And I could hear, "Look at that poor

digger, he's just come back from New Guinea," the bed was shaking you know and this army corporal kept putting the blankets on as I threw them off." I was really delirious and through the night I remember being in this place with this bright light. It's not a light I've ever seen on this earth but the nearest I've got to it being on this earth is when you're wheeled into an operating theatre

and the light that's in there, this clinically clean light, it was peaceful in there, there was no noise, you were quite content to stay there.

Well I don't know, it wasn't in a room, it wasn't in a tunnel, it was just this bright light and the next morning the air force doctor he came in with the matron and they walked past

all these beds either side of the ward and he came straight to my bed and he said to me, "How do you feel?" Well I was too, I couldn't talk and he didn't think that I could hear them and the matron said, "We lost him last night," and I started putting two and two together and I reckon that that's what happened. That's what this bright light was you know, it was so peaceful and I was quite content

to stay there. So I've got no fear of dying, you know what I mean. But I've read about these things but you know that's what happened to me. And my guardian angel came to the rescue again.

Never seen her, no, and another time, my guardian angel up there. It was a bright sunny day, we used to get bright days up there, not a cloud in the sky. And there was nine bombers

in formation of three lots of three, flying at fifteen thousand feet. And I was down in this clearing where all these native huts were with these fellows. And one fellow said, "Oh yeah, they're American Marauders, they're going over to do the Nips over in Gasmata," and I thought, 'Oh no, that formation looks too good to me to be Yanks.' And then I detected this stop and start noise, see

with the Japanese aeroplanes it's a different noise, you know it's a sort of a stop-start, I don't think they're synchronised or something, they've got a 'mmmm, mmm, mmmm, mmm, mmmm, mmm' and I didn't want to show any panic and I thought, "Well I know there's a hole up the side of the hill. I'll get up there. I'll just ease my way up there," and I left the main group. And I got halfway up this hill and these bombers turned and as they turned they let the bombs go

and I had no shirt on at the time and I was halfway up the top of this hill and I could feel the hot wind over my back but when I looked back to where I had been there was all this bits of debris all, you know, going up, and quite a few fellows were killed that day and what actually happened, the cable comes through from where the spotters signal in

to say there's an air raid, a truck had run over it and broken it and that's why you know, yeah. But that was another time when my guardian angel. And another time we were …

Okay yeah, right.

End of tape

Yeah it was pretty good, you always saw, if anything ever happened you always saw the funny side of it. I remember one

night, two Japanese reconnaissance over most of the night searching around and anti-aircraft guns had been firing at them and we were in the trenches and one fellow said to the other fellow, he said, "I don't know," he said, "It beats me," he said, "why these Japanese haven't put commandos in here to take this marvellous airstrip we've got." And the other fellow said, "Oh yeah," he said, "These Japanese commandos,

you don't hear them of a night," he said, "they've got this long bamboo pole and," he said, "they've got a spike in the end of it and a big loop of very fine piano wire," he said, "They come up in the dark behind you, they slip the noose over your neck and they pull it and if you go back to get away from the noose you get the spike in the back of your neck and you know if you don't you get your throat cut." Well eventually these Nips gave it away for the night and they went away and we all turned in and in those days

we were sleeping in a great big marquee tent and nobody would sleep in the beds either end, they weren't beds really they were two coconut logs on the ground with a piece of hessian nailed across them. And anyway in the middle of the night, 3 o'clock in the morning, we heard a hell of a commotion in the middle of the tent and we used to have these mosquito nets you know, with a ring to keep them open, and this fellow, Bill Sinclair, is yelling, "They've got me,

they've got me, they've got me!" and when they put the torches and lit a hurricane lamp they found that this ring in the mosquito net had fallen down over his head and you know he must have thought that the Japanese commandos had got him. And another night, the guards used to go out just before it got dark, about half past five I suppose, and the first guard would go

out. See you've got to appreciate the dispersals are away from the main strip. If you had all the planes on the strip they'd get wiped out. The dispersal's a long way from the main strip and in the dispersals they had, each Kittyhawk was in a bay and the bays were made of coconut logs on three sides, across the back and down both sides and the coconut logs were about

four feet high or five feet high and it was in case any air raids you know, the logs would take the impact of all the shrapnel. And I was on the second shift, I went out about, I think the second shift went out about 8 o'clock, and I went out and the fellow, they used to drive you over in a truck cause they had all the steel matting all the way round

the dispersal, and they dropped me off and the fellow I relieved he said, "Everything's okay." He said, "You've got two Kittyhawks," he said, "and you've got a P38 over there. Locky Lightning came in and fuelled today," he said, "Everything's all right," and he got on the truck and went. Well it was as black as the ace of spades you know, you couldn't see your hand in front of you and you never sort of stayed in the same place for any length of time, you sort of shifted

around, you would never ever leave that allocated area that you had of those three aircraft because if you went away from that area you would walk right into it and all these fellows were trigger happy, they used to open up in the night and have a look the next day to see what they'd hit. I was under the wings of this Kittyhawk and the moon started to come up and I saw this big piece of rope in front of me and I thought, "That's a big piece of rope,"

but then when the moon started to get on it properly it had a shine on it and then I woke up, it wasn't a piece of rope it was one of these damn big pythons, you know these big rock pythons, they were huge things about 14 feet long. So I pulled the handle back on the Owen gun and just put a short burst in to it but I knew it was dead because the minute I hit it it didn't move you know but that's what they'd done the blighters had put that there on the early shift to frighten the hell out of me you know when I come out. But we

used to always take a lot of ammunition with us and the CO, he used to say, "I love to hear you blokes out there firing all this stuff off," he said, "I know we're safe in the campsite and you're looking after the Kites," you know. But life up there, everybody was in the same boat, I mean if you were digging a hole, a trench or something, some fellow would come along and say, "Righto mate,

sit down, have a blow, I'll give it a go," you know, he'd get on the shovel. But one time we were there, we were swimming in this creek, this was on the second time we went up there, there was no Americans there the first time but the second time there were Americans there, and these two American military police, they had this American Negro, he was about the same build as,

who will I put it, the same build as Mohammed Ali you know, really big bloke, and we noticed that these American MPs [Military Police] always had the flap on their revolvers undone you know. And we said to these, "Why are you so hard on these coloured buggers," you know, cause they said to this Negro, "Don't you go in there till these guys have got out of that creek."

Anyway so, "Oh no," he said, "This fellow, he raped a native girl in the village and he's under close arrest, he's on trial and that." So anyway, about a fortnight after that we ran into the same two American MPs and we said, "Hey Yank, where's your prisoner?" and he said, "Howdy Sam, we put that son of a bitch up against a coconut tree and shot him," you know

that was the trial he got. But as I mentioned about the, oh another thing up there, another fellow he was one of the fitters and he wanted to boil, he must have had oil or something in his clothing, he wanted to boil the clothes to get them clean. So he dug a hole in the ground about, you know so deep and he got some of this arc mesh, when they put this strip down,

this Marsden Matting, they've got this arc mesh that goes underneath and he got a square piece of this arc mesh over the hole and in the hole he poured in this 100 aviation octane fuel. He brought the five-gallon can out of his tent, poured it in, took the tin back to his tent, then he put an empty five gallon tin with all the top cut out over it and he put his clothes in

there with soap and water and he stood back you know from the hole and he struck a match and threw it into the, well the petrol under the clothes lit but there was a bloody trail of petrol went to his, he didn't know the tin in his tent was leaking and when he brought it out there was a trail of petrol from his tent out and a trail back and the flames ran right along that trail and hit the petrol drum in his

tent and it blew his tent up. He was on a charge cause he lost his rifle, it got burnt in the fire yeah, but that was one of the funny things that happened up there. They used to make this jungle juice, I wasn't part of it, they used to make this jungle juice, they used to get a coconut, poke a hole in the end of it and poke in, they used to get some raisins and these things and put them all in and

just seal it up and put it under their bed for a few weeks you know. But this jungle juice it was potent stuff, I mean it used to, what did they use to say there, you drink it at night and explode the next day you know, yeah.

That right, well they found there was four Americans in a tent there and they found them dead and what they'd done, they tapped, in a

torpedo they've got the spirits, it's all to do with the giro or whatever it is in the torpedo to keep it level and they tapped this, it's neat alcohol, you know they tapped this spirit and it killed them. But I never smoked when I went up there and but the second time we went up they gave us these every, I think it was every week or every fortnight,

but you got these rations, they gave you I think it was about five cartons of whatever you like you could have Lucky Strike, Camel, Phillip Morris, Old Gold. Nut I never smoked, I used to get them and give them to my mates but I noticed after we'd been done over by the Nips, those fellows that seemed calm, cool and collected had a cigarette in their mouth, you know what I mean, it was an optical illusion really and that's when the Reds went in, when I started to smoke.

But I think the main thing we missed up there was the food, you didn't get good food, you know what I mean, it was terrible stuff, it was monotonous.

Bully beef and beans and these dog biscuits soaked in water or tea. He did one night; the cook said he'd give somebody a prize if they could give it a name.

And he had this big bowl and he put into this big bowl he put in bully beef and he'd broken up biscuits and he'd thrown them in and then he put in some of this goldfish, this stuff, these pilchards or whatever they call it, and he mashed it all together, it was fit. I went up there and put my plate up and pulled my plate back you know, "You can belt that stuff mate," because it looked like something the dog had brought up you know. But

the food was terrible and we had to take these Atebrin tablets, they didn't stop you from getting malaria but it made your skin yellow, very, very, very yellow, in fact we were about the same colour as the Japanese you know. And the, what else happened up there?

Well, oh that's right, seeing my name started with the letter D,

if ever there was a stunt or advance party you could bet your bottom dollar my name would be on, pretty near the top of that damn list. And one day they had me on a list to go to Dutch New Guinea and this was where all the head-hunters were, up there, and they said as well as taking your own gun you had to carry

a revolver at all times and you had to sleep with it, wherever you went you always had it because of these bloody head-hunters. And the idea was we were going to go in there to guard these fellows working the equipment to put an airstrip in but thank God, at the last minute they aborted it. But then we got, then we shifted from the Bay to Goodenough Island and sure enough I'm on the advance party so we

piled into this Dakota and we took off and I had that compass I showed you with me and it was raining like hell, the rain was that heavy you couldn't see the tip of the wing of the aircraft through the window. And nobody had any parachutes in those things because you know the people that had the parachutes were the pilots you know. And they fly low because

of the Zeros, because they're sitting ducks for the Zeros because they've got no armament on them. And I was looking at this compass and I said to these fellows, "If this fellow keeps on this course for much longer he's going to end up in New Britain, New Ireland," that's where the Japanese were at Gasmata and he's flying due north, due north, due north and I said, "Goodenough's not this far." Anyway

the clouds broke and I looked at the plane and down below in this ocean was this coral atoll, not a tree on it you know, it's barren. And he landed and he came in to land and there was an air force fellow on the strip and I said, "Hey mate, what is this place?" "Oh," he said, "This is Kiriwina in the Trobriand Islands." Good God, the quicker we get out of here the better cause you know there's no

protection there. Anyway the pilot got out of the plane cause he got us all to pile all our gear up the front of the aircraft in this rain and we were wondering what the hell it was all in aid of because he stood that plane on its tail. And he was looking underneath the undercraft of this aircraft and we said, "What the hell are you looking for?" He said, "I'm looking for the tops of trees," we said, "Why's that?" He said, "When I got you fellows to pile up the front," he said, "out the clouds,

when they broke," he said, "I was running slap, bang into the side of the mountain, the hill." You know but that was Goodenough Island and that wasn't a bad island, Goodenough, because it was totally different then New Guinea, Milne Bay. Where Milne Bay got all these, you know, heavy jungle and all that, Goodenough was, well pleasant weather there,

not dry but it was, you know, open country and quite good. But that Horn Island, that's another kettle of fish because when we went, this is when my guardian angel came to my assistance. There's no, there's a jetty at Horn Island but it can't take big ships so when we came to Horn, when we went to the Torres Strait we went to Thursday Island first and tied up at Thursday Island and then they put all the material, all the gear into these

big army lighters, you know, to take us to Horn Island. They put four trucks, one in each corner, right at the very end of the barge and all the gear in the middle. And in that Torres Strait there's quite a current running, you know, a very strong current and the tow rope, from the tug to the barge we were on, it broke and having been

at sea before the war I knew what was needed and I had to get a light rope onto a heavy rope and get the light rope to the bloke on the jetty at Horn. We were just as close to the jetty when it broke and tied it on the bollard. And I was bending down tying the rope on and I looked up and the stanchions on this jetty were racing to the side of the barge at a rate of knots and I either go up or go down, well thank God I went down. I went down right underneath the running board of the truck

and the stanchions on the jetty hit the side of the truck where the mudguards are, you know a real bash. But that's as I say, that's when my guardian angel would have, I think, came to my assistance. Cause if I'd have gone up I'd be cut in half. But there's no water at Horn Island. When you, you fill you water bottle up of a morning, before eight o'clock. If you went down there after eight o'clock there was locks on the tanks and there's a guard

on it and you got no water. And that bottle of water had to do everything, you had to clean your teeth, drink with it and everything, that was all you got. And they decided what they'd do, they'd dig for water. And they dug this big hole, it was about eight feet square and they got down to about eight feet and all this heavy like gravel they had to use a pick and then shovel it out

and they got crowbars and in each of the corners they poked these, got these holes down in the corner and they had these sticks of gelignite and some fellow said, "Oh he was a, he knew about gelignite he used to work in the mines before the war," so they let him do it. But he, I don't think he knew much about gelignite at all, because what he should have done is cut his fuses all different lengths and with the longest fuse you light first and the shortest you light last, he cut them all the same length and

when he lit the first fuse, that lit but when he struck the match for the second fuse, the head kept coming off the match and he got through, that's right he couldn't light the last fuse, so we said, "Get out of the hole you'll get blown up!" and he got out as the gelignite went off and we went for a smoko.

While they were having smoko they didn't notice but some smart-aleck, he went back and he urinated in the corner of the hole. And we waited and waited and waited to see if this fourth stick of gelignite had gone off, no it never went off, and when we went into the hole you now he said, "Gobbly gob we struck water," but that's what it was you know, yeah. But we always saw the funny side of anything up there you know, well you had, just as well really, otherwise life would have been a misery you know. But

letters from home were not, used to come through but not many regular, any regular pattern. Am I being taped for this?

When I

left there I'd done my time and I'd left from Goodenough Island and you know there was several of us that had done our time and had to get on the plane. We got on a Dakota of course, there again flying low because of the Zeros, and I'll never forget as I flew away from New Guinea I thought of all those, all those young blokes that we'd left behind in there you know. As I say to the kids in the class

at school, "We must never ever forget the sacrifices they made you know, the democratic way of life that our forefathers have carved out for us we can still you know you and I can still live it." And as we flew out from there, we were flying very low over the Coral Sea and you could see all the blues and the reds and the greens and the browns. We got to Townsville,

and it's not like it is today when the troops come back from the Middle East or come back from somewhere, you know the Prime Minister's there with the flag waving, we just got off the plane, nobody knew where the hell we come from, didn't care, and went and got a pass, a rail pass, from the air force place and went down from, you know, all the way from Townsville to Perth. And going

over there, across the Nullarbor Plains, we were in these cattle trucks, you know it wasn't a passenger coach or anything like that. And the driver and fireman, they were full as a boot, so the troops were driving the train and you could get out and walk alongside the train, that's how fast it was going you know, and then get back aboard. But

you know everybody sort of, I don't know what it was, you were a big happy family really because you're all in the same boat, you know what I mean.

Did I make?

Oh no they were there, they were not with us really.

No, the Americans were separate. But I mean we've got to appreciate the fact that if we hadn't had the Americans we were gone. I mean, lets face it, that's when I joined up the …. When Darwin was bombed I thought, "This is it. I've got to do something. I'm not going to sit here and do nothing," and that's when I joined up, when Darwin was bombed. And

but the Americans you know, England couldn't, England had her hands tied with the Germans, they couldn't do anything, but then if we hadn't had the Americans, well we would have been gone. But they did capture some Japanese documents at Milne Bay as it was, when they were translated it said:

'Quickly complete the landing, in the dead of night quickly complete the landing, smash the white soldiers without remorse, unitedly storm the enemy lines and take the aerodrome by storm.' And you know that was the main object was that airstrip, they wanted that damn airstrip. If they'd have won the battle of Milne Bay, well they'd have lost Kokoda for starters you know.

And the Nips would have control of all the sea lanes all around New Guinea.

Beg your pardon?

Well that's right, see 75 Squadron was at Port Moresby first. You see 75 Squadron was at Port Moresby in the March, they landed at Port Moresby in the March but

how the squadron came to be formed was that the war was going that badly, there was a big consignment of crated P40 Kittyhawks and they were consigned to Java, which is Indonesia today, and just before the shipment got there Java fell to the Japanese. So the crates of Kittyhawks were diverted to

Australia. And this is how 75 Squadron was formed, from those Kittyhawks, well they were formed in Kingaroy, Lowood in Queensland and, no they were formed in Canberra and they had to fly from Canberra to Townsville, well when they got

to the squadron got to it was Evans Head.

Hey?

It's on the border I think between New South Wales and Queensland.

