Australians at War Film Archive

Are we?

Ready? OK my life started, actually started in England. I happen…

My father happened to be over there during the Great War [First World War], he was Australian but he wasn’t accepted in the Australian Army at the time because he had bad ears, and he went to America and had an operation and then went across to England and they grabbed him for the British Army.

So he spent some time in the trenches in Flanders, and then later towards the end of the war he was looking after a gun station in the North of England in Yorkshire and that’s, and my mother, they were, my parents were I think, engaged

before the war and my mother went across to England when Dad went over, and she got a job in the remounts they used… Were still using horses in the First World War, and she got a job in England sort of looking after them. And my father,

after time in the trenches in France, got a job in charge of a gun station in the North of England, and then I came along. And so after the war in about 1919 I think, or 20 we came out, the family came out from England and went out to the property my father had at Longreach, in central Queensland, and I was brought up there on a sheep station. And eventually from the age I think, of about 7, I was sent to boarding

school in Southport, Queensland. That was about 2 days and 2 nights on the train to get there. So later on when we use to go back on holidays, back to Longreach, for the main holidays,

the winter ones and the Christmas ones, it’s a shame how different things are today with children, we’d be put on the train in Longreach or by an aunt of mine in Brisbane if we were going the other way, under the care of the conductor and no fears were ever felt for the safety

of the children. There didn’t seem to be any of this, these attacks or there probably… but or you didn’t know anything about them on children in those days. Oh where am I up to. Oh yes well anyway I left, I went up to sub senior standard

at Southport, and the I went off to Agcorp for Agricultural College and that was a three year course, and by the time I’d finished that, the war had broken out. And I, first of all went to a Light Horse camp at a place called Wallgrove in Sydney. That

lasted for about 3 months or more. And after that I joined the air force and I was accepted as a Navigator. Of course we all wanted to be pilots, it was the glamour thing to be, but they told me I had

some sort of refracts in my eye which I didn’t believe then. But later on like after the war, I found after having various medical tests that I did have a problem in my eye so I had to take that back. Anyway I joined the air force reserve and we had to wait, there seemed to be so many

in the pipeline. I had to wait to be called up. And the recruiting officer organised a job for me with a surveyor who had also joined the air force and was waiting to be called up. He was working in Queensland on the main road and

we had a camp, a small camp of about 5 of us, and we were on the job for probably about 6 weeks. Actually it was quite, we had quite a lot of fun, also it was hard work. After that I was called up and

went to the first initial training station at Amberley, did a course there and then went on and did courses at Cootamundra and Parkes, Evans Head and eventually got back to Sandgate which was the embarkation depot.

Then we got leave and because I lived a long way we got 3 or either 3 or 5 days extra, and after leave I got back to the embarkation depot and to my consternation we found that all the course that we were with, 10 course had been sent to Canberra.

Anyway so we thought, we didn’t know where we were going so we settled down and enjoyed life at Sandgate because we had nothing to do, and we had more or less leave when we wanted. And by this time we were getting a pound a day or a guinea a day I think it was which was

a reasonable amount of money, if you saved up for 2 or 3 days you could have quite a good night out. And so this went on for quite a long time, I can’t remember exactly how long but I think it was about 6 weeks and we thought we’d never get, this was a great war we’ll never get to it. And then

we were suddenly issued with tropical gear and told we were going to Singapore. Ok we got on the Mirella, which was a coastal steamer, it had originally been, it’s interesting it had originally been the Kaisers yacht in the First World War. And there was still

the original fireplace, the marble fireplaces. Anyway we had quite a good trip up to, up to Java. There were quite a lot of civilians on the boat; it wasn’t a troop ship it was just an ordinary passenger liner. In those days the Japs hadn’t started and it was just a passenger boat going up to Singapore. It was also taking a lot of people up to Darwin.

And there was a bit of, a few girls on board but the competition was too tough for me and I left it for the others. Anyway we got, had a good trip to Darwin and we were there for a couple of days. Darwin was the frontier town at that time and you had

to be careful, if you went past a hotel, that the doors didn’t open and somebody came reeling out and knocked you over. It was full of troops and a pretty wild frontier town then. Then we went onto Java, we had a great time in Java. The Dutch treated us as conquering heroes and took us to the various clubs and what have you.

There was one club, the swimming club, and there was some beautiful Asian girls in there and I think some of the boys were ready to desert then. Anyway after a pleasant stay there we went off to Singapore and arriving there we were, a group of us, there was about 16 of us and we were posted to different squadrons.

And I was posted to number 100 Squadron. Which to my horror when we got there, I found they were, our airplanes was a vehicle called a Wildebeest. It was a biplane, fabric covered, three cockpits with a top speed of about a hundred miles an hour, we thought my god this

is a bit ancient for the present day. Anyway we joined the air force there and eventually the war started. And after serving there for a relatively short time the Japs attacked and we were on operation there

for a while, and the Japs came down a Peninsula and got close, too close and we got within shelling distance of the airport. So we flew out to Java and the same more or less thing happened again and the squadron operated against the Japanese as they came down to take Java.

And when the Dutch surrendered and of course the British had to surrender with them, we were taken prisoner. We didn’t have any, enough range to get to Australia or India

so we had nowhere to go. And we thought we’d go and become guerrillas in the hills at one stage, but that was considered that was a silly idea so we became prisoners and then I became a prisoner for about what was it 4 years wasn’t it?

And eventually survived, survived that adventure or episode and eventually got back to Australia. And after a certain amount of time where I was rather unsettled and I kept sort of flying around the country to different places. And

I decided it was time to settle down so I decided to go in for Soldier Settler Blocks. Anyway when I saw the Government Official, who was organising it, he told me that even though that I’d been to an Agricultural College and came off a sheep property, he said

I should have a bit more actual farm experience. So I said ok so he sent me out to, I went out to a farm in the Dalby district and this was rather interesting because the farmers name was Benny Von Peen and he was an Australian but he’d been, his father had jumped ship years before

and he was a real Prussian. And I found with him, if I wanted to, he was a tremendous worker, he never stopped and a wonderful farmer, and I found that the only way to get a bit of a spell while you were working, was to start on a bit of a discussion with him. And we’d do that and away he’d go.

He always use to say Britain and Germany should never have fought each other he said. He said, “Look if they had got together they’d have ruled the world.” He was a real Prussian. Anyway get away from that. After finishing

a year there I eventually, I didn’t draw any blocks. So I eventually bought a very undeveloped property in the Dalby district and I met June there, my wife, my present wife and she was silly enough to marry me.

And we had a pretty rough time to start with. We had a very primitive cottage and we had to paint the thing and build it and do all sorts of things. Anyway eventually we got that going, I was on that, we had that property for about twelve years, no about 14 years and then

we decided that we’d had a, we needed a change, we’d done pretty well on it, and developed it up and actually made a bit of money and so we sold out at a very good profit and went down to Surfers Paradise. And we lived there for about 5 years. I got a job with L.J. Hookers

selling real estate. I don’t think I was ever a very good salesman however it was a good way to fill in time, and it wasn’t particularly onerous. So after, after that

we decided we, time we got back into the bush again and our daughter had been going to NEGS [New England Girls School] in Armidale and we came down a few times. And at that stage Armidale district was having a boom, farmers were,

the land here. Although they found responded terrifically to superphosphate, that was in the fifties. We came down, we bought a property here in 1964, after coming down and seeing what was happening and seeing how properties were developing,

we thought this would be rather good. So we came down and bought the property we’re on now. And that’s about it, I mean that was in 1964 and we’re still here. And this place when I took it over was very undeveloped like the other one, so we have a few years of

quite hard work to get the place into gear. And as I said that’s about it, we’re still here and we hope to stay here ‘til the end.

about probably from about 7 years old.

Oh the Depression, yes I can remember the Depression at that stage we were at Goodbury, that’s the name of the property in Queensland. And I can remember, that was in about 31

to 36, something like that, in the thirties. Things were tough. I know that we were either lucky or my father was because his parents had had property in Melbourne. And when they died he became executor of their estate,

and there were five brothers and sisters, and there was a hotel they owned in Melbourne. Anyway that was sold and the money was put into a thing called the Metropolitan Board of Works, which is a government sort of utility. And he use to get a small income from it. It was about

400 pounds a year and that doesn’t sound very much but in those days it was you know, quite a help. So that helped us a lot over the, as far as the property was concerned, over the Depression. So actually he didn’t have to, I was sent to a private school so he didn’t really have to suffer very much. And strangely

we use to go to one of those, this is before Surfers Paradise became popular. We use to go to some, Christmas summer holidays in Sydney, Manly. And well mother and we use to go down and Dad didn’t, he’d come down just for a week or so because he couldn’t leave the property for that long. And anyway in the

Depression I can remember the swagmen that use to come in, and it was a sort of a unwritten law that you gave anybody that came up looking for work or one thing or another, you tried to give them a bit of a job, put them on the wood heap or something for a while, that’s how they get a little bit of cash, and they got

rations. Rations were always meat, sugar, flour and tea, I still remember that. And there was quite a trail of them at that time. And this was remarkable, we never seem to suffer any robberies or they were all basically decent people, and

some of them walked the length and breadth of Australia looking for jobs going. They might get a job for a week or a fortnight and then moving on again. And so that was mainly my impression of the Depression, otherwise it didn’t effect me much because I was at school or one thing another.

The other people where?

Oh I think it affected everybody yes, in the towns more than in the country because it affected the country cause the prices were down, the price of wool was way right on the bottom. And a lot of people

more or less, I didn’t know many that went broke but a lot went very close to it. But they sort of, the banks sort of waited and held back for most of them and most of them got through eventually.

Well my father, when he was a young man, the thing to do, he came, his parents were in Victoria

and he was interested in the country, and the thing to do in those days was to go to Queensland. Queensland was the promise land and so he set off with a couple of mates and they bought a property, I think it was way up near Gonoona

on the line up to Cloncurry and they were there I think til the war broke out. I’m not quite sure when he got the place that I was brought up on that was Goodbury Hills, whether he got that, I think he might have got that after he came back from England after the war.

Yes well, he was there until the war and then, as I said, he eventually joined the British Army and he was in Flanders in the trenches for a while, if you’re interested I’ve got a poem there, he was quite a, that he wrote

to my mother while he was in the trenches. Did you see it?

Yes well he wrote a couple of, they’re more or less almost love letters you know, and there’s one there that you might be interested to have a look at, and so then I, well you don’t want me to go over the fact that I was born

in the whole thing like that.

My father was, I suppose you’d say of the old style, he was very what will I say, no he wasn’t severe he was,

what’s the word, he was measured, that’s not a very good word. But he always seemed to me to be very calm and he had a lot of… when he was on the land in Queensland he became

head of the local Graziers Association and also eventually he became chairman of the Longreach Shire Council, and he had quite a lot to do in public sort of life. And he use to represent the graziers, and trips away to Tasmania and Melbourne and where have you. And

yes .

No I think it was just, well there was that feeling especially in those days I think there was, Britain was still an Empire, the British Empire and we were sort of still part of it. And I

think he sort of think it was a duty and that sort of feeling more or less, left by the time I went to the war but it was still about a bit. But so I think that he just felt it was you know, his duty and also young men are all the same you know, they think it’s a bit of an adventure as well, and all

that sort of thing, til they get there. So yes and he, I don’t know why he was so enthusiastic to get his ear fixed up before he could go, but that’s what he did. And quite a lot of other people, like a friend of mine that I knew in Armidale, I met at Surfers Paradise actually

and I found that his father had gone to England and had joined the army in England, and it was interesting you know that we both had the same sort of upbringing in a way. So anyway yes, that’s about all I can remember.

I didn’t strike him as that. But he was, he could have been a writer you know, he use to write poems and that sort of thing. He was quite good at that and

those were actually the only ones I’ve seen you know, the ones he wrote to my mother while he was in at the war.

Well I think they just happened to get handed down you know, when somebody dies then they just

arrive. You collect a lot of things over the years and that’s part of it.

Yes, yes I read them. Yeah I did, I was interested in them, yep.

He didn’t

talk about it much, just mainly failing instruments you know, things that happened that were a bit amusing, that was the main thing he’d talk about, that I can remember, he didn’t get much into the serious side of it.

Well he was never a what you’d call a demonstrative type you know, didn’t make fuss about things, I mean he was very pleased to see me and you know

and I always knew that he was very concerned because the only letters he ever got, there’s some over there on the table, were the Japanese only gave you a certain number of words you had to use, so you had to, you couldn’t give any information away, you just had to say, ‘I am well, I am being well treated,’ you know, these are the sort of things that they had.

So you tried to work it around a bit and so yes, well by the time I came back he wasn’t that well, and he was living at Surfers Paradise so I came back and we stayed there for a while.

Yes well, she went to England too.

She was always a keen horse woman on the property. She used to ride in the local shows and win prizes and all that sort of thing. And so you know, when the war broke out and she wanted to go over next to my father, where my father was and she obviously became the handler. She and her sister went over, the two of them

went together. And joined as I said the Remounts, I don’t know whether those horses ever did much, but in those early days there was quite a lot of horses used in the First World War.

Oh well she was,

I thought she was a lovely woman. And she had beautiful hair, black hair that she use to, she use to wear it in a bun but she’d let it out and it would go right down here, and I think she was, you name it, a very good wife and a very good

mother, and she looked after us very well. And she was interested. I use to hear conversations she had with my father, she was interested in his work and his work in the Shire council and all that sort of thing. And what else can I say?

No I think I’ve forgotten them now, you know it’s a long time ago.

Talk about what?

I didn’t hear much being talked about at all in those days. Oh

you know a general talk because they had the various reunions, not that he went… I don’t know of any reunions ‘cause he couldn’t ‘cause they were in England. But you know the Remembrance Day and all those days of observances. But no, I think the war was over and that was it and

people just got on with their lives. And he was lucky that he wasn’t gassed or anything and he got out of it o.k.

Do you want me to start now or when? When the war broke out there was a Light Horse camp

at a place called Wallgrove near Sydney in New South Wales. The Light Horse which started up before the First World War and it was carried on in peace time right through up til the present, the latest war, the present war. The present war,

that’s not right is it.

And these camps had been running you know and people would go on bivouacs as they called it, and regiments and various parts of the country were still working in peace time. So when the war broke out, as Australia didn’t have in those days many

tanks, I don’t know whether they had any, they thought or the powers that be thought, that especially if there was an invasion to Australia the Light Horse could be useful, especially out in the country. So they had this large

camp of regiment size and that happen just, just after the outbreak of the war. I went to the Hawkesbury College and we had, and that was my last year at Hawkesbury College and we had a veterinary unit at the college

and we use to go on camps every now and again, about once a year to various places. And actually we considered it quite a good holiday. Anyway, so I was on my last year, I finished my last year so our veterinary unit

was sent to join the Light Horse Unit, Light Horse Regiment that was mustering at Wallgrove and we were there, and we were then sent there with the object of looking after these horses. So ok. I think we were there for, the Light Horse camp went on for about 3 months and

during this time they had all sorts of manoeuvres and one of them was an old fashion charge, where we had a thousand odd horses charging over the meadow and during this there was quite a lot, some horse fell down and there were a few accidents and we ended up with quit, horses

to look after. And also as they were congregated, the horse were congregated for quite some time on lines, lines are ropes lines spread across the ground for a distance for probably 30 or 40 yards, 30 or 40 metres and horses are tethered

to them and that’s how they’re tethered. And then of course they’re taken out to do manoeuvres during the day and at night time they’re brought back and tied onto the lines. And they put a hobble on their back legs and it’s tied to the line at the back and their tied with a bridle to the rope in front, so you have you know, hundred of horses

spread out on these lines, quite a sight.

Well they were used, the idea was to carry the soldiers and the soldiers they weren’t, there was not really, I don’t think they ever expected them to charge

again but the idea was they’d dismount, and then they’d go forward and move into battle and all that sort of thing, you know. It was more for you know, if there was open country, not in cities and things. They were used in the First Great War, you probably read about and that was probably the last big charge of horses.

