Australians at War Film Archive

Yeah. Well I was born in Murwillumbah which is in northern New South Wales. I was born on 17th of March which is why I ended up with the name William James Patrick. The Patrick’s for the 17th of March. I was born in Murwillumbah hospital

and I was the first of a family of five. I’ve got 3 brothers and a sister. And most of them or three of them are married – are now married – two of them never married. And the three that are married are now married twice. So we’ve lived in Murwillumbah and then moved around the local district. So I

think I went to about 6 or 8 schools in the particular area. So we had a life that sort of inspired me then to sort of keep moving, I guess, and I’ve moved all my life. And I think that was sort of the start of that. The reason or the inspiration for moving or wanting to move.

Oh I think because just because of the job opportunities weren’t there. Dad was changing jobs all the time. We sort of

share farms for a while in bananas, pineapples. Grew sort of plantation crops. Then that sort of ended and I cause I was a kid I didn’t I don’t know why these jobs sort of ended. And then went to another place and we looked after had a piggery for a while. And then we went and moved to another place and had cows looked after the looked after the cows. So it was just whatever jobs were available. And cause Dad was a

a French polisher by trade, and also an upholsterer and so he that – because there was people didn’t want to do things just after the war and there was no money around he took whatever jobs he could do. And eventually he went back to French polishing and upholstery at the local second hand shop in Murwillumbah. And he ended up contracting TB [tuberculosis] and that’s sort of when the family, sort of, was

then sort of all states of disrepair I guess. We ended up he ended up going into hospital and was there for about 8 years before he died of a heart attacked inspired by the TB that he had.

When would it be? It’d have to be 1954 or something like that. So he was in hospital, hospitalised for a quite a long time and during that time of course Mum had had difficultly bringing us

up. And then we actually moved from New South Wales to Maroochydore then and we looked actually care take flats at Maroochydore. Just for accommodation basically. And the pension sort of paid the food and –

Yeah. Four, well kids. Well there was only four kids at that stage because the younger brother was born later on a lot later, cause Mum remarried and he was from the second marriage. So

yeah.

Yes, yeah.

Wonderful. Really it –, you know, cause we didn’t have the worries. Mum and Dad that had the worries about the finance. But we had Terra – went to Terranora for a while, we had a pet koala, you know, that my sister used to just pick it up, like kids, pick up koalas by one leg and throw it over her shoulder and walk around with it no problems at

all and that. So it was a wonderful life living in the country cause you’d have all the pets you wanted basically. We had 2 or 3 cats at various stages and a dog so it was a good life and of course we lived out in the open did all the all the boy things. Pinched the next door neighbour’s custard apples and collected birds eggs, you know, the things that are no-no’s today I guess but in those days they were sort of everyone every everyone did them and it was fun. And we spent a lot, you know, most of our time out

doors because there were no toys. You know, you didn’t – toys were a necessity that you didn’t need. So it was the way it sort of went.

World War II, yes. I had two uncles. Cause Mum came from a family of 13, so I had two uncles. Grandfather was in World War I, but only towards the final stages and

he lasted a week or so and got – shot himself in the toe, or got shot in the toe anyway, and that bought him home. But a couple of uncles they served in New Guinea and the South West Pacific. And both those have gone as well I guess. You know so

Yeah, well I was born in ’42, so yeah.

Not really, I don’t think – no. Cause we’re always well for a lot a years we’re deprived anyway so it didn’t it seemed like we were just living, you know, continuing the life on because the money wasn’t there the luxuries weren’t there. You know if you got a bag lollies or three lollies a week, you were doing pretty good and you though that was extra grouse. So but as sort for the war I don’t think it

even registered until sort of some years later anyway. Probably until before I was 12 or something like that before I recognised the war was such a calamity. To me life was life was great you know.

I don’t know. Cause we – I loved them.

Mum’s still alive, but Dad’s well and truly gone. But he was sort of very tentative. Didn’t see much of him because obviously, you know, living in the country if it’s a day like today a job might by the time he got in from whatever job he happened to be doing we’re in bed just about. So you didn’t get to see him much. Mum was a very busy lady. Cause we in our in the early days particularly in Terranora it was fairly hectic. We used to live in a tent with an earth floor

basically and she had to get the washing water out put it over the floor to keep the dust down and we’d all and that’s why and bring the water on the washing day and put it on the floor as well. So –

Yeah, without the floor, just the dirt acted as the floor. And so she just compressed it down by putting the soapy water on it and eventually that packed into a fairly hard almost like concrete. But she’d be sitting there all night, you know, sewing making clothes. I remember my sister

when she was only probably 3 at the time, walking around with somebody’s self raising flour pants on, cause Mum used to make all the. You used to buy your flour in 5 pound bags or something and the flour bags then became the sisters’ pants. So she’d have somebody’s self raising flour on her bum. So yeah, things were rough, but we made do yeah.

Well it was still a continuation

I guess of the Depression. Because we – our – my grandfather or had my had my Pop living with us as well, cause he couldn’t find a job, so he helped out on the farm and whatever and at times. But it was a pretty good it was a pretty good life. Cause Pop was a real old bushie. He was actually a sleeper cutter on the during the early days and things like that and he knew more about the bush than most people know and you’d learn heaps off him.

He’d talk – he’d pick up a snake and say, “That shouldn’t be here! That’s from the Hunter River.” And you know, his schooling, you know, third grade or something but he had such a, you know, a memory and for detail. He’d say that’s got seven scales on its belly, that means it comes from the Hunter River. Cause I – years later when I was in the cadets, I brought home from Singleton a snake in my kit bag and not knowingly. It had climbed, it had crawled in there. And he said when he came over – cause he used to

live in Byron Bay – he came over had a look at it and said, “Hey, this is not supposed to be here!” He said it’s from the Hunter River because he’d had that much that much detail and that much knowledge.

Oh lots of things about nature. I’m – cause I’m a nature lover now, I guess. I work down round down on the river pullin’ out logs and stuff like that and got a park going up the up the corner. So he’s sort of instilled into me a love of nature, I guess,

and I do love nature definitely. And different experiences I think which he had more time to tell us about than Dad or Mum. Cause Mum was busy, you know, looking after brats, I guess. And Dad was sort of away working on it most of the time, Pop sort of there – it was sort of a mentor to tell us all about the, you know, different things about the bush, you know.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I suspect that they she may have done but I don’t know. I don’t know. Cause those things don’t worry you don’t think about it as a kid everything just comes, you know, falls on top of you and you feel happy about it.

Well as I said, you know, when we went to school we’d come home through Farmer Brown’s property and take his custard apples. Most of the time we helped out as well. You know I spent we used to spend

the weekends. My job was chipping around the peas or bananas. You know, just getting rid of the weeds and stuff and that’s most of the weekend was doing that. And it was fun more or less. Didn’t seem like fun at the time, but it was part of the part of the deal. And we used to have to go and get the get the break off the lantana, the dry lantana, so we could start the fire cause it was we only had wood fires. So you had we all had our little tasks like you’d make the – cut the chips. Particularly after Pop chopped off his – he chopped off his fingers makin’ chips, so after that it was, you know.

The chips of wood to start the fire. After that, it was my job to cut the chips cause he was runnin’ out of hands.

So, it wasn’t a great a deal of fun as we, you know, we played cowboys and Indians when we had time. But we were all part of sort of making the family work, I guess, and making sure we could get what we could out of the system.

Oh no.

No. We might have a have a day off during the weekend or something. But there was never such thing as going down the beach. As long as I can remember we never really went on a holiday as such.

I think so, yes I think so. Yeah, I can’t remember any many kids ever, you know, some of the richer kids obviously went down to their grandmother’s in Sydney or something like that for the duration of the school holidays. But most of the kids

we’d sort of team up together and play if you had time and that was about it you know. Not too many people went to the beach or went up to the mountains or anything like that no. As a as a holiday no. Cause you never had that disposable income.

Well this, no, this was only in Terranora. The other places we had houses. Like in Fernvale we had a magnificent old

Queenslander type house that came with the property. So it was only that one place at Terranora and that’s because we were sort of up in the hills right out of town, and I – cause that’s where bananas grow of course and then there was no accommodation there and that’s all that was available. But no other places we had had houses, good houses, yeah.

Lots of fruit salad yeah. Lots of bananas. I very seldom eat a banana now because, you know, I picked

them I’ve carried the bunches and I made the banana cases as a kid or some, you know, as part of the deal, as part of the family. So bananas for me are just about a no and particularly ones that you find in Victoria, cause I know they’re all done with carbide, all treat treated so that they ripen later on. Cause you pick them green and the only banana to me is the one that comes that’s ripe on the bush. So I have those

if they’re available but. So that’s but a lot of fruit salad. A lot of greens. Lot of peas and cause we grew peas and beans, spinach, yuck, still hate spinach. But that sort of thing so we were apart from the meat side of it was pretty self sufficient. Even on the on the meat side. Pop used to go and shoot a rabbit occasionally if he could. So we were pretty self sufficient, well you had to be, cause the carrier only brought out your stuff

sort of one day a week, or two days a week. So you’d get your bread on a Wednesday and all your goodies on a Wednesday and that’s that was it. The rest of the time you had to survive. So we as – that’s why my sister had plenty of flour bag pants. Cause Mum used to make the bread or dampers and bread other than the day the bread the carrier came. So there was plenty of flour. Plenty of damper.

Oh he was

just a – in fact I think they still have them. A just general carrier, but he used to come out and deliver goods all the way through. He’d bring the bread and anything else. That’s where we got our bag of lollies if we got them once a week. If we were lucky. We used to have to go down and I think have to walk down about 3 miles, cause he – his route, said, “I don’t come up this way,” so 3 miles to pick up what groceries you got.

And that was sort of it. But he was much looked forward to. Yeah. Fresh bread and the course it’d still be really fresh, so you’d break it. They were those double loaves. I dunno whether you’ve seen them. They you’d break those open and pick out the centre, cause it was beautiful. So that’d go down first, yeah, so yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah he had sort of a – oh, 3 tonne truck and he’d be picking up other stuff as. Some of the farm produce he’d pick up at the same time.

Or he might be bringing a bit a furniture to someone or – you know, just a general whatever people seemed to want and they’d get in contact with him and he’d bring it out for you.

Murwillumbah would have been the closest most of the time. Cause we – cause Terranora’s sort of near Tweed Heads, or it’s now a tourist area. But then it was only sort of banana plantations and it wasn’t much of a town. Then you had Tumbulgum which

was sort of – I went to school in Tumbulgum because we lived in Tumbulgum for a while too. I went to school in Tumbulgum and it had a sort of a general store. But the major centre was definitely Murwillumbah cause it had it had everything basically. So and we sort of radiated within an area of oh I’d say 30 miles of Murwillumbah, so it was sort of general shopping. And you’d get – sometimes

when we had a car – and I don’t think we had a car all the time – but when we had a car we’d go into town, you know, once a month or whatever to pick up the extra stuff that they needed.

When – yeah – when we lived – when we not very often but we could – there was a picture theatre in town we could go to. But I can’t ever remember going to it. Cause it was still, you know, still money down the drain and things

were pretty tough. I remember going, when we lived in Fernvale and we had the picture theatre, we used to go into town everyday to do the do the rounds of the cafés to pick up the scraps to feed the pigs from the cafes. So that was, you know, and that was a good day out. You’d volunteer to go in with Dad when you could and on pig sty cleaning day, the big challenge was to see who could find the most knives and forks that they’d thrown out

in the café garbage. So we had, you know, we had most of our knives and forks – we had, you know, Metropole Café or something written on them. So we had all this silver cutlery and we were, you know, we were doin’ grouse. But you had to get it out of the pig sty and just and give her a good scald but. But I remember lots oh lots of things that kids wouldn’t appreciate today. Like we used to make our own butter. You’d be sitting there with a big jar shakin’ this bloody cream

until it turned it into butter, and it takes a long time. So those sorts of things and they were fun. Used to have on the – when we had the piggery, we had a grove of persimmon trees and we used to, you know, get really full of these persimmons when they were in season. It was great and there was always some advantage, you know, there’d be a lemon tree goin’ somewhere, so you’d go and get the lemons

and be all be always scrounging something I guess. You know, Australians have known renowned for being great scroungers. And we used to scrounge better than most, I think.

Oh we got – well we were actually in the mountains so we could. But we didn’t. No we probably didn’t get off the farm all that much, cause it was

pretty busy, pretty hectic time just, you know, doing the things you did and going to school and whatever. But we used to walk to school which was probably a mile. Terranora was a mile and a half. In Fernvale it was 3 miles. In Tolgara it was a bit less. In Tumbulgum we had to actually cross over the river to go to school so it, you know, the time got, you know, really got away on you so it just the weekends were once again then you’d be

chip, chippin’ the peas and bananas. So life just life just went on but there were some fun times like, you know, there’s nothing specific just a walk through the bush. There’s no there’s nothing else sort of going.

Very seriously. Yeah yeah. I think Mum and Dad. Mum and Dad and Pop always said, you know, you’re not going to get anywhere without an education and, you know, that’s obviously been proven

today cause you don’t get anywhere without education. So I was fairly – well I was very encouraged to actually carry on with the schooling. And you had to do your homework, you know, and – but there were always – I don’t think it was ever a problem as far as I was concerned, cause I enjoyed learning and I still enjoy learning, I guess, cause I’m always trying something different.

Well it depends on where I went. In

Fernvale, for example, there was one room and there were all the classes were in the one room. And there were – I think there were 4 people in my class and 13 people in the school anyway, that’s how it worked out. That’s Fernvale and Terranora. I think there were probably two classes per room. Murwillumbah was a full blown school. So it had probably 48 in a class at times

but only the one class in the one room. Yeah, so it was different kind of place. Fernvale was nice cause we, you know, I can’t remember what age I went there. Probably till about third class or something like that so, you know, things get things get a little bit mixed up as far as the timings of things go.

No I don’t think

so. Not in particular, no. I think I was probably interested in extra curricular activities more than anything else. Like the birds eggs. I – as well as the birds eggs, I needed to know which birds were what. Cause there was no sense in us collecting the birds eggs unless you knew what knew everything you could about them. So that was part of the deal. And you’d ask Pop – or I had What Bird is That or had access to What Bird is That, which is a book from an ornithologist’s Bible, I guess. So

you’d find out as much as you could about them. But I don’t think I had a particular interest at school. I think everyone just goes to the school and does what they’re told to do, and till later on you don’t sort of settle down to any particular career path, like as such. But I was just generally interested. I liked English. I like Maths. I s’pose I liked all the subjects. As I said I liked learning. So it just carried on from there.

I think so yes. Yeah. As things went on there’s obviously as the years progressed there was a bit more money coming in particularly after when Mum remarried cause we all lived with the stepfather. Things were a lot better than. You know we had – with a TV set that we owned. We had a house that was being paid off and things like this. Before it was just either supplied or we had to paid rent for. So things were a bit were a lot more

comfortable the further they went down the down the line. So that yeah.

In Lismore we were living. No, when he first got TB, we were living in Murwillumbah I think. Then we had then we went to Brisbane for a while cause he went just looking for, you know, a place to sort of settle down. Then we went to Maroochydore. He was still in hospital in Brisbane at that point in time. Then he eventually they transferred him to Lismore,

when we moved to Lismore so.

Yes, well, confined to the bed, yes. He could get up and sort of potter around but he could only potter sort of to the end of the hallway and that’d be enough. He’s so weak he’d have to go back to bed. And that was another chore so every afternoon after school. Not every afternoon, but most afternoons after school we’d go and stand in the hospital. By the time you got home from the hospital once

again, it was just about time to go to bed so. And the weekends one – at least one day on the weekend, you’d go and see him. So, you know, didn’t have too didn’t still didn’t have too much free time. But we went we made do with it cause we had a – in Lismore we had a river the Richmond River and that was the favourite place to go. It was – swim. So that was absorbing and whatever, yeah.

No, went to Maroochydore. Went after Brisbane

went to Maroochydore then back to Lismore from – and I started school, at high school in Lismore.

It’s a bit confusing.

It’s confusing for me at times, yeah.

Well Brisbane we only lived for a very short time. We stayed with my grandmother and the only thing I can remember about that. Because I think we were going though a stressful period and I think the stress just wiped the memory to a large degree. I – all I can remember about that is

I didn’t like my grandmother. Cause I can remember from early days, her idea of giving you a Christmas present was to wrap thruppence in a bundle and it got bigger and bigger and bigger, so by – so that was my first memory of her. And then when we went there we always called her a witch. We thought she was a witch. And they had the town gas on, which we’d never smelt before and the whole place smelt like this town gas of course and we thought it was, you know, a witch livin’

in bloody hell basically. But we only stayed there for about six months until and then we moved to Maroochydore and I think we stayed in Maroochydore for about 3 or 4 years. Something like that. But no, Grandmother’s was a bit of a terror.

That was Dad’s Mum, yeah. Dad’s Mum. Mum’s lived at – lived pretty close to Murwillumbah, you know, they lived – they sort of did the same thing as we did, I guess. Move from point A to point B. But

they had a bit more, they had they were a bit more stable because they were involved in the cane cutting, in cane, so they were sort of stable, they, Mum’s family. So it was only – it was us that sort of circulated round the neighbourhood.

Oh I think so yes, yeah. Cause well it must have been really hard on Mum. Like to think that she was trying to bring up four of us and some and we weren’t all

nice guys all the time. As kids are. We did terrorise a bit so she must have must have really gone through pretty hard, and you can understand her wanting, you know, adult company. So I haven’t got any sort of bad feelings about her getting, meeting the stepfather, and getting involved with the stepfather and that, literally marrying him some years later. But it had – if it hadn’t have been for him we probably wouldn’t have survived as well as we had. Although he had a family, he was trying to support us as well, so you know. So

it was difficult. But he obviously contributed and he was a nice enough sort of guy, yeah.