The storm broke, a terrible storm, well a lot of those pilots had never flown in cloud formation or some of them only had

mainly two hours' flying time you know, some of them had five or six. Well they lost two pilots going from Canberra to Evans Head I think it was, they lost two pilots and two planes. Then on the leg from there to Townsville they lost another plane but the pilot was, he got out of it. So you know people were thinking, "Well what good is a squadron

that loses three planes before they even meet the Japanese?" you know what I mean. Anyway they got to Moresby, flew to Moresby and Moresby had been under constant heavy Japanese air attacks for months on end. And when the, the CO's plane it was, and when he came in to land at Moresby one of these army, he had the wheels down, one of these army fellows thought it was a Zero

and he opened up. Well fortunately he was fortunate, the bullet went just winged over his ear in the Kittyhawk and the pilot got, the CO got out and he raced over to the gun pit with his revolver out you know he was… But it wasn't long after that, I think that same day, the Japanese came over, snoozing over, no opposition

you know, normal run, and two pilots took off, Wilbur Wright and Wackett I think it was, and they shot this damn bomber down, it came down in flames because the army blokes they were really in raptures you know because they had some defence. Because the Kittyhawks they were calling them, first of all it was 'tomorrow hawks', then it was

'yesterday hawks' and then the 'never hawks' you know. But then the squadron got organised and the first attack they made they flew over the Owen Stanley Ranges to the other side of New Guinea and they came in to Lae on the other side of New Guinea from the seaward side. And the Japanese had a peculiar way of parking their aircraft, they used to park all

their bombers down one side of the strip and all their fighters down the other. And our fellows went in you know and they destroyed a lot of Japanese aircraft in that run. And then some bigwig down in Melbourne flying a desk, not a plane, flying a desk, he hit on the idea that pilots were a lot of dingoes you know he said, "They're not doing the job they're supposed to do."

Cause our fellows used to get up, at altitude a Kittyhawk in a dive is much faster than a Zero, and dive on these Zeros and get in and get out you know, they got a lot of aircraft that way. He said they're not, "The pilots weren't doing the job they were sent up there to do they should fight the Japanese." Well the CO, John Jackson, he took them by the

word and attacked with the Zeros. John Jackson with two Zeros on him and they shot him down and he crashed into the side of this hill and he was killed and, but you know if he had stuck to what he was intended to do it wouldn't have happened. Well then the Battle of the Coral Sea was looming up and the squadron was down to three Kittyhawks

and John Jackson called for volunteers to fly the other two aircraft to attack the Japanese convoy in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

No this is Moresby.

And all the pilots stepped forward you know so he said, "No," he said, "No, you, you and you you've done enough."

Anyway they drew these straws and I think a fellow by the name of Mick Butler, and I forget the other fellow, they drew the straws so that was the three pilots they had. And then the next day the Japanese came in with another air raid and they destroyed the two aircraft so they only had the one aircraft you know. And the CO apparently flew this aircraft out but he couldn't find the

Japanese invasion fleet and he flew on, I think he landed at somewhere in Cairns or somewhere, yeah. But that was how 75 Squadron come to be formed, yeah. And then his brother, his brother Les Jackson, he took command of the squadron and took over. But it is, the CO of 75 Squadron now, they're at Tindal in the Northern

Territory and they've got F18s and he sent, I've got it in the album, he sent me down a photograph of the F18 in the hangar and he also sent me down the embroidered badge you know, to wear on Anzac Days. And I think they might have worn the badges of 'Seek and strike' you know. But it was, it was a good squadron, in fact I think they were in

Iraq you know, 75 Squadron. But they were a great bunch of pilots and fellows; most of them would be dead now I suppose, there wouldn't be many of them alive. You know some of the fellows you knew really well and they bought it you know.

Well there was no saluting up there, no saluting at all, nobody wore any rank, you wouldn't know whether you were talking to a squadron leader or a corporal or something, you know what I mean, no rank was shown. The main thing they were doing was to keep certain those Kites kept flying all the time you know. Because the Kittyhawk, it's a very reliable,

they were a very reliable aircraft you know and the guns, those Browning guns, very destructive. In fact as I say if we hadn't have had the Kittyhawks at Milne Bay they would have lost it but General MacArthur, he never had a good word to say about the Australians, no. He was in his safe air-conditioned quarters at Brisbane and he

going on about this Major General Clowes who was running the operation for Australians at Milne Bay and he reckoned that Clowes was too long-winded doing this and doing all that but I say MacArthur never seen what the terrain was like up there. And if ever there was an Americans' victory he, MacArthur, would yell it out, "The Americans have done this," "The Americans have done that," but if it was an Australian victory he would never mention the word Australia, he would say 'Allied' victory you know. But

so you know we never had any time for MacArthur, all MacArthur said, he said, he patted himself on the back and he said it was his foresight to put troops in at Milne Bay, that's what he – , but he never said how good the Australians were or, you know. And actually in the Korean War, MacArthur would have started World War III, only for President Truman,

he recalled him you know back to America, yeah and that was the end of MacArthur. But after the battle up there we found 35 young Australians, they been tied with long lengths of telephone wire and used for live bayonet practice. We found two artillery officers tied to coconut trees for live bayonet practice. And they found

the Papuan women and girls, they'd been raped, they'd been spreadeagled on the ground and they'd been ripped with these damn samurai swords from their groin up to their neck. And their breasts had been cut off and placed either side of the body. We were fighting animals up there, not men, animals. And the Papuan men they also suffered the same fate you know, being bayoneted.

There was a case in Buna, that was fifty miles north of where we were, they Japanese they captured this missionary, a priest, they captured a priest and two sisters and a plantations owner and his five year old son, and on the beach at Buna they beheaded the priest, they beheaded the two sisters, they beheaded the plantation

owner and the last one to be beheaded was a five year old boy you know. I mean what sort of mongrelistic, you know. And people say to me today you know, "Do you forgive them?" Well I can't forgive them, I can't forgive, I can't forget you know, what they did. They won't admit to it that they were even in the war, you know what I mean. In the schools in Japan they don't teach the children about war.

In fact I saw a thing on television, this fellow was interviewing this Japanese politician and he said to him, "Why don't you tell your people what actually happened in the war?" you know. "Well," he said, "as time goes by there's getting fewer and fewer," in other words they won't do anything while there are any of them are alive. And on the same documentary there was a Australian woman teacher

in a school in Japan and she said to all these kids, Japanese kids, "Which countries were at war?" and they mentioned, you know, every country bar Japan and Australia you know. It's just kept; it's not in their history books, you know, they don't want the kids to know about it. I think if the truth was known they're damn ashamed of what they did you know because they

I think they consider everything you know outside of Japan it's beneath them, you know they're inferior you know.

Well it wasn't their fault, they were, you know, a different generation but my generation, I'll never forgive them no,

it's a terrible thing they did, yeah. But you know I wrote a lot of poems up there, I wrote The Road to Kokoda, another poem up there. It was Air Force Guard, it was: 'It's black like it, It's dark like inky blackness, your eyes just pierce the gloom, (UNCLEAR)…'

Oh I forget that one, but I wrote another one, The Road to Kokoda: 'Through the pages of history we look back, of the hardships and suffering on that jungle beaten track, the goal is always onwards up high and perilous slopes, in spite of all the setbacks their hearts are full of hopes, the weary, worn and wounded

who had stopped the knife or shell, were carried back to safety from the unforgotten hell, their bearers they were gallant, their skin was shiny black, through unseen work and glory they bought the wounded back, these Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels their childlike acts and odd, had surely come from heaven and were sent to us by God, every inch a hardship every mile a woe,

carried our boys nearer towards a cunning foe, so on this road of glory with many a turn and bend, toward a well-earned victory when they reach their journey's end.' But at Kokoda you know, if you were wounded at Kokoda and couldn't walk out, it was the Fuzzy Wuzzies' stretcher or death you know. And that's what I tell these kids in the school and all those letters, they all refer to the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels

you know, in the letters. But have I said enough?

Right, will I say how I come to write them?

Will I say how I come to write them?

Well after the battle of Milne Bay when you know our pilots sat down to get their breath and we all you know took it easy, I wrote my poem The Heroes of Milne Bay and it was dedicated to the officers, NCOs and the men who fought at Milne Bay in 1942 and it went like this:

\n[Verse follows]\n 'We shall remember them, battle stained and torn,\n

Into that jungle of death, on that rainy dawn,\n

Gallantly they fought through hell and swamp, they progress sure and slow,\n In mud and filth, they battle on against the cunning foe,\n Low in the stagnant mangroves throughout the night they lay,\n Waiting for these yellow swines, their one and only prey,\n

Lurking down in every palm these green clad fronds did lie,\n

But still our boys went forward in spite that some would die,\n Courage and valour was only theirs and life so dear to pay,\n Those gallant lads who fought so well in the battle of Milne Bay.'\n

And after the battle I wrote another poem, My Dream Girl, and it went like this:

\n[Verse follows]\n'Jungle, jungle, jungle, humid wet and green,\n

Entangled vines and creepers, like some horrid awful dream,\n The order it was given, the advance stops for a spell,\n You fall fatigued and tired in this jaded jungle hell,\n As you sit there in the jungle your mind drifts into space,\n From a mud pool filled with water you see a charming face,\n

Of a pretty dark haired lady, her smile is soft and sweet,\n

Her eyes are gay, alluring, her face is small and neat,\n Her eyes they seem to sparkle like a elegant morn in June,\n It lingers in your memory like the strain of a haunting tune,\n You bend down to her closer to kiss those ruby lips,\n

Instead of scented lipstick just muddy water sips,\n

Your dream girl she has vanished, the pool is stirred and black,\n You wish that pretty lady through that mud pool would come back.'\n

And when we went to Cairns to get new aircraft, I went down with my second dose of malaria, it was really bad and they put me in the Cairns Public Hospital and through the night I

saw this, went to this place with a very bright light, and the matron, when she came in with the air force doctor the next day, she didn't think I heard it but she said to the doctor, "We lost him last night," and it prompted me to write this poem, My Angel:

\n[Verse follows]\n 'Bathed in the sweat of fever, a head with a maddening beat,\n You lie so still perhaps you're dead, on that bed with sheets so neat,\n

Then my eyes began to open just like rosebuds do in May\n

And through a distant window there came a golden ray,\n I thought I was in heaven as I looked down to my feet,\n For there she stood an angel in white and smiling sweet,\n Her halo it was shining white upon her pretty head,\n And turning to my angel but not a word she said,\n

Her smile was like the dawning, her hair of auburn hue,\n

Her eyes were clear as crystal just like the morning dew,\n I wanted to caress her and take her in my arms,\n But there she stood defiant in spite of all her charms,\n Then my mind awakened to war and all its curse,\n My darling beloved angel turned out to be my nurse.'\n

And another poem I wrote up there was The Men in Green:

\n[Verse follows]\n These jaded sons of ANZACS, valiant in every deed,\n Their daring and their courage an example we might lead,\n From Milne Bay and Buna, of Lae and Kokoda fame,\n Their blood on the beaten jungle has written their glorious name,\n

Through rivers creeks and jungles and land that no one knew,\n

They overcame the setbacks these men in natures hue,\n A cross stands in the jungle, a tin hat on its frame,\n It bears the scribbled letters of a fallen hero's name,\n Perhaps a kiddie's daddy, perhaps a mother's son,\n Lies down beneath that heap of earth his life and duty done,\n Nippon scattered remnants retreat before their might,\n

Broken in disorder they leave the bloody fight,\n

Onwards ever onwards their work and fight unseen,\n These gallant sons of ANZACS who wear the jungle green.'\n

That's another one. Do you want the Kokoda?

The Road to Kokoda:

\n[Verse follows]\n 'Through the pages of history we'll look back, of the hardships and suffering on that jungle beaten track,\n

The goal was always onwards up high and perilous slopes, in spite of all the setbacks their hearts are full of hopes\n,

The weary, worn and wounded who had stopped the knife or shell, were carried back to safety from the unforgotten hell,\n Their bearers they were gallant, their skin was shiny black, through unseen work and glory they brought the wounded back,\n

These Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels their childlike acts and odd, had surely come from heaven and was sent to us by God,\n

Every inch a hardship every mile a woe, carried our boys nearer towards a cunning foe,\n So on this road of glory with many a turn and bend, toward a well-earned victory when they reach their journey's end.'\n

Yeah right, 75 Squadron Port Moresby:

\n[Verse follows]\n 'Bathed in the glory of a nation's fight, strong and unbeaten a token of their might,\n Its gallant heroes have lived to fight and die, undaunted and brave in a New Guinea sky,\n A mere handful of men from away down under, to a land of hell midst war's loud thunder.\n

Poor food and mud was a daily curse, fever ridden sick they have to nurse,\n

Few were their grieves and seldom a moan, distinction of rank was never shown,\n From bloody fights our battered Kites came, some were lost the others lame,\n Of six Kites left one could fly, but still we down them from the sky,\n

After six long weeks relief had came, we'd done our job of worthy fame,\n

As we left this unforgotten hell, we thought of those who'd died and fell,\n Some were boys just only men, but shall always remember them.'\n

That was that one.

Beg yours?

I used to write poems, everybody in the squadron, I used to write a poem about

them. They used to ask, "When am I, when am I being done?" you know. Well some blokes I used to offend and others I didn't, you know and I did write one there, when Munroe bought it up there, I forget how that went now. When Shelley E bought it, I wrote that poem when he went but I just can't remember them off-hand, I've got them in the book.

Not really, some of them asked me for copies of them, that's how they must have got the poems in that book down there, you know, that they put in but I had to crack them because they put some of the things wrong in the book you know. But …

Did I?

No, not really, no, no I never thought anything more about, you know.

But my grandson he said, "Oh put it in a book someday," or something you know, but I never bothered with it. But I have, I've made a tape for my grandchildren you know, just a brief outline of what I've done. And …

Oh up there.

Oh just when you've got a spare minute you know. In fact I found the other day some poems I'd written and they were still on the, on that Red Shield paper like the army. See that was another thing up there the, while you were in the front line you'd come across this army, this Salvation Army bloke with his compass you know

what I mean, it was amazing really. And I found poems written on the Red Shield it was, the Red Shield paper and, but I've never, you know, given it a second thought to do anything with them.

No.

Oh I think, when I wrote a poem I used to write it out on a piece of paper and pass it around the unit you know and then get it back, that's how we did you know. And but I mean some of the, when you wrote a poem about one of the fellows in the unit you always sought out some of his most humorous things you know, that he'd done. And I'll tell you we had some real humorous guys in that

outfit you know. I mean that fellow, the Gremlin, I remember a night there, we were, this was the second time up there, there was an American anti-aircraft gun position, there was all these sandbags all around it and it was dark at night and they had a hurricane lamp lit and I think somebody was playing a mouth organ and we knew that these Americans had these, I think they called it the K Ration,

and in this K Ration it was sealed tins, I think it was about 36 in the carton, and they had a little tin of coffee and sugar, they had another round biscuits like digestive biscuits and they had some of these hard boiled lollies. And there was something else in there.

Anyway, we knew the Yanks had these, they had their own store stack just away from this anti-aircraft position they had. So we decided what we'd do, we'd, I think it was the Gremlin, he said he'd run on with his army boots you know on this steel strip in the dispersal, he'd run down the strip and this fellow,

King, he'd open up, fire in the sky a burst and you know. Anyway this is what happened and the American with the mouth organ stopped and the lights went off, the hurricane lamp they had. So Kingy went over to them and he said, "Hey, have you seen a Nip come past here?" He said, "One of the fellows just opened up on him." "Hell nobody," he said, "We wouldn't leave this goddamn

pit of a night with you trigger-happy bastards out there." Well all this was going on we went, two of us went round to the where they had all these army rations and we knocked off about six I think it was of these cartons, these big cartons, and put them in a kit bag and took them back to where we were. And so you know, that's how we got them off the Yanks. It was nothing, you'd be in

the campsite and a fellow would drive into the campsite with an American Jeep and he'd drive right through the campsite into the jungle where all the trees were, pull all the trees all over it and walk out you know as if everything was all right. And then about an hour later some American bloke would come up and go, "Hey buddy, have you guys seen a jeep number 35746?" "No buddy, we haven't seen it. Well they'd get this damn jeep and repaint it, paint all the American things off it

yeah. And then when the ship was pulling out from Cairns to go back again, there's all this cargo in the shed on the wharf and with a pot, some marking paint and like a stick, a stick, pointed stick in this marking. And there was some, these kerosene refrigerators

and our fellows just went down and they wrote on them Group X, Group X on all of them you know, that was our number, Group X. Yeah put them in the ship, they go in that us. But that's what it was like you know, you got things that way but I still can't understand why I can't remember, with the memory I've got, what happened

after the battle, you know with the ….

Oh yeah, oh yeah no trouble at all. But they had the money and we had no trouble selling anything to them, especially if you got anything off a dead Nip you know, they'd pay you big good money for it. And their

gear was really top gear, like their khaki shirts and pants, when you felt them they were sort of, they felt good like silky feel about them whereas when you felt the Australian stuff it was more like a hessian feel you know like, so I got some good, a good pair of pants and a long sleeve shirt and when I came home I wore it on leave you know

but you've got to appreciate when we demolished the campsite the only clothes we had were what we were wearing and we wore those clothes for about, I think about six weeks or more. Well you had no clothes to change into, you know what I mean. And that's why I've got to be very careful now, I mean I get this dermatitis, this rash. I ended up up there in a

casualty clearing station, it was more like a leper colony with these fellows, just walking around with a g-string on and I had this rash it was all round my waist and in my groin.

In Milne Bay,

Oh yeah it wasn't a leper colony but everyone had this damn, you know you could hang your belt up there, leather belt in your tent and overnight it would go green, absolutely green,

you know that's how bad it was, the mildew and the mould. And I've got, when I dry myself now after a shower I not only dry myself with a towel but I've got to use a hair dryer, I've got to dry all my feet, under my arms and my groin and everything.

With a hairdryer to make certain that, if I don't, that will come back you know, the jungle never lets go of you, you know what I mean oh no.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I've constantly keep myself clean that way, you know what I mean. It's just one of those – . But I not only got malaria I got this dengue fever too. That's a damn terrible thing you know. You wouldn't credit that you could get, a mosquito could do so damage and of a night up there

we had no gloves on, we were really ill-equipped. We had no gloves on and if you looked at the back of your hands it would be black with these mosquitoes you know, just especially just after dark. And they had this repellent, this Methyldelphene and the best way to use that was let your mate put it on and don't you use it. You know they would go for him and leave you alone, yeah. But …

No. We really were, we weren't really equipped you know for the jungle. We really should have had some sort of a napkin that went over you, but then again I suppose it would have affected your vision I suppose, wouldn't it? But in the jungle of a night, especially a moonlight night at Veon Vau, watching that tree line you know and you'd imagine, and if you let your imagination run away

with you, you'd go mad. In fact some of the fellows, they got sent out, they went troppo, you know they couldn't take it yeah. But I'd say in wartime, I'd say one of the most trying things, and thank God I never come up against, is in a kamikaze attack, you know what I mean. I think every man has got his breaking point and of all

the combat situations I think the kamikaze would test you to the hilt. You know it doesn't matter what you threw at them, they would come at you, you know. In fact the, in the attack on, I think it was on the Philippines, when the Yanks were taking the Philippines and that, they lost that many ships, they nearly pulled out

of doing it because of kamikazes you know. They were just obsolete aircraft, but still they were bombed up you know, if it hits you they would explode.