Beg you pardon?

Oh yes I think there was, yes I’m sure it was, it was (UNCLEAR) obsolete. But anyway I don’t know, the powers that be decided that it was a good idea to have this camp and do the training cause I thought the training was good anyway, and they could move from there into another part of the army if the horse weren’t used.

I think the thought was if the horses were used, if someone invaded Australia. But anyway as I said, after the end of this camp we ended up with quite a lot of horse, injured horse and well as that they got various diseases, laryngitis was one thing

and the horse that is. And we had to look after them before they were sent back, they came off properties you know, all these blokes in the Light Horse were all off properties somewhere and their horses, we had to look after them and try and get them better before they went back. So that meant that, that right well we had,

I was a Sergeant in this Veterinary corps. from Hawkesbury and we had the vet, the college vet he was the captain in charge of the Veterinary corps. Well he had to go back to the College because they started up a new year you see, so I was the

senior NCO [Non Commissioned Officer] and they made me in charge of this group that was left to look after the horses. And it was pretty good because I could, I could write the leave passes and so naturally we had quite a lot of leave. Anyway we stayed, we had about 2 months looking after these horses and,

as I said you know we use to treat them, ‘strangle’ was another thing that horses got which was really like mumps, it all came out on this, swelling in the throat. And it took a long while to get some of these horses back on their feet again, a couple of them died,

a few of them died actually. And I’ll never forget the, when they died, we rang up someone I forget now, some people that disposed of animals that died, and this bloke came out, now was there one or two of them, came out in a car, an ordinary car,

a tourer car, a tourer in those days, it you know it didn’t have glass windows. So they got this horse and they chopped it up into pieces and it was still only died the day before, so there was still blood everywhere and they just put into this, shovelled it into this car, you know legs and things sticking out the side, it was quite comical

actually. And off they went. I don’t know where they went to or what they did with it but it would have been pet food or something you know. So that’s how they disposed of the horses that died. Well as I said, we had quite a good life there and there was a sort of a nightclub called the Log Cabin at Penrith,

and I still had my car so I was pretty popular with everybody, and we use to sometimes go over to this Log Cabin at night time and have a bit of fun, got to know some talent of course and you know that was part of life.

That was quite pleasant until eventually the horses were well enough to be sent home so our little unit was closed down and I then joined the air force.

When I what?

I was 21.

Well it was at the College,

it was an Agricultural College, the Hawkesbury, so as part of the whole system they had a, this corps the veterinary corps which I suppose was meant to, if the Light Horse were ever used, well the Veterinary Corps would join as a unit to help look after the horses. So that’s how that operated.

And we had, we did a bit of training and one thing and another. We went on bivouacs to various places, that was sometimes just before the holidays or during the holidays from Hawkesbury. That was about it actually, there’s nothing much more to say.

1939

Well the war had broken out when I at this camp in Sydney, the Light Horse camp, it had already broken out.

I think you’ve got me.

No I think it was before the Light Horse camp. You see after, yes after I finished,

can you remember the date that the war started?

No but when I left Hawkesbury,

I’d finished the course

and I think I went on leave, I went on holiday,

my father was then I think living at Surfers Paradise and I think I went there for a while, so I think we probably heard about the war then. I told my father I was going to join up, he said well I can’t stop you he said, you know, he had a few words to say, that he

did a similar thing so, you know, he can’t really stop you, but he did more or less say you know, it’s probably exactly what you expect. And then I’m not quite exactly how it worked, but then I went to this Light Horse camp, I can’t quite slot the times in you know where I was at various times.

Oh well they would have found out, only if they had short wave radio, they might have got it, you know, direct. But it came pretty quickly because

it was Mr Menzies got up and said now that Britains at war, we are at war, you know. And of course there was no television then but and there was radio. The news, you’d get the news on the radio.

Yes I think I did.

Yes, and everybody you know, there was a sort of a feeling of, probably a feeling of dread, a feeling you know of what’s going to happen now. Because we had as, most other people’s parents had been

to the war, that the present generation like myself knew a bit about it and knew it wasn’t a picnic. And you know there was a sort of feeling of well, where do we go from here, what’s going to happen, what am I going to do, you know. These sort of thoughts naturally went through you.

Oh yes, we did but as far as I can remember.

Mmmmm?

Yes

Well I suppose

everybody thought it was a bit more glamorous and thing. But my main reason, and this probably had something to do with it, my main reason was I thought at least in the air force you’d come back if you didn’t get shot or something. You’d come back to your base where you’d probably be able to get a comfortable sleep and where things would be more or less normal,

and you’d be able to get a decent meal, you weren’t in the mud somewhere. That was my main reason. I thought it would be more comfortable. Probably not a great (UNCLEAR) but that’s the way I looked at it.

Well they, you know,

my mother, I forgot to say this, my mother had died earlier, I missed that part. She died of meningitis, which you couldn’t cure in those days. Yes that was rather a

very sad episode because I was sixteen at the time and an aunt of mine, a maiden aunt wanted a companion to take on a trip to New Zealand, I think she probably wanted someone to carry the suitcases and things. So she asked me to go with her. So off I went,

we went to New Zealand and travelled all over the place had quite an interesting time. Except I remember we went over on the Marapailer, which is a very flash American ship. And one of the first nights we were sitting in the State Room or a lounge or whatever it was, I don’t know what you call it on a ship. And my aunt who was, she said,

“It’s stuffy,” cause it was all centrally heated, nothing much was centrally heated in those days and this ship was, you know. And my aunt said, “Peter it’s stuffy, go and open a window.” So it was on the inside and there were sort of windows there so I went up to open a window and I was ascended on by all

staff you know, it wasn’t allowed to open a window. The Americans were keen on this air-conditioning and keeping it all nice and warm. So that was that episode. Anyway while I was over there my mother, we got a, how did we get it? Cable I think. That my mother wasn’t well and so we immediately book on, I forget the ship now, it wasn’t the Marapailer,

and there was no aircraft there then and then came back to Australia. It took three days to cross the Tasman, and when we got there, I hadn’t realised how serious it was, and when we got back to Sydney

the doctor came, use to come ashore to check before passengers were allowed to land. So they took me off on the doctor’s launch, which was unusual, and I thought what’s going on and we got, we came into Rose Bay and there was a car waiting

for me and a police escort and we raced out to Mascot to catch a plane. And the plane was still waiting for me to get there and I was taken straight across the tarmac and the plane was waiting for me, it was one of the, what was it, Avro Anson I think.

It’s a twin engine Avro Anson. And I was taken straight to Brisbane and my mother had died before I got there, so it was a very sad episode of my life. So it was just Dad and I, carried on from then. It was the only time in my life

I saw my father cry, broke down. He actually cried you know, and he wasn’t the type to cry, you know. So anyway that was that episode and we eventually got through it. Dad took us for a trip through New South Wales where we met some of our relations and what have you.

And eventually of course we settled down to life again.

Yes I had one brother, younger than I, that’s all.

He was probably at school and anyway he…

I think he did see my mother before she died you know. But meningitis was one of those diseases in those days, that was almost incurable. Now days of course if you get it early enough you can handle it.

No, no he thought you know, as far as I can remember he didn’t.

I think he did, he did give me some tips. I don’t know whether I can really remember them all. Oh by the way I didn’t mention my father married again.

Mmmm?

Oh no it was quite a few years after.

I can’t, nothing specific no.

No it’s the usual rather, you know in a case like that. When I left of course there was always that sort of sorrowful parting but you know. He wasn’t, as I said, he wasn’t a man that would show his feelings as a rule. As I said, the only time I saw him break down was when

my mother died. We all broke down.

Well I think a lot wanted to join the air force but a lot didn’t.

The air force then, everybody you know, they got such a rush of applicants they couldn’t handle them all, and those that were… First of all you had a medical first to make sure that you didn’t have flat feet or something. How that would affect flying an aeroplane I don’t know. But as I said, you had to go on reserve and wait

for quite some considerable time before you were taken in. I suppose there was quite a lot that tried to join the air force. But it was more you had to have a certain level of education and that weeded out quite a lot.

Well as I remember it you went into a building and first of all I think you had a medical, you had a pretty good medical test and then you went and had

like an interview with the recruiting officer who asked you various questions about why you wanted to join the air force, and I think he just wanted to get a general opinion of what sort of person you were. Then after you did that, I don’t know whether it was on, probably not

the same time. I don’t quite just… when they selected you but it was early in the peace, it was before I was sent out on reserve, you were told whether you were going to be an air gunner, navigator or a pilot. And I was

put, they told me I was going to be a Navigator. And that was it. So then we were sent off on reserve and waited until we were called up.

Oh well a Navigator it was quite a long training course.

We started off as I said in, I think I said earlier, at Amberley but there it was mainly knocking us into shape, doing a lot of marching and one thing or another, learning the rules and what have you. Not doing very much practical work at all it was mainly sort of getting you accustomed to

discipline and you know, various things. So we set off to Cootamundra and at Cooty we had to study what they called, god I’ve forgotten the word, navigation anyway.

It had a certain name, it would probably come to me.

No navigation, a type of navigation, there was a word to describe and I’ve just lost my memory.

No that came later.

Basic navigation,

but that wasn’t the word but that was basically what it was. And that meant navigating by the use of maps and compass, studying ground features, rivers, mountains and towns and cities and learning how to take sights off objects on the ground.

Also you had to make allowances for the wind, so you had to learn how to do that. Also when you’re flying in different places, there’s what they call magnetic deviation, there’s a different.

True north varies from the magnetic north by a different degree depending on where you are in the world, or where you are in different places, so that was part of the navigation we did at Cootamundra. Then we use to do theoretical navigation where you put a number of points

on a sheet of graph paper and then theoretically, you were given a course by the instructor and then you had to find your way around and plot the course on this graph paper and see if you could come back to where you should. Well we did some of this and then later on in the course

we were taken, you went out in a plane and you had to navigate to different points on the map. Like we were at Cootamundra and then we might have to go out to Broken Hill, down to

somewhere near the New South Wales border then back, usually a three legged course. We’d do these navigations to see, to eventually learn you know, how to navigate by looking at features on the land, by allowing for the wind speed, allowing how to work out what the wind speed was

and all these other things. And then later on we had to do it at night, when you couldn’t see that much but we didn’t, no, we didn’t do all that much at night, nearly all daytime stuff. So about three months

at Cootamundra doing that course, before they felt we were proficient enough. So then they sent us onto Parkes.

No, we use to go, usually a couple, two in an aircraft. So that there would be a check you know, but sometimes there might be even more ‘cause we were all just learning then but as we got towards the end of it, you know, there’d only be a couple.

And during that course we had, let me see, we went on leave once a month, and of course by that time I had 3 or 4 pretty good mates, we use to get around together. And we use to go to

Sydney, now we weren’t, we were Queenslanders so it was too far away to go back there. So we use to go to Sydney. The train use to… we use to go down and over the time we got to know various people in Sydney. We all managed to get

you know find a female friend of some sort if we could. We had a hotel in Kings Cross I remember, it was a private hotel and we use to stay there. It was a pretty rough place as I remember it, anyway we use to enjoy ourselves. And we had 4 days

leave I think. We go, leave on a Friday and have to come back on a Monday. And we had to cram as much in as we could in four days. So we did our best.

Well I suppose it’s probably like it is now really. Except it was, it wouldn’t be, you know there was night clubs and

I don’t think they had, full strip tease things or anything then, but they went as far as they could anyway, as far as they could according to the law. But it was a pretty rough place, you know, and always has been.

Concerts?

What was the name of one? Can’t remember maybe Pussycat or something like that. Can’t remember sorry. These things happened a long time ago.

Well I’d met one in Penrith, Penrith you know, when we use to go on leave there. And I don’t know what she was doing there at the time. Yeah, and then she moved to Sydney that’s right. And she had a job in Sydney and it wasn’t particularly

serious. I mean now days you’d get straight into bed with them, (UNCLEAR) it took a bit longer then.

Well the main problem was that this was before birth control. And the women naturally were,

well before the birth, they did have birth control but it wasn’t 100 percent, you know. So you took a bit of a risk and of course the girls were a bit nervous, and also you know as a… I didn’t want to get anybody into trouble either, you know.

It didn’t always work like that, things you know, the best of ideas don’t always work do they, things break down sometimes. But on the main on the real, generally we use to just have, be good mates really. A lot of,

as I put in that book, as you probably read, a lot of cuddling and that sort of thing.

Kings Cross it was I think you know, it’s probably very much like it is today except it’s more sophisticated today but it had nightclubs and honky tonk places. I’m not exactly sure,

it’s amazing it’s hard to remember all these things. But it was like the lively part of Sydney, that’s where everybody sort of went to live it up. And because when you went on leave

that’s the place you headed for, it had the reputation.

Well the reputation that you could pick up a girl there or and have a good, you know, I don’t think, I don’t remember there being drugs,

whether drugs were about I never heard of it. I suppose there was some sort of drugs going on but no, I don’t know what they were. Didn’t seem to figure in the newspapers or anything.

Well there was more concern then there is now you know, for instance you wouldn’t get discussions you get on television now. The sexual organs and all that sort of thing you know, it was just taboo. Just wasn’t discussed,

as I remember it. In general conversation also it was not considered civilised or decent to use bad language, you could use bloody or even buggar but a word like fuck, I mean you would never, never use it. Especially in

mixed company as we use to say in those days. I mean men might use it in a shearing shed or something, they might be swearing, but if a woman came into the shed it all quietened down even amongst people like shearers or anything like that. There was a sort of a code that I don’t think is around anymore.

Different types of women?

Well the women I knew in Kings Cross were friends, they weren’t actually prostitutes. There were plenty of prostitutes at Kings Cross at that time. And you know that’s, but I never had to go to find a prostitute. So

no, but that’s where you went if you were looking for a prostitute. And in the nightclubs there they’d be around.

I don’t know whether we took them in.

Oh no, they managed to get hold of them.

Oh well I mean, there was a fear of venereal disease. I think it wasn’t morals that kept you away, I think it was

venereal disease.

Mmmm?

I’m sorry I can’t get what you’re getting at?

Oh,

well yes you know, that was well known it was sort of a, everyone knew, we all knew that you could pick VD up, it was quite common knowledge. And well it was up to you whether you took the risk. Whether you were that eager or not.

You mean the girls that I was sort of associating with? Well most of the girls that I associated with… As you moved around from station to station you know you got them, you know, you were looked after, people invited you out,

went to parties and that sort of thing, and you got to know, you know very decent girls. And you had a lot of fun with them but you realised, I mean it depends on the person, every person is different. But I always felt a certain amount of, call it morality, no call it being relatively decent, because

you didn’t want to go away and leave somebody pregnant because it was not like the pill was around. And the other methods were a bit hit and miss. But I mean you know, sometimes you took the risk, you used the things that were available.

Various… I remember Orthogonal that was the thing.

What?

Oh that was just a tube of stuff that a woman would inject into her vagina and that was supposed to act as a contraceptive. It was fairly effective.

But not 100 percent.

Well when you get a group of men together you pick out the ones that you get along with you know, you generally might have a fairly small circle that you seem to get around with.

And as I told you before, I had a car and I use to take it with me to various stations and I think I was the only one that had a car there. And it wasn’t a particularly good car but it went around, so I was a bit, probably fairly popular.

Mostly people like myself, I think. Nearly all would have been, a lot of them would have been at private schools, not all but a lot of them would have been at private schools and they would have

reached Senior Standard, what do they call it now, ‘cause you had to more or less get to Senior Standard to be admitted in the air force. They’d have had a reasonable standard of education.