In Murwillumbah, yeah. Because we once again after we’d finished in Tumbulgum and Dad got back to work as a tradesman as a French polisher and upholsterer, then we started living in Murwillumbah again and then we lived in the caravan park, once

again under tent sort of accommodation. But at least then we had wooden floors in the tent type thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh this is this is before he got the TB. This is –

Yeah.

Yean, yeah. This is actually before we went before anything started to happen. This was fairly early in the piece. Then I went to school in Murwillumbah until I was in fourth class or something then we moved Brisbane,

then went to just – it’s just another gap in – early gap in the –

Yeah, lovely great. Yeah, so I think as a Piscean, it was my – it was the best part of my life really. Even though things were hard, because Mum was sort of going to see the new father and so at times. Oh I can remember at – for a week we had a lady come in

at night to sort of look – to make sure we were doing all right, but other than that we were in charge of ourselves while Mum went down to see the new father. But things were good there, cause we had, you know, there was no great dramas. It was not all these jobs so we had time to actually roam around and do and go surfing and do those sorts of things. So that was it was the sort of beginning of life getting much better. So, you know, even though the money wasn’t there, the time

was more available. So, you know, we’d you could go and smash the local light globes around the carnival and you could go up and go up to the beach and go swimming. And we did and I did a lot of that. And at the same time I was doing a bit of – at school I was swimming and cause I went in the state – Queensland State Championships as a swimmer from Maroochydore. Didn’t do any good but I went in it. So, you know, we had a lot more time available

because we didn’t have farm chores to do, I guess. So we went on, so that was good.

Breast stroke. Breast stroke, yeah. And I cause because we trained in the surf I had to wear this wear full had to train fully clothed with a jumper on to try and make up for the freshwater difference. So that was that was a bit different.

Body surfing oh, yeah. Well surf board a surf board was, you know, beyond the means. But no we I we I did a lot of body surfing. In fact we all did. So that was a good 4 years. And I think the by the mere fact we moved from New South Wales to Queensland and the education system had changed between those two states there was a different emphasis on different things. There was I remember

in at Maroochydore we started doing Latin roots for, you know, in English which we’d never touched on in New South Wales and I don’t think they ever do – did. But it gave you a greater understanding of how words are actually developed, and a greater ability to appreciate English, I guess. So that was good and we – I did manual arts there. I started all my manual arts wood work and whatever. So that sort of stemmed me down the tradesman’s line I guess in later life. Cause I was, you know,

loved doing that, but we had to go from Maroochydore to Nambour once a week to do manual arts. Which was – and that was good fun, cause most of the time you’d go on the bus and hitchhike home cause there was all these farms on the way back. So you’d get a load of oranges or something on the way on the way home. Fill your bag up with oranges or something whatever’s available.

That was – cause that’s where the manual arts school was at. I think it was only

in Grade 7 and 8 or something. The senior grades anyway was. And that’s the only place they had the manual arts sort of equipment. So.

Well in those days we actually lived in Cotton Tree and Cotton Tree was well and truly separated from Maroochydore itself. The town of Maroochydore. But the shopping centre, well it had a picture

theatre, cause we actually had – Dad was there for a while, and actually had the hamburger concession in the picture theatre, so that was another little job we had to on picture nights was making the hamburgers for the – so I had to go and help out there. But between Cotton Tree and Alexander Headlands, there was nothing. Now it’s just totally one coast. Which totally changed and Cotton Tree itself has changed.

What was what was once a caravan park is now more shops and more houses and whatever. So it’s changed a hell of a lot.

I didn’t have time. Didn’t have time. But there was one big advantage was that until till the owner caught on, you’d dive – after the movies were over – you dived into the movies and grab all the bottles. Cause they were all thruppence or

whatever refunded, so you’d grab the bottles and cash ’em in. So that was a bonus. But then the movie theatre owner said no, cause that was obviously money that he’d make. But until then I was making good money out of that. Cause I think the pictures were only one or two nights a week, or one night a week perhaps. So it was only sort of pocket money, but it was helpful. Helped, all helpful.

Dad and myself. And that was for we only had that for I think probably 6 or 8 months. But it was – that was good, cause we used to I used to eat well. Cause the hamburgers that were left over, cause you’d have to make up all the hamburgers between sort of the start of the pictures and interval, and obviously you didn’t have any idea of how many you were going to sell, and by there was always some left over, so that was for Bill. So tha –t no that was different again, yeah. Little

something different.

Well I was well – hang on. I started in high school in Lismore so we moved from moved to Lismore in what about fifty-three, fifty-four something like that I think it would be. Got me, you’ve got me now, yeah.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. So I left school, joined the army in ’59,

so three years prior to that’s ’56, so yep, fifty – sort of prior to ’56 through back to ’52 something like that in Maroochydore.

Yes yep. Well that’s not something that really affected us I don’t think. You know once again as everyone said it’s the forgotten war.

It really had no impact on Australia as such or as far as we so far as we could see at the time. Cause they were – it was a long way away. And the concept of, you know, of preventing the domino effect it was sort of not didn’t worry you very much you know. And it was somewhere else and there was no threat to the homeland. I suppose the guys in World War must – World War I must have felt somewhat the same, you know, very disinterested because they’re –

we weren’t under threat. I think World War II’s – you can understand it was a real challenge then because they were fighting. They were on our shores just about, so it was a major drama.

No, I don’t think so. Not until the end of the high school when you had to make the decision. That but

there was no aspiration to join the army at that point in time. I think that when I finished when I actually applied for various jobs at the end of the time, was a matter of I haven’t been there, so I – and that’s basically the reason why I joined the army. Even though I been in school cadets and loved school cadets. But I had the – like I had the choice of going either to the PMG [Postmaster General’s Department] as it was in those days, as a

technician. The Commonwealth Bank as a bank clerk. Or the army as an apprentice. And I said well the Commonwealth Bank was still in Lismore, and I said, “Well, hey forget that!” The PMG was Sydney, which I said I’d already been to Sydney from at one stage of the game. And the army was in Melbourne, so I’ll join the army. So that’s not very patriotic, or anything else, but that’s sort of the essential reasoning. And which I didn’t have any great choice cause

I had to get out and get away, you know, get away from home and start working to earn a quid to make it easier for the other guys. So there was no great choice, there was no choice of lingering and I thought I need to get away from home to give the others a bit more chance and become self supportive. Whereas Mum would’ve – if I’d have stayed in Lismore, so that was the major reason for getting out of Lismore. And the PMG – and of course Melbourne was far enough away. So that’s good.

Yeah I joined the cadets I think in the first year. Was it the first year or half way though the first year? Well anyway there was a time there was an age limit or something on it when you could join, so I joined it as soon as I could and I stayed right in it till I left at Intermediate [Certificate] at the end of third year. And I was a sergeant, so that made me feel, you know, that feel good and we’d been to all the cadet camps and so there was there was sort of say I

s’pose inspiration. I knew what I was sort of gonna going to get into in the army, which I didn’t know with the PMG. So it was I guess another reason for punting for the army, because I knew how to come to attention and how to stand at ease and all that sort of jazz. I could do all sort of stuff and I could handle it and so I thought that’s an advantage. I wasn’t quite as easy as that when I actually did – when I actually joined the army, but it seemed pretty good from the outside looking in. As a cadet I thought,

“Well there’s no dramas here. I can handle all this.” And well I did, but it wasn’t quite that easy. Cause we, you know, I think I was 16 when I joined and so it was a complete uproot from home into an environment where, you know, where 20 guys live in a shed about half the size this. So you think, you know, it wasn’t quite as easy as that. And you did that for 3 years so, and during that time you had the

problems of or restrictions of not being able to drink. Although that didn’t worry me for a couple of years but you weren’t allowed to wear civilian clothes. You weren’t allowed to go out and stay out. Weren’t allowed out during the week at all. On the weekends you could only go out if you had an approved address to go to. And that had to be approved by your parents. To – that’s to stay over night, so you could only have day leave, unless you had an approved address. And of course that was a bit a little bit hard for the guys coming from interstate

that had had no contacts in Melbourne. So I think it was I ended up I – we fudged it of course we, you know, and we had. Of course you couldn’t wear civilian clothes as an apprentice, as an apprentice NCO [Non Commissioned Officer] you could. So you teamed up with this apprentice NCO, you keep your set of civvies [civilian clothing] in his locker and then on the weekends you’d go down, cause you had to do a

leave pass parade, and you’d go down in your uniform, dive back get out of your uniform, get into your civvies and off. So there were ways and means around it but I think it was fairly restrictive at a time when you wanted to do other things. You know like at 17 and 18, 19, the sort of restrictions were imposed were pretty severe. And probably understandable because we would been – we would have got ourselves into all sorts of trouble.

I didn’t know whether we’re moving too fast on the on the army side of it or not.

Yes well I can remember the major in charge of Cadets, in fact I went back to the local high school fairly recently and I got a year book from their 150th or 50th or whatever it was and it prompted

me to remember the old Major Rumble – Rumble Rumble. But, no, it was great we used – we got actually service dress instead of battle dress, I don’t know whether you’d know the distinction between the two, the service dress is a longer type coat, a tunic type coat and it was made our of fairly – a bit coarser material than the battle dress and that was all, I think, left over probably from World War I. That was the winter issue and then we had

khakis, I think KD [Khaki Drill] drill for the uniform. But, we enjoyed it, it was only one day a week or something but you felt big time when you got there with your KDs on, your boots and web belt and went up the store and drew out your .303 [rifle], you thought you were the greatest thing ever. Then of course going to camp, I can remember going to Singleton was – I think was the major camp. I think I went there a couple of times

for the annual camp and then I went there for an NCO training course. I think the big thing that stuck in my mind about cadet camps was condensed milk, we used to buy the tins of condensed milk, punch the two holes in them and slurp the condensed milk and I think that was the thing that really stuck in my mind and that was a good treat. I can remember at Singleton particularly and it was confirmed later years how many flies there were in Singleton,

you couldn’t, couldn’t walk into the mess without sort of taking flies with you, but the idea was that the guy in front of you, you’d brush the flies off his back as he went through the door but I’ve never seen so many flies in my life as I have at Singleton and that was another major memory. And of course, the palliasses we used to have the straw in the bags and that was something different. Not very exciting

I must admit, I didn’t like sleeping on straw very much. I suppose it’s better than sleeping on bare boards and that was the alternative but I found the dust of the palliasses sort of gave you that wheezie sort of dry coughie throat most of the time. But I can’t remember – recall too much about the cadet camps, I know they were great fun. We used to do the tent scramble over the top of the tents, slide down the other side and onto the next and do that sort of scramble,

and that was pretty exciting until someone put their rifle on the corner and you come down on one of those, but – it was just general good fun and I think even thought the discipline was there, it was pretty laid back I guess because we were all kids and whatever at the time. I can’t – apart from that I did all the training, all the NCO training and I think that was good because it was my first

association with lots of guys in a confined space, you know, I think we were only 8 in the tent but we were all sort of in together, all away from home, all, you know, and you had to learn to exist without Mum and that was a major achievement for some, particularly some of the younger guys as I got to the senior years. You’d hear the guys having their little sook at night. Natural enough I guess, but

it seemed strange that the guys were actually sooking. But some of them had never been away from home and had probably had it pretty cushy at home, as well which for me it was great, because I didn’t have to get the firewood and all those sorts of things I had to do at various times.

No I don’t think so, no there was no compulsion from the school level.

There might’ve been from an emotional or your know peer, a peer group pressure thing, because I know I got a little bit of pressure from a friend of mine’s father who was actually in the army, he said, “Come on, come on join the cadets!” cause I was also involved in the Scouts in the time and they were a little bit hand in glove type organisations and my mates father was also in the Scouts, so we were meeting on those sorts of levels

and he encouraged me to join the cadets, only because he said you can get a slouch hat out of it and you can turn that into a Scout hat without too much trouble. So that all worked in my favour too, but no they were good times and I think the fact that I joined the cadets and the mate had joined the cadets and that gave me the opportunity to meet his father, was also some impetus for later on joining the army. He was a warrant officer

then in the infantry, he’d been around for a while and he was a good guy. So that was sort of influence the set up – once again that final decision at the end of school which job was I going to go to and I think I got a little bit of encouragement from him as well to go on the army – in the army direction.

He didn’t pass away till the first year I was in the army.

Yeah, I’d actually joined the army and he passed away in the first year – at the end of the first year.

Well I don’t think Dad – Dad sort of never offered an opinion, Mum I think hated the idea because she’d lost – well the two brothers who’d gone to war they’d hadn’t come back all that well, and they’d both gone, and they were both younger and they’re both gone now so

obviously they suffered somewhat. She wasn’t really in favour of me joining the army because what do you join the army for eventually to go away and fight so, and I think like all mothers, well most mothers they’re not really in favour of putting your life on the line, I guess. But Dad, I don’t think he offered an opinion one way or the other. I think he was a bit disappointed that at that stage of the game that I left home and no longer could come and see him, but that I suppose -

but he never offered an opinion one way or the other. I don’t know.

3rd Year, Intermediate Certificate, cause you needed an Intermediate Certificate to actually get into apprentice at school. And you virtually had to go to school for 3 years before you could leave anyway. You obviously get exemption under hard circumstances, but we were never that hard up

and Mum supported, well both Mum and Dad supported going to school and getting an education and so did the stepfather because by this time the stepfather was in the scene. Because he was actually, worked on the Department of Main Roads as a bridge foreman but he’d only done x amount of schooling, you know, 6th class at most, as a lot of people did in the generation previous to us, only went to 6th class, 14 or 12 or whenever they could get out of school, they went out

earning a quid. So, he supported that the continuation to Intermediate and that and just as well cause you wouldn’t have got a job without it, but there were plenty of – well you wouldn’t have got a reasonable job I don’t think without. But with that, it just opened the doors I think as the Higher School Certificate does now, you’ve got to have it before you can go anywhere.

I can’t even remember how it started actually really, I can remember – I know what happened initially when I went up at a station, I just don’t know how I actually applied for the job. It must’ve been through a career – the career channel at school. But I just can’t actually remember, but I actually signed up in Brisbane and that once again a bonus as far as I was concerned because once again I’m moving around seeing something different. So we had to go up there for

the initial enlistment, pre-enlistment tests and the psychs, things like the psych [psychology] tests and whatever and then we actually went back home and sat back and waited and it was starting to get fairly toey, because they said they were going to notify you in x amount of time and x amount of time was very, very close to have being gone and suddenly other job opportunities were closing at the same time so it was only –

it was starting to get very, very close to the point where I’d say I’ve got to take the Commonwealth Bank and that was the other choice because I thought I’ve got to take the first opportunity occurs, but anyway the army came good, and said yeah okay. So then we went up for attestation, I think we came home again, and then went back to go on the draught. All the Northern Rivers, even though we lived in New South Wales we all enlisted in Queensland, because it was a lot

cheaper for the army to take us to Brisbane than it was to Sydney. So we actually went to Brisbane and then we met up with the Queenslanders and went down as a Queensland contingent to Melbourne.

No not really, I can sort of remember the aptitude test where they got all the gear wheels more intermeshing gear wheels, have you done one of those? They’ve got intermeshing gear wheels and you’ve got to tell which way the fast one is going to be going as you go through

the chain of gears and then they reverse the flow and all this, it’s just a standard mechanic aptitude test. I can remember that sort of thing. The psych test I can’t remember much about, and I thought it was all fairly ridiculous and every other psych test I’ve ever done, I think they’re fairly ridiculous too but, there’s obviously something to come out of them, I’m not too sure what. So the psych test I can’t remember once again to

pick the different fillings for the words, and the gear test and the psych interview. And they just asked you whether you hate your father and why you hate him and, you know, those usual silly questions they usually ask. Yeah, so, and of course, after attestation it was the sort of first time we got together as a group all these guys from Queensland. So, I was a one – what we call one oblique, cause it’s the Queensland number one oblique

such and such whatever, whatever. So I was always a one oblique and I’m still a one oblique except the oblique has now gone and that was the sort of first real bonding that sort of occurred and that was a fairly important bonding because even now even most of the bonding with the one obliques is stronger than the ones or other mates that you’ve made and that sort of – in retrospect that surprises me a bit that the best mates were still

the earliest ones.

Yeah, yeah well, yeah – everything in the world operated around the apprentice system as far as we were concerned at that stage of the game.

Yes, yeah, I put in for fitting and turning and in fact there is a bit of a story behind that. I put – because at school my aptitude was for clerical work, I actually put in to be

a clerk, the clerk intake of apprentices isn’t until halfway through the year so I said, “That’s not good, I’ve got to get out and get on my own two feet, Mum can’t – ” They can’t support me for the 6 months while we wait around. And I said, “What else have you got going?” and they started on this list of names and I’d forgotten what trades were what, until we got about halfway through and I thought, “Just shove down fitting and turning.” So that’s

it, that’s the career choice for the rest of your life is made on that sort of basis which I thought was a bit silly, but it happened.

No, I knew what fitting and turning because I’d done metal – done crafts at school so I knew fitting and turning involved working with a lathe and things like that. That’s as much as I knew I had no idea what a fitter and turner would do in the army. I knew what a soldier would do in the army, like shoot people, you know, but I didn’t know what a fitter and turner was going to do but it was something that I actually knew something about,

out of these – I knew enough about brick laying to say I don’t want to do that. I’d seen how hard it is mixing cement and carrying bricks so fitting and turning sounded pretty reasonable to me, so that’s why I became a fitter and turner.

Not – well you see once again the infantry you had to wait until you were 17 to join the infantry so my major thing was get a job, mate, and get out and earn a quid or at least be self

supporting. So I think I didn’t really give infantry much of a choice, because I had to wait another year and half or something before I was eligible age to join infantry. So I got in as early as possible and that’s the earliest you can get in as an apprentice, and that’s why I became an apprentice I guess, yeah.