Beg your pardon?

It did really, a poem I wrote up there was An Air Force Guard:

'It's dark like inky blackness, your eyes just pierce the gloom …' I can't remember it. But they used to have these fireflies up there and you know they give you a fraction's comfort in the long and dreary night, you see a tree, like a Christmas tree, go off and on like that with these fireflies.

And another thing up there was these flying foxes, well we used to lay down on the ground in an open clearing and fire, this is just before nightfall, they used to come over after raiding the orchards, the native orchards, and we used to fire thousands of rounds at these flying foxes and I never saw one of them come down yet. The bullets would go through the wings. But

one of the, when I came out of New Guinea, I came home and got my leave and I had a fair bit of leave. And then I got posted to a Catalina squadron at Crawley and it was a piece of cake really cause you could come home every other night you know, it was like having a job. And then I went down with my second dose of malaria, my third dose and I ended up in

Hollywood Hospital, that was a pretty bad dose. But fortunately I got the strain of malaria where you only get the three doses, you don't get any more. Some of the fellows keep getting it all the time. And while I was in Hollywood, George Mills was with me up there, he got posted to Italy.

Yeah, and George Mills he was with me, he got posted to, I'd have gone with him cause I was the same mustering to a fighter

squadron in Italy but you know I missed out cause I was in Hollywood. And when I came out of Hollywood I went with 25 Squadron for a while, they had Liberators and then I got a cushy posting to Mallow, to 328 Radar at Mallow that's on the Eighty Mile Beach up at between Broome and Hedland. And it was a, there was only a few on the unit, there was about half a dozen on the unit,

but the main thing is you have to have that radar going round the clock because of the Nips in Timor and it was really a home from home. And I was such a good shot with the rifle, the air force came to some arrangement with the station owner up there on the Anna Plains to buy every month a bullock but we had to kill it. And they wanted me to go out

and shoot these bullocks, one of the bullocks in the herd, I said, "No I'm not going to do that," I said, "as good a shot as I am I can't kill it properly like that." I said, "You get them to get the bullock beforehand and bring it in and put it in a pen and I'll knock it over no trouble," and it was the animal was quietened down and you just say 'bullock, bullock, bullock' and you'd have the rifle rested on a log and when he looked up you just hit

him here and the bullock went down like that and he was gone. But that was, we got much better food there cause we had a kerosene refrigerator you know and be able to put the meat in that. And then they stole all this material, every time we went into Port Hedland on a run every month or so they stole all these steel fence posts and all

this chicken wire, rolls of it from some army place. When you got outside of Port Hedland you passed this Army Depot and it wasn't fenced off so you'd stop the truck and have a good look around, nobody there so you'd hop over the fence and go and help yourself. So we built this big massive fish trap at Molowa and it was, I suppose the circle of the trap was about as big as this room here and the wings went off towards the beach like that

and at high tide of course it was covered, completely covered there was a big fall and rise of the tide. But you had to go down on the outgoing tide, not before it went right out because if you let it go too far out, the fish laying on the sand you couldn't eat them because these snail things used to get into them, into the fish. So when the water was about that, about 18 inches high,

you'd go down and empty the fish trap. Well the fish we got in that trap were unbelievable, we got, they call them salmon, I don't know whether it was salmon or what but we used to carry them back to the tent, to the camp on a pole up the sand dunes and you had to raise the pole above your head to keep the tail from going in the sand, yeah. And we got sharks in there, we killed them and the outgoing tide took them out, we got sharks, we got stingray,

we got swordfish, we got turtles, we got everything. And when the war finished, see because we were getting all this fish and eating this beef, we weren't eating this bully beef and beans, all this stuff and we had a stack of bully beef and beans as high as this house, yeah. And the CO said to me, yeah he said, "Don," he said, "put a match to that," you know you do what you're told, I put a match to it, threw it and walked away. Aborigines

put it out, they're still eating the stuff up there, I'll bet, you know. But that was a home from home posting.

We went into Port Hedland, packed everything up from the radar, went into Port Hedland and we camped on the side, this strip in Port Hedland and it was that hot, it was about 45 degrees, but the flies

there were, they drove you mad, you know what I mean, it just wasn't one or two flies, it was far better to get in the tent and swelter to hell, you know, than be outside with the flies. And this army fellow came along with a pad and he said to me he said, "Who wants to wait a week and have a luxury trip down to Perth to Fremantle on the Kilama or take pot luck on an aircraft coming through?" and I said, "Put me down for the Kite, mate."

And the next day a Liberator came through and I got a lift down to Karana Downs, we stayed there overnight. It was that hot up there you could feel all the heat coming off the iron stuff, you know, at Karana Downs.

Just waiting for another to go on to Perth you know. And then the next day a Liberator come through, we get on that and go to Perth. We touched down at Perth Airport, got a lift from some American bloke at the airport

to the causeway and caught the bus home. But then when the war was, I demobbed in 1946 and of course it was the rule of the land in those days that if you were in the services your employer had to give you your job back,

so I got my old job back at this biscuit place. Well you could sense it from the moment you went in you weren't wanted, all the fellows that had never went to war they had the pick of all the jobs, the boss's jobs. They made your life a misery you know what I mean. I said, "To hell with this," you know, jobs are not easy to get because everybody was coming out, coming for jobs. And

I stuck it as long as I could and I said, "That's it," and I left them, I was married. I was out of a work for a fortnight; you get no dole in those days you know. And then I got a job truck driving and was driving a truck. And one of the things, this company I worked for they were the agents for a

chemical company and I used to go down the wharf and pick up all the chemicals and all this. Anyway, after about 12 months I got wind of it, the fellow that was handling the chemical agency, he was going to throw his hand in so I went to the manager and I said, "Look," I said, "If you don't mind," I said, "I wouldn't mind a crack at that job." And he said, "Do you think you can do it?" and I said, "Of course I can." So he said, "I'll tell you what,

I'll give you three months' trial," he said, "If you're any good," he said, "you can keep the job. If you don't you can go back to truck driving." "Oh fair enough." Well I built the chemical agency up from next to nothing to really big top figures, I mean big figures, I mean you know millions of, thousands of dollars and I built this agency up so much so that the chemical company decided to come and open their own office in Perth.

But they said, "We can't do that unless we get assurance from you that you'll come with us." Because they knew these people weren't buying from them, they were buying from me you know. And I said, "All right," and to cut a long story short I became the sales manager of the state, yeah. And I've been doing that for about oh twenty odd, thirty years I suppose, yeah. But I was very,

very efficient in polyester technology you know, I studied it hard and cause we had customers making these great big 60 foot holes and all that and that's how I come to get my swimming pool you know. I knew the right way and the wrong way to make a pool. I've had a colourful life really you know, yeah. The best thing that ever happened in my life, these two grandchildren come along –

marvellous time that was. I'm waiting now for the, when can I expect that phone call you know that they're married now you know.

In schools?

Oh yeah, well what I do when I go to the school, I rang Channel Seven and I said to the bloke with all this copyright stuff, "Well look mate," I said, "I want to show

all the kids in the school this bit of footage off one of your programs, the Susannah Carr's World Around Us," and I said, "Can I do it?" and he said, "Go for your life," you know. So that's what I've done, I've picked the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels bit out of it and another thing I picked out, the 75 Squadron at Milne Bay and put it all in. It's only one, see, you've got to keep it brief because they lose interest.

So I kept that down to about, oh about 20 minutes, and then I play the audio tape, that's the sound of an air raid siren, all clear, the air raid siren, all clear, what you hear in an air raid, what you hear in a dive-bombing attack, what you hear in a shelling attack, Kittyhawks taking off against the red alert and then just one little clip of the marching song of Anzac

Day you know, play that to them. I'll show you after what I've got down below, I've got six big panels, they were that big, the panels, I couldn't go and buy the paper, the cardboard to put it on. So I got some cartons from washing machines, you know, coming out, painted the back green, and I went to the library and got all these pictures at the library, went through all their books, only Australian not American,

and I got the whole of, I got all, not all but some of them, the warships of World War II, the aircraft of World War II, the soldiers in New Guinea, the Fuzzy Wuzzies, you know all that and put them all round the classroom. And then I've got a bayonet I've got there and I take that up and put that down, I show them the compass and put that down cause I tell them what happened about that, I think I've got a Japanese cigarette case or something.

And they pass it all round, the kids you know, and then they ask me questions. Well my hearing's not good and the kids don't talk loud enough and I find that these things are no good in a classroom, so I take that out. And they speak to the teacher and he tells me what they want to know and I answer them back. And the questions, they're not stupid questions, one little girl said, "Did you make any friends

up there?" you know, well we didn't call them friends, we called it comradeship you know, if you're digging a hole somebody would come give you a hand, if you fell down they'd get you out of the mud." And another girl, "What did you sleep on?" you know. One little kid said, "How many Japanese did you shoot?" you know and, but you know they really, and not only that, when they write to me they remember all you told them. I told them the CO had told the pilots not to mix it with the Zeros,

they put all that in there you know and yeah.

Oh they're about 11 I think, yeah, but they're a mixed bag of kids because they're from the Middle-East, they're Asians, they're Australians, white Australians, they're Aborigines you know, different backgrounds, but they all want to know what happened yeah. But [Department of] Veterans' Affairs are very helpful, they give me what I want

you know.

Oh they give me all, well unfortunately this year she gave me all she had, she said the Federal Government has cut down on the funding or something. But like brochures of the Services Heritage, these biros and these little badges that they put on and some of the posters they've got, and

I take them up to school but you know it goes down really well and Veterans Affairs, they were going to get me to go to the high school so once they mentioned the high schools I had to do my blooming homework on that one because these are high school kids, they're no fools. And I wrote all the highlights about World War II you know right throughout, I mean who'd have thought that on D Day [6 June 1944 – Normandy landing]

there was a British warship fired a twenty inch shell, a six shell and it went twenty miles and they've got to convert all that to kilometres and it took out the main German Panzer commander, killed him. Cause what they

probably got word back, "There's a Panzer column in the area, shell the column from the ship," and by fluke, with a bit of luck they got the commander, you know things like that. And then I've also got the number of Jews that were killed even up to the thing you know, United States declares war on Japan, this is in 1941, Hong Kong surrenders to Japan December 25th,Christmas Day, January the 2nd

Japan takes Manila in the Philippines, 15th Singapore force surrenders, you know so any question they might ask I've got it here.

That's right yeah. But that one there, oh Germans use biggest ever U-Boat, Wolfpack, Hong Kong voyage in the Atlantic. 51…

End of tape

Yeah right, well it's the first time for quite some years; I haven't marched this year because

I came out of hospital at the end of September and you know I wasn't the best, I looked terrible so I didn't march and but I still went to school. And but it's a different, like each time you go there he's got like another class, it's not, when you go one year it's not the same kids the next year they move up you know in the school. And

they still ask the same type of questions you know about the war and the things, what I found they really enjoyed was, and I have to give them copies, was that poem My Angel, you know, the nurse, and they also they all mentioned about the Fuzzy

Wuzzy Angels you know they, so much so that on the, I wrote to Veterans' Affairs in Canberra because I think they gave us like little postcards to give to the children of an Australian solider. Well it could have been anybody cause all it was was a head and shoulders of somebody with a fur felt hat on, you

know, that didn't really mean anything to them. The picture I wanted them to put on the next year, that was this year, was his name was Wasimbarwee, he was a Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel, and he was helping a wounded Australian soldier along the track and this soldier,

his name was Whittington and he got wounded on the airstrip in Buna and he was wounded in the head too, he was bandaged around the head. And this New Guinean, he was sort of helping him along the track with a, you know, the stick and apparently he said, this Wasimbarwee said, this was on the tape I showed them that he

got him to a field hospital but they couldn't do anything for him so they flew him to Port Moresby but he died. But that was one thing I knew the kids were all interested in was the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel. But then Canberra wrote back and said oh you know, "We might consider it," I knew they wouldn't you know but. Then I showed a tape, I told you about that

tape and the audio tape and then we've got a session there for, you know, for questions and it was amazing really the type of questions they asked, they weren't stupid questions. So I'll be going back there next year, you know. And then after about two weeks I get all these letters you know from the kids.

I find that they're genuinely interested in what I've told. And they're all budding artists, these kids. And in the letters they draw all these things you know, they draw medals and they draw guns and planes and but the thing, they seem to remember everything that I tell them you know like I

just happened to mention that the CO said to the pilots not to fight the dogfights with the Zeros, they write all that in there and another thing I said something about, oh that's right one kid never thought, he'd never heard of any, a mosquito you know killing anybody with malaria and then I talked briefly about the First World War and I give them some figures,

I said, "In 1917," I forget, I didn't bring my book, "there was 1,700 Australians killed in one day in one battle. But then the British would lose as many as I think it was 20,000," you know and I said, "If these soldiers were to march past your school, four abreast you know, they would

start at 9 o'clock in the morning they'd be going past at 11 o'clock you know that's how many men we would lose." And I said, "In the battle for Buna, bloody Buna," I said, "there was 40,000 troops committed, Americans and Australians, and of these there was, I think there was 3350 were wounded or killed," so many were wounded you know but they were really interested in what you were telling them.

But as I said, from Anzac Day I noticed instead of the crowds getting smaller they're getting larger and it's all these children. And when you march past them they're yelling out, "Good on you," you know, "thanks, good on you." But what else can I tell you about it?

That's all right.

Well, as I told you it was Don Ameche and Don Ameche was a film star, he had a dark moustache, well I [had a] moustache similar to him and I forget the pictures Don Ameche was in now, of course he's dead now, of course. But that was the nickname they gave me, Don Ameche, yeah. But before Don Ameche, when

I worked in that factory they called me Scotty, because I had a bit of an accent and they thought I was Scotch so they called me Scotty. I'm no more Scotch than the man on the moon but still you know.

No that's the only one they've ever called me.

Oh other men yeah. Well one fellow they called the Gremlin, a fellow by

the name of Donaldson and he looked like a gremlin, he had long pointed ears and he had a sort of a pointed beaky nose and he had all his hair shaved off, you know he looked the part. He was called the Gremlin and then there was Vic Handleson, he was the Wood Butcher, and then there was Eddie Goff 'the Katinni toff', well because the pure women they called them

'katinni' I think it is and he went up to the village one night, one day, and he slept up there and we never let him forget about it and we called him Eddie Goff the Katinni Toff. Then there was another fellow by the name of Jimmy Hamilton and they called him Jimmy the Pig and I've got a photograph of him with a wooden sword and he's dropped his false teeth down at the top and he looked like Tojo and he's handing this sword to the other fellow with a bayonet you know pointed at him.

Another fellow's name was, what was the other fellow's name there? There was an Irish bloke there, he was a real mad bloke, Donovan, that's right, no we used to call him Donovan, Harry Friel,

that's about all I can remember of their nicknames, you know what I mean.

Oh yeah, well Vic Anderson, he was very clever with a bit of wood and a penknife and there's no doubt about it. This Blue Emperor particularly he carved because he went down the strip and he got some lacquer, it was, for the you know for the

white and blue on the wings, they never used the red because anything with a red dot the pilot shot at that so they took the red out and just had the white and the blue and it looked very realistic this butterfly the way he painted it you know and he got some black paint for the feeler things on its head and but a funny thing he used to carve a lot of things but I remember

that particular thing, you know, that he carved, especially when this fellow come along with a butterfly net and swooped on it but yeah that's about ….

Oh well he raced out of his tent, he had a piece of him you know, the fellow felt a big fool because… Yeah,

"Oh no."

That's right. Yeah I'm just trying to think of some of the funny things that did happen up there but it, I know one time there a fellow he had it in for one of the corporals, an Irish bloke he was, I just forget his name. He was as mad as a rabbit and he was going to shoot this corporal and I said. "No mate you're not shooting any corporal

while I'm here," you know, "I'm not being a witness to that." And I forget what happened now, he had his rifle all ready to do it, he had a hate for this corporal and the last minute I think he didn't get out the truck, that's right, he drove past and didn't get out and but he was a real Irish bloke. He was as mad as the Irish

you know what I mean. But I can't think of many, I sort of didn't dwell on those things you know, what was said and done like that.

Such as the …?

Oh no, no that was just a one-off. You know he just had it in for this corporal, he just hated him. And

mind you I think he was all bluff you know.

Yeah well the P40, The Kittyhawk, it was a very reliable aircraft, it was very strong, it was a very robust aircraft. They had like a decent sort of armour plate behind the pilot and

in the Ellison engine, that was a very, very reliable engine you know, it was American made, the 6 forward firing guns in the Kittyhawk they were very, very destructive you know, they were 50 mm. In fact I remember one of the pilots, you know, on a tape I saw, he said he got a real shock when he first fired the guns on the P40,

especially when the tracers come, you know, they're so powerful. But they were a good aircraft, they were nowhere near as manoeuvrable as the Zeros but it was a good aircraft. There was one day there; we were in a bombing raid and what they did, they

got, I can show you on a map down there, where the airstrip was and the area around the airstrip they put it on a block, a four-sided block and they had A,B,C,D and E you know. And they gave these lines between the blocks a colour like white, blue, yellow, purple and inside that block was anti-aircraft, the anti-aircraft

defence used to take over, so there was no chance of them shooting our own planes down. Our own planes would never fly into that block. But the ground defence could then communicate with the pilots and tell them that the Japanese formation was leaving the block crossing line green or red or whatever it was at so many degrees and they could take them on outside of the block. And I'll never forget one

day there was, we had a big load there and when the planes had gone out of the block this solitary P38 he made passes at the Jap formation and each time he made a pass you'd see one of the bombers would be smoke coming from the engines. And he made about 3 like that and each time more smoke and then what they must

have done, they must have turned all their firepower onto him and when he came in for the fourth time, he was hit. And he asked permission to land and they said, "If you don't land on the strip proper because we've got," I think we had about 15 Kites up and they were all getting low on fuel. "Don't land on the strip proper but bring it in down on the top end of the strip." Well unfortunately

of all the places on the strip there was one place there was a coconut stump and the poor devil hit this stump and of course he got killed, he stayed in the plane. Well nobody sort of recovered that body for several days and what it was, he was a Dutchman, he was a pilot, a Dutchman in the Dutch Air Force and he was flying this P38 and he just happened to come into the area when there was an air raid on.