I don’t know, just the usual chiacking that would go on

amongst the blokes. And tease each other I suppose, ones that had various attributes or but I can’t really be very specific on just what we did. You know we just were together,

talked together, thought about things together, discussed politics or, and of course women and what we were, what we intended to do after the war if we got back, you know, the general sort of discussion you would have

when you had time to fill in.

What in training?

Oh well you’d get up, reveille, the bugle would blow whenever it was, 6 or half past six about six I think. Line up for

breakfast and then you might go down to the classroom to have a lecture on some part of your training or go out and have a flight. We had these pilots that use to take us around

and we were flying mostly Ansons in those days, which is a twin engine bomber and it would have a top speed of a bit over a hundred miles an hour. And these pilots were blokes that had joined up the air force and

some of them had been, most of them had been, had their wings before the war and then they joined the war, and because they had the experience, they’d become instructors and most of them were eager to get to the real thing and they use to

fly us around. Like as Navigators we were navigating from point to point and they’d be totally bored flying us around ‘cause they wanted to get over to the, into the squadron somewhere. So they were usually pilot officers and the instructors that had been flying before the war.

And so you know, they joined up preferably straight away but they were used as instructors instead. Eventually they got away but for a while they were too valuable as instructors to be sent away.

Oh well the first experience of flying?

What in the air force or flying?

I think the first flight I went on was that flight from Sydney

to Brisbane when my mother was sick. I think that was the first flight. You had to land, you couldn’t do it in one hop, we had to land in a couple of places. I might have been up before but I think that might have been one of the earliest.

About a dozen I think. I think it might have been the DeHavilland.

Mmmm?

Yeah they’d stop and refuel in a couple of places. I forget exactly where they were now.

No. No because there weren’t many, much flying going on then.

Well on that flight from Sydney I don’t think I was thinking that much about… I was thinking about my mother you know. But

I’ve never really been scared in an aeroplane. Not until I got into the air force, I was scared a couple of times then. But just being in an aeroplane I’ve never felt nervous about it.

That was in Cootamundra that would have been when we were doing Navigation. Oh well that was just like a flight, you know you’re sitting in an aircraft and you’re working it out, you’re doing your job. And I don’t know, you think about crashing or anything like that.

You don’t ever, I don’t think I’ve every really felt nervous in an aeroplane going on various flights since or anywhere. I’ve always felt the plane was in competent hands and if something happened it would just happen, that was it. You’ve got to be able have faith in life.

As we were only more or less students they looked at us with a certain amount of distain I think. As we hadn’t you know, we hadn’t finished our courses yet. They were just

(UNCLEAR) just like ordinary blokes but they had a bit more rank than we did so we didn’t see a lot of them except when they were actually in the aeroplane. They just went off on leave, they didn’t go with us. They did their own thing. They were (UNCLEAR).

Mmmm?

Oh do you mean the pilots or the chaps that were going to be pilots?

Oh no they go into different places. We didn’t meet up with them until right at the end.

Oh well, I think it needed to be, I don’t know whether I was a good one, but you needed a certain knowledge of mathematics and it’s a help if you enjoyed, like I use to do like

at school, I enjoyed geometry, it was one of the only few classes I did enjoy. So if you had those skills before you went it was quite a good help. Because you could handle the technical side of it better.

And otherwise I think you just had to have a relatively calm sort of nature. Which I think you need for most things really and be prepared to work at it.

Not really, well you felt you had the beginning, you felt that you knew enough to get started because after you got, did your training, then you went on and did advance training.

And that’s when (UNCLEAR) sent to Canada. So and even when you did that advance training you still weren’t fully trained because you had to get into the real thing when you actually had to do things and there was somebody trying to stop you. So you could never say you were fully trained.

But you know you felt you had a grounding.

No, no I ended up in the Wildebeests.

Wildebeest

Yes.

Well do you want to do that now or when we get to the (UNCLEAR)

Oh no, no they weren’t,

the Anson was more or less archaic; I don’t think they were used very much in the war. Now at that time going to England, they were flying Halifax and Stirlings and various other bolder types.

Well there was just the pilot and we navigators. I forget how many we use to take but not many.

Oh well it depends on the plane, I mean the crew of some of the later planes in the war, you might 7 or 8 or more. Mid gunners, air gunners, side gunners all sorts of things.

Well yes, you’d have to be in a plane to train as a Navigator then it would be your job when you were stationed, eventually stationed in a squadron, you’d probably have a crew, there’d be a pilot and the navigator, probably airgunners and wireless operators and various, depending on the size of the aircraft.

No, mostly you have your own job to do, you help each other if you can but mostly you look after your particular job.

Oh yeah I think so. Certain level of proficiency but you knew you weren’t, you still weren’t a really good navigator. I mean for instance I think a ships navigator is about a three year course.

The war had started then yes.

Oh just the normal news coverage you know that’s all. Naturally you’d hear the news bulletins everyday,

and wonder a bit more of where you were going and what you were going to do.

You’re a little nervous to make sure that you were doing it properly you know, that you

that you’re navigating. That you’d be able to do the job and not get lost somewhere. But the pilots, they knew the routes, you know, they’d been flying the same routes for weeks, so they didn’t need really us to navigate them. If

we gave them the wrong course and they’d just tell us and go back and do the right one. You know they’d have their own crew, they’d have their own navigator for the plane to make sure they didn’t have to rely on us, as we were only trainees you see. So we had to do it but there was always a check there so that

we didn’t get them up into a mountain somewhere.

No, no, “You’re off course have another go.”

Well they had

what they call RT [Radio Transmitter] which was just a mouthpiece and a cord that went from place to place so you could talk to you know any of the crew or the pilot or he could give you orders.

Well you just do it, I mean ok you’ve got to fly to A to B. Well first of all you work out a course,

you work out a magnetic course which allows for magnetic deviation and before you start you probably use, what they call a Met Wind, that means the wind from the Meteorological Station so you put that into your, well you actually draw a

diagram on a sheet of paper, on a graph paper and you put these deviations in to allow for the course. So you start off with that and away you go. Well as you’re going along you check from, if you visualise objects on the ground,

you take compass bearings on them, to see that you’re on the right course. And then if there’s a wind change that makes it a bit tricky cause I don’t know what they do now but then you could either take a drift, you’d look backwards and see what angle the plane was going,

if you’re on course, but if the wind changed and was blowing you one way and you look back at some object and took what you call a drift you’d see the number of degrees if you were off the course, and you could make an adjustment so you could back on course. Now that was, that’s all right unless there was a very big change of wind altogether

and then you had a rather complicated business of finding your wind and that meant telling the pilot to fly on three courses, I forget, he’d go on one course for a certain amount of time, it might have been a minute or five minutes I forget what it was. Then you’d change to another one at right angles to it and then another one.

And from that you’d work out the wind speed, you’d get the wind from 3 different directions and from that you could work out the drift and the wind speed. Don’t ask me to do it now, I couldn’t do it.

Yes that would be. But that would only be

you know, if you really had to get a big change of wind, otherwise you would just use the drift and correct for the drift. And you could get, if you could see the ground you can measure a distance on the ground between two roads or something and then you could work out how long it took you to fly that distance.

And then you could work out your actual speed of the aircraft. Compared to the, ‘cause the aircraft speed, it varies a lot depending on how the winds blowing. So that’s about basically what you do.

Yeah.

On no you’d just say alter course such and such. If you were flying at 180 degrees and you worked out a new course was 190, alter course, you’d send him a chit written on it. Sending him that and, if you could get, otherwise you could talk to him, it depends on the plane, the size of it

you could talk to him and say change, alter course.

Oh yes, they tried to you know, do what they could up to a point.

Yes, well Parkes was a totally different kettle of fish. It was Astro-Navigation. Which theoretically is a very technical business.’ Cause you’ve got the stars, the moon, the sun, to try, and

that’s what you try and navigate by. And it’s a bit too complicated to go into.

Well you have these tables, which have been worked out by all the scientists that give you the time when a celestial object is in a certain position. And you’ve got to, say you’re going to use a certain star to navigate from. Ok. there’s only a certain number of stars that are used,

or if you’re going to use the sun or moon you can take a sight from the object with a sextant, you don’t use a compass you use a sextant, and in an aircraft you’ve really got to… in the aircraft you had to get up and they opened a, there was a hatch in the top,

to get into, you’d take 6 sights and average them. Well then came the hard part. You had to look up these tables which would give you, you know a position of that moon at that particular time, on that particular day, on that particular month, in that particular year. That had been already worked out for you but you had

to look that up. And you’d also look up any magnetic deviation, and what have you. And you’d put that into your, what you were working out and work out from that, your course. Now one of the problems was that this took a fair bit of time

and it use to take me a hell of a long time. And by the time you’d work this out the aircraft would have moved on, quite a fair way. So then you had to calculate not from the point you started with but where the aircraft was going to be then. And then set the course from there.

Now it was just, the old Anson would go just over 100 miles an hour, you could do it. But it would have been impossible in a faster aircraft. Actually that way of doing it went out, that they worked out an instrument called an Astrograph, instead of you having to work out all

those tables it did it for you. So when they actually got to the real world you didn’t have to use that thing. But in the start of the war apparently that was the way they were doing it. And at Parkes it was a very intensive course, it was a month long. We sat,

most of it was in the classroom. We swatted everyday. Saturday and Sunday, everyday it just went on and on. We did a couple of flights and in that case they’d take a basic navigator like it was before

and a student like myself to do an Astro-navigation. Well the basic navigator would actually navigate the plane around; this would be at night by the way. Now the learner he’d be up here taking all his sights and work out with a table and then he’d give a course which he’d plot on a piece of paper.

Now when you got back, you might do a three-legged course, when you got back to your original base you could see how far you were in or out, if your theoretical calculations should have landed you back at the base. But I found in, of course, one of my exercises we landed 60 miles away.

We would have landed 60 miles away if we had taken my thing. I’m afraid I never really mastered that. Anyway we did the course and they passed us out and sent us on to Evans Head to do gunnery and bombing.

About Parkes.

Yes, well after Parkes we went to Evans Head and that was quite a nice spot, I still had my car. And I got to know a very nice girl in Lismore; she was a doctor’s daughter,

and I use to go in there every now and again and have some time with her. Although we didn’t get a lot of leave so it didn’t last long. Anyway at Parkes, the idea was to do gunnery and well, I wasn’t to do gunnery. We had the airgunners with us

now, they were to do gunnery and I had to do bomb aiming. Now bomb aiming consisted of a bomb sight which was an instrument that was set up in the hatch of the aeroplane, which was opened and this was in the

Hatch, and the bomb aimer which would have been me in this case had to lie down and look through this sights on this instrument and then I had to direct the pilot and say left, left, right, left, right, bombs away.

And then I went to see, we use to use practise bombs, 11 pound practise bombs and try and drop them on targets and then they’d tell us how far away we were from the targets. And a friend of mine happen to be, he wasn’t a close friend but I knew him quite well, a chap called (UNCLEAR)

he was the pilot of one of the staff, that were flying us around, we were flying in, I don’t know whether I told you, aeroplanes called Fairey Battles which were single engine planes. And they had just the two cockpits, one for the… three cockpits, one for the pilot, one for the gunner, one for the navigator.

So I remember he was flying me around one day and I couldn’t quite get it right and I was saying, telling him to fly left, left, left, right, left and then I had to say, and then if I had overshot the (UNCLEAR) I had to say, I forget what the word was

but it meant it was aborted. And I did this about 3 times; he got completely fed up with me. So I had my head down the hatch, the sight and he put the plane into a bit of a dive and then went up. And I bashed my head on the bombsight, I still

remember that. Oh yeah he got fed up with me. We were friends, you know. So anyway that was what you had to do. And I can remember the case of one bloke had, a chap called Carmichael and he was a wizard at this. And one of the exercises was, after we did the bombing of a still target,

was to bomb a moving target. And they had a boat, that was travelling out in the water somewhere from Evans Head, and this bloke went out and I don’t think this has every happened before, he put one of these bombs right through the

boat, it went through the wood. I think the boat was in a sickly state when they got it out, and so he got the prize of the best, the best bomb aimer.

Oh well,

you’d have navigated to your target and you’d see where your bombs were, what you had to bomb and then do the bomb aiming and when you’d dropped the bombs you get back to navigation again. But all this is a bit of, what’s the word?

Bit airy fairy because I think in the real time I doubt whether they ever used those bomb sights. Now they were the old ones, and of course when they got overseas they had altogether different systems. Bigger aeroplanes and they had

specialists on these big raids over Germany. Big raids over Germany, they’d have specialist bomb aimers, the top of the class sort of people and they’d navigate for a group of aeroplanes til they got to the targets. So I think that a lot of this stuff that we learnt

was probably redundant by the time they actually got over there in the real thing.

Well that’s all they had. And they didn’t have the aeroplanes that they were actually flying in Britain you know, over Germany. This is what they had here,

this is what was available. So you’ve still got, you still learnt you know, the systems and learnt how it operated, it’s just that I think when you got over there you were using more modern equipment.

About a month

We were in, I was in 10 course and we just move around from place to place. So all the blokes were in 10 course doing navigation, they were there as well. I forget, I think we had about 28 or something in the course from memory, yeah about that.

We’d been through Cootamundra, Parkes, Evans Head, Orange you know, this was our last course.

Well I think I told you that before didn’t I? Well we went to our embarkation depot and I think I told you, we went on leave and we got extra 3 or 4 days and then when we came back from embarkation depot the rest of the course had already gone. I told you all that.

Well then we,

we were in, the ones, the 16 of us that happen to be on long extra leave we stayed at embarkation depot at Sandgate for about, I think it was about 6 weeks. And we thought we’d never get to the war.

Because we had a long, we lived in Western Queensland somewhere and in those days it took 2 days and 2 nights to get from Longreach to Brisbane. You’ve got to remember there was no aeroplanes flying. There were, I think there were some, I don’t know whether Qantas.

Yeah I think Qantas didn’t, yeah there were aircraft. Qantas had a mail service to Brisbane and back. But they weren’t sending us on aeroplanes, we were on the train.

Advance training.

No we didn’t do that at all. We, as I said we stayed at the embarkation depot and then we were issued with tropical clothing and then we boarded the Marella for Singapore.

So then actually we were told as we hadn’t done any advance

training we’d have to learn, train, do our advance training when we got to the squadron. So that actually meant we did our advance training when the war started.

On the job.

Well we didn’t know that was going to happen.

We didn’t know where we were going until we were sent up to Sydney, Singapore we still didn’t really know ‘cause they don’t tell you. You wait til you get there. All we knew, we were going to Singapore. And we were joining an RAF [Royal Air Force] squadron.

Oh tropical shorts, a pith helmet,

shirts you know

No they didn’t have pineapples on them. And of course we had the boots, and that was mainly what it was. I think we also had, we had to take our other uniforms with us too,

our blue uniforms. So we were loaded up with kit bags of stuff.

Brisbane.

No I don’t think anybody came. You weren’t sent, that was all sort of secret.

That was all sort of you know, they didn’t tell you where the movement of ships went like that.

Where in the ship?

Oh yes it was quite comfortable. It was a, I told you before, it was a passenger ship taking passengers up to Darwin and

all the way up the coast and up to Singapore. Cause the Japs hadn’t started then, the Jap war hadn’t started. So there was still traffic going up, mainly officials and people, mainly going to Singapore and quite a lot going to Darwin.

Well when we got to Singapore,

we really didn’t think at the start that they would. We didn’t think that they’d attack you know we still thought of them as the Great British Navy which was still the biggest navy in the world at that stage, and we didn’t think they would.

We thought we were sent up there just in case something happening. But as time went on and all the negotiations were going on in Washington, and then it became pretty obvious that something was going to happen.

Oh Singapore was a pretty dirty place then. It hadn’t been cleaned up with Kwong

what’s his name? Kwong Ki [actually Lee Kuan Yew] or whatever his name was. And it was very, very class conscious, very much the British class system. Where, for instance, if you went on leave you could go to Raffles which was the main hotel if you were an Officer,

but if you’re a Sergeant you’d go to the Seaview, and if you’re other ranks you’d go somewhere else. So it was rather stratified you know, very much so.