Yeah, the first one that really springs to mind is Max Neil, and he springs to mind because he, like me, he just made that choice because he didn’t know what other choice to make. So he was in as a fitter and turner as well and he didn’t really want – didn’t really know what it was all about either. And he ended up in the long term, he went through his apprenticeship, got out of his apprenticeship and actually went to Army School of Survey in

Bendigo and became an architectural – a topographical draughtsman and then from there, after he got out of the army he actually went to Mercury in Hobart and was working as a sort of printer cum topographical printer, and I think he also worked in the cartographical section in Hobart. So, from what started out to be a simple sort of career choice,

turned out to be something – nothing like it in the long run. He occurred to me, Andy Phelp, he was another one that joined up with us. He was one of our crew as well, and he went to engineers after they went through apprentice’s school. Unfortunately he died fairly recently. We had a reunion I think a couple of years ago, apprentice reunion, and that was the last time I saw him and he looked pretty well. He was actually I think then a major in the army so

he’d just got out or was just about to get out and I think within 3 or 4 weeks of getting out he had a heart attack and so it was a bit unfortunately, that’s his sort of story. Who else can I think of, they’re gone, yeah.

No, no, no, we went to Brisbane and went straight on draught to Melbourne, to Balcombe. Balcombe was then the army Apprentices School. It now no longer exists, I don’t think the army takes apprentices any more. So it was sort of one of the phases that have died completely. Unfortunately I think, because I think the army’s going to need apprentices somewhere along the line. Yeah from there to Balcombe and that was sort of the

start of the army process. Whether– I can’t think of – no – ask me another question, I just sort of last track of where we were going.

No I don’t think so, I thought 3 years sounded to be okay and after that I knew that I would be posted somewhere else at the conclusion of my training, presuming that I got through it successfully and it was. Then I was actually posted after going through Balcombe which is a story on its own I guess, of itself then I went back to Brisbane. So all these sorts of things I sort of had an inkling of anyway I guess

within the first few months, you know, what’s sort of going on. But it was, it sorted added to my lifestyle that’s the way I was going to go. And, I never did stay much longer than 3 – apart from the final analysis in Melbourne I stayed 20 years in Melbourne but prior to that, it was every 2 or 3 years up stakes move, up stakes move, and I was quite happy with that. I must admit, once

you get married it sort of changes, changes the complexion a bit cause you’ve got to think then what about the family and that’s – I probably believe the army shouldn’t be a married man’s sort of job in retrospect. It must be extremely difficult on some of the families. Imagine some of these guys going away for 12 months and sometimes longer and the family’s still stuck at home. I think it’s a problem and always will be a problem.

It’s definitely an ideal single man’s life.

Round about 16 I think, yeah.

1959, I started, yeah, so I was probably a bit of 16 maybe, but I started in January 59 but because I’d done – lost a year going from Sydney from New South Wales system to the Queensland system and the year doing

the verse, I was – well I wasn’t old for a Queenslander because all the Queenslanders were a year older than the Victorian or the New South Welshman or – and the West Aussies they’d done a year longer because of their – what do they call it, I can’t remember, they actually did 2 years longer in sort of senior primary school before they go to high school so they’re all a year older than Victorians well

all the other states.

The Balcombe story.

Well the first impression was I’d made a mistake. I’d made a big boo boo [mistake], cause once again we got out of the bus on the parade ground and we had, you know, the typical infantry sergeant there going off ape shit, you know

going crazy and you think, “Oh. What have I walked into?” You know. And, you looked at the tents and you thought – not the tents, sorry, the huts, we’re not going to have to live in these. I thought they must store something in these but no they’re your living quarters. So they were the old World War II galvanised iron type huts. They were quite adequate but you felt, you know, I’ve left a perfectly good bedroom at home to come to something

like this and, you know, when they’ve got a locker and a bed, a locker and a bed, you think of yeah well it’s a bit ordinary. I think the biggest thing was when we got off the bus and with the infantry sergeant barking and bellowing and carrying on, like, you know. It was the first memory and after that everything settled in pretty well. They divided into companies according to your trade, so you all lived in a

particular company for your black trade which is sort of fitters and turners, motor mechanics, welders, blacksmiths, they’re black trades or the ‘zappies’, which they’re sort of the electrical trades. They lived in sort of another company. So each lived in your lines, so that was okay. And, they normally had some from the year’s previous intake was in charge of your hut until your final year but

it was the previous intake or the intake before so you had 3 intakes there at a time obviously because it was a 3 year course but depending on who you got was how you were treated basically. If you got a senior year – the senior year apprentice in charge of your hut, you got treated a lot better than if you had the intermediate year in charge of your hut.

Because the seniors were

God, you know, or next to God cause they’d almost finished they were – and obviously they were fully grown by then. They were a lot bigger, they obviously knew a lot more about the system but they made sure because they were a click and the same as, you know, like – they made sure that you did what they said. And there was no fears or contradictions, no back answering. You did what they said, you had to do.

So we had all the normal things like, you know, kangaroo courts, you know, and how long can you hang off the rafters for and you all hang on longer and all that sort of jazz. That was all part of the camaraderie and the development of the system but it was – it wasn’t something that was totally unexpected because I’d seen the same thing sort of in cadets, so it wasn’t really bastardisation in my way of thinking, I know

they call it that now, but it’s an induction process that, you know, that you’ve got to go through I guess. I feel a bit sorry that it’s reached the political level now where it doesn’t happen quite so much, as I think it’s an essential part of establishing the priorities both in the informal group and the formal group and it’s all part of the deal. But we had – we used to,

as I said, keep the civvies in the lockers because you weren’t allowed to wear them so but the seniors obviously the guarded it a bit more jealously, so if you had a senior in charge of your hut, you’d have to find somebody usually intermediate intake, that would look after your clothes because the seniors wouldn’t let you have that privilege of course, so they guarded it pretty – they were all the top of the senior NCO

or NCO level as far as the apprentices go. The structure is the same as the army except it is all by apprentices. So you have an apprentice RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major], you have an apprentice CSM [Company Sergeant Major], you have apprentice corporals, sergeants and right through the lines. So all the senior positions obviously held by the senior intake. And that’s where the discipline sort of come in because if you didn’t do what they wanted you to do either formally or informally,

because they were senior, they would get you one way or the other. So, that – it was the sort of chain of command. We used to go to Melbourne and I think the bodgies and widgies [1950s youth subculture] were in at that stage of the game, and at one stage one of our guys got bashed up by a gang of bodgies, so the next weekend we all went in and anyone with long hair, we took the web belt off and gave them a bit of a whack with it. So I think it hit the papers at one stage

but it happened. But, you know, it was a great equaliser but it was also that bonding was necessary. The hamburger concession there was always the senior’s intake right, they had the hamburger session because some of them – you weren’t allowed cars in the first and second year anyway so you had to be senior to have a car and so they had to go into town to get the hamburgers and they would charge you whatever they could – well whatever

the exorbitant rate was to have a hamburger. But they’d supply them and that was their concession. The beer we used to keep, because it was a dry camp, there was no – while there was a wet canteen which is, you know, where you sell booze [alcohol], because there was not wet canteen – there was a wet canteen in the area, but we weren’t allowed access to that. All our beer we would get from the pub and put it in toilet cisterns to keep it cool

or maybe give it a spray with a fire extinguisher to cool it down on the hot days, but we got up to all those sorts of tricks. But, it was – there was a lot of camaraderie, just a lot of hard work because you’d have to have a lot of study sessions at night and they were policed by the senior intake or by the AIC [Australian Instructional Corps] staff that you actually you’re your hour and a half of study session to do whatever, the homework or whatever. So that was fairly heavily policies. We

all ate in the one big mess. There was no apprentice, sergeants or officers’ mess like there is in the RIA so we all had the same junk or stuff. The meals were good because I think we used to get ration and a half because of the we were still growing supposedly so we used to get normal man’s ration and half. So we were fed well,

in fact very well. I can remember sitting down to a tray of – because a lot of the guys didn’t like asparagus. So we used to have one of these big aluminium trays full of asparagus and I sat down and at the tray of asparagus. Well you couldn’t be around me 3 hours later. There was – things like that happened and that was all part of the game. We used to have to – you used to have your own sessions at the cookhouse,

you were rostered on for that, clean the – getting the food ready, cleaning the dishes that sort of thing. They had dishwashers, so it wasn’t a great drama dishwashing, just throw them all in the dishwasher but it was, I used to love the kitchen duty itself because I used to – well I think most people do but I like sultanas and they used to get these big, big crates of sultanas so I’d go and grab a handful of them and scoff them and we’d put

some steaks aside for when the guys were on guard duties. So you’d come into the kitchen at night and cook a steak. Oh there’s millions and millions of stories I guess. When you were on guard duty you had to go around and stoke the boilers. They were all coke fired boilers. You found the coke bin, once you’d spread the coke out it was a nice place to sit back and relax for a little while, while you were on guard. So a place to sleep was in the coke bin

when you were on guard duty. And of course sport was a big part at Balcombe. I played rugby there because that was one way of getting out of camp without any problems at all because we played in a civilian comp as well as an army sort of situation. So we’d play Morning Star, I think was the name of the local boarding school. We’d play them in – at rugby, no, Aust Rules

we’d play them. I didn’t play the Aust Rules but I boundary umpired for Aust Rules, so that was one day out and the next day I’d play rugby down at Moorabbin so that was another day out. So it was all paid for and all the transport was there so it worked out pretty well. But it was – sport was fairly important and I guess it always has been in the army, a fitness type thing. So we were always pretty well involved in that. What else can I say about it?

I remember when we – cause we got all this – the pay so we were rich, you know, as kids we’d never had that much money so you’d go out and buy your packet of fags [cigarettes] and which – where I started smoking cause everyone then basically started smoking but towards the end of pay day or in between pay days, that was when things got a little mean, so the guy with the packet of tobacco was a good friend

to have so you’d share the butt and, you know, things these days probably wouldn’t happen, share the butt around and we’d get to the point where you’d put a pin through so you could hold the pin to smoke to get right down to the pin to get that last bit of the smoke. And that was, I guess was all probably peer pressure to a degree, cause I was fairly – as a kid I never smoked. I think I’d had a go at

couch grass in a bit of cigarette papers or Mum’s dumpers [cigarette butts] or Dad’s dumpers or something, but I was never really serious about it, and it never really appealed to me and yet by the time I left Balcombe I was a pretty heavy smoker. So it was sort of – just through peer pressure, I think to a large degree because they did it, the soldiers did it, the infantry sergeants, you know, the big time guys did it, so it was a natural progression.

It took me a long time to get over the smoking bit because I ended up getting up to 3 packets of 25s a day. I said, “This has got to stop!” But it took me a lot of year – I was doing, you know, – it took me a lot of years to get over it. But it was still, you know, to be part of the boys, to be part of the group cause there weren’t many that didn’t smoke. The apprentices, I think were getting –

I think I was getting 5 quid a fortnight, you couldn’t get too much with that. You’d buy a packet of tailor mades on payday and you’d buy a packet of weed [pouch tobacco], sort of last you the fortnight. If it didn’t last you the fortnight, you’d bung it off somebody else. But everybody did it, it was the way things went. But, you know, 7 quid a fortnight didn’t go far at all cause you had to buy most of your stuff out of that.

No, drinking

was – not allowed but if you went out – in fact the first year – my first year I got charged. I think it’s why I remained an apprentice for the whole 3 years. We went out, we knew we all coming home by train, because that’s the way you all come home at the end of the year and someone said well we need something to drink on the train. So a mate and I decided we’d go out and get it all. So here we are walking back with all this grog [alcohol] and got sprung. You know cause

you hitch hiked everywhere and we just didn’t get a life quick enough and we only missed out by about 5 minutes, because there was a check of lights out by half past 10. There was a check to make sure you were back in the barracks and we just weren’t there. And when we walked down here’s the orderly officer and he was a regular soldier, captain or lieutenant, captain I think, there was no way of talking him out of it so we ended up getting fizzed for that and I think the

worst part about the punishment was we lost leave, but that was acceptable. But we lost money that was acceptable, but we had to stand down while the RSM poured all the grog down the drain and that really hurt. I think it hurt the RSM, too, in retrospect, but I think we had a bottle of scotch, a couple of bottles of scotch and Black Tulip was all the rage, I don’t know whether it’s still – it was a brandy based liqueur, it was the rage so

I had a bottle of Black Tulip for myself and that was what I was going to drink going home on the train and a whole bottle of gin or a bottle of vodka one of the white spirits anyway. Here were are pouring them all down the drain then the RSM handed us the bottles, made us go over to the tap fill them up with water, wash them out and pour it down the drain. Yeah, so that was a sort of a – the only time I’d been really bad I think and I happened to get sprung in the first year. So, you know,

from what I can gather I was due for a hook but that put an end to the stripes. I think once I’d blotted my copy book that was the end of it for the full 3 years that was interesting. What else did we get up to? Oh we used to have our barbecues and pack the kit bag with ice, or take your bags out and pack them with ice and fill them with beer and go down to the beach at

Rosebud or Dromana and have a barbecue, a ‘beerbecue’ without the bar, no meat, just the beer. So that was a little bit of fun, that didn’t happen all that often but it was something I remember. Actually the work itself was pretty easy because we had to do the trade, we had to do PT [Physical Training]

and we had to do education subjects and if you wanted to, if you volunteered to you could also do Leaving [Certificate] subjects, which I thought was a great idea because once again it’s a bit – a continuation of learning but it was even better than that because if you did continuation classes, you didn’t attend morning parade. So that you missed out on all the bullshit that goes on with morning parade, so we’d march straight up and do our educatoin

classes before the day started, although there was some involvement after – after work but I ended up getting my Victorian Leaving while I was there, so that was good on top of the trade. We were given lots of opportunities and was – well I think was a great life. Even though the money was – money was always a problem but and it’s always been a problem as far as I was concerned until obviously later on.

But, PT was hard. Night exercises were hard we had to – I remember at one stage we had to march from – in fact before influenza injections became generally used in the public we were trialling several years before so we all had to go for our flu injection, had the flu injection and some us were as sick as dogs, a lot of them were as sick as dogs and that night we had to march from Balcombe

to Cerberus across country. So and that’s a fair way and we had people flaking out and doing all sorts of things after this first flu injection. But I can remember and that was a pretty rugged type of thing cause the next day back to work again, there’s no rest for the weary or the wicked. But once again it was instilling – in retrospect it was instilling discipline but at the time it just seemed like an act of pure bastardry

because there was no rest and we had to carry full kit and I found it difficult in later career let alone at that stage of the game.

A fair part of the day, yeah. I think was a sort of morning of PT, a morning of regimental training, probably a couple of afternoons

of education that was trade science and trade maths I think we did and the rest of it was pretty well trade. In retrospect I think the thing that they lacked was an army orientation. The people – the teaching – some of them were army tradesmen but some of them were civilians who’d only done their – worked in civvy street [civilian life], I guess, so when you actually hit the mainstream

of the army, you didn’t have a smick about what the army wanted you to do as far as their stuff. You learnt how to work the lathe, you worked the milling machine, did the full civilian trade bit, but out in army you didn’t have a milling machine and you didn’t have a lathe, but you had all this stuff that you’d never seen before like a generating set or a little camp over or a hurricane light

all these things that you were supposed to fix, and you’d never seen them before because there was none of that practical orientation. I could make a gear for a Mercedes Benz but you didn’t have a Mercedes Benz out in the street and you didn’t have the machinery to do it with. That was the sort of sad part about it, I think, and that persisted right till I think the apprentice scheme ended. No one ever brought in the equipment that you were going to work on for the rest of your army career.

No one showed you a gun, or to pull a gun down as far as it will go and things like that they didn’t do that it was just basic fitting and turning as you would learn well as we learn at tech and I think that was a feature that was lacking but only in retrospect because at the time you didn’t know this. But I hit Northern Command Workshops when I’d finished my apprenticeship and my first job I had was to

repack a 148 semi rotary pumps. Well I didn’t know what repack was. I didn’t know what a semi rotary pump was. And I didn’t have a clue how to do any of it. And you think, you know, it’s – that was the sort of training that led you nowhere even though you had the basic skills – yeah, the basic trade skills, you couldn’t apply them. There was no

practical application to them. So that was one of the misfortunes of it I guess but the basic tool handling was there so it wasn’t a great problem but it’s just a feature that was missing. And in later years, I was actually writing technical instructions as part of my army job and they’d been around forever except no one had told us they even existed. So I could’ve gone to

this, you know, REMINS or EMI or EMIs as they call them, instruction, pulled it out found semi rotary pump and actually done it by the book because someone’s already told you exactly what to do, but nobody ever told you these things ever existed. Every unit’s got them. Every unit had a set of instructions, no one ever looked at them, no one ever worked by them. In retrospect again, thinking I spent hours and hours writing these instructions for no one to look at

in later –

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Yeah. Well I think just to finish off with the Balcombe bit, it’s worthwhile remembering or think mentioning how important the graduation parade is. You know we spent hours and hours sort of training to do this half hour parade and were you actually get your certificate of graduation. Graduation certificate. From there we were went

home on leave. And I we I had a mate that came from Lismore as well and I said well I’ll come go home with you. So we proceeded and the car broke down and the out come of it all that my graduation certificate, I haven’t got it, was in his car and I’ve never got never got it, so. From there we went actually went home on leave and then we received our corps allocation at Balcombe which is, you know, you can either sort of there’s probably

three corps you can go to from the apprentices school. It’s either engineers, RAEME [Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers] or signals. And most the electrical type people go to signals. The other trades can go to either basically the engineers or RAEME as fitters and turners or motor mechanics and that all that side a things. So you actually get your corps allocation and your posting before you leave Balcombe. So we then you then you go on leave then you report into your unit. So we did all that and

having lost the graduation certificate which was, you know, sort of something I regret to this day. One it’s only a bit of paper but –

It was in the car and I forgot to get it, you know, cause it was done up in a little roll like you get with a ribbon tied around it and I just put it up well we had them both up the back of his car and a course I dunno what happened to his car, or him later, cause I didn’t meet him for probably a lot a years after and he doesn’t remember where his is, and he doesn’t remember where mine is. So obviously it stayed in the car or got thrown out or got cleared away in the

rubbish or something. But it’s just one of those things that you regret not having because it’s a substantial portion of your life as a young person particularly. So then anyway I went home on leave. Then had to report to Northern Command Workshops in which is in Bulimba in Brisbane. So I went there as the lowest form of life a brand new craftsmen apprentice or ex-apprentice and as I as I was saying earlier, or I mentioned earlier my first one of my first jobs was this 148 semi rotary

pumps and they still sting my memory because, you know, it was such a such a big job and such a boring job once I got used to the idea. It was just, you know, take ’em all apart clean ’em all out, put some packing back in and put ’em all together again. And then just and then test ’em to make sure they sort of operated correctly. Which is sort of backward backwards and forwards movement to make sure they pump water petrol or whatever they were supposed to pump. So by 148 of

them I didn’t want to ever see a semi-rotary pump again. So that was that was sort of in that was I think that was the job what probably, because it was just about my just about my first big job as a paid tradesman. It stuck in my memory. I did lots of other little things along the line but I just they just don’t occur or don’t go through to the memory. But part of that – the idea once you get out of Balcombe that you spend a year in a base workshop

to this is the time when you’re supposed to be learning about all these other things. And of course 148 rotary semi-rotary pumps is only about 148 semi semi-rotary pumps, not about anything else so I didn’t learn too much for several months apart from these pumps. And that concerned me a little bit. But towards the end of the time, you actually do time in the other sections to feel to get a feel for what’s going on. So I did a bit of time in small arms. I did a bit of time in the carpenters shop. I did a bit of time

with the textile guy. I did a bit, so just to get a general feel for what a base works is all about. And they’re that’s probably once you leave the base workshop that’s the last time you really see too much machinery. After that as a tradesman it’s normally your tool box and your files and your hammers and it’s just about down to that. Some of the places have may have a machinery truck that has a drill a pedestal drill and a lathe on it. A lot of units

don’t even have that, and when you go bush, you don’t normally have that sort of thing anyway.