So he said, "Oh I'll have a bit of the action." But that's what happened, they turned all their firepower on him you know when he went in for the I think it was third or fourth time.

In the sky?

Oh well you can, see the strips are made of steel

and in a decent sort of an air raid with the anti-aircraft you can hear the shrapnel, whatever it is, coming down from our own guns, you know, hitting on the strip. And the noise of the, in an air raid there's so much noise you don't know what is what. The day of the big raid, the dive-bombers, they went for the ships in the harbour, the normal bombers

they bombed us and between the noise of the bombs, the noise of the guns, the noise of the anti-aircraft guns, it's just so much noise you know going on. And it's very very hard to distinguish which is which. But you know you're a damn liar if you say you're not afraid when the damn Zeros are strafing the strip you know, you're in a hole on the side of the strip.

I don't know what size, I don't know what the Zero's ammunition was but they had a cannon, they had a cannon on the, I think a 20 mm cannon. In fact there was a B17, a Flying Fortress, came in one day and it was shot up. And it landed on the strip with holes in it like, all the way like a colander dish and the

squadron's ambulance went down to the strip and the Yankee, the American pilot he got out and he'd been hit in the arm, in the fleshy part of the arm with a 20 mm cannon shell. And he got out and he just sat on the running board of the ambulance and he just sat there until all his crew got out and the fellow that was, I think the fellow that was mainly, the one who had the most wounds

was one of the gunners, the tail gunner or one of them. They virtually you know carried him out and then once they'd all got in the ambulance this American pilot he got in too and off they went to the hospital, the field hospital. But I think on that day, I think three Zeros attacked them or four Zeros.

Oh they weren't sloppy, oh no, no, don't get me wrong on that. But they didn't fly as good as formation as the Japanese did in the bomber formations you know. It was only a marginal thing but you know I could detect yeah and. But oh no, I know the morning of the invasion

there was word went round that the Americans were going to come in with B17s, well they were late coming in but they did come in and they dropped their bombs and you could hear these bombs going off it seemed for eternity, you could hear this 'Whoompf, Whoompf, Whoompf, Whoompf, Whoompf' you know going on for a long time. But I think the Americans in the

B17s were operating from northern Queensland; I think it was Mareeba or somewhere like that. But at Goodenough Island, I've got a picture of it, it was an American B17 and four Zeros took to him and shot him and you know really put big holes in the planes. And he brought it in, he skimmed the water with his wheels down, with his wheels down, not up, and he put the

Kite on the beach you know, it was a brilliant you know, it was really good flying to do that you know. But our blokes, I've seen them when they crash, I've seen them belly landing you know in the sea, some of them belly landed on the strip you know been shot up. But I'd say without a doubt the best pilot

the squadron had was Johnny Piper, yeah. He was a carpet salesman before the war, I believe, in Melbourne yeah. But he was, he was a really good pilot yeah, Johnny Piper. I would put him at the top of the list you know as far as the pilots went yeah.

Johnny Piper came, yeah cause I saw a

documentary with Johnny Piper on it about, oh about 10 years ago. It was a documentary the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] made called 44 Days and it was all about the squadron at Port Moresby and Johnny Piper was on it yeah. But as far as the other pilots go you know, there wouldn't be many of them left now because after I left the squadron

a few of them would have been killed. But I've got no, I've got no, how will I put it, I'm not sorry that I didn't get into aircrew in the long run because (a) I got with a great batch of fellows you know well I did, and secondly I think if I'd have been in aircrew I wouldn't be here today, you know I wouldn't have been talking to you today because there wasn't too many you know,

people in fighter squadron you know, that survived the war. But I don't really know what happened to, after I left the squadron they moved north you know they weren't, they went north to, what's that place now, in Borneo or somewhere but you know what happened in the war, once they,

the Japanese, had been virtually stopped and pushed back the Yanks wanted to take over, they sort of didn't want any Australian participation in the, they said they can manage from there on so to speak you know. So you never saw any Australian aircraft in attacks north of

New Guinea you know, it was always the Americans were doing that. The best, one of the best wartime photographers they had in New Guinea is an Australian by the name of Damian Parer and he left the Australians and he went to work for the Americans and he was killed

going ashore at, I think it was Palau in the Pacific yeah.

Well the best air raid I was ever put in in my life, I got caught down the wharf one day and I hopped into this anti-aircraft pit you know. And these fellows said, "Righto mate you start passing that bloody ammunition along,"

and you're that busy doing that, you know, the air raid was a piece of cake you know, you didn't notice it. But you've always got a feeling in an air raid that the bomb's going to hit your trench you know, you've got the odds and that, one in a thousand I suppose but it's the noise, it's the terrible noise that goes on, you know. The Bofors guns and then

the big three point seven anti-aircraft guns, they make a fair amount on noise and then, you know. But when they drop the bombs, cause it's not like a whistling noise like you hear on the television it's more like a rush of wind you know like the wind 'shhhhhhhh' going like that and then 'whoompf, whoompf, whoompf' when they're patting on the ground.

I never got into a dive-bombing attack but I should imagine that that would be more frightening than a high level attack you know cause you'd know that they were diving on your position. But I'd say without a doubt the worst, the most frightening thing that we encountered up there was the shelling from the two cruisers you know. You saw these three flashes on the night sky

you knew that was the sound of three coming your way and you don't know whether they're going to land in front, at back or behind you. And it seemed eternity but it wasn't all that long, I mean it must have been only five, about five minutes I suppose, five or ten minutes but it seemed much longer than that.

What, in that shelling?

No damage at all. All they did, they didn't damage the strip one iota but they just blew big holes in the jungle. Cause we were not, again we were just laying on the floor of the jungle and they just blew big holes in the jungle and cut some of the coconut trees down at the base, you know. But I don't think there's the same amount of shrapnel in these big naval shells as what,

because I think they were mainly using big a lot of high explosives you know to blow big holes in the strip. But they were big holes they were blowing in the jungle you know, as I said before you could have got a car down the hole, a small car on end yeah. But that particular Cruiser the Tameroo, that got sunk in 1943 by an American submarine, I don't know where it was but it got sunk, yeah.

Nothing, they just stopped shelling and off they went.

Oh no, what, I glad you mentioned that. What happened when the cruisers were shelling, the CO of the squadron he wanted to take a Kittyhawk up and drop a bomb down the front of one of the cruisers and the army brass said, "If you as much as get in that aircraft and start it

up we'll shoot you." Because if he'd started an aircraft up, they'd have pinpointed the strip with the noise and as it was they were firing in the right direction but they were overshooting the strip and so he didn't take off. But that's what happened, they threatened to shoot him if he took off, yeah.

That was, thank god yeah that was it. I don't know how these poor

devils got by in the First World War because they got it day and night, you know what I mean. And they got big bombardments from the Krauts. But no that was the only shelling we ever got and that was enough for me you know, I got enough with that. I can understand why anybody could be shell-shocked under constant shelling attack because it could get to you, oh yeah.

Oh well it just depended on the weather; you know, like on a good moonlight night that was a good bombing moon. When we first went up there, there were no air raids, it was always strafing, it was strafing and the occasional armed reconnaissance, Japanese bomber on reconnaissance with a Zero escort. And, but once they'd lost the battle, that was it they threw everything at

us to get rid of that strip, yeah. Because there was no doubt about it, that airstrip was the means of their defeat you know at the Bay. And if they'd have got that strip, well you know we'd have been in for it. Thank God they didn't. What actually happened, they landed in the wrong place. Their homework on what was at the bay

was all wrong, they didn't know we had two fighter squadrons there for start off. And they underestimated the strength that was there you know, in the army because they had the fellows in the 9th Division and I think there was the 7th Division but they landed off-course they, where they landed was where the Yanks were putting in this second airstrip

out of the virgin jungle. So I suppose they saw this great big opening in the jungle and they thought, this is it, but they were a long way off. Some of the natives apparently that they captured and asked them where the airstrip, where we were you know, I don't think the natives understood what they were talking about because the Japanese shot them you know because they couldn't tell them. And I remember reading in a book,

it was the Japanese version and he said this blue-eyed, blond, young, blond Australian soldier, he said he was very brave because they'd captured him and he knew like he would be killed and shot and they quizzed him about the airport, where we were, the airstrip and he didn't tell them you know. And but that definitely was the main target, the airstrip.

Because another thing up there too, it was the 7th Division, they stormed the Kabi Mission with bayonets and they killed, I think they killed 60 Japanese, there was more than that killed cause a lot of them ran off into the jungle and died but they killed 60 Japanese in this bayonet attack. And then it wasn't long after that the Japanese,

you know, sort of gave it away. But the Japanese, they had full control of the sea, I mean they could come and go as they pleased. We had no navy there whatsoever. The only navy ships we had there was the day before the battle, was the Arunta and some other ship, I don't know what they were called, Vats or what they were. And they hightailed it to the safety of Port Moresby. But there was no

navy, the Japanese after a couple of days of the invasion I think five destroyers brought in the first reinforcements you know for the battle. But the whole thing was that they landed off course and had they had landed, you know, nearer to where we were well it might have been a different story even in spite of the Kittyhawks. But the Kittyhawks they did, they played

havoc with them you know. They couldn't fight in the daytime because of the Kittyhawks, they were like eagles in the sky watching them, so they had to do everything of a night. And all the passwords up there started with the letter L, like we never had, the Japanese must have had trouble pronouncing the letter L. And they all started with the letter L and

it didn't happen where we were but I heard from some of the fellows they, the Japanese would yell out in English, you know, "Keep to the middle of the road," or it might be night-time and they'd say, "Good morning, Good morning Mum," or something like that, well they'd get a burst of machine gun fire once they did that you know. And but they crossed open ground for the

first time on that strip and when the Japanese attacked like that they make a hell of a noise you know setting crackers off and yelling, oh yeah. And they were met with heavy and light machine guns and mortars and they took high casualties but that was the last time that they crossed open ground you know trying to get to the strip.

And I was saying it wasn't long after that they started taking their men off.

Well the Kittyhawks used to, when there were threatened snipers the army used to fire a smoke signal or whatever they call them, you know, where they were but the army would always call the Kittyhawks up and they would back the army up wherever they wanted them strafed because you've got to appreciate, it's all dense jungle

and you can't see much on the ground you know so the army used to call the squadron up and they used to you know go in and strafe that area, where they were. But I think in the course of the battle the Kittyhawk wore our 300 gun barrels in the course of the battle, burnt them out. And but I say towards the,

see the Japanese were, I read in a book where the Japanese intended to make a second attempt at Milne Bay, when they lost the first attempt they were going to make a second attempt and had they done that, we got through the Battle at Milne Bay, we were short of ammunition, we were short of supplies but they just got through like in the time

span that we had. Now if the Japanese had have come back the second time and the Kittyhawks had taken a terrible pounding you know from all this mud, coming up. And you know it's a fair strain of the engines all the time. The damp surface really in, not in the best of places, we used to service them in the dispersal. And

they used to take a terrible amount of punishment and towards the end of the battle I don't think we had all that many aircraft were serviceable you know to attack the Japanese. So had they come back it would have been, it could have been 'goodnight nurse'. But I read in this Japanese book where this Japanese aircraft was taken off from the, Rabaul in New Britain

and a fellow came racing out from the control tower waving a white piece of paper and he said the Japanese used to call Milne Bay, he said not Rabii, Guadalcanal and it was, it was Guadalcanal that saved us because it wasn't after Milne Bay they attacked the Yanks at Guadalcanal and the Yanks took a lot of casualties down there as you know. But

as I say we just defeated them early (UNCLEAR) we did. But you know the radar, no wasn't much of it up there and the radio communication was terrible you know and all these things went against us but as I say the Kittyhawks and that they really were, the army would say that because Major General Clowes he said

it seemed remarkable that men and machines had endured what they had. In fact I've got in here what he said he said that …

Oh yeah. But the night before the invasion we were down at the strip putting all these bombs under the Kittyhawk sort of you know where the belly tanks go and we knew it was on then. But it's an amazing think like, we knew that, you've got to appreciate, Pearl Harbour was on December the

7th '41, well on Christmas Day they took Hong Kong and I think about a week after that they captured the Philippines then in early September, in the February they captured Malaya and Singapore and they got Java, every place they'd landed they'd taken it. And then they wanted New Britain they took that, New Ireland they took that and they took all these little other places

and we were just next on the list you know and although we knew all that, I don't know what it was, we weren't scared you know what I mean. We felt that we had the stuff to stop them. Now George Mills, a chap, one of the blokes, one of the guards, he was the CO's man like he use to, he wasn't fighting with us, he

whatever the CO wanted, he was like, he wasn't the CO's batman but that's how he come to be down the wharf that day, he was getting stuff off the ship for the CO you know. And the CO said to him on the night of the invasion he said, "Would you stay down the strip all night on the telephone in the operations tent?" And in the early hours of the morning the phone went and George answered it and it was some

bigwig in the army and he said, "Would you alert the commanding officer and all the pilots and tell them there's been a breakthrough and we can't guarantee that the Japanese won't get onto the strip." And he said, "I suggest that if you've got any spare pilots," well we did, we had more pilots than planes, "if you've got any spare pilots you fly them out at first

light to the safety of Port Moresby," and this is what they did. And then it was, came, it was regular routines because the Kittyhawks operated from the strip in the daytime but as soon as it got very late in the afternoon they took off and went to Moresby for the night, for the safety of Moresby, because you know they didn't know whether the Japanese would get on the strip or what. And then they came back the next morning. And this is how they operated,

like Moresby for the safety of a night and then came back the next day. But we knew what the Nips were up to, we knew they wanted that strip you know that was a prime target, yeah, cause it was a good strip. I forget how many coconut trees they cut down to make the strip, it was thousands of coconut trees you know,

cut down, and they did it with this Marsden matting. And often, even with this matting, the steel strip with all the rain we got up there the strip used to be like a lake but that didn't deter the Australian pilots and watching them taking off and land was like watching a speedboat, a high powered speedboat on a lake you know with all the water coming out from the sides of the wheels,

yeah. But some of the planes used to come back and there was holes in them, you could have crawled through them you know. But you know they got back. But getting back to the pilots going to Moresby in one of the Hudsons, there was standing room only in the Hudson with all these pilots were all standing up in the Hudson, they couldn't all sit down and they got a lot of the pilots out that

way to the safety of Port Moresby. And I think at the time we felt it was going to be like another Singapore you know cause what happened there, all the top officers got out, I forget his name now up there but no that wasn't the case, it was just that you know the pilots are going to Moresby for safety, it made sense really and because it takes a long time to train a pilot you know

you can't afford to lose them that way.

Oh the strip we were on?

It's hard to say really, I forget how many miles they landed off course but I really don't know that, I couldn't answer that.

You know in a battle like that there could have been, some of their forward troops could have gone round somewhere and got nearer to us you know but I honestly don't know how close they got to the strip, no. In a battle like you've got to appreciate that you're only in one part of the battle, you know what I mean, you don't know what's going on over there or what's going on over here. You only find this out after the battle, what happened. What happened

down the strip that night well I didn't know that until I caught up to George and he told me about ….

That was the first night of the battle yeah. But there was a breakthrough but fortunately the Australians held it. In all fairness this officer was telling, this army officer was telling the squadron leader, was telling that ever likelihood that they could get on the

strip you know and it was on the cards but fortunately they were held. But they were fanatical, they were fanatical people they were.

No, we weren't on the strip, we were at the back of the strip and but we, well we would have fought them at the back of the strip yeah because the army was with us. And

really speaking, that was the finest thing that could have happened because the army are more experience in fighting like that than the air force and being under the army's control you know you stood a much better chance than trying to do it on your own. But on that high ground, as I said, I can remember everything right up to the shelling of the strip but after that it's

a complete blank, I don't know why but it's a blank you know. I never want to find out anyway cause there's some reason why I can't remember it you know.

It was towards the end of the battle, yeah. Just after the shelling, well the fact that he shelled the strip meant that he was losing the battle, you know what I mean, he didn't want, he knew he'd been beaten

so he decided to destroy the strip. But as I say I've got all these Japanese objects in my possession, I didn't know how I come to come by them. But then this fellow fifty years later said, "Oh you went out with us on patrols and mopping up operations," and I can't remember that, I've no idea. But as I say I've got a good memory as you can see, you know, way back to when I was a kid at five years old

but for some unknown reason that's blanked out.

Well put it this way you sort of catnapped, now if anybody even now, if anybody was to stand by my bed and break a twig I'd jump, I'd be on my feet, oh yeah you know

and so much so when the Japanese got close to where the action was at the air force, they used to apparently come into the camp of a night and get food and they used to cut a few people's throats and when the guards went to wake up the pilots they would not go in and shake them like that, they had a stick and they'd poke them with a stick

to wake up because the pilots used to sleep with their revolvers on them and you know they could have quite easily shot the guard. So they used to wake them up with a stick you know, time to get up.

In some places yeah, apparently they found they got in to get food and they found fellows with their throats cut yeah.