You became a Sergeant. Oh there were a small

number of officers, pilot officers straight from training. We had 2 in our course. Both of them had been schoolteachers and I think they were pretty good at navigation, you know. They came out top of the class more or less. One of them incidentally was a second cousin of mine.

A distant cousin. A chap named Lex Logan. And he went up to Singapore with us, on the boat. And he got killed the first day of the war. First day. But that’s the luck of the game. He was

seconded I think to a brown squadron and they went out when the Japs attacked up at Kotabaru up at North Malaya. And he got killed; he got shot down that first particular day.

Ah the

system? We arrived in Singapore and I forget exactly whether, I think somebody came to meet us, that’s right. And then we were drafted to different Squadrons. Like I said this distant cousin of mine was drafted to a brown squadron and quite a lot of others were

drafted to brown squadron. I think some were drafted to the Hudson Squadron , it was no I don’t think they were, not from our course, might have been but I forget. And we were drafted, (UNCLEAR) to 100 and 36 Squadron, they were the Wildebeest squadrons and the bulk of us went there.

The Squadron was stationed at Seletar, which was the biggest aerodrome of Singapore, the biggest military aerodrome. And so we went out on a bus to Seletar and settled into our quarters and started easy life there for a while.

Never seen one before. That was a shock when we saw the first one. There’s a drawing of one the hall there. Did you see it?

Mmmm. Drawing of it by my daughter, drew it from my

magazine. There’s not, we had a lot of New Zealanders in the Squadron. ‘Cause the New Zealand Air Force had a couple of squadrons of Wildebeest. So they were already trained and knew all about them. And they were sent up there to Singapore where we joined an English squadron and these Wildebeest

were more or less of about 1929 vintage. And they were used in India up in the mountains and the country there to subdue the neighbours I think, and they had these couple of squadrons in England. They probably wanted

to get rid of them so they sent them out to Singapore and they are a torpedo bomber squadron. We were meant to drop torpedoes against ships, that was our role. But we were never used as it actually. Some of them went up at the beginning of the war

when the Japs first landed. Someone, a couple of flights went up, I wasn’t on it and they dropped some torpedoes and I think the damn things went the wrong way and that’s about the only torpedo bombing that was done. In the whole time I was up there, and I was up there before it started for about 6 weeks, it might have been longer.

I didn’t do one torpedo exercise. It was so laid back you wouldn’t believe it. I don’t think the English ever thought the Japs would attack. We did very little training; we were supposed to be doing a lot. We did a few exercises, training navigational exercises. Did a bit of

aerial photography. I don’t remember doing it, a bombing practise run. In fact you know it was unbelievable you know, it was if nothing was going to happen. And

do you want me to go on and talk about that?

Anyway we settled in at Seletar and on the night, was it the 8th of December was it, I happen to be in charge. We had a picket whose job was to go around and check the aeroplanes around

the strip, and I was the Commander of it. And I was in the hangar and my job was to change the guard every two hours and all that sort of thing. Anyway I was in there, I had a stretcher in there and suddenly all hell broke lose.

And I jumped up and looked around and the next thing there was an awful noise and a bomb went off on a building behind the airport and shrapnel came through the tin thing. I went outside and looked up and here is two wings of 18 Japanese bombers going over, that’s the first

I knew of the war with the Japs. We didn’t get any, and the sirens went, by the time the sirens went the bombs were dropping. So it was a good introduction to hostilities and I remember I didn’t know what to do. And I got outside and I was looking for

somebody to tell me what I should be doing and I saw a Squadron Leader standing there. A bomb had hit a NAAFI [Navy Army Air Force Institute] behind the hangars. A NAAFI is a sort of a café sort of thing. And it had killed a couple of blokes there. And so we were more or less looking down

at the bomb hole. So I went up to this Squadron Leader and saluted smartly and said, “Look sir I’m in charge of the guard looking after the aeroplanes, have you got anything for me to do?” And he was just as dumbfounded as I was. He just said, “Just carry on with what you were doing.” So and that’s

how the war started in Singapore.

Oh you know, smoke and the smell of cordite and debris and all that sort of thing. And it was quite a rude awakening. That was the same night, same day as the Japs bombed

Hawaii, the same time. It was at night here but about the same time as they bombed Hawaii. I put it down as a terrific bit of organisation.

To bomb Hawaii, miles across the sea from Japan.

Well I was just, to start with I was sort of completely surprised

and when we go round that was the first bomb I’d seen and I think at that stage you’re too busy doing something or trying to do something, you know, you’re looking about what can I do, you know. I’m an airman or a soldier so I should be doing something and I was looking for somebody to order me and give me orders of what to do.

And then ok, then when the bombers leave and things settle down. There you are, you sort of realise that things are for real from now on, that things have started and that things are going to be different.

And of course you’re shaken too, shaken up you know, a bit fearful. So you know but it was such a surprise that the bombs were dropping even before we realised.

But these Jap aeroplanes, I can see them in the searchlights, rather beautiful, the whole wing of 18. Actually we didn’t get many bombs in Seletar that night at all. And that was the only damage done, 2 blokes killed I think, and a big bomb hole in the thing. I don’t where most of the bombs fell, a lot of them fell in

Singapore itself.

Mmmm?

Oh I don’t know what they intended to hit. But there were other, other aerodromes in Singapore.

And they didn’t do a lot of damage with us like some, quite a lot of, a few bombs hit out in the aerodrome, on the airstrip but…

I think they use to use mainly a 100 kilo,

a 100 kilo bombs.

Well if it hits you it would do an awful lot of damage. You know I mean it’s not a big bomb by modern standards but it was universally used. We use to use 250 pound bombs, quite a lot of them and

oh they’d do you know. If they hit an aeroplane they’d blow it up, hit a barracks it would kill quite a lot of people if they were in there.

It would have exploded on impact.

Oh well you know, depending on what the

ground was like you know whether it was hard stuff or whether it was soft or whether it had been raining. It would blow a hole about a couple of, went from this out to the side or a bit more. It all depends on what it’s hitting.

Well that depends, there’s all sorts of different kinds of bombs. There’s high explosives, which that’s suppose to blow up, made up a big hole or blow up certain things. And then some are designed to explode just above the ground

and shoot out shrapnel everywhere, they’re called anti-personnel bombs, and so you know it just depends on the type they were using.

When what type were we using?

Well I thought they were using ordinary high explosive bombs

Well it hit this building, so it blew a lot of it up , it didn’t kill, it didn’t blow the whole lot up but it blew quite a lot of it you know. It sort of went through the building and as it exploded it wrecked and made a bit of a mess

Mmmm?

Oh there were a few, yeah a few others on the place yes. But that was the only one near me at the time.

Oh well I went back to check

on the aircraft and to see what all the other blokes were doing cause I’ve got a job, so I just carried on doing that. And of course, in the morning we all got together, had a lot of talk and discussion, one thing or another and when you know, what was in store for the next time. So then on we got bombed from them, from time to time.

No, I didn’t know them. They were staff from the NAAFI.

We’re back to Evans Head are we?

Oh yeah, yes from then on, while we were there you know they’d come over every now and again. And at the time there was very little to oppose them. Later on they got some Hurricanes and then

that quietened them down a bit. But oh no, there was quite a lot. I was in the, first we were in, we were living in the married quarters. This Seletar, this was quite a big air force base. And when the war broke out they sent all the married, the women and children, they were family of some of the air force blokes,

they sent them away to India or somewhere and we were billeted in the married quarters which were little sort of houses. And we use to have to walk over to the, it was quite a way from there to the mess where we had our meals and also to the administrative part of the building. It was quite a long walk. I remember one day

we walked across, and while we were over at the mess for breakfast the Japs came over and dropped bombs all over the place but they didn’t drop them where we were. And we went back afterwards to the married quarters and that’s where they dropped them. And the one that I was in, that I lived in. When I got up there was a great hole in the roof and a piece of shrapnel about that long lying on the bed.

So I’m glad I was away at the time. So you know that was, happened a couple of times. Another time they came over and I dived into the nearest slit trench, they had them all over the place. So you cowered in them until they went away.

And one landed pretty close, if nothing more I found that extremely frightening, being in a bombing raid. I can imagine these bombing, you know in England, and in Germany it must have been terrible for people there.

You know you’re waiting, and you’re just waiting. Well I must admit I was very scared, I didn’t like it.

Yes it’s called ‘My Dugout’ and it’s to EEA, that’s my mother’s initials. “The ground is soft outside, the swift rush of feet, cowering close against the muddy trench,

as men take cover from the deadly heat, a crash like howl and faith withers under, and the blinding flash of dangers past tell survivors of their lurking fate. Inside the dugout fashioned with blood and sweat, alone, models necessity of life, roughly crude as if life itself,

in the fitful dark, like by an open fire, lives one emblem of a different sphere, it is a photograph of yourself. And as I look the burning fire, striving for breath at it’s very life, leaps from it’s glowing bed and casts a friendly gleam upon your face, lights your eyes and written there I read, loyalty and

truth and a steadfast gaze of one who looks upon the world with sympathy and trust but there from apart and wonders why such things must be hunger, shame and poverty and feels both pain and pity in her heart.”

He wrote quite a few actually.

Well mostly you know, just ones to my mother that I’ve got. He probably did write, he wrote one about my brother and called it ‘My Boy Bill’ you know. I think if he hadn’t have been a grazier, he would have been a writer.

Ah yes, well after we graduated we are given our wings, well actually as a navigator I only got a half wing which was in the form of a wing with an ‘O’ on it and it got the, naturally

it got the name of the Flying Arsehole.

Oh well quite literally we couldn’t do anything else.

No I think we

did for individual ones but not as a general thing as I can recall, no.

Yes Johnny Blunt and Bruce Applebee. Bruce was a New Zealander.

Well soon after I got to Singapore,

we were sort of formed together and we stayed together right through.

No except I. No Johnny Blunt didn’t come up on the same boat, no.

Well Johnny was short, fairly short, rather

a larrikin, liked his grog and that’s probably why he died fairly young but he was a good bloke, a very good bloke, he came from Melbourne and Bruce, Bruce was fairly tall and thin and

I only found one fault with Bruce, he was fair too intrepid for my liking, especially when we were going on a raid or something. I wanted to get over and get home but he wanted to make sure and have another go, you know.

Yes, well I think he felt he

wanted to be in it, wanted to get the job done. I think it’s in the book. On one raid we went to, suppose to be going to that, was that devastating raid to Endau when we lost most of the Squadron and our plane got hit by bombs

and the Squadron Leader from our flight said he had to take our plane. Anyway he said, “There’s another plane down there that they’re working on now, and they might get it ready if you want to come.” So Bruce got very excited we went down and found the, this plane and

we had a couple of mechanics working on it and he got very disappointed when they couldn’t get the engine revs up, and by that time I had some sort of imminent premonition that this raid wasn’t going to be a lot of fun. And I wasn’t at all sorry when it was called off.

Oh, I think Johnny went along with me.

It certainly was. It was a, because of our (UNCLEAR) the Wildebeest we were told, more or less promised that we wouldn’t be used in a daylight raid and up til that date

all we done, we’d done all our work at night. Bombing and you know as the Japs came down the peninsula. Anyway this was a bit of a crisis, there were troops being landed at a place called Endau, which is only a bit over a hundred miles up from Singapore. And the power that be decided that they had to throw everything into it

to try and stop them. So the, we had two squadrons, the Wildebeest, 100 which I was in and 36. They both had the same plane and the same set up. And they took off in two lots, 100 Squadron took off,

I think it was about 2 o’clock and the other, and then 36 took off a little later. But they didn’t realise or if they did they didn’t do anything about it. The Japanese had already taken an aerodrome about a quarter of an hour’s flying in an Avro from where this landing was. So when the boys got to the site

they saw the ships, the crew, they were dived on by all these Japanese fighters. So it was you know chaos. Squadron Leader Rowlings, the head of the Squadron he was shot down. A lot of others shot into the sea. And out of the whole 2 Squadrons of 24 planes,

13 were shot down, it was a bit of a disaster. And I think that night in the mess it was a terrible feeling. You know all these blokes gone, 3 crews so that was 39 people missing. Strangely enough a lot of those blokes got back. They crashed into the sea,

and were picked up, some were picked up by British destroyer. And a funny incident was, there was another type of plane we had that was sort of with the Squadron called Albertcors and they were a cabin plane, rather similar but a cabin plane. And it had a navigator and

a gunner and they were in the cabin behind the pilot. And the, they got shot at by these Navy Overfighters but they crashed down and happened to get away but the plane got hit

rather badly and it was sort of shuttering and playing up getting home. And the gunner and the navigator couldn’t make contact with the pilot, the RT [radio telephone] system must have been knocked or hit or something but he couldn’t make…

And they thought the plane was going down and they jumped out, parachuted out and the pilot got back to base with no crew. That crew added quite amusement in the Squadron after they got over all the problems. And a lot of the other blokes got out, got out in parachutes

and walked home and that sort of thing. I forget how many in the final thing but it wasn’t quite as bad in deaths as it seemed to be at the start.

No one in the plane no.

But that was a disaster as far as the Squadron was concerned.

By a Flight Commander.

I think he was but he got back. No he was hit, I think his pilot was,

one of them dragged back and he was badly wounded and he had to get a leg taken off I remember that.

I didn’t go to a lot. We use to chug off at night and I remember bombing

fuel installations and various Japan placements and one thing and another, but we didn’t strike much opposition. I think that the, when we flew over an area, like we bombed that aerodrome later that the Japs were flying from, when they shot

down all our planes. We went back there a couple of times and bombed and luckily they didn’t seem to have night fighters. They didn’t get us that way. I think that they probably heard the planes and thought they were the Hudsons. Hudsons doing

about 3 times our speed or half twice our speed. So I think everytime they started firing at us they fired ahead.

Beg your pardon?

Well one particular one I remember quite clearly, when we were sent off to bomb that aerodrome

It was at a place, Kwampong it was at night and fairly late I forget exactly the time. Anyway you go down to the crew room to start with and there you are briefed, told what your targets going to be, told you know, how many bombs your carrying and told if they had any information about what was on the drome.

Told you what to expect and so off you went when you got that information. Set course and hope you got there. Well on this particular night we got there ok, dropped our bombs without incident then I gave the pilot a course to come home.

I think it might have been the course I gave, 85 or 75 or something like that. Anyway away we went and it was pretty late and pretty tired. After I gave the pilot the course I sort of settled down and

was dozing more or less. And suddenly he talked to me over the RT and said, “Peter shouldn’t we be over water?” And I said, “No Bruce we shouldn’t.” So he said, “Well we are.” I think he said, “Well we bloody well are.” So I said, “Well wait a minute then,” and I had a look and sure enough then we were heading over the

China Sea, we were heading over to the unknown. And so I quickly had a look and then I gave a correction of course, and he went back on that and I was a little bit concerned because when you came into Singapore you had to come in on a special course

because otherwise likely, the ack ack [anti aircraft] were likely to open up on you because Jap fighters use to come in, Jap use to come in at night and bomb. Anyway I must have done the right thing ‘cause we didn’t get shot at and we landed safely.

No, no,

very little. No there was a little bit from the aerodrome but no not much, not at night anyway.

No because it was night.

Well flying at night they can’t see you as well. And unless they’ve got night fighters you know, you’re fairly safe from other aircraft.

Well the Wildebeest was a large biplane fabric covered with timber

stays and that in the wing. And it had single engine, a large single engine of about 7 or 800 horsepower and the pilot sat in front just behind the propeller. He had one

gun, a machine gun that shot through the propeller. Next to him was the navigator who sat in the middle under the wing, so and then the gunner was at the back. So there’s, it was open, there was a tunnel going down the aircraft and so if the pilot, the navigator had to get out by

parachute or something he had to go down this tunnel and push the gunner out first.