At no this was the first year out of Balcombe. Yeah

Yes and I was allocated to RAEME yeah. And it was Central Command Workshops – Northern Command Workshops.

At Bulimba that’s in Brisbane or basically in a suburb of Brisbane. Close on it’s

actually on the Brisbane River which was nice little place to be. Cause the barracks were sort of on the side of the river like a like a motel unit. They were nice brick one’s which are this is sort of much improved after Balcombe. It didn’t even seem like the same world or the same army. So that was good and you could actually go in the just walk out the back door and throw a line in and catch bream. So that was that was nice for a country boy that’d been deprived of fishing for a while. So and that was good. There was only I think

only spent the 12 months not even I don’t dunno 12 months and a little bit there I spent there I think. then I got posted to 4 Field Workshop. 4 Field Regiment which is at Wacol, which is sort of half way between Brisbane and Ipswich. And 4 Field Regiment was an artillery unit. It had just in the transition period of going between 25 pounder guns to 105 Pack Howitzers. That’s an Italian gun

that’s not very well liked by anyone, I don’t think. But for the next 3 years I basically – I spent. Was it 3 years? Yeah. Spent yeah in at Wacol and most of that time was in the field. So Vietnam was – well the Confrontation was on. Vietnam was starting to stir towards the end of the time so they were really getting

up and running because they thought they’d be the first artillery regiment into Vietnam, which I think in ultimately they were. But I we didn’t know that was gonna happen at the time. But we were actually training for war on a full on a just about on a full time scaling. So I think out of the 3 years there I spent 11 months roughly at home. And I remember this cause I was told this by my first wife who whose didn’t fail to rub it in at odd times. That we, out of our marriage

career of that 3 years, I’d spent 11 months at home. But it was all, you know, training mostly at Tin Can Bay, various other places around.

Oh, she was in Brisbane. Yeah, she lived in lived in Brisbane so I used to commute from Brisbane to Wacol and back again.

Well it is. Well I thought it was and it was a long time to be away from home. And for a newly

married guy, I guess. But I wasn’t the only one, of course, there were lots of others in the same boat. But it was just seemed, you know, a bit exorbitant on the family life at that point in time. Yeah so that and it was a bit of a concern. Didn’t actually. That didn’t affect the marriage but I don’t think it helped it very much either.

Yeah. Well most a the time every before any

any artillery gun is allowed to or artillery piece is allowed to shoot it has to be inspected first and that was basically my role. To make sure that A) the bullets would come out the bore and wouldn’t stay in it which is a major achievement. And to make sure the thing would actually fire and that the sights and everything were coordinated so that the round would end up going where it was aimed to go. So that was the basic responsibility, and

of course any maintenance that went along with that to make sure the thing did do all those things. Was sort of the basic role, but along alongside that you would have any sort of other anything else that moved apart from vehicles was a fitter and turner’s – basically a fitter and turner’s responsibility. So if it was their little gasoline stoves that played up you’d fix you’d have to fix them. It was oh what else? Tent pegs got bent you’d have to straighten them and all just any anything that sort of went wrong, you were sort of Mr

Joe-Fix-It, I guess. That’s sort of it in a nut shell. But the biggest the biggest the main responsibility was to make sure that the battery or whoever you went out with could fulfil their major role of firing their guns and that was basically it. So you’d normally have your tool kit and be prepared to and have they used usually go out as batteries. Cause there’s two batteries in an

artillery regiment. They’d normally go out as a battery and they’d take their battery section with them and which would be me and probably a motor mechanic and somebody else usually. Maybe a driver and you’d have and may or may not have a Land Rover to carry your gear. If you didn’t have a Land Rover to carry your gear, you carried it or tried to bum a ride with someone else. And that’s but usually you had your own vehicle as a battery section. I can remember at one stage

actually being choppered [helicoptered] in with me carrying my toolbox. Being choppered into a gun position but that was only sort of the odd thing rather than the usual it was not the not the normal thing. Normally you just stayed with stayed with your our gun battery. And usually you operated on your own because they weren’t very much help to you. The artillery we – I thought were very sort of paternal. They looked after their own guys. You had to sort of make sure that you had enough rations otherwise

cause you wouldn’t get any of theirs. And the same thing I s’pose happened later on with the tanks. With the tankies they were somewhat the same. But they’re very – we call – I call them Jack Merchants and I think most RAEME people call them Jack Merchants. And that’s sort of the way the way the thing crumbled. But it was very – it was hectic and we did a lot of fairly hard yakka [hard work]. Cause Tin Can Bay is – as the training area was a lot of swamp and officers being officers would only want to go through the

swamp. And when they saw one vehicle being bogged that was only another excuse to get all vehicles bogged. And because you were in the battery section that was part of your duty was recovery. So here you are with one of these little hand winches, winching every one of these vehicles with their guns behind them through the through whatever swamp this officer’d decided to put you through. So that was that was memorable. That improved my impression of officers as the years went by.

So it there was a lot of lot of time in the paddock and no and no great dramas fortunately. I don’t think we actually don’t think we ever blew up a gun or killed anyone in the inadvertently. We probably left a few rounds that were unexploded around Tin Can Bay which means you shouldn’t walk in there ever. If you ever get the chance to, don’t. So that was but it was not nice to work with the artillery and artillery units compared with

a RAEME unit, cause they’re very – they own you and they make sure you know it. You normally got there a colonel in charge of a regiment and our bloke was sort of a captain usually in charge of the LAD, light aid detachment. So yeah, we were sort of the bum boys of the place. And then when you got back of course you there was the usual guard duty and all that sort of jazz in the camp.

And once again it was. Sorry. It was out of the brick motel units back into the same barracks as we’d been same style of barracks that we’d been in Balcombe. So it was that was a retrograde step so. Yeah. In well during my time there it was there was one saving grace of course I got promoted to lance corporal, and I thought – which I thought was a greatest thing that had ever happened. In retrospect it probably

wasn’t, but it seemed all right at the time. And I was still involved in the Scouts at that time. I had a senior Scouts at Bulimba. I was sort of their Scout Master if you like to put it that way. And we decided that we were going on the camp, the Scout camp this particular weekend and it was Friday afternoon and the job – my job was, you know, as I said, repairing guns and I was just about to reassemble it and

that’s when I did me finger in. Cause the bridge block dropped down and chopped me finger off. So that was a nice memento, so that was the end of the Scout camp. And but it was good. In fact the Scouts have been – were good right the way through. I belonged to Scout – the Scout movement for a long time and I found that there was a lot of help between the both organisations. Because usually or in or in lots of cases the boss was also a Scout leader or district commissioner or something in the Scouts so that you got these little fringe benefits

always creeping in where he’d give, you know, this little bit of help here or a little bit of help there and it’s and they really supported the Scout movement and still do I think to a large degree and that was nice to see. So anyway the ultimate result was I didn’t end up going on the on the camp. Cause once you get into an army hospital the problem’s not getting into them, it’s getting out of them. So I think after 2 weeks I got out,

got out of the army hospital after cutting off the tip of me finger. So you think. Oh, they looked on me they look on all patients I think as extra labour. Cause I spent the last week or so cleaning Venetian blinds and doing all those wonderful things that they need housekeepers for.

Mmmm. Mmmm.

Yes yeah.

I was

actually assembling one of these Pack – these Italian Pack Howitzers which is as the artillery gun. And what the idea in assembling these is you’ve got to make sure the breech block stays up so you put a block of wood in there to rest the breech block on. But what I did inadvertently was I had the block of wood but, you know, you don’t have nice little blocks of wood I just had a block of wood and stuck it in there and as I stepped across to get a better go at this. Cause they’ve got this – they’ve got lips on the breech block of the Pack Howitzer

and as I stepped across I knocked the block of wood out and my hand was still in there so good night finger. So that was that good thing for 4 o’clock in the afternoon, cause everybody wants to knock off including the hospital including the ambulance drivers including everyone. So that on – so it created a few dramas anyway but and that was all over.

No, none – any of this peripheral stuff that

No it was only purely a fitting and turning course. And that’s and that was a sort of a cause for concern I guess, yeah.

At the – at the base workshop?

Oh the semi-rotary pumps.

The 25-pounder was the other gun. Yeah. They were actually left over from World War II

and they were fairly reliable cause they were an English gun and this the replace wonderful replacement that I don’t think anyone did a reasonable trial on was an Italian thing that the advantage was of course that you could dismount it and everything was man portable. So the whole gun after New Guinea experience in World War II, people realised that you had to be able to move guns into mountains and things like that, so they decided that the Italian gun was obviously the answer. Because everything was man packable or

mule portable I think they called it. But it was man packable that you could all dismount all the every bit bits and pieces and it was all able to be carried by at least 2 men. Sometimes one man, you know, so that you could actually walk up the hill, put ’em back together and go on firing. So that was a great idea in principle, except the gun sort of really wasn’t robust enough and it didn’t last in service all that long. So it was fairly good by the taxpayer to

waste some of his tax dollars on a gun that didn’t last all that long. I think they took them to Vietnam and they fell to pieces in the first 6 months on just couldn’t maintain accuracy. They just everything just moved.

No no no. No this was a fairly – it was a modern gun at the time. It was just not really good for the role I don’t think. No one had enough work on investigating what it would do in the long term and looking back in retrospect.

Cause I did what they call maintenance evaluations in the tail end of my career I can I think that no maintenance evaluation was every done on this before it was admitted to the – or before it had purchase which was a mistake. So I s’pose the whole system learns and I think it was a major learning experience for them because there was a lot of money involved for a gun that didn’t really handle the pace as we’d as you’d like to put it.

Well, immediately. You – normally we had a – each battery has sergeant and I walked in as someone knowing nothing as a craftsmen. So the sergeant takes you under his wing and feeds you and does and does the tutoring. But, you know, it makes it does make it a little bit difficult that you’re launched into this totally new environment with knowing nothing about anything basically.

So from Wacol, lots and lots of exercises. Lots of good experiences cause I’d never flown on a helicopter flown in a helicopter before. I’d never been on a C-130 or a or a Hercules before. We did all those on this on this partic – in that unit during this training because that’s how we were going to operate in wherever we were going to go to and they were, as I said, training for Vietnam. Or thinking they were going to Vietnam. So as it was, there was a lot of nice things in there but there was

also a lot of sort of buggerising around that and useless sort of training and repetitive training. Because every time a new CO [Commanding Officer] was posted to the unit, we’d have to go through the same round of exercises so the CO, this new CO knew what to do. So by the time you’d been there 3 years they’d had 2 or 3 CO changes so you were repeating the same sort of style of exercise every year sort of thing which sort of it was a bit

wasteful but, you know, and a bit boring I guess. And from there the big posting order or the big choice came. If you – do you want to stay in this unit and go to Vietnam or take this posting to what was then 24 Construction Squadron? But – and they’re going to Borneo. And I thought well I’m going somewhere anyway whichever way it goes and because

24 Construction Squadron was engineers I knew then that there would be some RAEME or some of my counterparts from apprentices school might be going with them, and the rumour went around that these units were much better people to be with than artillery particularly in wartime. So I said, “Okay, I’ll punt to go to 24 Construction Squadron.” So I got posted there and that was obviously to go to Sabah.

We did a bit of training, pre-training before we went there and that was good. A bit of intelligence sort of briefing and they we actually went they told us what they were what we were going there for which was something that I didn’t really understand or didn’t know about prior to that. But the idea of going to Sabah was A) to put a military road through from Keningau through to the Malay – the Indonesian border

so that in the event of a major insurgency from lower Kalimantan, we could access the border fairly quickly and that was the idea of putting the road through. But there was also an ulterior motive or another motive – probably not an ulterior, but a better motive was that there was a race of natives in the area they were called they were called Muruts who were according to world standards undernourished and vitamin deficient and they couldn’t

access normal services. So the idea was to open up the open up the country so that medical teams and people like that could get in and they could get better nutrition and that style of things. So that made me feel good. That was a better reason for fighting a war I thought than going out to zap someone. So we went through the training and actually then the unit was renamed as 1 Independent Armament Squadron Workshops. No sorry.

1 Independent Field Squadron Workshops and that was so that’s what we went to Sabah.

At Enoggera, basically cause that’s where 24 Construction was based at Enoggera at that time. They became 1 Field Squadron when they went to or 1 Independent 1 or I forget. 1 Field Squadron I think when they went to Sabah, so they lost their 21 Construction Squadron name, even though the unit was 24 Construction, they went over there as 1 Independent Field Squadron or something. And they didn’t like that cause they’d lost their unit

identity. Whereas other people that’d been over there kept their normal unit name. Like 7 Field Squadron went over as 7 Field Squadron so they were a bit disappointed to have to go and lose their – lose 24 Construction out of the history book, as if you like, to put it that way, because they were called 1 Field – 1 Independent Field Squadron or whatever. So they had their reservations about that and away we went. So we boarded a plane in Brisbane. Qantas. No doubt. So we flew Qantas and stopped over

in Port Moresby and that was interesting cause I’d never been to Port Moresby in my – cause these are all my dreams of a lifetime coming home. So we stayed at Murray Barracks overnight and had to show all the locals – cause we weren’t allowed. Being white men in New Guinea you’re not allowed to do anything. They had all these local army people with the dark skins come in and we had to show them how to put the stretchers together, cause we weren’t allowed to do it ourselves.

Cause we were gonna stay there overnight. So after showing continually it was faster to put them together yourself but that didn’t matter. But it they just didn’t go through to the keeper. But at least at least they had a try and so we stayed there overnight. Next day we took off flew over and stopped over in Guam. Which is once again, you know, another step in this dream and we stopped over for a few hours, and at first they weren’t gonna let us off the plane. So

and then they just decided to relent, cause some of the guys, well, I was a smoker then they were getting a bit toey. And so we ended up going into I dunno what they whether it was the American officers’ club. It was an air force base and an American air force base. I dunno whether it was the officers’ club or the OR’s [Other Ranks’] club but there was or wherever. But we went in there cause we didn’t have any US currency or anything else. But it didn’t matter cause we didn’t buy couldn’t buy a beer. Could not buy a beer and by the time we got back on the plane we were just about rolling and

we’d danced with all these American girls, air force girls so. It was a good little stopover. So we got back on the plane and hit as it was then Jesselton, which is now Kota Kinabalu, and then I can’t remember exactly what happened there. How we got from point A to point B. We actually went from the airport to the railway station. Jumped on the on the on the train to a place called Tenom and that was

a nice trip. I think it was 84 kilometres and it took us 8 hours to do it.

In Sabah. Going between Kota Kinabalu and Tenom.

Yeah to Sabah. To Jesselton yeah to Sabah.

Yeah, we did. Oh yeah we flown there all right. Yeah, but how we got from the airport to the train station, I don’t know, I can’t remember but I think obviously by truck or bus. But it’s just one of those details that probably isn’t

important and it’s not.

Oh well, I think we went over in a couple of batches, but I think there was about probably about a hundred. Yeah probably about a hundred. In the batch. And of course we had no Malaysian we jumped on this on this train and went up the Padas River Gorge which is a beautiful scenery. In fact I wanted to take the wife when we went over recently, but just couldn’t fit it in. But it’s just beautiful sort of country and when you’re

doing it at, you know, 5 kilometres or 5 miles an hour it’s on the train you get a good view of it. So we part way up ended up stopped at a little place and I can’t remember the name of it. Might a been Bofus but anyway all the kids rushed out with selling ice creams. And we didn’t have any Malaysian currency, but we still wanted an ice cream obviously cause this by this we’re now in the tropics. So we’re throwing ’em pennies and getting an ice cream for a penny and we’re thinking we’re doing all right and they think they’re doing all right. I dunno what they were gonna do with the penny but it was

they were quite happy with that, and we were quite happy with the ice cream.

Well we never had the opportunity because and we probably didn’t need it when it was, if it was all boiled down. But we’d never had a chance to go to, you know, they don’t have Bureau de Change at a lot of these places, and this place didn’t have Bureau de Change. So you just didn’t get the opportunity and until we’d been first paid, you wouldn’t, we didn’t – wouldn’t have got paid in Malaysian currency. All we had was Aussie currency.