And just as well with the guards woke up, it wasn't our squadron it was 76 Squadron. When the guards went into to wake the pilots up they didn't, you know, give them a nudge they stood a way off with a stick, yeah.

Oh it's hard to say, I think it lasted about, it started on the 26th of August and it went through to, they started to shell on the

6th of September and then they brought it, and then they started taking their men off after that so it would have been, it could have been over a good fortnight you know, the actual battle. But then even after that there was still this cleaning out, cleaning out of pockets of the enemy in different places.

I don't know what they did with their wounded, the very badly wounded. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't shoot their own wounded, I don't know but that's the type of people they were.

Well as I say I don't remember the latter part from the shelling in the army, I didn't remember it and then I remembered

once I got back with the squadron just before we left, you know, when the Yanks took over and they came up from the wharf with their mobile kitchens and all that and it was, I think it was about a day after that, two days after that, we formed in a squad, the army got either side of us and they

cheered and clapped as we marched out and we went down to wharf and caught a ship called the Ormiston that took us from there to Horn Island yeah.

Only for that short time. It must have been about a week, I suppose, but you know I remember everything else but I don't know what happened in that

period of time. I didn't get hit on the head or anything like that, you know, but as I said before the clothes we had we'd been wearing them for about, we must have had them on for about, there was no clothes to change into. I think we went for about three or four weeks for clothes you know. You couldn't go and wash them anywhere there was no chance of doing that, yeah.

Once the word came round we would rejoin the squadron we knew we were pretty right yeah. And that's when I caught up with what had happened back in the squadron, you know, since we'd been away from it. But there's no doubt about it that was the right thing to do for us to go with the army because

we were more effective as a fighting unit with the army than on our own.

Oh just the guards, just the guards yeah. The fitters, although the fitters didn't have a lot of work to do as far as the aircraft went because they were flying to Moresby at night you know, but the fitter and the armourers, well the armourers would have been kept going because

as the Kittyhawks landed they'd taxi over and refuel and belt up with new ammunition, the pilot would go and have a cup of tea or something. I'll never forget it, when one pilot landed he said, "I'll go and have a cup of tea," he said, "I just got a barge load of the bastards," you know and but yeah the fitters and armourers stayed with the squadron and the radio mechanics

and all that you know. We had a radio mechanic up there called, I think it was Merve Price, and he was a great fellow for fixing radios, he used to get a pair of tin snips, pair of these pliers, and he used to cut all these circuits out and he fixed the radio sets that way you know. And but that was how he fixed some of the radio sets,

cut all the circuits out, yeah.

Well there was no need to defend because the aircraft weren't there, the aircraft were going of a night to Moresby, they were flying of a day and going for the safety of Port Moresby

of a night so you know there was no need to look after them down there, look after them at Moresby. And then they'd come back a day, like the next day, yeah. But that made sense really because they couldn't be used of a night and they were vulnerable if the Japanese had broken through you know. But as I said they could come and go as they pleased because the navy, they

could do that you know we had nothing to stop them.

Oh, well as I say you were just in one quarter of the battle but what I've heard later on was hand to hand fighting in some places you know. And

the, I'm thinking of the, the Japanese used to lie amongst their own dead and our fellows they use to bury them as quick as they could, you know what I mean but I don't know how true it is but one of the ways our blokes used to, the army blokes used to find out if a Japanese was dead they used to with the heel of the army boots put it across his face on the ground you know,

well if you're dead you don't move, if you're not dead you'd jump around wouldn't you? And they were burying some Japanese and one of these Japanese was lying amongst their own dead and he picked up a rifle and fired at these burying you know, the Australian burial party but they put him down pretty quick and he went in the hole with them you know, yeah.

But that's what they used to do, lie amongst their own dead. But that was the fight, the fighting with the army, I'd put the Australian soldiers number one in the, as a jungle fighter, they were good; yeah you never used to hear them or see them. That little army corporal he was proof of that, you never used to hear him

coming behind you, you never used to see him, you only used to see him once he got out of your vision you know, that was it. He used to go to all the posts on this ridge right along on the top of the ridge. I wouldn't have done it for worlds you know.

Oh the Japanese had no artillery there; no, there was no anti-aircraft stuff,

it was just small arm stuff that they had to contend with. But no the Japanese didn't bring any artillery, not to my knowledge, they didn't bring any artillery with them. Virtually we had full control of the skies after, the first day I think it was a big air battle and then after that we had control of the skies. Because the Americans and all that

and the Bostons and the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] but they kept the Japanese, they kept the Buna airstrip under pretty heavy attack all the time you know, they couldn't use it. But the Japanese used to attack us, these would come from Gasmata in New Britain and as I say, after the first day of a big battle, from then on the Australians had command of the skies and

that's a big factor in the battle you know, if you've got air, you'd be right.

How do you mean what?

Oh that was going on all the time, I suppose, but I don't know how many there were at the strip you know, how far they came in. But,

no, I couldn't answer that one properly. No, not really, cause you know in a battle you're only just in one place, you don't know what's going on over there, what's going on over here or what's going on over there. But you do know after the battle what happened you know, they say all these people they found bayoneted you know it was. And the first Australians that met them,

they were militia people, they weren't our air force you know, they were virtually conscripted soldiers that met them you know, not the volunteer soldiers like the AIF. But see the AIF, they were seasoned troops from the Middle East and by the same token the Japanese were picked marines, they'd had war experience and jungle fighting in the Philippines and China and Malaya you know,

they weren't raw recruits, they were all big men. When I say big, they were about 5 foot 8, you know5 foot 9 and big solid fellows, yeah.

Oh I couldn't know, I didn't go that far

forward you know to know that. I know that, once they started taking their troops off we knew then that we'd beaten them you know and that was it. I don't know what sort of reception the Japanese in charge of the operation got when he got back because it was a defeat. And Winston Churchill, he heard of it and he

said to the British troops in Burma, he said, "Well the Japanese are not invincible," he said, "The Australians beat them in New Guinea and he's not invincible," and it was, there were no Americans in the battle, it was all Australians yeah. But this is the thing that bugs a lot of people, the Prime Minister, John Howard, went up there, he went up to Kokoda and he

unveiled a plaque at Kokoda saying it was, you know, the battle that saved Australia and all the rest of it, well Kokoda was after Milne Bay really, it was still going on when Milne Bay was being fought but it was Milne Bay really, it was the battle that did save Australia you know. But John Howard, he

couldn't have done his history on that because you know he didn't know it. But I think, I wrote to Darryl Williams, the Attorney General, cause I used to know Darryl Williams, he's a West Australian, I used to pick him up. I used to pick his father up of a morning, he worked in the same office as I did, and I use to give Darryl a lift to Perth in the car,

to Perth Modern School, and that's how I come to know him. So I wrote to Darryl and I pointed it out to him, you know, and he come back, full of apologies and he said, "There's some talk about them erecting a plaque at Milne Bay or something," you know, "in memory of the men lost there," and that sort of thing.

Oh yeah.

I didn't see them buried, but I know the mob, the big bats who got killed on the strip, they were pushed in the hole you know with a front-end loader and then that was just covered over. You've got to appreciate, up there it's hot, humid and dead bodies, even after a day, they start to get a bit on

the nose you know and the quicker you bury them the better. But that's what they did there, they scooped a hole in the ground and just pushed them all in. But how they buried these other fellows, I don't know what took place in the burial party there, that was the army's job there.

Oh they put all these rocks on the top and they put a

coconut stump on it and they built this plaque on it you know to say that this marks the westernmost point on the Japanese advance of August, September, 1942, well it was, it was the nearest they got to Australia they never got another inch nearer to Australia than that cause after that it was all on the retreat. And they said in memory of officers, NCOs and men who, you know, gave, the battalion who fought there and they've got

85 unknown Japanese marines lie buried here in that hole, yeah. I've got a picture down there of me squatting on top of the hole you know.

I don't know what happened there, because I don't know. But the Yanks, when

they'd pay you good money for anything like that if you could get hold of some of that stuff and flog it to them.

Anything, I mean mainly photographs of Japanese soldiers with their families you know that type of thing. And I don't know about Japanese helmets, I know I brought some Japanese ammunition home I got there and after a few

years I thought it's damn silly keeping this stuff in the house you know so I buried it up the back of the block and I happen to mention it to my grandson, he's only a little kid like this, I buried all these bullets up there, Japanese bullets well they were up there all day probing around trying to find them, I buried them deep.

I left 75 Squadron in,

I've got it here; yeah I left 75 on the 14th of October in 1943 at Goodenough Island and then I

came from there to Perth and then on the 3rd of February 1944 I was at Pearce at 25 Squadron Liberators and then in the June I was at 328 Radar Wallal and I got discharged in April '46.

But the, there's the figures there, Guadalcanal 60,000 Americans committed, 1,600 killed, 4245 wounded and Buna, Bloody Buna 40,000 Australians and Americans committed, 3095 killed, 5451 wounded and this didn't include those that died of malaria or, you know, other diseases.

But I got all that in case I went to these high schools.

Yeah right, yeah.

Well all, the main thing, there was only about a dozen people on the unit and our main function was to

keep that radar going night and day, it didn't matter what happened after that. And so much so, provided the radar was going, it was sort of like a holiday camp really because the CO on occasion used to go out on these picnics and we were all in this Land Rover, sitting three each side in the back and the CO was driving. When I first went up there a big bird,

a crane, took off from the side of the road like that and all the fellows grabbed their rifles to knock it down and the CO said, "Cut it out," he said, "One of you fellows will get shot," so he said to me, "Don Ameche, sir," he said, "Have a go," so I just put a good shot, 'bang', bloody thing fell down you know. He said, "Right, you're the man, you're our executioner," and so I went down the beach the day after that and all these

sharks on the incoming tide, their dorsal fins going up and down and he said, "Have a go at them." So I put a bullet through the dorsal fin, you know you couldn't miss them. So he said, "Right you're the executioner." So he said he wanted me to shoot sheep they'd get cattle and sheep from the station and I'm not killing sheep, well I'm not pulling that off. So they got this fellow called 'the Pigmy', he was a butcher

in civilian life, he killed the sheep but I killed the bullocks, you know, in the pens. And this Pigmy, when we killed the bullocks this Pigmy he used to disappear into the carcass this fellow, he was only a little bloke, he was that small that when we were carrying the fish back from the beach, well the fish were on a pole, we had about four of these big long, big fish on it. I'd say, "For God sakes, Pigmy, put

you bloody hand right up in the air you know, you're dragging the tails in the sand," and he used to disappear into these bullocks and he would be releasing all the big internal intestines, I suppose to pull out, and the Aborigines were around when we were doing that and they, the thing that they wanted, the women around there was the penis part of the bull,

you know they wanted that, I don't know what they wanted that for, whether they used to eat it. We used to give it to them. But as long as we kept that radar going you were sort of, you were jack-of-all-trades in that unit because you put you hand, turned your hand into cooking, you'd take turns about. You cooked today and do somebody else tomorrow

but it was the only place where I've even been in in my life where they had a panorama view from the loo. And what they had there, they had these four, two stakes in the ground with hessian strung across it and the loos used to face out to sea, there was nothing in the front of them you know nothing down the side. And you could see from the loo

you could see there was Eighty Mile Beach that way and it was, you know, 80 miles beach in the middle of it down that way and it was a panorama view you know, I don't know what anybody ever thought going past in an ocean liner with binoculars on but that was it. But it was a good unit but as I say, after New Guinea it was a piece of cake, yeah. The tents

we had there were dug in the ground, like there was a hole, a big square hole about that high and it was all sandbagged and then the tent was pitched over the top. Because that was there from day one when they built the radar because of the Japanese air attacks, they did attack Broome and that was a way of protecting yourself. We had no air raids there when I was there you know, actually it was towards the end of the war.

But I've got it in that album down there the day of the, the day that the war was declared finished they had a party up there and the menu they got, you'd think you was in a luxury hotel down south you know, they had crabs' claws and they had roast beef and all this sort of stuff on the menu and

fish fillets of snapper fish fillets and all this and but the fishing up there was astronomical you know. I've never seen fish like it in my life. In fact we used to waste more than we used you know, just cut this clean fillet off the side and throw the rest away. But it was a good unit and I've got some pictures down there of, at a bit of a picnic,

having a barbecue, yeah, on the beach. But after New Guinea that was heaven, yeah. You could sleep of a night, no worry at all, you know. But since New Guinea I been a not a sound sleeper you know, you just stand by my bed of a night and break something, I'm up, oh yeah.

But you just got trained that way you know to do it. But looking back now, you know, I think about the fellows I was with and I look back and I think well, you know, we were all one big happy family really because we were all in the same boat. We all had the same goals to aim for. You know whatever happened, in fact one of the worst

things I saw up there was I used to always, I don't know why it was, but I was always one of the first they'd grab hold of to go out to a crash site and I went out to a crash site. It was in Cairns, we came back for new aircraft and this sergeant pilot, I don't know what the hell happened, the Kittyhawk was flying in level formation and for some unknown reason he just dived,

went straight down in the ground and he landed between a house and a school, fortunately there was no kids in the school and they grabbed me to go out to guard the crash site and when you got there you could smell all this burnt flesh that lingers in my mind, the smell of burnt flesh. And then at Goodenough Island, because of all the heavy rain, you know that used to fall, they dug these big

drain ditches on the side of the strip. They were about, oh about three foot high I suppose, two foot deep and about that wide, about two foot wide and there was a Boston taking off and in a Boston they've got a crew of three, they've got the pilot, the observer and the gunner, and this Boston was just about airborne and he blew the starboard tyre and the plane lurched

down on the flat tyre and it went sideways like that and round and round and round until it went in, the flat wheel went into the ditch at the side of the strip and the plane flipped over on its back. Well, we could see these fellows inside trying to get out and we raced over to, you know, to help them and when we got near somebody yelled out, "She's bombed up!" cause the plane was taking off with bombs to bomb the Japanese at Gasmata.

Well we flattened out on the ground and these bombs went off, there was 250 and they went 'Whoompf, Whoompf, Whoompf' and they blew pieces of the Boston and the fellows inside it, small pieces all over, that would be one of the worst things that I saw up there. You just couldn't do anything about it, you know what I mean, if you kept standing on your feet you'd have been blown to pieces as well.

But that was a good squadron that 22 Squadron because when they, I used to be with that when I was at Richmond, but when they were bombing the Japanese installations at Lae, they were bombing the buildings and the anti-aircraft positions and all that. Flight Lieutenant Bill Newton, he was one of the pilots he was bombing, he was attacking one of the anti-aircraft positions

and his plane got hit. The other pilots saw him land in the sea off Lae and they saw him ditch the plane, he was all right, they saw him get on the wing and started to swim toward the beach, hoping to God that he'd be picked up by some of our forward troops but unfortunately Bill Newton got picked up by the Japanese and Bill Newton he was beheaded in the March

'43 and that's how they treated our downed aircrew. But that Boston was one of the worst things that I saw up there you know. I'd seen plenty of aircraft you know crash land with the wheels up and sparks coming out from underneath but nine times out of ten the pilots got out of it, you know. But that Boston never had a chance you know, it was upside down.

Are you finished?

Oh not all that long I don't think, I think it was about

five months I think, something like that. See the war was just about over when I got up there. I really should have, if I hadn't have got the third dose of malaria there was no doubt about it I would have gone to Italy. There's a funny thing, when George Mills went to Italy they weren't posted to RAAF fighter squadrons they were posted to RAF fighter squadrons

and he was there until the war finished and I would have been with him but as I say I went down with the third dose of malaria and I missed it and then I got posted to Wallal. But I think that it was a cushy posting and I think other than malaria you know sort of helped me go there.

Well

I know of a night you know in the jungle they were bad, there is no doubt about that, and you had no gloves or anything to protect yourself with and you couldn't put your hands inside any because you wouldn't be able to hold your Owen gun you know if anything cropped up. And it's a funny thing, you sort of,

when you get it it's like you've got a severe headache and you're heating up like somebody's stacking a fire underneath you, you know you're get hotter and hotter and then after a while you start shaking like a you know you can't stop yourself shaking all over and that goes on for a long time and then after that you feel really weak and it was nothing up there to hear that 'The Last

Post' playing of the night and you'd say to somebody, "Who's getting buried," you know, "tonight?" And they'd say, "Oh so and so, he died of malaria," you know and it did, it killed a lot of our blokes, malaria. And, but the first dose wasn't too bad but I say that second dose that was a real killer that, that second dose and even the third dose was nearly as bad as the second dose but thank God

I was lucky, I got the strain where you know once you get your three doses that's it, you don't get any more, but some fellows there, they get it all the time you know, different strain yeah. But I had the dengue fever too. How I knew I had the dengue fever, I got access to my air force medical records and that was on the records you know, dengue fever, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, as I said, it was a feeling of, there was no pain with it but it was a feeling of like a massive or worse than the flu and after malaria you felt weak you know, there's no doubt about that, you felt really weak

cause it had taken that much out of your system but apart from the, I think it was the shivering part of it that really sort of wore you out you know, the shaking and the shivering but I don't know exactly, I think I was in the hospital for a month I think afterwards and the same in Perth, that was a month or six weeks and, but you know you feel washed

out and weak afterwards, after the malaria and I didn't lose any weight cause I was only about, I was nine and a half stone, that was my fighting weight up there you know, as fit as a fiddle really until I got this damn malaria and then but I got over it and you know. But

it's a terrible disease, there's no doubt about that, it can kill you. But it's all because of a damn mosquito and see being a guard you were where the other people of a night under mosquito nets back in the tents, we were out in the jungle you know with the mosquitoes and there was nothing you could do about it. In fact

in one place there at Horn Island, there were different tribes of mosquitoes at Horn Island, they were a lot smaller than the New Guinean mosquito but their bite was worse you know, it stung, you could feel after you'd been bitten, the back of your hand would ache from the bites and so it's no wonder I got malaria, everyone in the squadron got it you know it's a known thing, it's the worst

place in the world for malaria, and New Guinea's a big place. But there's so much damn water there, that was the point, and this is why they breed.

Beg yours?