No.

‘Cause the wing was right ahead of you, everything, if you tried to walk out on the wing you’d get mixed up with all the struts and the wires.

Oh you come up to the side behind the wing, got up onto the wing and then jumped in.

No.

(UNCLEAR)

You know when I said a larrikin I suppose I meant when we were out together at a party or something he’d be always the one that would be inclined to play up you know. And as I said before, he enjoyed a drink and but anyway he was a very good bloke.

No, no, we walked down Lavender Street and that was enough to have a look. Lavender Street was the street of all the prostitutes. No there wasn’t much opportunity actually.

The only ladies that I saw there was the Australian women started a sort of a NAAFI for the troops in Singapore. Most of them were middle-aged if I remember correctly.

No that was just the street of all the ladies of the night that’s all. You know and the Chinese, most were nearly all Chinese. And they’d be sort of hanging out enticing you in.

Oh it was for the ones that didn’t care. Nearly anybody that went they usually ended up with VD. There was a hospital in Singapore

especially for VD cases.

Oh my word. Oh they warned you, gave you condoms, they were issued with condoms and also an evil stuff called, we use to call it Blue ointment or something you were suppose to inject that.

Where do you think?

Right up it.

That was supposed to keep all the bugs away.

We use to go to a place in Singapore, it was called the

World. And they had what they call taxi dances you paid for a dance, all these girls, they were Chinese girls, very nice some of them, very beautiful and you could go in and pay your money, and have a dance with them, and have a drink with them but no funny business.

And that was one place we use to go to.

No that was up in the better part of town.

Oh with a lot of them yes, some of them. But I didn’t see many of our blokes go there.

Not that I know of, they could have.

It wasn’t a crime. It was for the Japs. They use to get into awful trouble.

Well we got on fairly well. We went into the RAF Station of course, that was a British setup. Well we had to get

use to the sort of class system, I mean the officers were another being, the English officers you know, they were, I think they’d be in their training everything. They were sort of, once they became officers they were apart from men and they were encouraged to be apart. I think that was so that they can

probably keep command better. But in Australia it was entirely different. I mean we still treated our officers as officers, we still had to salute them or suppose to, but I mean especially in the air force and especially amongst the crew, it was very much as a lot of friends you know, we all got on pretty well.

So that took a while to swallow a different sort of set up that the English had. But they sort of, I think we quietened them down after a while. And they became more you know, more sociable. And they were pretty good, especially amongst the ones we had, they were all, most of them were permanent officers, permanent British officers,

that was another reason that they would be different and different from the men. Like it’s not like a peacetime army like an Australian Army where they just take up civilians and put them in the army. But if you’re like in the British Army they’re trained from, from you know, from the start to be whatever they are private, what have you. And

so there is a difference. But we eventually got on pretty well. Some of the English, some of the English crew they were a bit different to us and we’d throw off on them a bit and they’d probably do the same to us. But on the whole you know we got on reasonably well, well very well.

No, not amongst us anyway.

Bastards. Well I never had to really come in contact with them but you know they weren’t particularly liked. And I’ll tell you one case, it wasn’t in our

Squadron, he was in the army, an Australian, a Sergeant I think he was. And he was in the Happy World I think they use to call it, it was a dance pavilion and he was as full as a boot, one particular night and he pulled out his revolver

and started shooting into the roof. And of course the Military Police picked him up and threw him in the jail. And it took the, I heard later that it took our, some of the Commanders in the army, it took a lot to get him out.

The Pig.

I suppose because it got along like a pig.

I had one; it’s on that table. It’s a photograph of

the girl I was going out in Brisbane for quite a long time, quite a serious, you know we were quite serious and I had her photograph in my wallet in my (UNCLEAR). I use to take that and that was when I eventually got shot, the bullet went through it. I’ve still got it to show the bullet marks.

Merle Knight she was a model.

I think the crowd in Brisbane amongst the people, I sort of knew her, you know. She was friends of friends and that sort of thing.

Oh well we just met and then when I was at like, before I took her out a couple of times, but then when I was at Sandgate waiting to get away I use to go to Brisbane, for leave. That’s when I use to pick her up somewhere; we use to spend a lot of time at Lens Hotel and

yeah we, it was, we had quite a good relationship.

Oh she’d have been a year or two younger than me. She was about 18, 19, 19 she would have been.

Oh yes, knew them. I had to behave myself.

Well when I left I was,

but of course the war intervened and you know by the time I got things, I did meet her again a couple of times, she already had somebody else by that time and I had already met somebody else you know, things had moved on.

Well I think it was in Brisbane, the Premier nightclub at that time was a place called Princes, which was an upmarket place you know. So as I remember, I remember taking her out there and we had a very pleasant evening and one thing and another. And tearful goodbyes

as you would have. And well that was it.

I don’t think so. I don’t think so, we hadn’t become quite that serious you know. We were mainly having a lot of fun. Going out together sort of.

No. But on that, I don’t mind if you look at it. That photograph that’s in on the table there, on the back she wrote a list of things we’d been doing. It said it all much better than I could say it.

I think I got one letter, I think.

I probably did, yes. But you know things move on don’t they. You know, when you, especially when there’s a war on.

I wasn’t concerned, we weren’t

in touch, we just had a good time together and we parted. I mean we weren’t engaged or anything like that, there were no hold ups.

Now you want the story from

from when we landed in Singapore.

Oh yes,

Ok. Well from there on, after that.

Well

after that catastrophe at Endau the powers that be didn’t send us out on any more daylight raids. But we still potted about doing you know, doing night work, night raids. And then of course the Japanese they kept coming closer and closer down the peninsula

and then of course there was a night or a day in the mess when we heard that the Prince of Wales and the what was the other ship? The two British battleships that were sunk by the Japanese aircraft off Singapore. The British had sent the

two battleships out cause they thought if the Japanese tried to land troops you know, nothing would stand against them. They were naïve, they didn’t think that aeroplanes could be a danger to battleships, this was the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. The Prince of Wales was the latest British battleship and the Repulse was another

very, they were very big, 18 inch guns, god knows all the anti-aircraft stuff in the world, and you would have read the story would you? The Japanese sunk them with aircraft and pretty quickly. Anyway that gave us an awful shock. We knew then that you know,

we felt that Singapore would be taken, up until that time we thought we’d hold it. And after that happened you know we got very down in the dumps about it all.

The feeling was terrible, it really was. It was the first time we, up

til that time we thought we’d hold Singapore but when that happened we could see the writing was on the wall pretty well. And it was such an unexpected thing. When these battleships arrived, they arrived with a great fanfare and talk of these wonderful ships arriving and they’d clean up the whole Japanese nation.

But then to see that they were sunk in about an hour by Japanese aircraft. I think that was the first time that battleships were sunk by aircraft and that’s when you, from then on the whole strategy of naval warfare changed.

Yeah I think we did, I think that was some time before Singapore fell, I think we must have. There’s a lot of conjecture,

people saying he shouldn’t have left the troops and all that sort of thing, but we weren’t in the army so we weren’t as close to it.

Well as I said, we were very despondent at that but as far as our squadron was concerned we didn’t do a lot after that except we were still flying around

bombing at night, and this went on til the Japanese got close enough to shell the aerodrome. So then our powers that be decided that it was time we moved.

No, not really, not that I considered a close shave.

No.

Yes we received the news that we should leave, so off we set, we took all our luggage, which wasn’t much ‘cause we took what we could get. And the plane was really,

we also took, those horrible torpedo’s with us and that was the reason why we couldn’t fly out. If we had taken spare fuel tanks instead we would have been able to fly to Australia but we had these ¾ ton torpedoes under our belly. And we flew out with them and an extra person on the plane. We took one of the

ground crew with us, so we had 4 people, all our luggage, ammunition and what have you, they were pretty heavily loaded. And we landed at Palembang at Sumatra and anyway we were there. I think we had a meal there that’s right. When I say a meal it was out of a bully bag, brew beef tin. Then we

took off again and I still remember that take off. Off we went and we had this, we were fully loaded with torpedoes underneath and it wasn’t a particularly long runway, and I could watch as we struggled up, we could see the trees at the end of the runway and we were almost there, we just crawled apart. I think we might have tipped some of the branches

it was so close. Anyway off we went and in the goodness of time we got it to Batavia, landed and then were put into some Dutch barracks in Batavia itself to start with. And yes I remember that

because the officers went off and stayed in hotels. So we were there for a while and then we were shifted out, the squadron was shifted out to a jungle strip out of Batavia. And we settled there, I think we settled, we had a big, large Chinese house,

that’s where we barracked yes. Anyway by this time the Japanese were getting closer to Java and then we heard the horrible news I think that the Prince of Wales, not the Prince of Wales, the Perth and the Huston were sunk in the Straits

of the Java Sea or the Straits of Java. So we knew that the Japanese were going to be around pretty smartly so we were getting ready to go and attack the Japanese landing fleet when they arrived. And this is where I seem to be lucky, like I missed that raid at Endau when we lost all those planes,

and we were getting briefed up for this attacking the Japanese Invasion Fleet and then the CO [Commanding Officer] said to Bruce one day. He said, “Bruce there’s a few, there’s two aircraft we left on the strip at Batavia.” The crew had gone to Australia I think, I don’t know why but they did. And, “We want you to go and get them.”

So they sent two of us, Bruce and a New Zealander and the crews. And we were given what they call an imprest account that means we were given money and sent off to, and also we took some mechanics with us to check the planes. So when we got to Batavia we found a hotel and settled down. And the mechanics

went out to look the planes up and we told them not to hurry because things look much better here than they were out on the jungle strip. And we did meet, I don’t know, we met a couple of Dutch girls but we didn’t have time to get anywhere. Anyway we were in the hotel and then we were there for a couple of days and then

we saw a tremendous amount of commotion outside and on the street. (UNCLEAR) cries and found that the Japs had landed not far down the coast, so we thought my god we’d better get back to the squadron. So at last we got hold of the blokes. The mechanics said they’d have, the planes were going ok and out we went to the airstrip and got the planes out. Just before

we took off a dispatch rider arrived on a bike, a motorbike and said, “Look don’t go back to your original airport because the Japs might be there.” So we said ok. So we set course for another one, place further down and

landed there and there was about, there was a few other crews went down there to so we had about. 1,2,3,4, 4 crews I think and we settled into a hotel there and life was pretty good you know, food wasn’t too bad and everything was going ok. And while this was happening

the rest of the squadron they set off to attack the Japanese Fleet that was coming in. And while this was going on we were luxuriating in a hotel. I never asked for it, it just happened. And we lost our second commanding officer in that raid and a few others, quite a few others. That was the next big lost for the

squadron. So anyway we were at this hotel for a while and then we got orders to go up to Bandung which was up on the mountains, about 6000 feet up. And by that time we’d been reduced to, our commanding officer, we lost what 1,

2,3 commanding officers in that short time we were in Singapore. Something of a record I think. And we, our commanding officer now was a flight lieutenant, Flight Lieutenant Ellison. And Ellison didn’t really believe in navigators I don’t think.

He thought he could do it better himself. So he took off, we were to go on a raid from Bandung to this aerodrome that the Japs had taken in Java soon after they landed. So we set off in the evening, I think soon after,

not long after dark, the moon was shining. So we set off and Ell said, “No we won’t.” The right thing to do in my book was to go up high, higher than all the mountains and set course to Bandung and then come down. But Ell said, “Oh no we’ll follow the railway line.” Ok. so off we went

and that was ok for a while. While we could see the lines gleaming in the moonlight, but as we started to go up, the mist started to come in and suddenly, suddenly we’d lose sight, we couldn’t see the ground and Ell starts circling, he circles to try and find something he could see and I thought my god. I’d been watching the map

and seeing these bloody mountains saying we’re going to crash into one of these, we can’t miss. Anyway this went on for a while, I was more scared then, than I’d been in any of the bombing raids I’d done I think, because it was just inevitable I could see the mountains you know, we’d just come round and just missed them. And anyway it cleared

and we got up there ok. And in Bandung mostly we landed on what you call a flare path, do you know what that means? Well they light a light of flares or sort of landing things in long line, along the side of the airstrip and the pilot judges and he comes down on that. And that’s what we were use to, but they didn’t have that in

Bandung, instead of landing on an, what did I say it was, flight strip, they landed on a searchlight. They put a searchlight down on the runway and you’re supposed to land in the beam you know. Well Bruce had never done that, well when he came in,

he landed all right, hit the tarmac but he was a bit off course and he tried to get it back onto the strip because there was, when you got down there there was sort of little lights to show you where to go because the rest of the stuff was festooned with bomb holes. So we got off the strip but couldn’t get back on

and we got slower and slower and we got down to about 15 knots I suppose, straight into a bomb hole. After the poor old plane went up right on it’s top but it didn’t go right over it stopped in a very ungainly position in this bomb hole. So we got out and you could hear the petrol running out of the tanks.

And of course there’s fire, fire, so we got out as quickly as we could. I even, as soon as I could get to the wing I jumped, I didn’t try to climb. Anyway we got away from the plane and off we went and when we got there some of the others that had landed were already being briefed to get on this other

raid. Their planes, they had to land at Bandung to pick up bombs and so they eventually went off, we saw them off, we didn’t have a plane. And no we didn’t have a plane so we couldn’t go anywhere. So anyway

the pilot went off to see if he could get in touch with somebody to find out what we were supposed to do. Bruce, Johnny went off somewhere I don’t know, probably to get a drink and I was pretty tired and feeling a bit, what’s the word when you’ve been through something and you feel the stress of it you know.

A bit stressed I suppose yeah, so I was sitting down, half asleep and suddenly I heard a loud voice burling at me, “Sergeant is that your bloody aircraft out on the aerodrome?” So I got up and here’s a

British officer full of braid, there was braid everywhere. I think he was a wing commander I think he was or even higher. So I said, “No sir, not mine, but I’m the navigator.” And he said, “I don’t want any cheek,” and I said, “All right sir,” and he said, “Well get the bloody thing off, planes will want to land, and get there and they’ll run

into that heap you’ve got out there.” So I said, “Oh sir, I don’t speak Dutch and I don’t know anybody.” He said, “Use your bloody initiative man.” And I said, “Yes sir.” So off I went, so I hunted around and I found a Warrant Officer, a Dutch Warrant Officer and I told him the plight I was in, the trouble I was in and asked him for assistance, so he said

“I’ll help you.” So he got hold of a tractor and we went out hooked up on the old pig and started to pull it off and when that was started it was starting to get daylight then and then I thought it was time to get off the airstrip, the Japs will be over in any minute. So off we went and then I don’t know how he quite did it but Bruce, he had,

he got hold of another plane somewhere, someone had, what was happening then, they were sending a lot of the crews back to Australia by ship, this was we knew it was all over. And you know they had to park a plane somewhere and here’s an extra plane or a couple we’ve found up at Bandung.