Oh no not no. We get paid in the currency of the country once we got paid yeah. But we hadn’t been paid. So and didn’t get paid till we got to camp so.

Yeah. Yeah well not all well we did in there. We got paid in Malaysian currency. In Vietnam we got paid in scrip, military scrip, but it still wasn’t in Australian currency. And of course you can’t spend Australian

currency without paying exchange rates. So that worked out fine. Anyway we got to Tenom and then got picked up in Tenom by truck and went through to Sook. A place called Sook which is our first was our first base and that’s sort of 30 miles out of Keningau if that’s any help. But it was still on this road going, you still on this road going through to the Indonesian border.

And the original the idea was that there was no road from Keningau at all until this was a continuation of previous people had been over there because the engineers had been over there for I think three tours before us and they’d actually done probably 70 or 70 or 80 kilometres of road. So we actually drove over the road that our guys had made previously. In the previous years until we arrived at this place called Sook. And of course there’s nothing at Sook. Oh there is

there was a school. And this village of tents which is where were gonna live for the next whatever and whatever. But that was it was nice. It was right out in the out in the middle of a plain and that. And in fact it was all from Keningau to Sook is all nearly all sort of tropical savannah type grassland. They and it was fairly easy as far from a technical point of view as far as putting a road through it was fairly easy apart from the sort of rise and fall of the land which gets a bit hectic but it still wasn’t too bad compared what

with what was to come. We pulled in we when we settled in a Sook. My main job there was repairing chainsaws. Cause engineers use a lot of chainsaws. And because when you graduate from Balcombe this, so it all ties in, I guess, eventually when you graduate from Balcombe as a fitter and turner you’d normally become a plant fitter. So that you were then repair things like bulldozers and stuff like that. So I’d because I wasn’t an engineer I didn’t get involved in

that side of it, I got involved in that sort of lathe work side of the fitting and turning side and the chainsaw small engine type repair. So that was sort of involved there. Then I became then I really became the – we moved from – they were operating out of there and it was across fairly hard a lot of swamp. Or very low lying ground so it was a lot of fill a lot of work going in, or had to go in to be able to make this road

across this semi-swamp to get to the mountain range. So I stayed at Sook until such time as that section of the road was completed, and actually we started got to the top of the first range of they were called the Witty Ranges and we set up another set up a camp there whilst an advanced sort of camp there while they were still based at Sook and I went forward to the their camp because their chainsaws at this stage of the game were fairly important and a fairly big job because

some of the teak trees were, you know, probably 12 feet in diameter. And they had to, you know, there’s only one way the bull dozer would just run across ’em and just bounce off. So there was only one way of getting ’em down was by chainsaw. And that so it was a full time my – a full time job there. Just sharpening chainsaw blades the chains on the blades on the on the chainsaws or repairing them. At that stage we had solo chainsaws, which are – had been around the army system for quite some time and had seen better days

anyway. So they were in a lot of ’em were breaking down so we bought Dolmars locally and they and they performed really well. So but still required the same amount of chainsaw sharpening cause like, you know, every day there’d – I dunno how many chainsaws I’d have probably, oh, 6 or 8. But I’d be sharpening chainsaw blades all day nearly.

A file.

Yeah. So it was a pretty monotonous job. But also, you know, rewarding, cause you knew that they needed them. A lot a jobs you do in the army you do it for somebody’s say so not because it needs doing but this one actually needed doing. But, you know, you paint white rocks for no reason at all. In artillery units you paint white rocks. Why paint white rocks but something for the guys to do. You know. But see it’s got not nothing no real use but these sharpening the

chainsaws was rewarding and I enjoyed it. And of course moving up out of the plains was probably 5 to 10 degrees cooler. So it was very comfortable just like this all the time. Just a shirt and shirt and shorts – we – and a hat we wore, and jungle boots. So it was very comfortable and a lovely place because it was now, we’re now in virtually virgin jungle. And it was, you know, primary jungle. If you got off really got off the path

there was nowhere to go cause you just couldn’t walk. It was impenetrable basically. So that was good and there was, you know, the butterflies were flying round the orchids were growing in the trees. It was, you know, tropical paradise that no one virtually had no white men or very few white men had ever seen I guess. So that was nice.

They used

basic corduroy construction with a, you know, logs in it first up and lots and lots of gravel back filling from the mountain. As they as they made cuttings in the mountain they brought it back down and back filled over the top of it. But fill was fairly important obviously. I know how many – how much depth they had to put on it. There was a fair bit of depth involved making it, you know, a roadworthy road I guess. Because it was, you know, designing we had to design it to well to carry military vehicles including tanks if that was gonna be the case.

So it was fairly lengthy process. This is why it took so long to go, cause I think it was 23 kilometres and took the mob before us nearly all that time to go the 23 kilometres. That was 6 months and about 2 or 3 months of ours. So nearly 5 months to go 23 kilometres across this swamp. So it was a major construction feature.

No. no no. No. No, nothing, just

the maintenance of the tools and things behind or production things behind it.

Yeah well, it was bridging bolts and I never saw where the bridging bolts went. Cause I don’t think we ever – I don’t think we ever constructed a bridge. But there was a matter of putting, oh, I forget how many inches of thread by hand on the end of five eight rod about this long so we could. But it was a monotonous job too.

But I think that’s there was still a lot a chainsaw still some chainsaw work cause they were still working up in the mountains clearing, starting to clear that to get them, so they get the back fill, to fill over the swamp. So there was still a fair bit of chainsaw work going on, and that still pretty well occupied me. So

Well we started. Being a smart fitter and turner and we had in fact – I had another bloke or had another two blokes working with me, and he

put them in the lathe and he’d rough them down by machine and because they had to be interchangeable, we finished them off with a hand dye. So it whatever head tip they were threads per inch he’d rough ’em down on the lathe which you can do screw cutting attachment. But to actually finish off a thread on a lathe takes you a long time because it’s, you know, it’s a very touchy sort of operation. And you do – when you get down to the final depth of the thread, you can catch the tool because

you’ve got all the tool bearing against the sides of the thread and so it gets to the dickey process. So he’d take ’em out at two thirds of the thread and then we’d and ti wouldn’t take long then by hand to whip ’em down after he’d made the start. So with the hand and then they’d all be standard. Which you obviously needed.

Oh I think it was a tent. I think we did have a – cause the engineers lived pretty well. And that was

another reason for going to them. I think we even had a cement floor in part of it. Which is sort of fairly unusual. But it was – we had – once again we had one of these machinery trucks I mentioned that we do on occasions had and it had a fairly big lathe on it. It ate the threads. Cause sometimes, you know, you need a fairly high powered lathe to turn a reasonable size thread. So that’s – we had that advantage. And of course we had

to have a big lathe for the maintenance of their plant equipment too I guess if we had to make parts. But very seldom did we – ever very seldom did we had to make a part for a piece of plant, cause they’re – most of them are pretty complicated or castings or something like that so they were pretty hard to make anyway. So that was sort of my involvement. Or things that occur to me. I suppose we had the normal petrol stoves and all the normal day to day stuff, but don’t – didn’t even register any more. Cause now I’m an expert at petrol stoves

by this time cause I’d been doing it for at 4 Field Regiment for so long. So on that peripheral stuff I know all this now. But it’s taken me a while to learn it but I know it now. Yeah, so –

Yeah. Well see, we had hot and cold running water. And we had that in Vietnam in fact as well. And it’s only modifying

whatever’s available to make it work. But they do live well. And when we further on after this place on top of the hill was called Nabawan which I went back to fairly recently. Wasn’t the same place Nabawan is now. There was nothing at Nabawan when we were there, nothing at all. Except the army camp which is sort of built on the side of the hill. When I went back the village of Nabawan is now sort of 2 or 3 kilometres away from where we were and it’s now a small – a very – well by

their standards I spose a village. Got 5 or 6 shops and all sorts of things there that weren’t there before. So but anyway to tell you how they lived comfortably the next place along was called Pandawan and it or North Pandawan actually and there we when we when we finally set up camp they took a big hole of the ground put down the malthoid and we had a swimming pool. That’s how well they lived. Whereas, you know,

we and that’s and it’s possible it only took ’em a half a day with a with a bulldozer to do it. So they do they lived pretty comfortably and they have their beer and all that sort a stuff. Or most other units do too but the engineers seem to know how know how to do it nicely. And I was very happy to be with them. Anyway that’s that was just an aside. The malthoid. Do, you know, what malthoid is? It’s a sort of a very thick tarred paper that’s water proof and they just laid that laid that in the

ground filled it up with water and there was our swimming pool. Nice, as right as rain. Beautiful. With a bar right beside it which was what else could you ask for? Yeah.

I’ve got no idea but it is water proof. I know as a kid when I mentioned that place in Terranora we actually or no it was in Murwillumbah we had a malthoid roof on. And all it is just tarred

paper thick tarred paper and just waterproofed and saves a heavy building so you don’t have to put any much substructure under it. So you can just put whatever you like and put malthoid over it and it’s waterproof. In fact I’ve got some under my tank here just to stop the rust keep the water out of it so it’s a it’s a in that early days post war it was a fairly important construction temporary construction material. You know a lot of the galvanised iron and those

and tiles and those sorts of things were pretty hard to come by and pretty expensive. So a lot of people sort of made do with other stuff and malthoid was very cheap and nasty on it. Anyway, back to Nabawan.

Yeah, well –

Yeah, well, basically the reason was because of the because of the confrontation they were frightened of the Indonesians coming up the centre of Kalimantan to hit and take over both Sabah and Sarawak and Brunei and which is even more important I guess cause

that’s where the all the money is, or was then, and was then. So that was the primary reason was to put a road through so that military vehicles of all types and sizes could get access immediately to the Indonesian border and stop the millions from streaming over the border. The other side of the coin was there was another race of people there called the Muruts who were undernourished

and there was a human side of it. That we wanted to make sure that they get access to communication logistics and things so that they could become a continuing feature of society I guess. Cause there’s not many of them, but they were still they were sort of hunters and gatherers maybe some minor agriculture but very small lots of rice. But very subsistence type of activity.

And they were still walking round wearing loin cloths and shooting and hand held blow pipes. They with poison darts. So that’s the way they were sort of living and I think there’s probably another a environmental side to it as well. Because what they were hitting with their poison darts were horn bills and, you know, proboscis monkeys and stuff like this that was, you know, World War, worldwide liking to.

So that was aside so we give them real sort of cows meat instead of they them eating they were eating the hearts out Proboscis monkeys and the brains out of the other things so a few other odds and ends. So that was – and that was a nice sort of an adjunct to have to the purpose of the exercise.

No we didn’t stay with we in fact at

at Sook there was no the Muruts were sort of the jungle people, so on all that savannah plain there was next to no Muruts. There was a few Dusuns, I think, Dusuns. They were sort of horse riding people those type of things. And the and the Muruts sort of stuck to the fringe of the jungle, particularly in the Whity Ranges which is where we were – this Nabawan and Pandawan is. It’s sort of in the middle of the interior primary jungle. So

where were we going?

Oh yes, yes. At Pandawan we actually were camped on sort of one side of the creek and they were and their village or kampong was on the other side of the village. So we did have a fair bit of contact with them there, but also on the day to day basis once they once the road was sort of being completed they’d come down and wait on the side of the road to try and get a lift to

town. Of course we were virtually the only vehicles going along the road, so you’d stop and fill it up with Muruts and take ’em into Keningau and they’d then they’d get back somehow on a return trip or wait on the side of the road again. So there was a lot of to-ing and to and fro-ing and help on their side and we didn’t hesitate. Even though, you know, today you probably would because of insurance angles and all that sort a jazz. But we’d fill – if they had a truck going in,

they’d fill the truck up with people till it was overcrowded and take them into town. So it was already working while we were there the opportunity the logistics were proving that they could they were able to do these sorts of things. So the human side of the development the road was actually was fairly apparent even in the in the early days. As soon as we hit the top of the mountains and they started coming out of the jungle so. It was working, they were they were actually getting nutrition. Getting – were getting other forms of communication

I guess anyway.

They weren’t yeah. If they decided to go to town, it’d probably take them I dunno probably a week of walking. Cause I don’t think – I think they had what they call bridle paths but I don’t think they ever had or I never saw a horse. They used the bridle path, so the bridle path was

more a ‘bridal path’ – A-L rather than L-E, I think. So that if they wanted to walk anywhere it’s gonna take them a week to get into Keningau so and as it was now, the trucks – the truck took them in a day and if they were smart they’d be back on the same truck or coming back the same day. But no I think it achieved its purpose then. In retrospect I’m not too sure it was the smart move.

Having gone now gone back and

seen the people now are no longer wearing their loin cloths. They’re no longer have their blow guns. They’re no longer living in their in their tribal communities. They’re all living in the towns and they’ve lost that culture or I think that culture forever. I know there’s on the various tourist maps it’s marked Murut Cultural Centre, but I think half – if it does exist which I didn’t find, but if it does exist it’s not preserving their culture

as we know it. In World War II these same guys cause the bridle path was used by I think 3 Raj during World War, or 3 Battalion during World War II because they in the kampongs, they’ve still got photos of ours of Australian guys in their in the head headman’s cottage. So there were they did have people through previously. And so did know of white man.

And Australians oh yeah. Well what I was going about to say was that they were then head hunters in that period of time in World War. I hope they’re not – they’ve – we’ve knocked that out of them but it’s just a shame to see so many of their other traditions probably have gone forever. And so that’s one negative. I s’pose there’s positive and negative side to nearly every action I guess. And that was, I thought, fairly unfortunate. That sort of culture which was probably limited to

four or five hundred people when we went there is probably just about gone. It’s supposed to be making little baskets in Nabawan and I don’t know whether they ever made little baskets. It’s just, you know, they just sell ’em for the tourist market and that’s it. They’re like for holding pencils and that sort of jazz. And you think well they’ve got probably no practical use within the Murut system. What –

Oh yes, yeah.

Well, see they – when we –

Not a great deal. Because of the language, the language barriers particularly. Because they don’t speak Malaysian. And even if they did, I don’t. They spoke their local dialect and that was about all because now they speak Malaysian like everyone else. But then they only spoke Murut

and the two languages were very dissimilar apparently. So there was next to no communication except, you know, for bartering or going through someone who could speak both Malay or English and Murut and there weren’t too many of them. And we you we didn’t come into contact with too much too many of them. But the one contact we did have was when the road finished as far as Nabawan, no sorry, Pandawan. They actually

had an official opening because the because the kampong was right beside the camp as I mentioned before to the and they invited us over to their village and we had an official opening ceremony. Going around beating all their gongs. They’re drinking their rice wine and we were drinking their rice wine which was a mistake. And they drink ’em out of what they call tapai jars. It’s probably a nice little aside I think it’s once again it’ll be a culture that’s probably gone or just about gone and these jars are about three foot high

and they’ve got a fairly high neck on them. They make the rice wine in the tapai jar. Put a put a leaf over it and add water until it fills up to the top of the jar and when you take you drink it through a through a bamboo straw and when you drink you’re not allowed to stop drinking until it goes down below the leaf again. And by the time you’ve done that three or four times you’ve had had more than enough. But it just keeps going on and on and on.

And those interestingly enough those were those jars are from China. They’re Chinese export and they most of them they’re now family heirlooms for anyone that’s got one. They’re worth thousands on the market and they’re about and they’re sometime after the Song Dynasty which is sort of 6 – 636. So they

This is all the tribe the Chinese-Vietnamese trading that went on. And, you know, we’re only just

finding out about it now to a degree that they’re where the trade routes went and that’s part of the story. And apparently theirs two types a couple of types of tapai jars or a couple of uses for them. The other one is for the bones of their ancestors. When we went there we presumed that they were one in the same. That the tapai jars that the made their rice wine in they made ’em on top of the bones of their ancestors. And that’s what we were led

to believe. But apparently that’s in from what I know now that’s not the case. They had a sep – for separate use. They were both they were the same jars but one was used for funerals and one was used for making their rice wine. They didn’t combine the activities. Thank goodness. But did make you think. But when they put on their feed, you know, it was I’d hate think what it probably was. I think most of it was monkey we ate

on the at that opening. I suspect some of it was horn bill. And probably a little fish. But it was I think the brains of the monkeys were a delicacy – are a delicacy in Malaya and I think maybe that’s what we ate. But I don’t want to know. So that’s but that we didn’t actually learn much about their culture except the oringtur, the head man, he’s in charge of the village

his family are sort of highest are highest in the social ladder then it goes down from there. But I think most of their religious beliefs are animistic. They’re if they’ve got and they’re only I don’t think they’re strong about anything. They’re definitely not cause they weren’t Christians then. They may be Christians now but they were animistic I think in mainly in belief.

I don’t think any. I don’t think any. There may well have been. I wasn’t aware of it. But I suspect that there would be very little negotiation just. It was because it was basically – it was tribal land but they didn’t get the niceties that our guys are getting just defence, the defence

purpose and that’s it go. Admittedly we tried to well we did avoid, you know, all their sacred places and I dunno how they sorted it out which were sacred places or not and, you know, went as close as we could to the villages without or residences without sort of encroaching entirely on them. And we definitely didn’t push any villages down to put the road through but. So there might have been some negotiation but I don’t think very much. And I don’t think they were worried too much. I’m sure they weren’t after a million dollars like our guys after

mining and things like that so. They – but they –

I don’t think so, I don’t think so. I think if the conflict had have come they just would have gone further into the jungle and they’ve only got to go 200 metres further into the jungle and you’d never find them. So I think if you – even the Japanese or I think the word would’ve passed around enough to know they’re a formidable enemy. Cause these the blow guns are deadly accurate. Within

the range that you’ve got in the jungle. And they’re deadly you know. I think it’s 7 seconds from being hit to dead and so that’s a combination of krit which is a native snake. Krit and a particular root of a particular tree and one sort of I think the tree sort of petrifies. Or not petrifies what do you all it? Freezes you can’t – anyway you can’t react you can’t sort of do anything while you’re dying.