Well all they gave you for malaria, they gave you Quinine to take and when you took this Quinine

well you got this sort of a buzzing effect in your ears. And I know when I was in Hollywood and I was on Quinine and the nurse came along and she said, "Would you come to the phone, Grace is on the phone and wants to speak to you," well I couldn't hear her on the phone because it attacks your eardrums and

that's the only thing they give you is Quinine, nothing else, I mean on the outer when they gave us Verbantin but that didn't stop it, all that did was make our skins yellow, you know we were about the same colour as the Japanese. But yeah that's the treatment for malaria, it's Quinine and rest I suppose, yeah.

To my?

Oh, well I think I was too sick to worry about it you know what I mean. I wouldn't say that you didn't care whether you lived or died but you know you were, you're just that way that it really got to you, you know you knew you'd get through it but you know while you had

the shakes and all this heating up business you know you'd swear that somebody had a fire under your bed, stoking it up. And that's what, in the Cairns Hospital that it seemed odd to me that they had an army corporal with me all night you know doing it. But it's a terrible damn disease, oh no I wouldn't

wish it on anybody yeah.

The?

Oh the white light, well that was peculiar really, because I wouldn't have thought much of it until I heard what the matron said to the doctor about losing me, they lost me, but then when I looked back I realised that through the night I was in this,

it's not a tunnel and it's not a, and it's none of this business of looking down on yourself, it's just a peaceful place where this light, it's not moonlight, it's not daylight, it's not artificial light and it's so peaceful there that you're quite content to stay there, there's no noise there, you know, you're so happy in there that you'd stay there, you know, and if this is what that's like, well it's

nothing to worry about. But once that I heard that matron say to the doctor, "We lost him last night," then I put two and two together and as I said I had an army corporal orderly with me all night and seeing this bright light and everything else I must have, you know, matron must be right. But they did lose a lot of men with malaria, there's no doubt about that, oh yeah. But I think that's what prompted me to write that poem,

you know, My Angel, in the back of my mind I had visions of this angel with me, and yeah.

I know who it was, it was, my grandmother she had a boarder

and not a married man, he was an old chap and we used to call him Old Tom and he used look after me, see you've got to appreciate that when I was a child my father was away at sea all the time and he'd be away for, sometimes for eighteen months between Japan and America, and my mother had, she had five children you know so she couldn't

devote all that much time to one child, and this Old Tom, he used to take me under his wing and he used to take me to the park to feed the ducks and he'd take me on outings and where my grandmother lived it was a bus drive from there to where we lived and my mother had so many children with a pram and that and in those days if you had a pram you couldn't put it on the bus.

So Old Tom used to come to me on the bus and my mother normally used to have to walk and he sort of, how would I put it, he idolized me you know as a kid and he's the person I feel is my guardian angel. And I've seen so many occasions in my life where a guardian angel must have had some influence you know. I mean it started all

with the Munroe incident in Sydney and then it went from there through New Guinea and even you know to this day with this cancer I had, my guardian's looking after me. Cause if they hadn't have gone in looking for that loss of blood with an ulcer, they wouldn't have even bothered, you know, I would have been dead this time next year. But I think it was definitely Old Tom was

my guardian angel, there's no doubt about that.

Oh there was a nurse there, always had a nurse, she was nice girl and she was very kind to me and I think having that experience in the night, seeing this nurse there in all her white,

you know, business and the sun coming through the window up there it sort of triggered it off and that's why I wrote the poem My Angel, yeah but it, you know, just came to me, I didn't have to think about the poem, I just sat down and wrote it you know, never gave it much thought and but that happened with all,

most of my poems. All the poems there's some reason why I wrote them, you know what I mean, it might have been something that happened in the squadron or some event that took place. The thing about the leaves that time, the fellow wanting us to rake up all these leaves, well you know it prompted, well they asked me to write a poem there, the other men in the unit and when they put the poem on the board

in the mess that night the CO saw it and he thought it was tremendous you know, and I suppose he thought to himself you know, "What a waste of time having these buggers raking up leaves," you know. "We should be raking up Japs." But yeah, I'd say that Old Tom was my guardian angel, there's no doubt about that, yeah.

I just forget now, to be quite honest, I gave it to her and she's probably still got it today. I never thought, I didn't think much of it until recently last year when I was in Fremantle Hospital and this nurse she use to, she was a very kind nurse, although she wasn't in my ward she would come in and ask me how I was going, you know from another ward and

I said to her, "You remind me of a good nurse I had in Cairns," and then that, and she said, "What was that about?" and I told her I wrote a poem about her and she said, "What was the poem about?" So I recited the poem to her and the next thing I knew she had tears in her eyes you know. But she was, she was a nice nurse, the Cairns nurse, but as I say I never saw her after,

well I think after I got back to the squadron it wasn't long after that we went back to New Guinea.

I couldn't tell you to be honest, no I couldn't tell you. But I think in wartime you know, a caring nurse can mean a lot to a soldier or, yeah, a serviceman.

And that Aboriginal boy that (UNCLEAR) with Tommy Gray wrote that poem and that really was prompted him about, you know, a Red Cross nurse.

Yeah right.

Well when I got to Townsville, as I said there was an

air raid, when we got near Townsville there was an air raid going on and we eventually got into Townsville and I camped in a house that had, in Queensland they've got the houses on these stilts and I was on a camp stretcher on the ground floor, right on the waterfront. And it wasn't a good place to be, I suppose, with the Japanese were dropping the bombs and fireboats on the

harbour. But I wouldn't have ventured into town because they told me that the Australian commandos were up in arms against the Americans, you know, it's all over women. The Americans had the best uniforms and they had plenty of money and you know with all these movie stars and all that the women were taken in, I suppose,

and the army were gunning for them so I, you know, didn't venture into town. And it brought it up later on because when I came back to Fremantle there was a troopship in with New Zealanders on it, Kiwis, and of course Fremantle was a secret base in World War II, it was a big base,

all the submarines were based there and this Kiwi boat was in Fremantle and, I'll never forget it, there was an American soldier, I don't know whether he was killed, he was stabbed anyway outside of the Commonwealth Bank in High Street and this is all because of what happened and I know that the Americans, they went to New Zealand first and they played havoc in New Zealand with the New Zealand women

and this was where it all lamented from the New Zealand women, the Americans and the women, yeah. But by the same token we were mighty glad the Americans were here, you know, if we hadn't have had the Americans here, well we'd be talking Japanese now I suppose, yeah, and we'd be asking for a bowl of saki.

But …

Well it wasn't amongst all the Australians you know, it was just the certain few that had it with the women situation I suppose, especially servicemen whose girlfriend that had been taken by the American on different occasions, that was probably what would have triggered it.

Although Grace, she went with an American, I wasn't connected to Grace then but he was a nice bloke you know, he didn't do anything out of the ordinary but the, I know at Fremantle they were showing a movie somewhere and what was it now, somebody said, "I wonder where she's gone," in the movie

and someone yelled out, "She's with the Yanks," you know. But there's no doubt about it they had the money, you know, what I mean it was and not only that, how will I put it, if you went to a party anywhere the Australian men would be on their own having a grog but this wasn't the case with the Americans, they'd take a bunch of flowers to

the girls, you know what I mean, and get them that way, but you wouldn't find an Australian walking out with a bunch of flowers would you, you know. But yeah, as I say, we were grateful they were there though, my God yeah.

Oh that's right, well

at the Brisbane Station on the narrow gauge line before we left, we were sitting in the train and there was another train pulled up alongside of us and it was coming from in Townsville, you know, going south and these Americans in the train they wound the windows down and they yelled out you know, "Righto you guys, you go up there and fight the Japanese and we'll go south and fix your women," you know

and that started animosity cause we pulled out the station just after that and went. But I do know, I think they called it the Battle of Brisbane where there was this conflict between the Americans and the Australians.

I don't know much about it but it's just that I've heard of it, you know, the 'Battle of Brisbane'. And cause there were a lot of Americans in Brisbane, the

General MacArthur had his headquarters in Brisbane, he used to operate all his business in his safe air-conditioned quarters there, but yeah it was called the Battle of Brisbane, I'm pretty certain.

No but the thing I did

notice in Queensland on the railway, the railway line goes through the main street in a lot of places you know and when the train stopped in the main street they had all these trestles alongside the track and the women there they had scones and cakes and sandwiches and all this for the troops you know, really friendly people, and but the population mainly

was steaming south from the north and as I say the beaches up there were covered in barbed wire, everybody expected an invasion you know, no doubt about that. And you know if we hadn't have won the Coral Sea and the battle for Milne Bay, well there could have been an invasion. Cause as I say the Japanese, up until Milne Bay every place they invaded they'd taken it.

But Milne Bay was a definite turning point of the Australian war anyway against the Japanese yeah. And but I'd say the Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, that saved us there's no doubt about that. Cause if he had come back to Milne Bay like he, I believe he was going to instead of going across to the Solomons to Guadalcanal, well we couldn't have held him,

no we could not.

Oh I don't really know, it's only that I heard that thing about, you know, shipping all the cattle to the north and I've got nothing definite on that, you know that was just something I heard and breeding a better class of Japanese from the Australian women. But you know the

Japanese is a funny person, because every time he's come to a foreign land and invaded it, the people in that country, they're inferior to the Japanese, it happened in China and they interviewed a Japanese a little while ago on the TV about his treatment of Chinese in China and they had an experimental factory in China where they would be operating

without anaesthetic, they were operating on people, these were Chinese, and you know taking their legs off and arms off and all this and he admitted himself it was all wrong and he said, "Well the Japanese, when they go to another place they feel that the people are underneath them and inferior," and they are just like dogs, you know what I mean, and they treat them like that and this is what I think, what would have happened if they'd have come to

Australia for sure, yeah. But it's certainly been under the, you've only got to see how they treated our prisoners of war you know, in Thailand and Singapore and the other place, in Borneo, Sandakan, I mean that was terrible there, what they did there. But they are a sadist,

they're sadist people, you know what I mean, they rely on people suffering and I think that would have, you know, that would have happened down here if they'd have come down here.

I really don't, I couldn't answer that question, I don't know. But

it …

Well it's hard to say you know whether that would have been done, as I say, on that map there's a line but it was definitely on the government policy. I think why they did that, they had all the main troops were over in the Eastern States, in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and they had been better equipped to hold

them there then if they had them scattered throughout the country and, lets face it, Fremantle in those day it was, apart from being a big American base we had nothing here to defend ourselves with, you know, all the Australian troops mainly in the Middle-East fighting the Germans and when the Japanese came

into the war they came back but a lot of them went to Singapore and got captured and the Australian soldiers that were in New Guinea they were all seasoned troops you know, they were good fighters. But no I think that was a government, why they had the Brisbane, Sydney line was that

to keep the, just in case the ….

What, the map?

Well it's the Japanese Flag, the Rising Sun, and there's a blue marked border that goes down

Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne and then the rest of the Rising Sun covers the rest of Australia you know and that's the way we saw that on that footage on the TV yeah. John Curtin was the Prime Minister at the time and you think to yourself, 'Why would he forsake W.A when he was a West Australian,' you know but I think

the main reason was they were more able to hold the Japanese on the Brisbane line, you know, on that line. But the Japanese had landed on the Cervantes in WA, they had stores and bags of rice in caves and that on the

Cervantes. But for some unknown reason you know they turned away. Mind you, you've got to bear in mind that the further south the Japanese came the more their lines of communication extended, you know what I mean, and a lot could happen between here and Japan, you know, with the long lines of communication, and they were very vulnerable, but I think after the,

I think it was after the Midway the Japanese lost their superiority of the naval force and cause they lost a great big carrier, the Shoho, they lost that in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and in one battle of Midway they lost about three carriers and I think that once they weakened with their naval

force, and the lines of communication were long, that it was a big ask for them, you know, to take Australia but that was in, within their sights, for sure the early part, yeah. But after Milne Bay that was the end of it, they went south. And MacArthur he, once New Guinea was secured

he put the Australians in at New Britain at Rabaul to clean that place up and then that's as far as he wanted the Australians to go because he, MacArthur, had this bee in his bonnet about the Philippines that he said, "I shall return," you know and he wanted Australians not to be involved in that. Although there was some Australian Navy with them when they went into the Philippines but MacArthur was,

never had a kind word to say about the Australians, it didn't matter what they did, never a kind word. Because he said the Americans did this and that but not the Australians.

A lot of ex-servicemen they remember it, they remember what he was like, you know, never mentioned the word 'Australians'; it was always 'Allied', you know.

But he mentioned Americans you know, but no. I think every ex-serviceman you talk to would have said the same thing you know, yeah?

That was even during the wartime they knew what MacArthur was like?

No not in the Australian Army no, they weren't worried by that. But

I found all that morale in the Australian Army was excellent and I said before they were a great batch of men, I mean I doubt if we'll ever see such men again.

Well

today, a lot of these do-gooders today, you know, they say, "You shouldn't have dropped the atomic bomb in Japan," well if they hadn't have dropped the atomic bomb in Japan, there was two of them or three whatever it was. If you had to take Japan, you know, invade Japan, they were fanatical people and we would have lost millions of men and why do that when you can drop one bomb and you might kill

millions of civilians, so what, it's in wartime and I reckon that that was a godsend, that bomb you know, it came at the right time and then I know when a Colonel Tibbetts in the B29, it was a B29 dropped it, I think it had 52 minutes from that altitude

to when it exploded, he had to, you know, get away as soon as he dropped it and he said he felt that his aircraft had been shaken by a hand, you know, a big hand. But the do-gooders, you know, the do-gooders say, "You shouldn't have done it," but if it was mine, I would have dropped more than one on them, I would have dropped half a dozen for what they did to our fellows in these prisoners of war camps.

At Hiroshima, yeah I was at Wallal on the 328 Radar, yeah we rejoiced that day, oh yeah.

Yeah. Just that we had a feeling of relief you know, we knew we were going to win but when was another matter and no, it was a great relief. As I said before, they

do up this menu up there on 328 Radar, it was a feast we had because it was a great feeling you know, the hostilities were finished and I forgot to show you that menu but I've got it down there. But you know it was a relief, I suppose, yeah. But then we knew we'd be back, you know, going home.

No we never had any beer up so we just, you know, I forget what we drank now but I can't remember any beer in the place. I think we had a beer when we went to Port Hedland you know, that was a hell of a place with the heat and the flies, that was terrible. But …

It was no trouble at all, we got in this Liberator and I think we travelled in the bomb bays. It's a funny feeling in the bomb bays because if you look down when the door's closed, they don't properly close, there's about an inch space between the doors and you can see the ground down there and you know all you're standing on is a piece of thin aluminium and, you know, and the ground.

Oh no it was quite a pleasant trip. I forget now if it was an American Liberator or an Australian but we were glad to come down to get away from those damn flies up there, it was terrible. And I didn't want any luxury trip in any boat at all I just wanted to go home. But it was the quickest way to get home because I think we came into Quanah Downs overnight and the next day

we took off and we went straight to, in those days the airport for the aircraft was at Guildford and we touched down at Guildford and there was a Yank there in a Jeep and I said, "Hey buddy," I said, "Are you going into Perth?" and he said, "Yeah, hop in buddy I'll give you a lift." And he dropped me at the causeway and I got out with my kitbag and hailed a bus and you know went home.

Nobody knew I'd arrived or no welcoming committee you just went home to your home and that was it yeah. And walked up the street, there was no cars or taxis or anything like that and you couldn't afford a taxi any rate. But that's a good trip down in the Liberator yeah.

Well I was thinking to myself, you know, I mainly thought of all those fellows that never come out, you know, the poor buggers left behind. And I felt a sense of relief that, you know, that you were going home for good, no more going on leave and all the rest of it. And I remember it wasn't long after, I'd been home for about

three or four days and I had to report in to the air force place at Amberley and I went up there and there was a great feeling of relief and excitement and I got my discharge papers. And I was, you know, free to go. And I felt I'd done my bit and you know, yeah.

Oh well in those days I wasn't

married, my mother was home, my father was away at sea and my other brother was an engineer at sea, he was at the, he was on a ship which was a tanker for the American and New Zealand Navies and he was off the coast of Japan the day the bomb was dropped and you know refuelling the fleet and

I think it was just my mother and one of my sisters home. You know they were pleased to see me. My mother never liked me with a moustache she said, you know, in fact she said to me, "You look like a damned Italian," she said, "with that moustache," and this was when on when I went on leave, the last lot of leave I had and I happened to go into Fremantle that day to get a haircut

and I went into the Fremantle barber's and there was a troopship in from the Middle-East. And the barber said to me, he looked at me he said, "Are you from Italy?" and I thought, "Good God, my mother said I look like a damned Italian with this moustache," and then the penny dropped and I said, "Oh no mate, no, I'm from New Guinea," you know. But she said I looked like a,

so I shaved it off and I came back to earth, you know, and shaved it off. But I found it very, very hard sleeping in a proper bed. In fact I would have been much better off if I would have slept on the floor. And I did have nightmares, I remember my mother saying, "You keep talking in your sleep," you know, "about Japanese coming up something or other." And, but I did have nightmares for

a few months I suppose after that. And, but then I settled down and, you know, went back to my old job. But as I say before, I wasn't wanted there, you could sense it when you went in, you know, all these fellows they had all the bosses' jobs and they looked down on you for, you know, leaving them when you went. So, but that's what happened there.

Well as I said before, we were young blokes, we were motorbike mad and speed mad and oh no I always

wanted to fly a Spitfire, you know, I thought that would be the shot. And unfortunately, well it got me in for a recruit but you know they didn't train me in their time. Actually what it was, they couldn't get enough men to fill that mustering that I went into. That's why I moved so quickly and went from, I went from Perth to an operational squadron, the 22 Bostons, in

virtually two jumps, you know what I mean, and then it was another two or three months after that, another jump into the front line. And, but I never regret it because I met a great batch of fellows I was with and I still believe you know I wouldn't be here today if I had got into air crew.