So Bruce got hold of it and made sure it had some fuel and we found out that the, our base now was a place called Tasikmalaja, down further south in Java. See we’d been going backwards all the time, even since we were in Seletar we were going backwards, retreating

and anyway so we flew down to Tasikmalaja and we were billeted in an old school. It was a horrible town, it was very sort of stark and unlovely you know. Anyway we weren’t there long, I’ll hurry up a bit if I can, and we went out and we had to camouflage our

planes, that’s right. And we just got ours camouflaged out on the strip and it was half made, they’d been working on it and it had like I think, half the strip was bitumen and half was dirt I think or something like that. Anyway while we were out there, blow me dead if the Japs didn’t come over

and strafe us. And I remember diving into a slit trench with another bloke, there was all slimy water, that had been there for ages but I didn’t mind. I got as low as I could and anyway eventually after flying up and down the airstrip and trying to hit something they didn’t our plane. Anyway they were landing on the otherside and

that was, we got over that and we got back to our base. By this time it was about the 7th or the 8th, what was the date that the war finished, was it February? I forget it doesn’t matter you can look it up in the books. And it was the night or

day before the Dutch surrendered in Java. And so the powers that be that night, that was the night before the surrender, the powers that be of the British Air Force powers decided we’d make another raid on this

aerodrome, we were going to raid from Bandung. You know it was pathetic really, ‘cause then we had 3 aeroplanes left. To send 3 old lumbering Wildebeest to bomb an aerodrome when the war was nearly, you know when it was just about over. It was just a, they were just making a show

I think for the air force, ‘cause it wasn’t going to do any good. Anyway off we took, we were last and we had to circle up pretty high because we had to go over this mountain range, about 6000 feet and we were the last. And when we got, we could see the fires burning where the other two planes had attacked before us. And so we headed

for where the planes were burning and we were going to drop our bombs in that and Bruce said, “Oh we’ll drop two.” I had to fuse the bombs, he did the dive bombing, the old Wildebeest only did about a hundred a hour but when you wound it up into a dive bomb it got up something like 300. And so we did one dive bomb and brought it up again.

And then I said to Bruce, “Look Bruce I think we’ve done enough. I’ll fuse the rest of them.” And he said, “Ok.” So I fused the rest of the bombs, we had four we dropped at once, four 250’s and I still don’t know to this day whether we were hit by anti-aircraft fire or by our own bomb blast.

I know we went very low and we pulled out in a hell of a steep dive and I got some shrapnel in my arm when that happened, and I got quite a fright when I started to bleed in the arm and it was only a scratch. And anyway up we got and we started off to get up above this mountain range to get home, and it was ok. for a while, the old pig was taking, doing a good job. And then

suddenly it started to splutter, and then Bruce was working away at the control and it would pick up again and away she’d go. And this happened three or four times I suppose, but every time it stopped, the engine stopped, it got a bit longer. Anyway then it got going again and then suddenly it stopped and then there was an eerie quiet

and it didn’t start again. And Bruce said, “You’d better jump.” So I crawled down the back, we had a parachute that went on the front, slipped it on. Johnny was in the back hesitating and I said, “Jump you fool! I can’t get out until you go.” So I nearly pushed him to get him out.

And off Jack jumped, he went and Bruce in all this time kept the plane steady for us, while we jumped and he didn’t try to do more, I don’t know what he was going to do. So anyway I think it’s, you’ve read that book have you, it’s all in there. When I pulled the ripcord

these parachutes need servicing pretty regularly and this had been, I’d been using it as a pillow out in the jungle and it had got wet and that sort of thing, and when I pulled the ripcord nothing happened. And so I started clawing at the canvas, the cover of the ripcord, and then I don’t know why, but I felt oh I’d hate to be smashed up on the ground,

so I thought I’d better shoot myself and actually tried to. My right hand tried to get hold of my pistol, and actually I only got a far as getting my hand on it that’s all. And I was clawing at this thing and suddenly it opened and almost immediately I hit the ground. It was that close.

So anyway I landed and then, I landed in a sort of a half dry paddy field, it was a sort of not muddy but damp. And I got out of that and I got out of the parachute but I took off the little,

chute that opens before the parachute, that pulls the chute open, I’ve got one of them on the table. And I set off and suddenly I heard somebody yelling and screaming and it was Johnny and we got together and we set off, we found a path and we set off and as we walked along this we could sort of see

fleeting figures disappearing ahead of us. We worked out later it was the local natives. Wondering who we were and getting out of the road. Eventually we came to the headquarters of a tea plantation and Johnny, oh then we saw a little group

of natives, with one native in a white coat ahead and thought he must be some sort of an official. So Johnny went ahead to meet them and I stayed behind and got my trusty 45 out to attack the Japanese Army I think. Anyway it was, he was one of the head men at the tea plantation so

he said ok, and he told us there was a room over there we could sit in and he’d find the, yeah he’d find the Manager for us who I think lived in that separate house and was asleep somewhere.

So ok I settled down in this room and I was pretty tired and I was half asleep and suddenly there’s a noise and I woke up to looked down the barrel of a 45. It was a Dutch officer and a group of Dutch, not Dutch, native troops with rifles and fixed bayonets behind

him, just checking that I wasn’t a spy or something you know. So anyway they gave us some cigarettes and we had a beer, which was very welcomed. And then we went out to look for, we heard from a mate that a plane had crashed and we went out to have a look and sure enough there was Johnny with sort of

sitting up, half sitting, all smashed up, brains all down him. And I’ve always been very annoyed with myself ever since for not getting out his wallet and that sort of thing, but I just couldn’t you know. We’d

been mates for a long time and got on well together, but I couldn’t sort of go through his broken body. So we made arrangements eventually for them, for him to be buried properly and all that sort of thing, and the Manager of the Tea Plantation gave us a car and a driver and took us back to our

base at Tasikmalaja. So we were there for a while, not long, and the next day we heard that the Dutch had chucked it in, well they didn’t do any fighting at all hardly. A little group of Australians did a bit of fighting but that was about all on Java.

And so apparently the Dutch had ordered that our Commanders to surrender, we were to go to a specific place and lay down our weapons and wait for the Japs to come and collect us. Well most of the English

in the Squadron decided to do that but the Australians and New Zealanders we decided we’d have a shot at getting a boat or something on the coast, we weren’t far from the coast and seeing if we could get away. So we got hold of a truck, one of those army trucks. We loaded it up with guns and off we set and we were

hunting around the coast looking for, we hadn’t actually got onto the coast when we ran into a couple of British officers in a jeep, they were flying a white flag and they said, “Look if we were you, you’d better, there’s Japanese patrols all along the coast, their navy’s

out from the coast and they’ve sunk nearly every boat that’s left the coast.” He said, “You’d better get up a white flag and get rid of your arms, just keep a few for self protection from the natives in case they get, annoy you at night. Otherwise if a Jap patrol comes on an armed group like you they’ll just wipe you out.”

“Well,” we said, “they’ll take us prisoner?” “Well,” he said, “they are taking prisoners.” So ok we had a bit of a conference then and some of the (UNCLEAR) said, “Oh, lets hang on and if they catch us we’ll fight out with them.” But then the cooler ones like myself decided no

we got a chance of living why not. So we ended up, we voted on it and we ended up getting thrown, well we were right next to a waterfall and we threw all the arms down the thing. And while we were throwing the arms away, I was next to a bloke name Valentine he was a New Zealander and he was getting these arms out, and he picked up a 38 and he was about there from me and the damn thing went off.

It went right through my chest, it missed my heart by about an inch. Anyway I collapsed in a heap, I thought that was the end. And I thought what a way to end up, a dusty dirty rag in the middle of Java. Anyway the boys, they got me, got me back on the truck, as comfortable as possible and they found out from some natives

that there was a plantation hospital further up, up in the hills. And they thought they’d take me up there. So off they set and it was an extremely agonising drive. I could hardly breathe and it was hurting like hell and the road was rough

but eventually we got there, I think it might have been about 20 miles or something like that. And when we got there the manager’s wife, she was a nurse and use to run this hospital but she took me into their house and she

gave me some injections of morphine, most wonderful thing I’ve ever had to have, you know. I could feel the pain slowly easing away, not altogether but at least the really tough bit. And then she had a look at my wound, that bullet was, a 38 bullet,

revolver bullet, a hard one and it went in between two ribs and lodged just under, between two ribs on the way out, and she cut it out with a razor blade. And so that was ok, and looked after me, she was terrific. Her husband, who was the manager he wasn’t so keen. I think he thought

he would get into trouble with the Japs. But she sort of sent him away and did everything possible to make me comfortable. And I’ve always felt that I did the wrong thing and not finding out her address and getting in touch with her after the war because you know, without her I don’t know what would have happened. But I

was there for, I’m not quite sure I can’t remember how long, but it was a number of days by this time. I’d got better and quite a lot better and we had, she opened a bottle of champagne and we had, she made a cake and we had a little celebration. And then out of the blue an ambulance arrived

one of British Ambulance and it had been sent up, the boys that had brought me up they realised by that time the hope was to find a boat anything like that, so they went back to where they were told to go, where the Japs had told them to settle, they told our commanding officers where I was

and they were able to send out an ambulance to pick me up. And so they picked me up and took me back to, and on the way back near Bamola or somewhere on the road we passed a Jap checkpoint and they…

The ambulance back was open and here was a little Jap with a rifle nearly as big as himself and that was the first Japanese I’d seen. So he didn’t (UNCLEAR) we closed the door and they took me to Bandung Hospital which had been taken over by Weary Dunlop for the troops. There had been a bit of a battle going on

at a place called Buitenzorg where Australian soldiers were involved, quite a lot of them had been wounded and they were bringing these wounded soldiers in from the battlefield. And they, so when I arrived there, this was a day or so after that or a couple of days after that and so

I settled into the hospital there.

I’m sorry? I haven’t got my hearing aid in.

No, no I knew that they’d get beaten. Just knew it.

I mean, well I always had faith that we’d eventually beat them, but when I come to think about it I didn’t really know for certain until they attacked America. And then I knew they’d, you know I couldn’t understand they could be so stupid as to attack America.

Well I thought that at one stage, they certainly would have only if, except for the Americans, except for the Battle of the Coral Sea they’d you know, have been here.

I didn’t quite get you then?

Oh yeah when he died, yeah.

No, no we made arrangements

with the Manager of the Tea Plantation, made arrangements with him and so I presume that he was buried on that plantation.

Yes, yes we did, wonder about it. Wondered whether but that was the only thing we could do at the time.

Let the authorities know and just make arrangements for him to be looked after. Because everything was so fluid then, see the Japs were taking over the country. So you couldn’t really make any permanent arrangements and take the body somewhere.

I don’t know what’s wrong I’m not hearing you properly now?

Yeah 4 people in the aircraft.

Oh well we just more or less stood.

There was a seat for the gunner but the extra person we took he just came in with me and we just managed, I forget now what we did but he probably sat down on the floor.

No just taking

a group of them or a handful of them, taking them and throwing them down ‘cause we didn’t quite know what to do and we thought at least that would just more or less dispose of them, then they’d be hidden down there. And that’s all we did and it was just unfortunate that this one must have been loaded

and it happened to go off. Wrong time.

No.

No just had to pick it up, he was a New Zealander, Petty Officer Valentine. pilot officer Valentine.

I was conscious at that stage yes, I was conscious all the time.

Oh well it was a group of the blokes, we were all together. Johnny was there and two or three others and then I came and they,

did what they could to look after me, what anybody would do.

They didn’t. It didn’t bleed much.

It just went straight through, it missed, or just tipped I think the bottom of the lung and just missed the heart.

Yes, Weary Dunlop was the medical officer in charge and there was another two very fine doctors there, a Doctor Moon, he was a major and another one, I can’t, I think his name was

MacKeller or something like that. But there were three Australian doctors and they were tops, really good men. Anyway by this time we had a little bit of an infection on the wound and Weary handed me over to Major Moon after looking at me and,

I don’t know if it was that or later I got a bit of malaria as well of course, you always get these complications just to make things worse. So then I settled down in the hospital and interestingly opposite me in two beds were two Englishmen,

you might have heard of them, one of them was very well known, Bill Griffiths, heard of Bill Griffiths? It’s a wonder. Bill Griffiths got, I think he might have stood on a mine or got too close to one, he lost both eyes and both arms

and they brought him in and they told me that, at that time they were bringing in other wounded soldiers and he was so badly wounded they didn’t think he’d live. So the doctors were looking at the people they thought they could save first. Anyhow when they’d done that, Bill was still alive, so Weary patched him up

and got him going again. He went through the whole war as a prisoner of war, he had an indomitable spirit you know, he wanted to live. After the war he became a great help for blind people, he joined some association and he use

to give lectures, he was still totally blind. And he came out to Australia a couple of times. Weary brought him out I think once, he was really some person. I was right in the bed opposite him, and next to him was another Englishman and he’d had a similar experience

and he lost, he was blind in both eyes and badly hit with shrapnel and wounded in various spots, so was Bill Griffiths, but he still had his arms. But I can’t remember his second name, it was Joe. But I think Joe died soon after the war. He could

see Joe just didn’t have that will to live, he wanted to die you know, whereas Bill Griffiths was prepared to go for it. And he got decorated by the Queen for his work for the blind after the war, quite some person.

Oh for sure, oh yes we met quite

a lot ‘cause later on. Well I was in that camp for quite a while and…

Mmmm?

The hospital I mean, I’m sorry. I just Bandung Hospital as far as I know. It was just happened to be taken over by Weary. He was in charge of a medical group that came out and landed in Java.

Then the after that, I don’t know how long it was, we went to Bandung camp. Now Bandung camp, at that stage I got there was still, people were still coming in. There would be at least 10,000 in it. A lot of Dutch and Ambonese, that’s

one of the island groups in the Dutch army and various other people, Americans, British, you name it we were all there. At this stage the Japanese were still sort of organising things, they hadn’t got down to really worrying too much about the prisoners of war. They just put guards of the gate. The object with prisoners of war

where Japs were concerned, the actual prisoners they carried on, like we carried on as if we were still in the air force. Our own officers took control and so on down the line. People kept their ranks and so on, so we were still a disciplined group. And in this one that came in, a lot of the Dutch

civilians were sort of, had ranks in the army according to what sort of business they were running or where they were in the commercial world. And half of them wouldn’t know a thing about what they were doing. And I don’t think any of them had ever fought anything, but they came in and they were prisoners. And some of them came in carting great

wheel carts of furniture and I think they even came in, some of them, with their own batman. And so, and they brought their own, they’d been to the banks before they came in and came in loaded with money and the camps started off and they were able to buy in stuff from the Chinese, and at that stage the Japanese weren’t

creating too much trouble. And the camps formed, it was just unbelievable. We had coffee shops going, we had a couple of nightclubs, men dressed up as, this was nearly all run by Dutch. Men dressed up as women. Oh you wouldn’t believe it was a prison camp. But the trouble was we had no money

so if you had any money you could go along to one of these cafes and buy a cup of coffee, but we didn’t have any money. So we had it. So this went on for quite a while and then the Japanese closed down a bit, and then I forget what happened. I think a lot of the groups in that camp were split up and went somewhere else, and Weary Dunlop left the hospital

all his patients must have been better or else sent back to camps and he took over that camp. And I was in that camp for quite, it was a very pleasant camp. The Japanese were not too much worry. They’d come around every now and again and make a nuisance of themselves, if you were suppose to... If you saw them you were supposed to bow and salute them, and if you didn’t get that you were likely to get a swipe

across the head or something. But you know they basically left us alone most of the time. And oh, they had camp concerts all sorts of things, education. There was big education schools because amongst the prisoners there were a lot of teachers, scientist all sorts of people you know. So they’d start classes on various things and classes on languages

and what have you. So you know it wasn’t too bad really. Except we were prisoners of, as far as we were concerned the food was pretty shocking. Three meals, we got three meals a day but the first was pat which was rice boiled up in water, and very thin, just thin, sort of a gruel. And if you were lucky a bit of salt.

And then at lunch it was the same thing pat, but with some vegetables and stuff in it, Chinese vegetables. And at night time we would get a small cup of steamed rice, and if we were lucky a bit of fish or something in it you know. So we got pretty hungry. And I got a disease called pellagra,

it’s a vitamin deficiency and it affects people that are use to the high protein diet. And of course I’d been out on properties and we lived on meat, out in the bush. So I got this and it’s, although we use to call it burning feet, your feet got temporary pain and you just had to keep walking, you couldn’t stop. And the only way you could get some relief was is if you could get

somewhere where there was a tap and put some cold water on it. Well there was never much cold water. There was a bit at Bandung. Bandung was 6000 feet. So this went on and I was in agony and I thought oh god, I don’t know how I’m going to last this, this is going to go on forever. But the Australians, there was still some money around

in with the camp, you know, the finances they brought in with them. So they decided to form a fund and for people in the hospital they tried to get them something a bit better. And they gave me… they were able to buy some eggs which were very cheap from the Chinese. And I got an egg

a day and that fixed it. High protein you see. And even though we got onto very bad diets in the future, worse, much worse than that one, I never got that again. So eventually after that we were sent to a camp back in Batavia

called Bicycle Camp, and it was run by a boot called Captain Sonny and he use to take it out on his own guards. He’d come in and bash them about. There use to be a system in the Japanese Army, the captain would come and bash the Sergeants, and the Sergeants would bash the corporals, and the corporals would bash the men. And that’s the way their system operates.