Oh yes. Well in fact we used to have competitions down the middle of the hut. I dunno how we got – we didn’t use poison darts but they we’d just use the darts without being poisoned. But we used to have cigarette packets down the down the middle of the hut and shoot them, shoot the thingo and that’s the reason why I know they’re accurate, cause I could hit the cigarette packet sort of at 20 metres. And we used to have big cicadas there were sort of about 2 between 2 and 3 inches long. They were fair game.

So, you know, you find all these activities to, you know, to fill in the time and that was that was a good one but they – but and then they had these – had the parangs which were sort of like a big machete or not a big machete, like a machete, and the symbols – they’re status symbols as well. And the orangtur or the head of the village, he has the fanciest one. That’s usually a bone handle probably made out of a shin bone of one of the previous enemies and tuft of the

hair from someone, they’ve taken the head off and things like that. And he carries that around and he normally carries a shot gun as well. And I dunno, I think that was English, introduced that as a status symbol. So he carries around the shot gun and I think the way it was, he he’d get issued with so many shells a month for his shot gun. Free of charge from the government. So just another aside.

Yes. We – at one

stage well at several stages we had warning that they were on their way. But we it wasn’t a great concern because what the grapevine told us was that we’d they’d we’d get three days warning from the from the natives on the on the jungle telegraph before they got reached us so there was never an overly worried about it cause they weren’t gonna spring us by surprise. As far as we were as far as we knew because jungle grapevine would tell us

soon enough to get into a defensive position. Cause we didn’t actually prepare any defensive positions at all. We carried our rifle around all the time. And carried live ammo [ammunition] all the time. But we never actually dug weapon pits and stuff that they did in Vietnam or we did in training cause there was no need for it. Why dig a hole if you don’t need to and it would only take them with their plant equipment, you know, 5-minutes to put in put in the best firing trench you’ve ever seen. So all we needed was, you know, a few minutes notice and

and everything was defensive. But we actually we did hear that they were coming but it never materialised and was a false alarm apparently. But for those, you know, few days it was a worry because you can’t you couldn’t see anywhere. You know you’d walk off the path and it’s black in the primary jungle. So they could be coming out of anywhere you wouldn’t see them. So you had to rely on the native passing the word.

No. We were there. We were everything. We were the infantrymen, we were, we did have guard duty and things like that at times, but it was always someone on guard. But it was – there was no horrific warfare type thing about it. It was just knew in advance, just confident in advance and they – and we did, we were working in cooperation with a native rangers, which are sort of like a

paramilitary type organisation not. On the good side, not on the bad side. Who were sort of circulating around in the jungle round us and they did have radio contact. Although we never, we didn’t see them too often, but they were sort of our advanced infantry if you like to put it that way. And they would probably pick up they’d pick up the messages and pass them along to us by radio if anyone there any movement.

Oh, I think I was still

pretty ready, yeah. Because we had, you know, fly through from Sabah jets and things like that and they had us all worked out where were so we had them admittedly to call to call on. And they probably wouldn’t a taken long to get from Butterworth across. We also had the infantry battalion next door if it really got serious. In Sarawak. And, you know, cause distances aren’t a aren’t a great problem in that area there’s only probably a thousand miles

from Point A from one side of Sarawak to the other side of Sabah. So, you know, a helicopter and we had helicopters so, you know, or the English had helicopters so they could pick ’em up and fly ’em in. So it wasn’t great. We used to have the Wessex come in for any medic, medic’s like if anyone got injured the helicopter used to come in and take them out. A Wessex, the English ones. So yeah. They had all that had all that covered. I don’t think compared with

Vietnam it’s not in the same ball park as far as fear goes. Not the same game. I think I’d be more scared in Kings Cross or down in St Kilda than I was in Borneo. To be perfectly honest because, you know, you’ve got more danger, more chance of being mugged and killed in St Kilda than you would’ve had in the middle of Borneo, I can assure you of that.

I loved it. Being an ex-bushie obviously I, you know, I loved it. And because I did grow orchids or real orchids at the time there’d be orchids that I’d that I’d walk through the bush and see that probably aren’t been or haven’t been seen yet by anyone else. Just growing wild on the in the bush. It’s not in the primary jungle you don’t see many animals, or much – many animals nor birds. So it’s more the orchids that appeal to me

and I’ll walk from North Pandawan the camp because that’s as far as the road was going at the time down to the next village through on the bridle path, and of course there course there was another there was a school. I think it was at Pandawan itself not North Pandawan and they had orchids growing hanging off the side of the school and I’d think oh this is, you know, this is heaven to me. And the butterflies some of the butterflies were, you know, probably some of those bird wings that are, you know, 6-inches across.

You know a butterfly, beautiful. Beautiful country. And then when I went back this time of course most of the primary jungle is gone. It’s the teak trees were obviously timbered out. Cause a lot been – a lot of slash and burn gone on. Lot – all the savannah grassland is mostly oil palms. They’re clearing the hills and the mountains where Nabawan was at an alarming pace. Put to put more oil plantations

in. You know the orangturs – that we – not orangturs. Orang-utans that we saw, you know, nearly every day driving if you drove through you’d see an orang-utan somewhere up in the jungle. They’re almost well they’re now in Sepilok and that’s about it. You know in the reserve program. So, you know, you ask yourself was it worthwhile opening up the country. There’s a bad side to everything and once again the rough

side a the coin. You think, you know, I dunno whether the pros are better or the cons. But that’s the shame to see and you wonder how many cause they’ve not or they wouldn’t have been ten years ago wild on environmental issues so you wonder how many species that have been wiped out in the in putting these oil palm plantations in. And then you’ve lost that lost the culture of the Murut so you think well that’s a, you know, disadvantage.

The road that was that all these guys spent so much bloody hard earned energy or whatever is now no longer used. It’s reverted to jungle. What we did in a straight line they’ve taken 20 kilometres to do. You know so they’ve gone they’ve gone right around and it takes. It takes now to get from Sook which is about 23 kilometres to Nabawan now takes about 4 hours. When once when we were there it was about 20-minutes or a half an hour so they

just wander right they go right. They’ve gone right around that swamp rather than rather than do than do continuing to do the road. And they’ve gone by having to go round it that’s why we went across it because it was too far to go around it you know. Thinking white man’s talk. So they’ve gone right around and gone well probably 70 kilometres out of the way to go to go 20 kilometres. So you think, you know, you just you wonder why you go to the effort at times. Cause, you know, a lot of people

spent a lot of time wasting their or their 6 months there. Obviously we’re getting paid for it and enjoying it but to have it all go for naught. Although the road is still through to Sook so but it’s only after Sook they converted it diverted it around. And it never did to go Pensiangan, the government pulled us out beforehand. So it never fully achieved either role. Never opened up the hinterland and it’s still not – it’s still the road is – still only now goes through to Pandawan. It doesn’t go

any further, so that’s the last camp – so that no one ever bothered continuing it further to get access the tribes that still I think it’s probably still 200 kilometres to the border. So there’s still 200 of tribe 200-miles of or kilometres of tribe that haven’t been accessed by the road that was meant for. So neither none of the purposes of the have been met. So it was a bit it was a bit disappointing to go back. Right where do we go from there?

Well it went over went across yeah it went it went across the Whity Ranges and went to Pandawan which is just as I said the North Pandawan where the village was and there was the I think the road actually continued through to Pandawan itself. I was only there for the road to North Pandawan. And of course Pandawan’s where the school is so it’s only further down the track and that’s as far as we went.

Still military vehicles. The full range military, you know, tanks the whole lot still. But it was probably only a dry weather one. Cause in the wet weather it was almost impassable. Cause of, you know, the rise and fall was pretty steep. A tank could – a tank could get through anyway, but the wheeled vehicles might find a bit of a problem in the wet after the tanks had been through. But it was – it would have achieved it purpose.

Yes. Yeah. I it was. Well particularly well I was in Pandawan and I had to drive in fact I had to drive the what we call the char wallah. He’s the bloke that does all the cooking. The Indian bloke that does the cooking for sale on in the camp. There were all the Indians will set up a business anywhere and he set up a business in our camp and he sells, you know, sandwiches and soup and bits and pieces like that. But he we used to look after him and I took him into town today one day to get his to get

a bag of potatoes during the wet, and driving in on, slip on the wet clay is something like driving in the snow if you’ve ever driven in the snow. You’ve got to sort of drive 50 metres before or 50-yards before you get there so you start. If you want to go around that corner down there you start steering now. And of course some of these hills were pretty steep. And we were coming back and it was wet and the char wallah said I’m getting out. He got out and grabbed his bag of spuds [potatoes]

while I’m drivin’ down the road. He wasn’t gonna stay with me, cause it’s a pretty fair drop over the side. But so it

Well I, no, I was sliding down frontwards. Under control. I was I still he didn’t he didn’t think I was. He was out. With his bag a spuds. Carrying his bag a spuds home. So that was six months and…

Well they picked their spots. The camp at Nabawan was on the side of a hill so it wasn’t a problem with water’d run straight off and North Pandawan, it was sort of on reasonably high ground because obviously cause the natives built there it was obviously the place to build. So we built on just on the other side of the creek. So you had the run off going straight into the creek, or into our swimming pool. It didn’t matter. So there was it was no great problem. We only we had a dirt floor in North in North Pandawan but that was

it wasn’t a problem. Some of the places were of course. You get tremendous tropical downpours at times. But we never had a big never had a big problem with that.

Yeah we went we went from Sook to Nabawan to North Pandawan while I was there. But we didn’t actually – the mob before us set up Sook. So we didn’t set up Sook.

We set up Nabawan and Pandawan or North Pandawan. And that’s the only – they’re the three places I went to.

Yeah basically, yeah, yeah. Then I think the mob after us finished off the section we were doing. Which is sort of just consolidating what we were doing went through to Pandawan and that was the last mob that went. And that’s as far as the road now goes and as far as it went then.

Only what we could only what we could quarry locally. We did have a gravel pit. It wasn’t sort of fine – it wasn’t fine gravel it was just, you know, fairly big fairly big crushed rock. We had to bring something in yeah. But the rest of it a lot of it was just red clay and it was, you know, like being on a skating rink. Well it was the day I was driving I know that it was like being on a skating rink. So anyway – so from

North Pandawan home.

Yeah. Oh not quite home first. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Murut. Murut. Murut. M-U-R-U-T

No.

Well I had, as I said, I had these two guys working with me at Sook. One of those was a local guy and he wasn’t a Murut, he could speak Malay. I couldn’t of course, but that didn’t matter he could speak a bit of English as well. And he was actually work. He worked for me doing the run downs – roll with the dyes on the on the bridge bolts. And to just to show what a little marketing gimmick he had. When we used to cut these bolts out of, you know, long

long bits of rod but it’d always end up invariably end up with little bits let over like a 2-inch bit and he used to turn them into minature perangs. And sell ’em to his mates. Not to us but sell ’em to people in town. That’s so, you know, just a bit of marketing enterprise. He’d spend there all lunchtime he’d be there with the bashin’ away at these bits a steel turn ’em into little miniature little perangs that to sell to his mates. He got a dollar each for ’em ,dollar Malay I think, so it was good entrepreneurship.

The Indian bloke?

Yeah we had a I think we had a dhobi wallah as well. He’s a sort of a washing man so and I think we had a – oh yeah, a couple a boot boys that all. This is all sort of from the local village at Pandawan a couple of the kids came across and they’d clean your shoes for you, for a dollar a week or something so very good. But we did we really didn’t have much

cause once again there was the language barrier. They didn’t give us a language course in Malay or anything else before we went. Which I think’s probably, you know, in retrospect probably a little bit a fault. They could a given you basic. Basic Malayan would’ve only taken you 3 or 4 days I guess. They don’t do that. Didn’t do that in Vietnam either so. It’s a thing that they could’ve done without any great expense to anyone. Cause usually sittin’ round on your bum waiting for a plane to go sort of thing and once you get organised.

So they could do that as well, but no one had, has, I don’t think.

Well you didn’t have enough time with them see. To learn you had to have to spend some spend a bit of time and they worked. They were working and we were working and knock off time they were gone. You know they disappeared back to their wherever they came from. So they’d have a – you could – you picked up a few words. I

picked up a few words but most of which I can’t remember now. But between his English and what I picked up in Malaya we’d communicate pretty well. They’d know what you mean. Same in Vietnam. We had couple of at one stage we had a couple of Vietnamese working for me and they you communicate one way or another you’d get the message across.

All up on bamboo stilts. The flooring was basically bamboo slats.

Like all woven together. The headman’s village and I think we which is most of the village anyway. Cause I think they all that’s all family basically anyway there’s a high tier goes right around the outside of a square about 30 foot square, I spose in the middle and that’s sunken down and that’s sort of the normal living area. That’s where their where they are during the day and these

high – the higher tiers are their beds. So they just climb up out of the or only step up it’s only a step. And you sit – actually sit when you’re drinking the tapai jar you actually sit on the side of their bed. So at some stage of the game the kick you out or roll you off their beds so they can get in it. Cause you’re drinking – that’s where you’re sitting drinking their tapai. But that’s – and it’s all bamboo suspension in it, bamboo. Very much like Malayans do the same thing. Except for the bamboo in Borneo wasn’t quite as thick so you had a finer

type weave a finer type floor. So that sort of only an inch in diameter round about and they were sort of fairly springy. Cause they we used to when we opened the road we had a dance in there and we’re all springing up and down to one a their local just follow the leader and do whatever they do. It was, you know, one of their traditional dances I believe. So I’ve done a traditional Murut dance which probably not too many people in the world have done. But don’t ask me to do it again or even what I did at the time. But yeah it happened and it was, you know, it was a great a great

occasion. And they were more than happy the natives were. Cause we had a very good rapport, I think. As we always tried to. I think, you know, we all talk about winning the hearts and minds of the people. Generally I think Australians are very adept and try sincerely to do that. Not only here it’s sort of everywhere I guess. It’s one advantage of being Australian. And it’s nice to be Australian.

Well I didn’t do much personally. I know one of the blokes came home with one of these perangs that I was telling you about. The fairly fancy ones. And it I don’t know what he actually gave him but it was a on a bartering arrangement. And we did not a not a great deal of bartering but just the on the odd occasion. Some guy’d come in with something that he’d that he’d swapped something else for.

Oh well yeah.

Yeah. No not that much opportunity. You know, even the boot boy you might instead of giving him a dollar you

might give him, you know, something that he’d particularly attracted to. I don’t – it might have been a cigarette lighter or something along that style, or a packet of fags or whatever. Instead of the dollar. He probably make a – it’d cost more than a dollar. He’d make a make a killing on the on the deal but it didn’t matter all that much. You know a dollar was only dollar Malay so it was then a sixth of an Australian dollar or something now. You weren’t givin’ away too much. But that sort of thing. Sometimes they’d want, you know, your old your old

sandals. Cause they’re good, they were good they were army issue. They were pretty well made. And there was no trouble in getting another pair of sandals. All they had to do was have small feet. So any yeah, but it was – wasn’t a great deal, because we didn’t have that much that many dealings with them. It wasn’t a general sort of village flow in and see what they can get and a village flow out sort of thing. It was just the odd individual that had a bit of entrepreneurship and took advantage of it.

Read a bit. Drank a bit. Went to sleep a lot cause there wasn’t a great deal else to do. Half past ten was normally lights out anyway. And the or well the bar closed half past nine ten o’clock anyway. But you couldn’t you couldn’t be there all the time. But most blokes just, you know, might a picked as I said, you know, get a few blow pipes and have a bit of a blow pipe. Play cards.

But most of the time it was just – things just happened. You’d have a bit of a yarn and go to sleep most of the time. Very – not very social activity at all, no. But there was – no, there wasn’t a great deal. But I, you know, most of us would have a beer before tea and by the time you’d. You’d finish work at four go and have a bit of a clean up go and have tea at five or half past five have a beer after tea then

by that time it’s half past six seven o’clock. Gettin’ dark. Nowhere to – no disco to go to, so where else you go? Back to your bed.

Yes. We had well that was another function that you had to keep the generator going as well. And that was once again living with engineers, so it was great. Cause they’d just pick up a 44-gallon drum of petrol and put it there and put the siphon in and way she’d go and just keep running

until the 44-gallon drum ran out. And it was only a matter of next morning coming in with a take another 44 and put it in. Great. No manual labour what so ever. But that was good. No it was good it was actually a great time. I enjoyed it. In both, you know, in both country wise. Service wise. Corps wise. It was very enjoyable. The only thing was, I was away from home so once again after spending once again after spending. I’d spent 11 months at home during now, another six months. So it was four years I

only spent 11 months at home before. So that’s not making me any popular in the on the home front either of course. So then out of North Pandawan. Back down on the train. Was it back down on the train?

Cause the tour of duty ended up. Each lot went over for 6 months as lot happens, often happens, you’ll phase – as replacements come in, you’re phased out, so I probably did less than 6 months.