I don't think my guardian angel could have easily saved me there you know but that's the reason why I joined the air force. I mean I had no intention of joining the navy because I'd, you know, and my early life in the merchant navy, so you know I picked the air force rather than the army and that was one of the main reasons because you know I've always wanted to fly.

I think I would have made a good pilot cause I've always been a loner, you know what I mean, like do things on my own. But as luck had it or fate had it I never got there.

Well that's right, yeah.

Not really no, the navy didn't appeal to me you know, I'd been in the merchant service for that long that, not that long that, but it had to be a few years, no the navy never appealed to me, I don't know why

but the air force did. You know it wasn't a bad uniform they had and that sort of thing. Oh Grace's brother, he joined up at the same time as I did and he went in as a pilot you know, he eventually was flying Mustangs. But no I was quite happy in the long run, what happened you know. But Mustang,

they were the best aircraft that the Americans ever produced you know, a marvellous aircraft. They were fighters that could all the way with the bombers, they'd go into Berlin and out and back again and still have fuel to burn and strafe something on the Dutch coast on the way home you know. No, Mustangs are marvellous aircraft. But no, I suppose the uniform too played a part of the air force yeah

The?

Oh no, no, when I swallowed the,

they call it swallowing the anchor, when I swallowed the anchor in the merchant navy, that was enough you know, I'd seen enough, been to enough places and I wanted to settle down. My daughter and my grandson, my son-in-law they went to England on his long service leave, they took Grace, she'd never been to England, she was born in Australia

and my daughter and my son-in-law, they're both Australian, and they said, "Do you want to come?" and I said, "No," and I said, "I'm remembering England as it was," because it was a marvellous place when I left England you know, and I said, "No, I wanted to remember it as it is, and so anyway I've done enough travelling," so they went and I stayed home. They had a marvellous time; they hired a car and went all around England you know, yeah.

But I suppose, no I don't think I'd even bother going back now to be quite honest. I think once you've left, you see these people that come out from different countries and you see them all go to cricket match and the country they came from might be playing cricket and they're cheering for the country they came from. Well that wasn't the case with me

I was always cheering for the Australians. I thought you know, "I'm living in Australia, I've got, I'm living in Australia, Australia's been good to me," and I used to barrack for the Australians, my sister, she used to barrack for the Poms, but I see so much today these people that, Australian citizens they call them, but their heart and soul's not here, they're not. But no, I've done enough travelling in my time, I'm quite content to, you know, see it out in my little castle here, yeah.

Oh well the last trip, I won that trip with MSA [Malaysia Singapore Airlines] on Australia Today and we had a marvellous time, see Grace had never been away on a ship in her life, never been out of the country in her life, and it was more an experience for her

than I, but I knew that she'd like it, but no we had a marvellous time you know, especially in Hong Kong and Thailand was good. The Thai people were very friendly and I got some photographs taken with some of these monks in the saffron robes and they knew all about Australia and they were asking me all the questions but no,

that was the last trip I made. And we went up, flew up in the plane and we came back by ship. It wasn't as good a ship as I was on, I'll tell you, that was the trouble I could see all the faults and everything there, and the service was terrible. I mean if you went in the dining room after a certain time that was it, you didn't get anything you know.

That never happened on the ship I was on, it didn't matter what time you went in, the passenger was always right you know and he got a meal. But we had a marvellous time so that was the last time I went away, yeah.

Well the competition was Australia Today and I thought, "Well it's a foreign airline and it put you outside Australia looking

in and what, you know, what do you expect and what do you think about Australia?" and I thought of, you know, wide open spaces, beaches and kangaroos and koala bears and sheep and I didn't do anything because I used to belong to a camera club and they used to give you competitions and every month you'd get a competition, the competition might be doors and you think, "Well what the hell can you photograph of damn doors?"

But if you sit down and think about it you can do a lot because I thought, "Now right," and one time I got onto doors and I took a photograph of the door slightly ajar in the bedroom and just a woman's legs in a negligee hanging over the thing, you know, over the bed and you know it was going in that, well that leaves you a lot of imagination, what's going to be behind that damn door. And

that thing in antiquity that was another thing you know, so I thought, "Well now, what will I do?" and I did nothing and I thought, "I'll just hold fire for a while," and then the sister came on with a little boy. Well fortunately he was wearing a check shirt like a farm shirt and I brought this sheep, the woman down the road, she said the sheep won't come I'll have to come up, they'll follow me up and she came up and I put them with the boy and put

120 film in the camera and put 12 frames through and you now say some were right, some were wrong. I used the flash off the camera to fill in the shadows and I got two frames where they were right, you know, the boy was right, the lens was right, so I just printed both of them. I mounted them the same as you do on the camera because when you're in the camera club you print it on a

8 x 10 print and you had to mount it with mounting tissues on a board and put it exactly in the right place on the board as if you're going to give it to somebody as a present. So I mounted the best one of these prints and I took it up there, I couldn't post it, and I put it in and I thought, "Oh well that's a waste of a film, you know, that's it." And as I say, three months later, well every week they showed you photographs of the entries

and they were terrible damn things and I thought, "If that's the damn things they're looking for, you know, I'm too damn good for them," but I think they were just putting the entries in as they came along. And then mine came up and I didn't want to go back to Japan, no, so I, he said, "What do you want to do?" and he said, "I'll see my director," and he came back and he said, "Yes you can go here, there and everywhere to the value of the prize." So I picked, you know, Singapore, Thailand and

Hong Kong.

Oh it was a return trip to Japan for two, yeah. And …

Beg your pardon?

No, I've been to Japan I've seen enough of Japan and I knew Grace would go with me and she hadn't been to Japan but I thought she'd like

Hong Kong and Thailand a lot better than Japan you know and that was why we went there yeah.

Oh I'd been all over, been all to the Japanese ports, Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, Chelamopo, oh half a dozen of them you know. When I was in Japan, in those days it

wasn't like it is today, all the women had to wear these kimonos, there were very few women with western clothes on and little did I think, when I was in Japan in those days, that one day I would be fighting them in the jungle you know and, but I wasn't sorry I didn't take my wife there because we had a marvellous time in Hong Kong, especially in Hong Kong, she thought Hong Kong was the ants pants, yeah.

Not really because they had, the only other alternative they gave us was the Philippines and Vietnam and I had no intention of going there you know. But fortunately what they offered to us was, you know, was acceptable, yeah.

Well I think I would have gone because I'd have had no option because Grace hadn't seen Japan but you know it wouldn't have suited me, I'd have gone you know for

Grace's sake but I wasn't real keen on going back to Japan, no. But I remember places in Japan in Yokohama the main street there was Theatre Street and in Kobe it was Motomachi and the, you know the Japanese

people were always smiling and all that but the generation, my generation Japanese, I'm sorry but I can't forgive them, I can't forget and I can't forgive, no, not what they did to our fellow, in especially the nurses, you know, Sister Bullwinkel up there, she was the sole survivor from 18 or 19 nurses they machine gunned. And you know

what they did to Papuan people you know, I'll never forgive them for that.

Yeah well I never thought the Japanese were that barbaric you know what I mean that but apparently when the Japanese

and the war goes to another country, as I said before, they treat the people there as if they're inferior and they become a different person, they're more like animal than a, you know, than a human being. And there's Japanese used to live down the street, they bought a, they've sold it now, they used to come here from Japan to play golf and then he'd go back to Japan again, that's all he did. And he came over one day,

he was all right you know, but he wasn't my vintage I mean he was a younger Japanese you know, probably never heard about the war at all. But the Germans, lets face it, they did face up and tell the people what they done and everything else but not so with the Japanese, it's not in the Japanese history books you know, it's devoid of any mention of war, no. But it was an underhanded thing they really

did attacking Pearl Harbour because they attacked it you know on a Sunday morning they knew all the Americans would be at church and they planned this thing for, you know, and not only that the Emperor of Japan he was as much a war criminal as Hitler was because he knew all about this. You see, once America won the war, when we won the war, America took control

and they didn't press any charges, a lot of them got off the hook lightly, yeah. Because they wanted to cement relations with them and get things back on a even footing.

Oh in those days I had a street lawn, I was cutting the lawn and he just walked over, he was

walking up the street actually, probably to get a bus or something, and he happened to stop and talk to me you know. I mentioned to him that I'd been to Japan, I didn't talk about the war, and told him the places I'd been to and you know, but he, you know, there's nothing wrong with him, he was quite a sensible bloke, and but I say he was a different age than the others, yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

Well my father was in the Curran, he was mainly between Brisbane and New Caledonia and Noumea and New Guinea and my brother,

he was on a ship called the Glenarnty, and that was a, virtually it was an oiler and supply ship with the American and New Zealand Navy off Japan and I know that he was near Japan when the bomb was dropped. But he really suffered after the war because it's the worse place to be on a ship in

wartime, is down in the engine room, and he was only a junior engineer and he got all dogwatches and you know and during these dogwatches you've only got half an inch of steel between you and a torpedo you know, I think that played on his mind too. But my mother, she was the one, she was the worrier and she had like three of us at the war, she had

me away, she had my father and my younger brother and she used to worry a lot, especially after the First World War because she knew that it could happen like the First World War and we could be attacked by the enemy.

Right.

Oh yeah, it was quite effective the, we never had to use any bayonets up there but I had bayonet practise, in fact I, we had a sergeant they called him Gandhi, his name was Sergeant Halliwell, but he looked a bit Indian and we were having this bayonet practise and he said to me you know, "Thrust!" but when he told me

'thrust' he was standing too close to me and I put the bayonet in him but fortunately it only went about half an inch into him you know but we had bayonet practise, unarmed combat, use of Bren guns, I never used a Bren gun up there, .303 rifles, I never used a .303 rifle up there cause we used the Owen guns and then throwing hand grenades, well I never threw a hand grenade up there but still I knew how to do it but

oh no, I think the training they gave us was sufficient but yeah. Because when all's said and done we were not really a soldier, we were mainly trained to guard aircraft and things like that and it was more than anybody's life was worth to go near those aircraft of a night because if you, you know, yelled out, "Halt or I'll shoot!" and they didn't halt, well you just opened, you let them have it and look after to see what you hit, yeah.

Well I don't really know to be quite honest, I lost my memory as I said after the battle and the only people I nearly wiped out was these Fuzzy Wuzzies that time, you know, that could have easily happened. In those days I was young and had good reflexes, if it had been today I'd have pulled the trigger, I would have been too late, yeah that's right and I would have regret it all my life. But no it,

I can't recall that part of it, no.

Well when you were down on a listening post you were more or less not down at the bottom of the hill you were about nearly a third away from the bottom and if you heard anything in front of you, one of you would stay there and the other would make his way up the hill

and, you know, alert them at the top of the hill there was some movement in the kunai grass or whatever you know. As I say, apart from the New Guinea people coming through that never happened, you know, but everybody took their turn on these listening posts, you know, you were not on the listening post every night, you know, you were one night and then you might miss it for three nights yeah. But that's what the main job was, you were the ears of the

unit, you know, listening to pick anything up and in fact I had good hearing at that point of time, until they started these damn shells about a week later.

Oh yeah, you've got, both of you got, you've got your Owen guns and you've got you know several magazines in your

pants that you had. Oh no, you're well armed, yeah, and the ideal gun in that situation because no long-range shooting involved you know like you'd need with a rifle and the Owen machine gun, it was Australian made, although it was Australian made it was a very reliable gun, you could put it in the mud, you could put it in a bucket

of water. In fact it was on the television a little while ago, they showed about the Owen gun, they used to call it the 'Diggers' Daily' you know it was, yeah. But that's what we had, Owen guns with ammunition, yeah. We never carried any knives or anything like that, you know, or bayonets.

Yeah it's pretty hard to think back on that one.

Yeah, I know we, we mainly worked of a night, do you know what I mean. You worked of a night and you slept of a day, that was most of the day or the morning of the day. And in the afternoon you'd clean up your gear and I think they used to have

a few training sessions on unarmed combat and these things and you know if there was any heavy work to do down the strip with the squadron you'd do that. If they wanted any trenches dug or trees dug, you've got to appreciate you couldn't expect the pilots to do it,

the fitters and armourers and mechanics, that was beneath them to do it, so somebody had to do it and we were involved in that. And another thing we used to have to do was to, all the aircraft fuel was in 44 gallon drums and we used to have to reload all these drums onto trucks you know to take down the wharf and you had to lift them up like that, above your

head, they were empty of course, and put them on the trucks. And any time we had unloading bombs, well we didn't lift them we used to slide them down a plank and roll them away, they weren't fused but still roll them down a plank and things like that. We got all the dirty jobs, and if they were moving camp it would always be the guards that did the moving you know and things like

that. But that's our main job was you know, jobs like that and guarding the aircraft of the night. And as I said the CO used to love us with all this ammunition being used because you know you would not be game to move from where you were to anywhere, you know to another place, you'd get it, you'd buy it, yeah.

Those fellows are all trigger happy you know, very very trigger happy.

We never had a lot to do with the pilots, they were away on their own. The only time we ever had anything to do with the pilots were occasions of

the pilot would come over and he'd want to go walkabouts in the jungle somewhere and he would ask if he could have a couple of fellows to go with him. I remember we went with this fellow one time that was Pilot Officer Holt and he asked us to go with him and we were down in this creek and somebody opened up with a gun and we got out of there pretty quick you know. But we really haven't got much to do with the pilots.

They were, you know, they had their job to do and they sort of more or less kept to themselves, yeah. But nobody wore any rank, you wouldn't know if you were talking to a squadron leader or a flight sergeant you know because there's nobody and there was no saluting, that was out of it. But everybody got on all right, we all had a job to do and you know we did it. You always did what you

were told, I mean you never queried it you know if they asked you to jump and you could, you could say, "How high?" you know but apart from that you never queried you just did it. But the pilots, they were a great batch of fellows, they were all young like us and they mainly used to have a sing-song in the mess of a night but they

would never drink the night before flying the next day, you know what I mean, it was a no-no. But I think we lost 15 pilots at Moresby and I think we lost about six or seven at the bay, oh counting the squadron it must have been about eight or nine all told, I suppose, from Townsville, yeah

we lost about seven or eight pilots.

In which?

We never got any time off.

No, you just kept with your mates you know, you either write a letter home or sit down and perhaps write a poem. No we never,

nothing like that, there wasn't any real social life it was, it was either doing jobs for the squadron or being on guard duty you know or sleeping you know. You never got very excited over food because it wasn't very nice.

Well we never got any air attacks during the battle although I'm telling a lie, on the first, the morning of the first day the Zeros attacked the airstrip and they got, I think they got, I know they got a Liberator on the strip, they hit that and burnt it.

They, I think they got a Kittyhawk that day but apart from that there wasn't a great lot of bombing taking place because they didn't want to damage that strip, they wanted to keep it. It wasn't until they went back the second time and they lost the battle and you know they bombed the strip. But I suppose you'd be a liar if you said you weren't scared but by the same token

you knew your chances of being hit were pretty remote, you know, although two of our chaps got killed in air raids. There was an air raid on and they were asleep at the time and they jumped out of their bed and they were running to the door of the tent and that's when they got it. One fellow

got one of his arms blown right off, I forget what the other fellow got. They killed them and they didn't have these body bags like you see now on the television, they just put them in these hessian bags, the bags we used to use with straw in them, palliasses to sleep on. I'll never forget it the day we buried Lofty and Bluey, the blood was running out

of the bags you know, you could see it running out the bags. But you never, you know you sort of, I don't know you thought, you always thought to yourself it couldn't happen to you, you know what I mean. That you were sort of, I don't know what it was but you were sort of safe from anything, from being killed. In fact even in the (UNCLEAR) invasion we never gave it a second thought

that, you know, that we'd be captured because we knew once the battle was lost and they said, "Every man for themself," we were getting out of the place you know we weren't going to stay behind there and put our hands up. No, but looking back now you know I suppose really speaking, if you knew the situation where every place they'd been into they'd taken and you were the next on the list that you know you'd be a bit concerned

about it but it didn't seem to worry us you know we no, no. And but the army blokes, the army blokes up there were the 9th Division and they were marvellous soldiers, you know they fought the Germans in the Middle East and you know warfare to them was nothing new you know, you knew you had good fellows up there fighting with you, yeah.

Well how will I put it, they were always calm, cool and collected you know, it used to rub off onto you. And the fellow as I said that really amazed me was this little corporal that used to be on a roving picket, he used to come round every night and his hand over your mouth and whisper in your ear, "Is everything all right, dig?" and then off he'd

go into the night. But not only that, the army blokes, see I don't know if you know much about the war but they used to call the air force fellows 'Curtin's Cowboys' or some of these, something 'Blue Orchids'. I know after the battle up there some army fellow said, "If ever I hear somebody called these

air force blokes 'Blue Orchids' or 'Curtin's Cowboys', I'll knock their teeth out," you know. And there was this, they really appreciated that we were there you know. Well let's face it, if we hadn't have been there, there'd be no fighter squadron there and they'd have been done. But no, we found the army blokes, you know, carefree going Australians and you know

very proud of them too. And as I said in the tape to my grandchildren that, you know, that from mine they were a special breed of Australians that I doubt we'll ever see such men. And you know you've got to stop and think well, you know, they did a marvellous job, they come back from fighting the Germans in the desert and they go up there fighting in the jungle and that's a totally different kettle of fish. And I would rate the Australians soldiers the best

especially if jungle is part of it, the best jungle fighter in the world, yeah.

Oh mateship, well I felt, you know, as I said we're all in the same boat, we all had the same

goals to aim for and we were really like one big happy family. And if a fellow was fall down in the mud you know, a fellow would put his arm out to get you back on your feet or if you're digging a hole, a fellow would come along and he'd say, "Have a sit down mate, I'll give it a go," and you know there was that feeling of comradeship amongst all the men, there was

no fly in the ointment people, fellow there, you know, that was a bit of a nark, all the other blokes, and no fights amongst the men, they all got on well together and it was just one, as I said one big happy family, yeah right. But that's one of the things you remember most you know, that one big happy

family, you see these fellows on parade at Anzac Day, they're still the same men. As I said up there you could rely on the fellows guarding your rear and flank, you knew that they'd hold that, you know the only way they'd lose that post would be (UNCLEAR) you know but you could rely on them and that was a big thing, oh yeah.