And I was not in that camp for very long, I was pleased to get out of it. And then I’ll move along a bit because…

Oh similar sort of diet the same sort of thing, pretty miserable. We were all at that stage, we’d been use to

you know, we hadn’t settled down to it so we were always hungry all the time. But you know we lived on it. We all started losing weight of course. And that was the process as you went on. And I was 14 stone when I went in.

I can’t recall a time?

Oh I can only give an approximate. I think I might have been in Bandung camp a number of months, a fairly long, a fairly good long stretch. And in Bicycle camp not very long at all.

I think we went to that by train, they pushed us into trucks, cattle trucks sort of system,

you know. And you didn’t go in luxury. So then

No, quite a lot, quite a lot.

but I know Weary Dunlop didn’t come with us. I don’t know where he went from that stage. I know where he went later on. But I forget the numbers now.

Well I think there was quite a lot of bashing going on from the Jap in that camp. And as I remember I think that some bloke tried to escape.

I can’t quite remember the story of what happened to him. But whatever it was it wasn’t good. Whether he was taken over by the Campy, the Japanese secret police or military police. And given a bad time, I’m not, or whether he was executed I just can’t remember. I think I’d left the camp by then.

Well it wasn’t hard to escape, you know you could more or less… There was a bit of a barbed wire apron, I know we had a fence made of native matting around the camp and a few barb wires you know. You could cut that and you could walk out. But the point was there was no point in escaping.

You stood out like nothing I know. I was going to say dog balls, you stood out you know as a white man amongst the natives. There was nowhere to go, you got out into the population. They were being paid by the Japs to pick any soldiers up, you know that had go out or got away. So there was a few

escapes tried in the early days but none of them ever came to anything, nobody got away. And

They tended to yes.

They tended to make things tougher for a couple of days, strict rules, if you were caught on any infringements you know they’d get stuck into you and all that sort of thing. That usually lasted for a little while and then

it would go back to the normal again. But that wasn’t a very pleasant camp at all. Well then I had another lucky strike. The Japanese in their wisdom decided, supplied, provided by some provisions of the Geneva Convention and they decided they’d form an officers camp. So when they did this

then they decided they need a staff for the officers camp. So they decided they’d get a group of NCOs and they’d be sent out to staff the camp. So they ask people for what their trades were, I didn’t have one. I was drafted as a farmer, so I said I was a carpenter. So off we went to this camp, a group of us

and I was the carpenter. I knew nothing about fixing up native huts and bamboo and that sort of thing. So anyway that’s what I became. And then all the 400 officers were sent out and as well as that the Japs needed by this time, decided to pay

the officers. And their system was they’d pay the officers the same amount as a Japanese officer but then they’d have it worked out, then they’d have a sort of a charge account. They’d charge them for, charged the officers for boarding, for lodging, for food, for everything. So when this was all over they didn’t get very much but they did

get something you know, they did get some money. So they were able to set up a camp fund. So we were able to augment our rations, the stuff that they bought in from the Japanese. The Jap officer in charge of the camp, a Captain Turnier he allowed this cause he got a rake off from the Chinese, he took a percentage, that was the way they worked

you know. And so this went on and they, suddenly from getting practically nothing to eat, we lived quite well. We got brown beans which are quite a good high protein diet, and other even occasionally a bit of meat to put in the stew. So you know life was starting to look good

and the Japs didn’t worry us too much as long as we saluted them (UNCLEAR) and it was interesting to watch the officers sent out to work. They were sent out to dig a vegetable garden, while we stayed at home and looked after the camp. So this was ok, and then for some reason I don’t quite know why,

I was promoted as Sergeant in charge of the hygiene system. My job was to go round and check the… what was going on in the kitchen and see that the things were as clean as they could be. The idea was to try and keep disease from breaking out in the camp. So

I had about three men and that was my job then to get around. So I spent quite a fair bit of time around the kitchen, looking at the drains and getting them clear and all this sort of thing.

Oh with a, native sort of, like a broom, a thing like a broom. A stick with a lot of reeds and things tied around it you know. A thing that the natives use.

And so that was then and this went on for some time. And then the Japanese decided things were going too well, the officers were getting it too good so they closed down the camp. Decided they weren’t going to have any more special officer camps. From then on,

after that a lot of the officers went out. Some of our officers stayed, a lot of the Dutch ones went out but we still had a fair few Dutch in the camp, about a thousand other (UNCLEAR) to the camp, mostly English, Australian, some Dutch what have you. And of course the

rations just flopped again, our lifestyle just collapsed. And so we went back to almost starving again and that camp was called Nakasura, that’s if I remember it, I think it was called Nakasura don’t ask me to spell it, it was a Dutch or Javanese word.

Anyway I remember one particular instant in that camp. At that stage I was being sent out on working parties. We’d go out to do various jobs and mainly cleaning up and we didn’t seem to be doing anything useful. But the Japs were there to make us do it. Prod you with a bayonet if you didn’t. So anyway

coming home one day I was about half way down, there was a long line of us and we were marching in a group of three you know, one behind the other and the three leading blokes were slowing down because some of the blokes weren’t too good. And the Japs were, trying to make them hurry up, they probably wanted to get

home, to get out to the brothel or something. But these three blokes in the front row were pretty obstinate and they kept sort of holding back and the Japs were getting more and more (UNCLEAR) And this went on and eventually the Japs start to get stuck into these three blokes, and one of them

couldn’t contain himself, so he took a swing at one of the Japs and gave him a hit you know, a fist, and of course all hell broke lose. Japs, rifles and guns came out and everybody was covered, and we were all marched back to camp and these three blokes were stood up in front of the guardhouse

and all they had on was shorts. And the Japs would every now and again would come out and bash them, knock them down and then order them up again and knock them down, order them up again. This went on all the evening and then they kept doing this.

And of course night came and mosquitos were around, you know it didn’t worry the Japs of course, and these blokes were getting a terrible hiding. And that’s the only time in prison camp that I could feel amongst us, amongst the men a sort of a feeling they’d had enough. And they were almost prepared to charge the Japanese guards.

You know there was, to have this feeling, we all had it. But then I forget whether better feeling prevailed or I think the Japs might have pulled a machine gun out. Anyway we quietened down and these blokes, this sort of went on until eventually they all, they just collapsed in a heap, they couldn’t get up again even if they were bashed up. And they were just left there. Left there til the morning.

They were left there all night and then they were picked up and taken and put into sort of solitary confinement cages for 2 or 3 days. We managed to smuggle some food to them but for that they didn’t get anything, the Japs didn’t give them anything. It was really horrible. And that was one of the worst instance I saw as a prisoner of war.

Anyway I was in that camp for…

Yep, well they survived that bit, I don’t know whether they survived the war because then I was in that camp for a little longer and then the Japs suddenly had a ‘tenko’, that means they had a parade and everybody except the staff which was me and a few others were paraded on the parade ground.

And then they were lined up and given injections and god knows what was in the injections. It was suppose to, I think it was suppose to be a, stopped them from getting dysentery, I think. Well that’s what we were told but I don’t know. And then the bulk of the camp was sent off to the railway lines.

That was another time I was lucky.

Oh have I. No I’m sorry I’m going ahead of myself. No that’s right, that’s right, yeah so this group of, a big lot were sent off, we didn’t know they were going off.

All we knew they were going on a working party somewhere. The Japs use to send out parties to build aerodromes and all sorts of things. And this was a party that was sent away. So when this happens, up til that stage all the cooking had been done by the Dutch, and because they’re the only ones that knew anything about rice and all this sort of stuff, the native stuff they cooked. So after this camp went out

our officer that was looking after the supply of the rations and all that sort of thing, a chap name Bill Moore, I think it was Bill. pilot officer Moore he came down to see me and said, “Oh we’ve got a bit of a problem. We’ve got nobody that

knows anything about cooking this stuff.” He said, “Now you’ve been in this hygiene (UNCLEAR) you’ve been in touch with the kitchen quite a lot haven’t you?” “Oh,” I said, “yes.” He said, “Well do you think you can take on the cooking?” Oh I scratched my head, I don’t know what I said but anyway I accepted.

You didn’t need recipes; you didn’t have recipes things to cook.

Mmmm?

Rice mainly, so rice and Chinese vegetables and things like that. And so I became, we had then, there was still a few Dutch in the camp, so they had some Dutch

cooks, and we had two shifts, twelve hours each. And I became in charge of our shift. So from then on I had to learn a bit about, I got a lot of hints from the Dutch on the other side and so I became Chief Cook.

Oh I don’t know. I probably did have a few.

But the food, it was pretty simple we had this paplin for breakfast, just this, it was more or less universal.

And then we had a similar sort of thing for lunch. We use to cook it up in things like 44 gallon drums and it was pretty hard work cause we had to be pretty strong because these drums had a loop in the top

and you could lift them off. It was all open fires you know, wadjongs, and open fires and fireplaces up about this high. And they were terribly hot in the tropics. And you’d sweat like a pig the whole time. And sometimes you had to lift these things, so you had to lift, you had to do quite a lot of hard work, and the shifts were twelve hours

and then you’d go and collapse. They weren’t beds they were just a long bamboo shelf and you got about 2 feet on each shelf. That’s where you slept. And so, as I said, I became Chief Cook and then on…

Well that was the last camp in Java. I was in that one for a long time. And then when we were sent over by a ferryboat type of thing to Singapore when we were crowded on like cattle,

and I was in another 3 or 4 camps in Singapore.

Well, you can look it up

when the Japs took Singapore, that’s when I was captured or shortly after that.

For the actual dates you can look…

Yes, the atomic bomb had been dropped. I was still a prisoner of war when the atomic bomb had been dropped. And then actually it was

some time after that before I came home. At that stage the British were just getting ready to invade Singapore, they were coming down from Burma and they were assembling all these ships at Rangoon, and that’s when the bomb went off and then everything stopped then of course. So it took the British 2 or 3 weeks to get down from

Rangoon to Singapore and we just hung around waiting until they came. The Japanese, while this was on, it was rather a funny feeling. There was a fully armed Japanese Army on Singapore but they’d been told, this was a Japanese (UNCLEAR) they’d been told to surrender. And they’d been told what to do. They were told to bring

like we’d been sent food parcels but we never got any. And then when, suddenly we got these food parcels came in, the Japs brought them in. So we, in fact some of the boys made themselves very sick trying to eat too much. And the Japanese did what the Commander who was

Mountbatten from Singapore, he gave the Japanese Commander in Singapore from Burma, he gave them orders and they just carried out those orders, it was unbelievable. And when the British arrived the Japanese were all lined up, they had soldiers to keep the streets cleared, everything organised for the British to come up

and land and you know, to surrender and do everything. But the British landed, they didn’t land to start with. Their troopships came just outside, and soldiers came off in small attack packs, and commandos cased the shore at different parts, and jumped up on buildings, and set up machine gun posts, and while this the Japs were just waiting for them

to come. It was, talk about an anti-climax.

Well I think I said that I went straight to a hospital.

No. I was in hospital for some time and then I talked about you know, those other chaps that were in the hospital with me?

Oh I forget, I think we were taken in a truck, it wasn’t far away.

A very large camp, as I said later on there was 10,000. It had been an Army barracks, a Dutch Army barracks. Yes it was a very large camp. I was camped there with a lot of Naval Petty Officers off the Perth. We were in a sort of a ex-

barracks that the Dutch NCOs had originally been in. And yes, so that was quite a pleasant camp. And then I think I told you about how the Dutch brought in money and they started cafes.

Well I think we probably had in that camp, about 1000 or more Australians; predominantly Dutch at that stage and there were some native troops as well. We might have had a thousand to two thousand, somewhere like that, Australian troops in there, and there were some Americans as well.

No.

Well they were good when they went in, and the camp as I said, the rations were pretty poor but you lived on them and people lost weight but you didn’t actually starve you know, you weren’t there long enough. And the climate was, it was a nice climate,

relatively cool up there. And so it wasn’t as exhausting as being down near Batavia where you were right down on more or less at sea level. It was terrifically hot and muggy.

The Dutch women were wonderful. The Dutch men, I met a couple of good ones in prison camp that I made friends

with. But I suppose they were just like anybody else but they had a different culture. They’d been living in Java like Lords you know. In Java before the war if a Dutchman was walking along the street, the Javanese had to get out of their way,

and move over to one side or get in the gutter. You know, they were the colonial masters, very much so.

Well they didn’t, they died like flies I think. They had big losses once the Japs cracked down and took all their

stuff away from them, and brought them down to everybody else’s level, which they did after a while, once they got settled in.

Well I don’t think they cared. They just got them behind barbwire and they had to look after themselves and that was it. The gave them the minimum like

they did us. Gave us the minimum of rations and that was it. And then of course we were well off compared to what happened to the people that went up to the line. I mean we rarely lived on clover, except we.. our treatment

was nothing like their treatment they got up there.

No I don’t think so.

No I don’t think so. I mean well you know I didn’t have a lot to do with the Dutch in the camp. We stuck to ourselves a bit.

We had to anyway you know you couldn’t go marching around, you had to stay more or less where you were put.

Yes, well we had different sections and we had different Commanders. The Dutch looked after themselves, we

looked after ourselves. And this went on you know, that’s the way it worked.

Oh well, I mean it depends what camp, when I got, became Chief Cook I had a job so my

days were all busy you know. If I, before that when I was in other camps and I wasn’t in the kitchen I could be sent out on a working party for the Japanese and that was doing different jobs, and then you could be unlucky ‘cause if you’re on a working party you did your best to pick up

something to take home to the camp. And the Japs use to carry out spot searches and if you got caught with something you shouldn’t have you’d get a belting and so it went on you know. So you got all sorts of tricks to try and hide things that you brought back, but you had nothing much to hide them in, because you weren’t wearing much.

Well nothing much normally except, when we were first taken prisoner as I said, the Dutch, some of the Dutch women were wonderful. They use to try and give us something when we were out on working parties, try and give us bananas or various things. And the Japs would shoo them away you know. And you know they were as brave as hell. They’d come

up on a bicycle and hand you something and then duck off. And later on they were all put in prison camps too, but for a while they weren’t and they use to try and help us. But that sort of thing also Japanese, Chinese merchants, you might try and

buy something off them, if you had anything to sell. Later on Japanese started to pay everybody and other ranks. I got 15 cents a day in Dutch money that was something. An egg would cost you 4 cents, so if you could get onto it, it was worthwhile. But if the Japs caught you were like,

you’d get a belting.

Oh yes, a couple. Not terrible bad but I got a couple.

Well you don’t like, (UNCLEAR) than you think, he’s smaller than you and he’s belting you and you feel very antagonistic toward him but you know you can’t do anything about it, you’ve just got to take it.

But they’re unpredictable the Japs, very unpredictable. For instance one minute they’ll be giving you a slap and then later on they’d suddenly give you a cigarette. Sit you down and give you a cigarette. You don’t know why. And I thought they were the sort of people

that you couldn’t ever get to understand ‘cause they’d do, they were I think, essentially a very cruel type of people. I might be wrong but a lot of it, I think it’s hard to judge, it was the way they were brought up, the way they lived and especially in the army, the Jap Army. As I

said before a Jap officer could hit a Sergeant, give him a bashing and the Sergeant could give the troops a bashing, and so it went on you know. And so that was their sort of code. Very strict discipline and that’s the whole, that’s the way their system worked.