So I went home probably five and a half months mark, or something, because my replacement arrived. In fact my replacement arrived from Malaya. So he came, as soon as he arrived I hung around for a while, so he’s got to know whatever and he knew more than I did anyway to start off with cause he’d been in engineers before. So didn’t there was nothing I was going to teach him. So when as soon as he was settled in the first opportunity to go out, I went out. And we went out in there must have been a fair few of us

cause we actually went to Jesselton. Got aboard Beverly – British Beverly bomber, I think it was. I think they it was bombers. They were double-storey sort of transport troop transport plane at 300 kilometres an hour we flew from Jesselton to Singapore to pick up the Qantas flight in Singapore. Stayed at we got pulled in and dunno what time we got in we ended we stayed in Nee soon Barracks in Singapore. And

then found out and I’m not too sure whether there was another reason or not to this day but apparently the Qantas plane needed an engine change. So we spent 5 days in Singapore. It was also at a time of heightened awareness and of and of heightened rumour that the Indonesians were gonna attack Malaya. So whether there was more in it than meets the eye I don’t know. I was never privy to that information but I suspect

that it doesn’t take Qantas 5 days to change an engine. So I suspect we were there for security reasons. To provide extra fire support if it was required. But it was fine by me, because it meant anything longer than 24 hours in country and as far as I was concerned it was another gong. Or in fact, it wasn’t another gong, it was a bar to the gong, to the medal we’ve already got because I’d been more than 24 hours in a in a war-like theatre. So I got something for nothing. You don’t get too many of those things, so yeah. So that was a

big advantage and back home and by this time I’d been I’d got my posting posted to South Australia to Adelaide to Central Command Workshops. So that was nice I was posted in as a corporal I think I mastered in as a lance corporal and cause I all this time all these times I’ve haven’t had time to do any of my personal training as an NCO cause I, you know,

can’t haven’t been able to attend a course cause I’ve been overseas or out in the bush with 4 Field so here I am trying to gain subjects for corporal when I was really, service wise, ready to be a sergeant. And didn’t have didn’t have subjects at all so. The next I think I spent 3 years in Adelaide and it was like we’ll go back and just talk about what we what I worked on during the time there. Part of that time was tyring to get cause you’ve got to do subject A B and C for promotion

for each rank.

After getting back from being down at the Postal – Central Command Workshops that’s in – it was actually at that time they were a split workshop one part was – well 3 parts, one part was Keswick Barracks, one part was in Warradale and one part was in Largs Bay, and I went to work at Largs Bay first

up and stayed there for probably 6 months, something like that and ended up getting promoted and then moved back to Warradale sort of semi in charge of the duty section. A general engineering section, so things had sort of progressed fairly rapidly. Sort of because Central Command Workshop is the only workshop in South Australia we got a fairly wide range of tasks. Probably the biggest task we got was

rebuilding Wiles Cookers out – they’re the mobile field kitchens, and I’ve think they’re been – probably World War I vintage and they came in two varieties, you know, a four wheeled one and a two wheeled one and they had all reached basically the end of their life and we were actually the rebuild workshop for them. It meant taking out the old steam fired boilers or whatever you want to and putting new steam boilers in them. And that

was – each job was a fairly lengthy process particularly on the four wheeled jobs they were a fairly big piece of equipment. And it meant replacing all the rubbers and reflex gauges and they were all sort of hundred at least jobs, which is a big job. And only in retrospect was it dangerous because all the lagging around the boilers in the old days was asbestos, so little did we know of course at the time we were pulling

out asbestos that had deteriorated rapidly. So who knows what the result of that is, but I had an old civilian working for me at the time and he’s now dead from lung cancer, so one suspects that maybe there was. He was the bloke doing most of the work I was the supervisor. We all got involved because it’s a dirty hot job. So, whether there is asbestos related problems there I don’t know but that was probably the biggest job we had.

What else did we do there?

A 100 men hours, yeah.

Up to probably 3 or 4 weeks cause you’d pull it down and then you’d probably has to wait for the parts to arrived because they’re all packed away in some store room probably in Brisbane because we’re doing the repair programme in South Australia, so that sounds logical. You’d have to wait for it all to come from Brisbane to get there. So it was more chance – more a case of having everything – a lot of jobs on at once

even though the job may have only taken a 100 hours or a 120 hours or something you’d have probably 6 or 8 Wiles Cookers on the go at one time. And of course, trying to keep track of which part, which one wanted which parts was always a bit of a problem. And getting the parts.

Yeah, supervising and working at times because once they decided to do something they decided to do so you’ve got to get in. But I had a fair – a lot of different varieties

of jobs, we put up big range plates, ballistic plates at Port Augusta. I had to go up there and assemble them all for just top, you know, the shells from ricocheting down rain so it was all inch steel plates so but a variety of jobs there. A few exercises where we were in support of – everyone wanted to go bush we were sort of the back up support force so spent a fair bit of time up at Beltana,

which is up near Port Augusta training range there. A big exercise, Kangaroo or something or other or one of those real, you know, big exercises. That kept me occupied for like a month or so.

At this stage, yeah, yeah. I passed over the promotion fairly quickly. We had, early on when I was

still a corporal, we had truck conversion thing where we were taking them off the old blitz wagons putting them on to the new international wagons like machinery loaders and all that sort of thing so we had to start from the sort of back up, take all the old floorboards and everything out put floorboards in and make the whole workshop up again so we had a few of those to do. And that was sort of as a corporal and that was at Largs Bay. And then Largs Bay closed down and went to Warradale and then we started the Wiles Cooker

thing and about that time I was promoted to sergeant sort of thing. And that was something different getting moved into the sergeant rank’s fairly significant, and I can remember a night in the sergeants’ mess, my first night, the stunt they pull on you, you’ve got to answer the door. They buy you the beer and you’ve got to finish the beer before you answer the door, so by the time – I think they just go and take in turns to go and ring the door bell. So by the time the end of the – it’s –

you’ve consumed a considerable, anyway, that’s just on the side but it was a trick that I hadn’t heard of happening. You know the new boy’s got to open the door so and everyone pulls a trick and you’ve got to go on. There I managed to catch up with most of the courses, these promotion courses and equipment courses that we’ve got to do a certain amount of trade courses as well as normal army soldier type courses, so I managed to catch up with almost I think to sergeant’s level

because I was still only a temporary sergeant, I had to do one more subject, I think, or two more subjects so I was only temporary. And then the big posting order came – or do you want to spend a bit more time on Warradale equipment wise?

The sergeant GE [General Engineering] he was in charge of panel beating, spray painting, textiles, the GE’s

side of it and the welders so you had a fairly broad coverage and that you had to obviously maintain timesheets, worksheets and all that sort of stuff and maintain the job progression, hour figures and all that sort of stuff, all the good paperwork stuff and responsibility that the rank brings. So there was a fair bit of time involved there. There were only a few army people most of them were civilian. So it was really my first big opportunity to work with my

counterparts in real life. So I had Stan, who was Austrian or something, he was my main sort of civil equivalent I guess but he was a worker where I once again did most of the paperwork cause that’s the role of the soldier but I only had a few soldiers, I can’t remember how many.

I think

both, both I think most – because the civilians had been there for such a long time, they’d gone through this all – this four wheel cooker was new to me entirely but Stan had worked on them in the last, you know, before I arrived at the place so he knew basically what to do. So it was only a matter of me sort of saying, “Okay Stan go for it.” But the difference is that I think the army blokes worked harder might’ve achieved less but they worked harder to do it.

So that’s probably the distinction I would draw is that the civvies or the civvies I had knew more but worked slower. Obviously they had all the time in the world, they were getting paid, they didn’t care. The army bloke had to sort of work at a higher pace to impress his superiors to make sure he maintain the rung up the ladder. For awhile there I was also in charge of the entire workshop which is a ASM [Artificer Sergeant Major] role, which is sort of one level so that

was nice because I was getting two groups of pay higher without being affected by tax on it, on the two groups higher. So that was great.

No I wasn’t officially no, no. I think that went on for about 6 months which was great because at that stage of the game the first son come onto the scene, or the only son come on to the scene. So that extra finance was pretty helpful at that point in time. So I enjoyed, obviously enjoyed

South Australia pretty much although the climate’s bloody awful. Not the best climate in the world, it’s hot, hot and windy and dry but no it was good.

It was yeah, basically we were set up in a base camp and supporting basically the light aircraft -

the anti aircraft battery which is sort of 40 mil five Bofors, so that sort of kept us on the ball and along – and there was an exercise in sort of being a soldier as well a sort of tactical where you’re sitting in your trenches a lot of the time and not so much of the trade work, so that’s always a balance you had to run across, was a balance between being a soldier and a tradesman. Depending on where you are and what you are. You know your defence comes first, you know, obviously

it’s no good trying to fix a truck if you’re dead. So that was always the first priority is the soldier bit and then the tradesman comes second so that you have to have the place defended on way or the other even if you’ve got to diminish your workload because of it you do it, so –

Yeah, this was actually being used in an anti-personnel role, and that’s fairly unusual if they just lay them down instead of firing up and they just lay them day and of course they pump out, you know, probably 20 rounds at 40 mil at a minute it starts to be fairly intense fire power if you’re on the wrong end of it. Cause we – obviously in Vietnam the Yanks had twin Bofors set up which is the same gun set up in parallel, used in a ground role.

It’s the same deal with all artillery you’ve got to make sure they’re capable of – you know, every day you’ve got to make sure that the bore’s clear and everything’s function, so that was the main role so once again everything is sort of peripheral to that.

Oh

well there was only this, was the – the anti aircraft battery only had 40 mil bofors and that was – and they’re still a good gun and they’re still – in fact, I think they’re still being used in that role apart from the anti ground air missiles and stuff like that we’ve got they’re still being used in the aircraft role and were during World War II, you know, they’re a tremendous gun and well designed for the role and the system’s not – apart from the electrical system, the electrical system’s pretty complicated but the actual gun side of it’s

just a big spring. If you fire it, the big spring takes it and sends it forward again and ready for you to go again, so from a technical point of view it’s a simple gun on the gun side. It’s only the sort of elevation when you go on to the electrical controls and that’s not complicated but for someone that doesn’t understand the electrical side of it very well, it’s complicated to me every time I looked at it. You’d see this big box full of things that made you a bit nervous but they are very, very reliable.

No, not really, no. You do a course as part of your – your senior courses when you really need it, his electrical technology is, but you only learn that at WO 2 [Warrant Officer Second Class] level, which is pretty handy because by then you don’t need it any more. But, most of the time you could see what, if there’s a bit – you know, it was only a wire hanging loose or something like just put it on, if not then you’ve got electrical, you know, electricians back up and you call

them in but normally they – in fact when the gunners when they’ve been a piece of equipment long enough, particularly like 40 mil, they been on it for a long time they almost do their own thing, all the time. They understand what’s gone wrong, they can fix – unless it’s real hi-tech they can fix it themselves, the same with the tankies. They’ve only got one piece of equipment to know and they get to know it. It’s all in the book, all you’ve got to know is the book exists and read it. So that’s you know,

but there’s no great dramas there so that was good. But that was a long exercise and nothing out of the box, a lot of them are long – I guess.

Oh I don’t think there was anything very complicated. It’s – most of the fitting and turning stuff’s pretty basic Wiles Cookers was probably as

complicated. Hydraulics, some of the hydraulics sometimes you had a bit to do with that in plant machinery but nothing, you know, it was only a matter of emergency replacing a hose that anyone can do so while it’s a hard piece of equipment, it’s not hard to fit a hose, and your medicos in a fork lift or a piece plant that’s no great drama.

Mm, yeah, yeah.

On the trade side in a system like that not much more. It’s mainly the biggest problem is keeping everyone busy because you don’t – it’s like everywhere else you have your peak loads and then you have not enough to keep everyone going. And it’s sort of trying even at times inventing things for people to do, just so they’re not sitting on their bums getting bored with the

system. And of course as soon as you have that happen, morale is shot down the drain. “Why aren’t I at home?” And you can’t answer that question. So it’s really a case of keeping them occupied and sometimes it was nearly like painting white rocks. We actually put in a fountain that was an old wash trough, in the old days they used to have a big round fountain and they used to have all the wash troughs – hand washing troughs with all these taps coming out so all the workers could go in and wash their

hands, well that faded into oblivion, but the actual ceramic thing was quite nice so we turned it into a fountain and that sort of kept us occupied. But it was not a, you know, world shattering job but it was interesting and it kept people busy. We put a pool pump in it and make the fountain heads and peaked it all up and made sure it was operated, it took awhile but it was good, yeah.

No, I don’t really think so, there’s heaps of things but most of them are fairly small and whatever and nothing outstanding. I thought the Wiles Cookers because they’re a piece of equipment that went right through all the wars basically until Vietnam. It was interesting to sort of through them in because of their long history of reliable service.

Well they’re actually using I think a M37, I think they’re called M37 Cookers, which is now just a stainless steel box with a gas ring down the bottom. It sort of like a tall oven so it’s a lot more mobile and probably more efficient because the other one was either wood or coal fired, so you had to find you wood and coal from somewhere.

Well they’re probably still in depot, probably still hold them in stock I would guess of course we –

a boiler would last probably I don’t know 10,000 hours of cooking I suppose so, the boilers that we put in 1966 or ‘67 would be relatively good today, because they’re only sort of used on field exercises or field camps or whatever. And they would only clock up a couple hundred hours a camp so they’re probably good for another two wars.

No, they were a good piece of equipment.

Looming –

It’s happened, yeah, it’s happened.

Well I’ve – it was always on the cards I guess. But I thought logically

because the higher you get up in rank this holes there in the war theatre of course I thought the chance of me as a sergeant are a lot less than me as a craftsman going. As it so happened my number came up so from South Australia go across to Pucka [Puckapunyal] for a while just in case you haven’t seen Pucka before, which I hadn’t, so I was posted to armour regiment at

Puckapunyal, so we’re now moving into the next phase. So were doing – I think I was posted there in the September with a view to going Vietnam later that year or early in the new year so after spending time running around – this is the tail end of ‘67 time spending running around Puckapunyal, which is enjoyable for everyone – anyone who has ever been there. They

sent us home on Christmas leave and said come back and we’re off. I was still living in South Australia. They didn’t actually move me while I was away so went home, come back to Pucka and goodbye. Another Qantas flight to Tan Son Nhut this time early ‘68, January ‘68.

Yeah, you want to go somewhere else first?

Yeah, we could spend a bit of time on it I suppose. It was interesting because I’d never worked with tanks before and I’d never done any courses on a tank gun particularly so it was interesting because I didn’t know what to expect and fortunately for me the tank gun is probably the most reliable gun on earth. The 20

pounder as it was – it very, very seldom plays up, the gun itself some of the peripheral stuff does. So mainly our – the training period running around Pucka was just sort of tank tactical training rather than tactical training if you’d like to put it that way. There was already sufficient people who had spent time with the tanks to sort of carry the workload and we still had, while we were in Pucka we still had

the back up of the workshop. So it was really a training of operating in the paddock as part of a tank group. So we’d go out in either, a troop of tanks, 3 or 4 tanks or go out as the whole tank regiment or whatever. Tank Company I think it is, not tank regiment, tank regiments, more 16 or 20, so we’d go out with them with our normal hard skin vehicles M113,

called the fitter’s track, so we’d go out with that and provide them the back up. Most the time when we were out there was very little technical work to be done really all we were doing was familiarising ourselves with moving with tank. Playing their different radio procedures because they’ve got a different radio procedure to what we normally operate. So there were those sorts of things that were fairly important to be fairly familiar with because the trade thing you can pick up in next to no time

flat, I guess, particularly with the expertise that was already there. So it was really an exercise in moving tactically, what the tank commander wanted you to do and where he wanted you to go and things like that so you didn’t compromise his position or compromise his movements so then that’s what Pucka was sort of all about. It was interesting in one way because I’d never been in a laager before, and a laager’s sort of where they – were all the tanks and there’s

probably 16 at a time form up in what they call a high square all their guns pointing out and when they set up for a laager this is at the end of the day’s work or the days employment they set up in that pattern with all their guns pointing out so it’s just – and then they throw a round of canister up the ball and if the shit hits the fan as they say the radio message comes through and they all just say fire now and of course you’ve got

16 tanks all letting go with a canister round and that’s something to live through if you’ve ever been through it, it nearly gives you a heart attack. Cause we were sleeping – we were actually out with the recovery vehicle which is an armoured car vehicle, not a truck, and we were sleeping on the top platform and I reckon everyone just lifted up a good – it’s a tremendous noise and when you wake up in the morning and you see, you know, you can see what’s happened, it just wipes the bush clear for about 50 yards right around. And

they use that as a tactical night. The tankies sleep in their tanks, you sleep – you always sleep on your vehicle so if you take off at night they don’t run over the top of you while they’re taking off because tanks are very unforgiving in that regard. If they run over you, you’ll only get run over once.

Yes so that was interesting. I didn’t enjoy the tanks much at all. I find that, you know, that tankies are a different breed

and probably because now I have – since then I have had a tank licence to drive a tank, and I’ve driven a tank, and I know why they feel superior now, cause you think nothing’s going to stop me and virtually nothing can stop you. You just put her in gear and rolling – you’re rolling and I think that’s where they get this feeling of superiority and same as some of the truckies do, I think some of the big truckies on the road, driving the big rigs I think they get that same feeling that they’re king of the road because nothing

very much’ll stop them either. So I can understand where the felling arrives from but I personally didn’t like that sort of attitude because it stems right from the digger up they’re all tarred with the same brush I thought.

Yeah into all attitudes like it wasn’t very much fun to live in their mess you know. We normally had a RAEME corner

and people went in the RAEME corner or ordnance anyone that was civilised and the tankies went to the other corner or had the rest of the bar.

They wouldn’t have a dig wouldn’t join the conversation, you know, you couldn’t have a conversation with them, so –

Oh they did, I’m sure. I think the reliability wasn’t –

it wasn’t as deep as it is with some other people because as I said they only had one piece of equipment to know and look after and it’s all in the book and they know most of it so they don’t rely on you as intensely as other people all they’d say is I need such and such and they could put it in, in a lot of instances. So pick on their armament side they’d just say, I want such and such, because they pull them down, lots of pieces they pull them down everyday anyway so

they know them better than we do really.

Well it did to a degree I think yeah, yeah although when it becomes like a big job like an elevation gear box change or something like that’s beyond – that comes beyond their capabilities but that doesn’t happen too often, you know, in the lifetime of a piece of equipment I think we only changed 2 or 3 elevation gear boxes in Vietnam, so

it’s – that’s under the worst possible conditions they could face. They’re very reliable.

Oh probably temporality I guess, yeah, yeah. But, I don’t think any of our guys established a great rapport with them. It wasn’t just at the senior NCO level I think it was right from digger up they – we have a reunion periodically and most of them don’t like tankies so

they’ve obviously got short shifted somewhere along the line because in the boozer once in the OR’s boozer, there was still that segregation. Do we want to leave Pucka now?