Yeah.

Well I honestly feel that, you know, all these fellows that gave their lives in the war, it would serve no purpose if people didn't remember it, you know, as I say to the school children, you know, you must never ever forget

the sacrifices these fellows made because if they hadn't have made these sacrifices, you know, you hear the do-gooders today say, "Oh wars are no, wars are terrible things," of course they're terrible things but if you didn't, well take the last war, if we hadn't have fought the Japanese we'd have been talking Japanese now and this is what I tell the children in the school and I say you know, "You must never ever forget the sacrifices they made so the democratic way of life laid out by our forefathers,

you know, we can live that life you and I and never forget it," and you know, 'Lest we forget at the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall remember them, lest we forget', and you know that's what I feel about it and the funny part about it is when you look at photographs now you realise how young you were, you know what I mean, you look and you say, "Good God," you know, "they were only

boys really," you know and but that's the way it was. But no it was a great batch of fellows I was with, there's no doubt about that, yeah.

Okay.

Not much at all, no, they told them very little. We didn't know what the army brass was thinking about or what they were doing. You know it was just that later on we picked up this information what had happened

and we knew like, when the Japanese invasion was on we picked it up, we were told, but we picked it up there was an invasion imminent and what they were doing to combat it you know in the way of more coast watchers and things like that. But no, they didn't tell you much at all you were sort

of in the dark, yeah.

Well I suppose what you didn't know, you didn't worry about and we knew that, you know, well the decisions they would make would be the right ones and it really didn't concern, it didn't worry us you know,

no worry. You see it's not like it is today, we haven't got television cameras up there and some fellow making a speech over the television saying, "They're going to do this and they've done that," and all the rest of it, you know, it's not like that. But you know what you didn't know didn't worry you, yeah.

Oh well,

that day I was back on the old campsite and it had been raining that night and there was mud everywhere, it was a mess, there was stuff scattered all over the place. We were digging in the mud for some food, tins of bully beef and beans and it wasn't buried in the mud this compass it was more or less sitting on the surface and I saw it there and I thought, 'Oh gee that might come in handy,' and put it in my pocket.

And if I'd have left it there of course it would have been buried for good and they wouldn't have seen it. And the same with that thing with the film in it. That was buried a bit in the mud but I got it out and fortunately in was in a tin and you know the mud and that didn't affect the film and I put it in my pocket. And it would have been oh 18 months after that that I got it developed you know, I didn't know what was on the film, and when I got it back it had

these picture on it, I think it was about six pictures on it I think, six or eight and, but I don't know who the film belonged to, you know I just found it and my mates knew I had this compass and I said, "Well look, we'll use that, the three of us, we'll use that if we lose this battle we'll be getting out of this damn place, I don't want to get caught by these bastards and get bayoneted," and that's what we

intended to use, you know, go over the mountains with this compass. It would have been a feat really because they were pretty steep mountains there in New Guinea and very heavily jungled. And all the creepy crawlies in the world out there, I mean you'd be surprised the number of creepy crawlies there are because when it rained these creepy crawlies were always in the slit trench you know and you'd have to get in there if an air raid but there was scorpions and you know

all these earwig things and centipedes and everything that crawled was in there. Somebody told me they had tree-climbing kangaroos up there but I never ever saw them you know but there was, it was terrible, terrible conditions to fight a battle in, you know. You know I've never seen rain like it, when it rained it used to rain, I've never seen rain

like it. It used to rain that heavy, it was a really heavy downpour, tropical rain day and night you know. I never knew, we used to be on guard duty, you'd try and get under the wings of the aircraft for protection from the rain. And if you didn't do that, well you'd just have a fur felt hat and you could you know, in one of my poems you know, you could, the beating rain you could feel (UNCLEAR) your body warm

and trying to keep your Owen gun dry but you've never seen rain like it, it was terrible you know. How those aircraft ever you know, the things they did really with the conditions they contended with, you know, it was amazing. Because to see them taking off with all this water coming up, it was going up right under the wings and God knows what the dirt it was throwing up

there. And I think all the ejection cords on the guns used to get blocked with this mud you know but they flew them all right, these yeah, the pilots yeah, they got there and …

No, no, I had full faith in what was happening, you know. Especially

when the, when they started to shell us, I knew that was the beginning of the end because I knew they didn't want the strip, couldn't get the strip, they had to destroy it. (UNCLEAR) like that I'll tell you, oh yeah. And the jungle lit up like at Luna Park with that big searchlight out and that cruiser and these shells started coming over, it was, you know, it was no picnic. But I feel sorry for the fellows in the last war, the First World War,

they used to get that day and night you know. But still we survived it, that was the main thing, yeah. But I knew then, once they started to shell that strip I knew that, you know, they'd given the game away.

Oh yeah.

Well I, well they were way away

from us but they came with these climbing irons to climb up the trees and they used to sit up there, they used to snipe our fellows from up there and they got a lot of Australians that day. And that was the main job of the Kittyhawks was, you know, to strafe the area of the trees where they were and so the Kittyhawk could do a lot of damage with those 6.4 firing guns. And there were a lot of Japanese, you know, fell out the trees

with that. In fact in Buna they climbed the trees and what they did at Buna, the tanks used to run into the trees and give them a big nudge and of course shake the tree like that and these fellows used to fall out the tree and then they'd run over them with a tank, you know, get them that way. But no, I don't know how many there were but you know, but that was one of their tactics was to climb these trees, oh yeah.

They came equipped with a lot of equipment you know, to get up. Because see, you can't, these coconut trees you can't climb them without some irons or something you know, they're pretty hard to get up.

Oh yeah, I've got a

tape down there I got off the television and the Americans had, see it was nobody knew about Fremantle and it was kept as a secret and the Americans submarines were here, in fact they've got a monument up there, they've got a monument about it and they operated out from Fremantle. But the Americans were having a lot of trouble with their torpedoes, they weren't running straight

so they went down to, I think it was down to Albany, and they sorted out the problem by firing their torpedoes onto the beach down at Albany and found out what was wrong with them. And they used to offload from Fremantle on patrol and they'd go up as far as Singapore and around there. And one time there, there was a Dutch

submarine, the Dutch operated out of Fremantle too, and there was a Dutch submarine stuck on a sandbank up in the, it was in the China Sea somewhere, and these Americans went up, they've got footage somewhere, there was a camera on the submarine, to get this submarine off the bank and they put these big wire ropes on it and they pulled and jerked and pulled and they couldn't move it, so they took the Dutch

crew off and they blew it up. You know I think they put a charge aboard it and then blew it up. But then the British submarines operated out of Fremantle too, but the difference between the Americans' submarines and the British submarines, the British submarines were very very cramped quarters for the crew, it was a terrible thing for sailing in and the Americans took

charge of some of the big hotels in Perth that was their headquarters and of course they use to take all the women up there to these hotels and what results of them now. On this tape the American chap was telling about all the things that happened when they went out on patrols and apparently in the

submarines, if you don't want to go out on patrol again well you just say the word you know, you're not classed as a coward or a deserter you know, well you put your hand up, "I'm not going again," and that's it. And but they did, they sunk a lot of Japanese tonnage out of Fremantle. And this tape was all about these fellows came back to Fremantle for a get together on this tape. And

they were telling about a ship, a submarine, there was a Maru boat left, it was sailing from, from Thailand to Japan and onboard they had these Australian prisoners of war and

this American submarine, this was in the South China Sea, and this American submarine sighted this Japanese Maru boat and put some torpedoes into in and it took a long time to sink because of all the rubber on it and the Japanese had cramped all these Australians down into the hold of the ship, packed like sardines and in the version of it,

they're all swimming in the water on rafts and float stuff floating in the water and a lot of the fellows you know they weren't leaving the area but these other fellows they thought, "We'll get away from here and make land." And a week later, it was always the policy in those days for a submarine on its homeward voyage to go back to the area where

they'd made a kill and they had on this on the Maru, fortunately they had a camera, a movie camera and they went back and they had a machine gun crew on the deck of the submarine and when they were, a shotgun party they call them and when they were bought on the deck to shoot these fellows in the life rafts, they thought they were Japanese,

they suddenly realised they weren't, they were Australians and these fellows had been on the life rafts I think for over a week and they hadn't had anything to drink, those that drank the salt water, they died. But they were covered in oil and one of the fellows there he said he wasn't worth, he was trying to open his eyes because of the oil to see it was too painful. Anyway the Japanese, the Americans took these fellows aboard and they got them down below because there was a lot of Japanese aircraft around

and but these were the survivors from this ship, there was about seven of them. And they showed this tape in Melbourne on Anzac Day at a reunion of these fellows and the submarine commander was very apologetic, he said, "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm sorry I can't make fellows with the eyes scream," the eye scream scene was…(UNCLEAR) but you know this is what happened in the submarines, they went back

to the scene of the kill and you know anybody there wipe them out. That was same thing that happened up there at New Guinea. The Battle of the Bismarck Sea, nobody had heard about that. There was 14, I think there was 14 Japanese Ships, navy ships and transports full of troops going from Rabaul in New Britain to Lae in New Guinea and these ships were sought after

day by day by aircraft, no naval ships, there was American Catalinas shadowing the convoy, there was Bostons, Marauders, Liberators you know, you name it, and Australians as well, Beauforts, Beaufighters, and they eventually sunk all these ships, so you can just imagine how many men the Japanese lost. And then after they'd done that, all these Japanese were in the water

and the next day the Beaufighters went in and they strafed all these men in the water because they didn't want them to get, they were soldiers, they didn't want them to get ashore, you know. I saw the camera gun footage of that action and it was horrific you know. But as I say the submarines did operate from Fremantle, it was a big base in Fremantle yeah. And that's why there was so many Americans in Fremantle you know there were Americans hanging from the rafters you know, they were everywhere.

I didn't notice them, that's cause I was away but when I did come home you know I was surprised that there was so many of them here, yeah. And then one day in Fremantle there was a ship, a supply ship in Fremantle, a American ship called the Maidstone and they had a, oh a big explosion on it and it went on fire and they had the visions of Fremantle being blown apart with it all yeah.

But that was, it was a secret base, Fremantle yeah, the Americans yeah.

Oh right. Well I was going with a girl and she was a girlfriend of my wife's. And I was up on the back lawn of my girlfriend's place and one afternoon and Grace came along and she

introduced me to her and I thought, "Yeah this sheila's not bad," you know and anyway I never thought any more of it. And I went away and while I was away this girlfriend, she fell for some other fellow. Anyway she never had the guts to write and tell me about it so Grace wrote and told me that she'd

fallen for this chap and she'd, you know. So I thought, "Oh well that's all right," you know, water under the bridge. So when I came on leave I made it a point to go out to Grace and see her. And her parents had a bakery business in South Fremantle and they were a really nice couple. Pop Fletcher, he was a nice old bloke, and her mother, Nell, and I went to Grace to thank her for, you know, writing to me

to let me know and talk about things and one thing boiled another and the next thing I knew we were, went to the pictures a few times and one thing boiled to another and I asked her, it was the, 1947, we decided we'd get engaged so I knew by her father, he was easy you know, to go and ask him about it. So I went to see him and he said, "Oh yeah, that's all right," he said, "She's got to get married some time you know." But I knew if you got the wrong side of her mother you

were wasting your time you know, she was a business woman and if got the wrong side of her you might as well give it away. But fortunately I got on very well with her mother you know, she liked me a lot, so we got married in the September '47 and that's how I met Grace and we've been married ever since. And then, 1948, our daughter came along, and

what actually happened, the baby arrived before the milk I suppose, if I can put it that way, and they put the baby on bottles for a while and to make matters worse the clinic sister, the women used to go to clinic in those days, and the clinic sister when she went there she said, "Oh this formula that you've got for the baby it's wrong," and she altered it all. So

we put the kid on that and we still weren't getting any sleep, she must have had a pain in the stomach you know. Well then about three weeks after, the clinic sister died and another woman came along and she said, "Oh this is all wrong," she said you know, "You've got to do this that and the other," and so we weren't getting any sleep at all and we thought, "God, if this is what it's like, having a baby is like," you know, "that's it." So one night there her mother and her sister, her mother's sister said, "Look, we'll take the baby

tonight and you two can have a night's sleep." Well they did that but they never took it again you know because but in the long run, it wasn't until we, some months until we got to the doctor about it all and he said, "Look, the quicker we get this child onto fresh milk the better," and this is what happened but we'd been through all this business and I was driving the truck in those days in my sleep you know cause of the baby. And we were

sorry really that we didn't have any more and my daughter is too, but that's what happened, and we called her Deirdre Anne and she's never been a spot of trouble all our lives you know.

Oh that's right, oh no, yeah. We have our differences now you know. I want to watch something on the television and Grace wants to watch it, I come here and watch it on that

one. But no it's give and take cause you've got to give and take and we've been happily married and we've got no regrets and we lived with her mother and father for a while and that was quite well but you know, it's not the same as living on your own and we moved to another place and this fellow

rented this place and it was in a terrible state so I painted it all and you know when I got it all finished he said, "By God, this looks all right," he said, "I'll move into here," and he said, "You can go live in my place," so I thought, "Oh blow that." Well we lived in his place, it was the only place that I've ever lived in where you could have a bath in the kitchen and stir a pan of soup on the stove, that's a fact. There was curtain between where the bathroom was and the stove was here. And I said, "Oh

blow this, the quicker we can get our own place the better." So I looked around and in the council there was three blocks, this one, that one and the end one, and I rang this fellow in East Fremantle and I said, "I believe you've got three blocks?" and he said, "Oh yeah, I've sold two of them." He said, "Come out and see me, I live in Dalgety Street," I think it was. So I went out to see him, Henry Bull his name was, and he said, "Oh, you're looking for a block are you?" And I said, "Yeah." "Oh," he said, "All right," he said, "My daughter

married three men, three daughters have married men with bloody built houses. So oh," he said, "I think a fair price for that block," he said, "with search fees and everything else, 77 pounds.

Oh and I said, "Done!" yeah.

Well you know, I would say, "If we have to go to war again, don't knock the soldiers," because there must be a reason why we went to war. And the last lot, I mean if we'd have knocked the soldiers for doing what they did it would have been wrong. And you know when all's said and done, this is our country and if anybody wants to take

it, well they'll have to take it over my dead body, you know, that's the way that I felt about it. And I know once I put that slouch hat on and got with these army blokes I became an Australian at that point of time. And I'm a dinky-di Australian now you know, through and through. And you get sick of these people who knock, these do-gooders that knock people over

wars, well I mean if your country's threatened, well fair enough you've got to fight for it, you know what I mean. It's no good saying to be like Neville Chamberlain was you know, there's the appeasement stuff, you know you go in and do something about it. But no I've got no regrets of what I did and that's my thoughts about the whole thing, yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Well they have changed because I think a lot of these fellows must have fallen off the perch because when I first started to march on Anzac Day, 722 Squadron used to march, that was the one I was in in Sydney and I used to march with 22 Squadron and they marched for a few years and then they suddenly stopped and then they no longer marched. Well 75 Squadron is virtually a Queensland

squadron so I can't march with them you know, they're in Queensland. So I front with 75 and part of the fellows must have you know died and the ranks got thinner so it wasn't worth the while to march as a squadron. And the other squadrons, I was with the Catalina squadron for a while so I marched with them and but they didn't march the year before last.

So then my brother-in-law's squadron, he was in number 3 RAAF Squadron in Italy and the Middle East so I marched with him for a while but then they stopped marching so you know, I find the units are slowly dwindling down and I know in my will I've got my original medals and they're

for my grandson number one, every Anzac Day he's there you know, but my grandson number two I've left all my father's medals to him and duplicates of my medals you know, and I know that he'll march on Anzac Day in my place yeah. And but that's the way I see it, I see it dwindling down in that respect that they get, you know, they must be falling off the perch and

the only thing that I can do now is march with a fighter group, you know, which I was never with that group but still I march with them.

Well it's marvellous really because the comments you get from the crowd, it's very encouraging, I mean you know you hear them saying, "Good on you," you know and, "Thanks," and all this sort of thing and

they've altered the ceremony a bit up there, they don't, like they used to have in the early days, I thought the early days was the best one, they had it on Riverside Drive but they have it on this reserve you know, back from Riverside Drive. But the old chaps are definitely getting less each year you know and that's the way I see it, yeah. But I'll go

as long as I can march, but if I can't march I won't be driven around in a car you know I won't go if that comes to that but whilst I can march, I'll march you know, yeah. Fit and able. But I'll honestly say in all sincerity the Australian soldier, look at the SAS [Special Air Service] in Iraq, they never lost any men

because they know what they're doing, you know they're a good soldier and that's the way I saw it. These fellows that I came in contact with up there, they were marvellous people, yeah.

Oh I think some of it's rubbed off, oh yeah I mean these SAS blokes, they're no fools and then I think the sons of Anzacs

they're there. But oh no they're a credit, yeah. And I think this Major Jeffery they've made Governor-General, I think that's a good selection yeah, a very good selection yeah.

Yeah that's right I couldn't settle down you know I don't know what it was. You were sort of uncomfortable on a soft bed, you weren't used to it and the food like, you weren't used to the food being so good, you couldn't eat a great amount of it. But I did have, no doubt about it I had nightmares

and things like that but thank God as the time went by they wore off you know.

Well it was mainly about Japanese and that, all these Japanese coming up a hill you know, they never got to the top but they kept coming at you, you know. But things like that. And I didn't need any counselling because after a while

I got rid of them, I got over it yeah. And came back. But I've got no regrets what I did you know I joined the air force and if I had my time again I'd do the same thing, yeah, no I'd do the same thing. But mind you another walk home I think the way things are today you'd be lucky to come back you know with all the stuff they've got today, modern technology yeah.

No all in all I'd do the same thing again, yeah. Probably wouldn't write the same poems.

Oh no that's all right.