Well it depends whether they did it with a stick or rifle butt or just how serious it was. Very often if you were caught for some minor demeanour such as not saluting or something, they’d line you up and on the face like that. And

so but you know whenever there’s, some of them were pretty fit. I didn’t get hit very badly. Well most of the time when I became a Chief Cook I was most of the time away from them. I didn’t go out on working parties, I was in the kitchen. And they very seldom

came into the kitchen

That they were unpredictable you couldn’t know what they were going to do.

I think they thought we were, we shouldn’t have been taken prisoners. I think they thought that we were cowards; we should have you know, died like they did, when they fought the Americans later on in the various islands. Where some of them fought to the last man.

And I think they thought the less of us because we didn’t do that. I think if we were, because if they. Like I think where they found an allied soldier that had died in combat, they’d often give

them a burial you know and salute them and all that sort of thing but I don’t think they thought much of us. I think they thought we’re all a bit weak-kneed. ‘Cause we had a different philosophy. We didn’t believe to fight on when it was useless. And we were ordered to surrender, so we surrendered.

I don’t know. I think it was just their psyche. I think it was just the way they’d always lived. It was, they believed, to follow the Emperor,

and the way they were brought up right through their beginnings of their life, you know. And that’s the way they did and that made them fearsome soldiers.

I admired them as soldiers yes. You had to admire them as soldiers, I didn’t admire them that much as

people, I can’t say I liked them but I could understand why they, a little bit, why they were the way they were. Because of the way they live, of the whole Japanese set up, the Mikado the whole thing.

Why they didn’t? Well I don’t really know, they did execute a few when they first captured them. Like the marches in Borneo and the executions that happened there. But

I think they decided in the same inner way to try and bide a little bit by the Geneva Convention. You know that prisoners should be looked after so they did that in a minimum way by feeding us as little

as possible. And of course later on, especially in Singapore where we were, that was not altogether their fault ‘cause towards the end of the war the Americans were sinking half of the boats that tried to get into Singapore, and so the rations in Singapore,

they weren’t getting any more in. And we were living on for quite a long while there, on corn that the British had in the warehouses before the war started. And this corn was completely full of weevils and stuff. But anyway at that stage we didn’t mind a few

weevils because it gave us a bit of protein cause we weren’t getting any other. Except that I’ll digress a bit. In Singapore I was in a camp at one stage, right next to the wharves and the Americans had been sending reconnaissance planes over at a tremendous height and the Japanese

would fire at them but they’d never get anywhere near them. They’d send up fighters and never get anywhere near them. So we realised that something was going to happen and sure enough one day, I think before, in the morning sometime, before lunch. Flights of nine I think it was,

nine Japanese bombers, four-engined bombers came over in, there was about 120 of them in one flight after the other, and they dropped their loads on the wharves. But fortunately they were mainly nearly all incendiaries, their object

‘cause the go down, that’s the warehouses on the wharf were full of rubber and provisions that the Japs had brought in and all that sort of thing, so their object was to burn everything. And they just used enough high explosives to blow holes in things to let the incendiaries do their dirty work. And as I said we were on this

last camp, not far from the end of the, not far from the wharves. And we could see these planes going over, wave after wave, hear all this noise going on and as it happened, the noise and the explosions got closer and closer to us. And then the last flight went over and the last of their incendiary bombs landed in our camp.

And then just put a couple of our huts on fire, we put them out, nobody was hurt. One of my cooks got a hell of a fright he was washing some Chinese vegetables in a bucket and an incendiary landed about from here to that curtain away from him, and he went over backwards and the water went all over him. But so and then, from then we went

down and we went on working parties down to the wharves to try and save things for the Japanese and put out fires and all that sort of thing. And of course as soon as they weren’t looking, we’d stoke the fires up and while we were down there we’d pinch what we could.

Well what I found is a big stock of, it had been left there since the British been there before the war. Bovril, little tins of Bovril about that size, you know what Bovril is? It’s like marmite except it’s a meat extract, it’s a solid little

meat extract and you make soup out of it, and all that sort of thing. And these had been burnt and all the tins had been scorched and the stuff inside it had gone into like a gravely substance but it still had wonderful nutritional value. And I was able to, and some of my mates to pinch a number of these and take them back

to the camp. And we got them through without being searched. And then we gave ourself a ration. I had one other bloke and we’d take half a tin a day and that made all the difference, we’d put it with our rice or corn or whatever we got. And it was a solid protein so it made a hell of a difference to our you know,

welfare at that stage because at that stage food on Singapore had become almost non existent.

Well they were getting down, because I’d always been in the kitchen, I didn’t lost that much weight. I was 14 stone when I went in. And in the kitchen we did our best to just eat the same stuff that everyone else got

but we did eat a little bit more because we had to work so hard, we felt we needed it. Anyway we did but I came out of the prison camp at about 9 stone, so I lost about 5 stone. A stone is 14 pounds.

Well as to the type of work it depends what, anything the Japs wanted them to do.

One job I had on the wharf was during when they dropped, the Americans dropped all these incendiaries. One of the go downs, that’s one of the warehouses was, had a lot of rubber in it and also tin bars. And a lot of this tin that did catch fire but it had melted and it

flowed out over the wharf and was like a little waterfall, it had flowed down into the water and solidified. So you had a sort of a lace curtain of tin going down to the water and all this stuff was on the wharf as well, covering the wharf and the Japs decided they wanted it.

So we had to sit down on this hot wharf, middle of the summer, middle of the tropic, they gave us a hammer and a chisel and we had to chisel bits of this damn tin off and collect it and put it in a bin. We had to do this for a day and it wasn’t very pleasant work I can tell you.

Mmmm?

No they gave us a chisel, sort of a chisel, it was a blunt type of thing.

What we had to cut it, cut it into pieces and put it in a bin.

I don’t know what they did with it.

Sell it back to Japan was probably their idea but

that’s the sort of work they were doing, and as I was saying trying to put out fires that was still smouldering and collecting stuff for the Japanese and putting it onto trucks all that sort of thing.

Well, I don’t really know what happened in some places, they must have pretty close to it, up on the line. What, right at the end at Singapore they had us working parties going out into the countryside, not that there’s much country in Singapore, digging tunnel in the hills. And by that time the Japanese

knew that the game was up, they knew they’d lost. This time all those naval battles had gone against them, and you know. The Americans had landed in Okinawa so they knew the whole thing was finished. And they use to say to us, by that time their attitude towards us changed. They started being nicer to us, ‘cause I think they knew that things were going to

swap around, but they also said, “All finished,” they said, “soon,” they said, “the Americans and the British come, everybody die.” So what that meant, that they were willing to finish, to fight to the last man and they’d retire into these tunnels and take us with us probably to carry ammunition or something, and that’s what

they seemed to be saying to us at the end. And of course that was stopped, saved by the atomic bomb.

No that was just individual Japanese talking to you. Some of them were, you know like all people, some of them were much nicer and better than others.

Some of them were quite pleasant at times. We had one Japanese interpreter and he was extremely decent to us. Tried to do everything for us and you got the odd one every now and again. Like humanity everywhere there’s good and bad in it. And yes so that was that, they were quite convinced that they’d be fighting to the last

man and practically everybody would be killed. And they were quite, not looking forward to it, but that was what was going to happen. And of course that was saved by the atomic bomb. And when the Japanese emperor ordered them to stop fighting they just stopped.

Well to start with

it was an eerie feeling. We didn’t know what was going on, we heard rumours, heard about some explosion somewhere. The Japs attitude changed, they were still on the guard gate but they were not coming near us and it was a funny feeling, and then we heard a bit more. ‘Cause we had, we had radios in the camps too you know.

But the people that worked the radios, the news was let out very slowly because we didn’t want it to get out that the Japs knew what we knew about things, and so that was very cleverly done by a couple of people. One bloke made the radio and then the officers that looked after it and made sure that the news was just dribbled out you know.

So it was a funny feeling and then eventually we got a bit more information. And then suddenly at the guard gate appeared two British soldiers in full battle dress. One was a Sergeant, he

came into the gate, the guard was still sitting there, was standing there with his rifle at the guard gate. This bloke, this British guy took it off him and told him to clear out, which he did. And these were two commandos that had been amongst a group of commandos that had been dropped out of the jungles in Malaya. And

when the atomic bomb was up they were dropped in because of the communists gathering in Malaya and they were more or less sent in to find out what was going on. And also to find out what the Japs were doing. And when the bomb went off and the Japanese surrender, they just came in and appeared at the camp, we got the shock of our lives to see these two

British soldiers appear.

We were in a camp in Singapore.

What?

We were just amongst the camp. By that stage we were all talking and wondering what was going on, what have you. And suddenly this was pretty soon after the surrender

these two soldiers walked in, it was quite a pleasant shock.

No only rumours. Except what we use to get from these radios they had in the camp. And they wouldn’t let all that out, or let it out too quickly because you know, if we might get it out, somebody might say something and the Japs

might pick it up, and if they had found a radio in the camp there would have been hell to pay.

Well the only communication was if you were on a working party with the Chinese, some of them would come over and give you a bit of news if they could see, you know, they could keep out of the Japs

for a while. And that was about, that was mostly where we got our information from. Any information except what we got from the wireless except of course, there was always a hell of a lot of rumours. Somebody would think they had some information and spread it around. You know the British are going to arrive such and such, and there’s going to be an air raid

tomorrow cause we saw American reconnaissance planes up there, and you know, all this sort of thing would naturally go on.

Home? No.

Didn’t get anything from home?

Only those letters on the table there,

which were, the Japs printed out in a form and you could pick what to say from a number of phrases they put it at. You couldn’t say anything of your own.

Well, they put up on a notice board a number of phrases and you could write a letter to your father or somebody,

and you had to use some of these phrases in the letter. And I think you were given about three or fours words at the end that you could say in your own words as long as they weren’t anything opposing the Japanese.

Ok.

Cards like these others most of them were printed. I don’t know where this one came from. But this was probably one that we wrote, yes 25th of the twelfth 42 so that was early in the business.

Yeah, do you want it know or when.

“My health is excellent, our camp is well equipped and the accommodation is comfortable.” What a lie. “Our daily life is quite pleasant. The Japanese treat us well. So don’t worry about us and never feel uneasy. Christmas here

celebrated in traditional style. Pantomime and fair included to all, best wishes, hope next Christmas we’ll be there together.” Now that one all those phrases are more or less what the Japs told us that we could print it, what we could use.

Here’s another

one, “Dear Father I am now in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Java. I am constantly thinking of you, it will be wonderful when we meet again. Good-bye, God bless you. I’m waiting for your reply earnestly.” We never got most of those letters til the end of the war. They were sent to us but we never got them.

They were sent through the Red Cross but the Japs never worried about that. There’s another one, “I’m now in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Java. At present living on a farm, conditions reasonable, health ok. Congratulations Bill if Leaving obtained. Love to all.” Bill was my brother and he was doing Leaving.

What?

I’m sorry.

Allowed to write?

That’s right.

Well that just worked because they had a number of phrases up on a board and you could pick so many out of it, that was it. You couldn’t say very much.

I don’t know, I don’t know that I can accept how they did that, but the Red Cross looked after that, from Geneva you know.

No, we didn’t see them. We didn’t see any of the food parcels; anything til the end of the war then they brought them in in truckloads.

I think we all had faith we’d make it. That we’d get back yes. I’ve got to admit we were getting a bit doubtful at the end. When the Japs were building these tunnels. And the Japanese were saying you know we’re all going to be killed and we’ll all die and that would be the end. That was making us feel pretty despondent but I think that’s probably would have happened if they

hadn’t have dropped that bomb. And that was a pretty horrible thing but you know as far as we’re concerned, we were thankful for it.

I can’t think of specific time you know, there were times that you know you felt that things were getting a bit dangerous and also after we had that first air raid from the Americans I thought we’d probably, we did get other air raids and I thought that might be

one of the big problems, attacks from the our own people. ‘Cause towards the end of the war the Americans had complete control of the skies. They were starting to dig deeper into Japanese territory.

Well, I don’t know what individual feelings were but I think it, I suppose it depended on what they believed before they were taken prisoner you know. They would have taken their beliefs in with them.

I was never particularly religious all though I went to a religious school; I had enough of it there. So I wasn’t expecting any deity to get me out of trouble.

I had plenty of, I was frightened plenty of times.

Virtually during the war especially being bombed, so that can be quite terrifying. I don’t know how the people in London and Berlin got on but that was the sort of thing that they went through. But otherwise I think you just, you take things as they come don’t you, you know

you can’t do anything about it so you make the best of things, and I was never a hero and I was thankful I got, especially after they started struggling back, thankful that I got out of some of those raids.

The most frightening?

Well as I said on the tape earlier I think the most, when I was frightened for the longest was on that flight from (UNCLEAR) up to Bandung when we were circling

in clouds and it was so terrifying, I thought, ‘cause it went on for a long time. It wasn’t just a thing that happened like that, it happened for quite a long time while we were circling, and as a navigator I was watching our route and seeing how close we were to these mountains, it was a bit of a fright. And I

must say I got pretty frightened when we ran into a bomb hole, and before we got out of the plane the petrol started leaking and you could smell it and hear it running out. But that didn’t last long cause I got out pretty quickly. And then of course there were off times when you’re being strafed, we were strafed a couple of times, and you’re diving, huddling in a

slit trench trying to get lower so naturally you get terrified. But when they’ve gone you sort of get over it pretty quickly.

What happened?

Well I think I was probably a better man, I’d learnt a lot,

seen a lot, seen a lot of what humanity can go through. And yes, I think I was a better man than when I went over, more tolerant, even though a lot of them weren’t. A lot of the prisoners were, hate for, you know, they had a bitter hate against the Japanese. Well I didn’t like them one little bit but I

felt that I in some way understood a little bit why they were the way they were.

Oh, as you imagine it was a great place to come back to yeah. And it was great to get home, it really was, to see the family

again. Eventually after settling down, I was very unsettled for a while. I did a lot of, I had a mate who was, who was still in the air force, flying up and down on the routes from Cairns to Melbourne and if I wanted to go somewhere I’d put on my uniform

and they’d take me us as a supernumerary pilot, navigator or something. And I’d just fly down to Melbourne, I had a girlfriend down in Melbourne for a while, they’d fly me down there, stay there for a while and then go back. But after a while I realised I’d have to settle down. So I think I got, told you or it’s on the tape I forget, that I got a job with a German

farmer, ex German farmer and that was an experience in itself.

Well so far

in since the start of time, wars have been a part of life really, they’ve gone on and I think they’ll still happen but probably they won’t be

great like the last two big ones we had. Because I think a lot of nations, especially the European nations and the American nations wouldn’t like to get into war but even as I say that I wonder whether tension between China and

America. America is, China is developing very quickly, building up a very, built up a very big army. It’s got the atomic bomb and as for two various things of those countries are not close or clever enough to

run things so that they can at least get on with each other, it could happen again. But it’s hard to believe that, with the atomic bomb that anybody would start a war. But then again if they thought they could start it and get away with it and wipe the others out before they got going you never know do you, it could happen. But I’ve got a little bit more faith, I think there’ll

be plenty of, probably small wars, rebellions all that sort of thing will go, but maybe if we’re lucky enough the big wars are behind us, crossed fingers.

Well this is not taped is it I won’t…

Well the reason that I rang up you people or the war people and said that I’d be interested. I thought of it for a while. To start with I wasn’t interested when I read the Veterans Affairs paper but then I thought my

Granddaughter, the one that wrote that book, that little book, was very interested in what happened and I thought it might be interesting for my grandchildren. I presume I can, can I get a copy of it at all or?

No I don’t think I can tell anybody else what they should do, I’ve got enough problems looking after myself. I’ve done it for 85 years and I’m hoping I can do it for a few more.

Thank you for coming.