I never did like Puckapunyal but – cause we actually had to do our battle efficiency course there, because before you go to a war theatre you’ve got to do battle efficiency which, you know, is

running around, digging holes and doing the 9 mile walks and stuff like that which is not appealing to anyone that’s got a sound mind and a sound brain. So I didn’t enjoy that much at all and they always put you into impossible situations and say now dig down to stage 3, and stage 3 is down to overhead cover well inside rock you just can’t do that. So here you are getting blisters and you’re not down 18 inches and you never would get down 18 inches. You know that’s

the sort of thing they carry on – they always put the RAEME people in the wrong spot and give you the hard yakka.

I don’t know, I don’t know, once again a superiority thing I think. They’re the arms and we’re the service, it’s always been a little bit of conflict in the army but, you know, they’re the front line guys and we’re the back room boys, if you want to put it that way, so – but there was always that little bit of conflict, oh, it’s never a great drama, but it was just always

just niggly you know. Because in Vietnam they had a major in charge of them and we had a major in charge of us but their major was better than our major. You know it’s supposed to go on seniority but it didn’t happen that way, so we were often directly under the command of their major rather than our major, which made things a little bit difficult. Yeah, politics and politics.

Yeah, it was just a sort of non event I guess rather – you know, rather than bastardisation I think it was a non cooperative sort of feeling and that’s hard to sort of go to war with that

feeling in your mind, you know, it’s – you really rely on each other to your part as best you can without any friction whatsoever and I’m sure there was that undercurrent of friction in the whole deal. You know when they went out on exercises we had to man – defend, this is in Vietnam, I’m skipping a little bit, but when they went out we had to man their defences and before they arrived we had to dig their defences cause the workshop was there first so –

and there was neve any thanks for doing that guys or anything like that and it’s not easy to slave under 30 degrees, humidity 90%, digging holes sort of 6 foot deep and put an overhead cover on them and we had to do it for all them and, you know, there’s a fair few of them. So it was just that lack of thanks when they got there or lack of anything when they got there so it was a bit disappointing. I don’t think anyone really enjoyed working

with them.

(LAUGHS) Well no one will ever watch it I hope, they might come and punch me lights out, yeah. There’s actually a bloke from the same Regiment up the road here and we get along fine but when they get in a group – it’s the group therapy or group –

– culture, yeah, yeah it’s a problem. I suppose it is with us too because we don’t like to work as they would like us to work either and that’s our group culture. But when you don’t get thank for it, well you don’t expect thanks

but you expect cooperation and if you don’t get that it sort of leaves you a little bit cool.

Technically?

Not all that well, as I said we were mainly tactically involved in the training at that point in time so technically I don’t even think I got inside a tank on that particular – during that particular

training apart from our fitters track which was totally unfamiliar to me too.

Yeah, it’s fitted out with an oxy set and tools and whatever.

It’s on tracks yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a M113 family with a boom crane on it, you’ve probably seen the ones with cranes on them. That’s a – I can’t remember the full designation but it’s M113A something or other. But we called it a fitter’s track.

That’s – even the motor mechanics one was still called the fitter’s track.

Oh yes, yeah, yeah.

Well essentially that’s it. It had an oxy set and a crane, which is fairly important because you got, you know, most the components for tank repair are fairly heavy even if it’s road wheels or whatever so you’ve got to have some

mobile means of lifting them. An oxy set just in case everything gets frozen or as in most cases something gets bent and you can only straighten it out with oxy so that was a sort of a major – major thing until we got around to – they used to have side – they have got side plates or used to side plates on them to stop any shells from going into the track work and the road wheels and busting it up. Well they found that the damage the jungle caused to the side plates was worse than taking the risk with the

enemy firing into them so we ended getting rid of them altogether but before they got rid of them, there was a major, you know, every time they went out on an exercise there was a major job, you know, they were all quarter plate, trying to panel beat them enough to get them all back in together and back into position. So that was sort of one of the regular sort of tasks, and not real hi-tech, but it was a job and that’s – if they got damaged out in the bush then you had to have the oxy there to either cut them off or to assist heat treat so that you could get them.

back into shape

Well usually in the rears, I think they call them echelons I think and we were normally a B, I think a B echelon and they were A echelon so in army parlance an A is an armoured and B is a commercial type vehicle

but a fitter’s track it’s probably something in between. But normally to the rear and not that to the rear but within sort of calling – the most convenient distance to be called up to any one of those tanks in the advance that had trouble to get back on the road because you don’t like them sitting there as targets. And they don’t like sitting there much as targets either. So the idea was that you sit back at the rear, roughly in the centre, anything goes wrong with one of those tanks it won’t take long to get to them

and sort them out from there. And you’re always on the same radio net so you’re not that far away. It’s fairly imperative that sort of thing happens because they’re obviously a prime target, a prime piece of gunnery. So that and, you know, the tankies don’t mind you sitting back at their rear pretty close.

Yeah well they, well particularly in Pucka they used a lot of what they call nicknames and nicknames are sort of like ‘snake’, whereas normally a map reference is given 1,2,3,4,5,6, you know, in six figures but they would give you Snake – up 3 across or right 3 or something which means that you’d go to the

nickname which might be, you know, a feature of some kind a little mountain or a knoll, you’d look at that and then you’d go up to 3 on our map and then across 3 and that’s where they’d be. Which, you know, I really don’t know why the do it that way because it’d be just as easy and probably more explicit to give you a full map reference because that’s where it comes to a grid square on a map which could be, you know, on most maps, you know, a thousand yards so anywhere in a thousand yards is a pretty fair tolerance when you’re looking for someone. So -

but -and that was one of the things that was different. A lot of their voice procedure was different because they developed their internal communication in the troop. So there’d be 1 this is 2 well that sort of doesn’t happen in the broader system you’d be – you’ve got a vehicle named, that’s called 39 Alpha and it’d be 39 Alpha calling 39 Charlie, but they’d be saying 1 calling 2

just those little things that were different that you had to become familiar with. But they’re all things when you hit the paddock, the real big paddock, you know, the funny things whizzing around it, it’s important to remember so I think it was definitely worthwhile that time spent in the training. And I was essential that we – that tactical stuff rather than the technical stuff, I think. Cause when it’s all boiled down in

the middle of a battle you don’t have time to do anything. Particularly technically, you’re not going to try and fix anything technically you just haven’t got time so the tactical situation is fairly important first up. So it was good we did that amount of training we also did a bit of hearts and minds stuff. You know this is the way the Vietnamese think, this is 57 religions they’ve got and just the general background and once again not a word of Vietnamese, so you

can’t tell them, ‘Stop hands up!’ what do you do at the other end, when it’s all boiled down, you know? You’ve got to expect them to understand English. Well that’s a bit funny when you’re going to a different country so, once again, I think it could’ve done with a basic everyday introduction and you’ve got the time to be able to do that, to be able to say, ‘Stop hands up! Friend or foe?’ or something, you know, but

you can’t expect them to understand English and yet that was the expectation. So, mm –

Yeah, I’m not too sure that wouldn’t, would not have happened here in Vietnam. You know cause not many of us could speak words and the last thing we’d be saying is ‘Stop!’ cause you were thinking it was

the bar talking it was go. Yeah so, but I think that’s one thing that has been – is lacking is both from the Borneo experience and the Vietnam experience was just a short case. You only need a day to get berhenti – that’s ‘stop’ in Malay to learn these – just those few words that could save, oh not so much a life I suppose, but it could. An innocent

life and I think my innocent life is as valuable as the next person’s innocent life.

Well it varied, it varied depending on what – who – how many were going out what was going on. In fact on one operation, on one big operation, we went out in a Land Rover. I went out in a Land Rover which is you know – a bit embarrass – this is in Vietnam, not

in Pucka, and that becomes a bit of a worry because, you know, that’s the one thing they can take out. They mightn’t be able to take out a fitter’s track and they definitely can’t take out a Centurion with their – most of their hand held stuff but they certainly take out a Land Rover and that’s the one I was sitting in. So yeah, it does depend but it normally was – normally a fitter, normally a leckie [electrician] and normally probably two VMs [Vehicle Mechanics] and a crew commander and the crew commander was normally, there motor mechanic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you’d have, he’d normally be the crew commander of the fitter’s track so he’d be in charge of the track and he’d normally be a sergeant. So it’s normally – it’d normally be the sergeant’s vehicle mech that’d go out on the fitter’s track in charge. I went out on a fitter’s track but I was never in charge, it was still the sergeant vehicle mech.

Yeah, could have.

Oh well, we’re touching on Vietnam anyway.

so, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

January ’68 I think.

Yeah. So I went home for Christmas went home on Christmas leave to Pucka and then somehow I think I can’t even remember where how we got out of the country. I know we went by Qantas pulled into Tan Son Nhut, got off the plane in Tan Son Nhut which is obviously the main airport in Saigon.

Totally stunned of course. I’ve never seen so many aircraft in my life. It’s there were just planes everywhere and planes goin’ in and out all the time. There was, you know, one there was probably 5 in the sky waiting to come in and there was 5 in the side waiting to go out. So it was phenomenal all the helicopters and stuff that the Yanks cause I’ve never sort of worked with the Yanks before. Poms have got sort of our level of capital equipment per person. But the Yanks have sort of way over the top and there was, you know, bloody helicopters hanging there doing nothing. So that was that was

a major sort of eye opener and I think most impressive thing that I’d ever seen as far as military hardware goes. So then we without even well we left Tan Son Nhut stayed over night at Camp Alpha. And that was my first experience at American meals. Like having what do they call it? Jello [jelly] or whatever it is for breakfast and everything’s sort of the wrong way round and whatever. So we only had the two meals there and then the next morning onto the Caribou. And

flew down to Nui Dat.

No this is with the –

Well this is now called 1 Independent Armament Squadron Workshop. That’s why I got confused when I was telling you about Borneo, cause it was 1 Independent Field Squadron Workshop. So it was it’s only the one word difference and it’s easy to slip one out and trip one in. So this is 1 Independent Armament Squadron, so yeah. So and it’s a workshop of about 12,7 so it’s a fairly – it’s in our terms a type

A or B something workshop in RAEME terms, so it’s a it’s a fairly big concern. So we all pile we pile aboard the Caribou and at this stage of the game we’re going to fly into Nui Dat. I’m saying, you know, “Where’s me rifle mate? Where’s me rifle?” Cause I thought we might have to hit the ground a runnin’. Because we you really had no idea of what was at the other end and flying over you could see all the pop marks, you know, in the ground where the bombs had been dropping. You’re think, you know, this something a bit more than Borneo. This is something,

this is something pretty serious. So where’s me rifle? Cause the last thing we saw in Puckapunyal, we were wrappin’ them up in hessian and puttin’ ’em in a box. So still no rifle. And here we are on the Caribou headin’ for Nui Dat. But anyway we got to Nui Dat and all the weapons were on the on the plane with us and got out and it was just like, you know, another army camp. That’s all it was, so. It was a bit sort of no on no one knew what was gonna happen and no one knew how to explain it or if they did they didn’t.

But I expected to that we’d have to go into all round defence and, you know, all this stuff you’d been learning all your life to do. And once again it was sort of, you know, this is this is pretty laissez faire, we don’t care much about all this sort of junk. So we were then trucked out to the perimeter cause we were we the tanks were assigned to a new a newer area entirely so we sort of a pimple on the defence organisation of the task force. Which meant that, you know, everyone

else had their had their all round defence and we were sort of sitting just on just on as a pimple as an adjunct to this circle. What’s broadly a circle. And then of course we were that was the tank thing which was totally undefended at that stage of the game. So we were sort of filing an undefended hole in the task force perimeter. So which was a bit of a worry. And the tanks cause the tanks didn’t arrive till probably mid-February or something till later on anyway. It mightn’t have been that late but they we went in dug their weapon pits. Set up

our camp. Had the workshops established. Then the tanks started to arrive. Tanks and tankies started arriving. So

Without yeah. We had we didn’t. I don’t think we had our fitter’s trucks even. Our fitter’s trucks come up on the on the ship as well. So all we had was our SLRs [Self Loading Rifles] and, you know, personal weapons to defend a perimeter against, you know, the potential line of attack with is still a potential a major potential line of attack. So that was

it was good when the tanks got there and plugged that hole. And we were we actually then in their background but, you know, initially it was pretty worrying. Cause we didn’t have we didn’t have any barbed wire round the front of us. That was, you know, we had to put that in as well before the tanks arrived. So it was a bit of a concern initially until the tanks did arrive and the tankies arrived and filled that. It was a pretty big area. I s’pose probably six, seven acres. And

that’s and on a perimeter that’s, you know, a fairly big front for protecting. Although all the – most of the foliage had already been cleared by the ‘non existent’ Agent Orange and other things. So there was a vast open area that was it was fairly easy to see. Particularly in day time you could see all right. Night time was a little bit different. But it was –

Well yeah, well, they there’s – there was always a scare on at Nui Dat. There was always someone coming from somewhere to do something to us. And when we first got there it was I think they’d been mortared somewhat probably a couple a months earlier or something so that was still in the pipeline. And the other thing was that it was leading up their Tet and of course now everyone’s heard of the ‘68 Tet but at the time we didn’t know about ‘68 Tet.

So but we – there was noises like there was a lot of movement and things going on. Not that we saw any, but there was it was the sort of intelligence. So we were expecting anything basically from day to day at that stage of the game. Because as it was probably rightly so I guess in the long term.

Eight, yeah.

Yeah this yeah this sort of I’d say Christmas probably ’67 was I think round about the turning point. It might have been a bit earlier or a bit later. When public opinion was starting to swing dead against us. Cause I know it did during ’68 it swung. It had swung after Tet it swung. It really swung. But I think it was it’s starting to got that get that shifty feeling around about Christmas

’67 and it was failing to be the popular war we thought it would be. Like all war’s popular. Like bloody hell. Yeah so it was getting that way. And then of course after ’68, after Tet ’68, sort of that public opinion and because of the casualties just really swung. And I think part of it was part the innocent. You know all the Vietnamese casualties as well as our own. I think, you know, with the cause we they were multiple times what we lost

and it was just a bloody shame that they all sort of all went for nothing I guess in the long term.

Well I’d heard of the domino theory and like everyone else I believed it at the time. It sounded feasible and it was happening to a degree. They were in were in they’d tried in cause I’d already been in the Borneo situation which is the first part of the domino theory.

That they were gonna come down the peninsulas, same as the Japanese did and take over the peninsula and then move through. So in theory, it was already started. Even though in effect it wasn’t was never did turn out that way. But it was believable and I believed it. And didn’t matter anyway. I didn’t have any option. I was a volunteer soldier. I went where I was told. But my belief was that we were we were fighting Communism before it hit us

because of the domino theory. As it’s proved it wasn’t right. But it might have been right if we hadn’t gone to Vietnam, so who knows what happens, what would’ve happened in the final analysis.

Oh yes, yeah. I don’t know how many were in my platoon. Probably about 30 and I would say more than half were Nashos.

Not really no. I don’t think there was. You’d have, you know, have the occasional go at each other in fun. But I don’t think there was in fact I had a lot a lot a respect for the Nashos, for ’em to launch themselves from having gone through the same thing when I went from Balcombe to a real army unit and thought what the hell’s all this shit? And they had to they had to do the same thing from whatever job they happened to be doing in civvy street which might have been something entirely different to fitting and turning, to army fitting and turning. And launched

into a, you know, probably our one of our prime technical pieces of equipment and have to know it. So I had a great deal of and they and they did that remarkably well.

Oh no yeah they were. They were allocated to RAEME because they had the skill in civvy street [civilian life]. Basically they were fitter and fitters and turners in civvy street. So they were allocated to RAEME or they were in this particular instance. Where they went after that was

sort of up to the system. But they were they were actually allocated to RAEME as fitters and turners. Yeah so that sort of kept them. So but I was amazed that they were they fitted in so well and I was happy to serve with them and I think in lots of ways they were more how to say? More ambitious? Not that probably not the right word.

But they were interested in doing the job properly than a lot of the regulars. You know, cause they were probably new at it and didn’t know any short cuts. Didn’t know any better, and but they were very enthusiastic about the – and that surprised me. I mean you have the exception but you had – we had the exceptional ARA [Australian Regular Army] guy, too, that wouldn’t work in an iron lung. But I – no, on a general basis I was quite happy to serve with them and quite happy to have them

at my back, or me at their back, either way. Didn’t matter as long as we can rely on them and that’s all we can ask I guess. And if they couldn’t perform trade their trade wise they could always ask someone and they did. They but most of the time they handled the trade side of it as well. So it was good to see. And there was as I said there was no, none, I think there was more friction now or more of opponents

now that we’re back than we ever were, when we were there. Like the Nasho now is more outspoken than he ever was in Vietnam and wants to differentiate himself more now than he ever did in Vietnam so it’s it was – it’s different but. Course they’re short term most of them were short term two years and it’s probably for a lot of them the biggest different thing in their life. So they sort of want to bring that

difference to the front I guess.

Yeah, we were digging the mortar pits and admittedly the engineers had come in and dug some of them but they have other tasks of course. They cause they did the mine clearing and all sorts of junk. So it was all the hand finishing off and digging what hadn’t been dug by hand because they were committed to other tasks so all these mortar pits are sort of 6 foot long I guess. 6 foot deep or probably 9 foot deep I guess. Cause you’ve got to have 3 foot

3 foot of overhead cover against the mortars. So it was also sort of lay pickets down. Put galvanised iron over and fill the fill the dirt over leaving two open ends so you can get in and out. So that’s basically you’re mortar motor pit. Then you have a fighting pit which is sort of just 3 foot deep or something so you can just duck in and lean on the lean on the edge and zap hell out a the enemy when he comes chargin’ over the hill. Which fortunately they never did. So that that’s the sort of. But these this’d

be every sort of probably every 20-yards you’d be digging these pits. So because you never knew when where the mortars were going when the mortars were going to come and where you would be so you had to have fairly close access to them at all times. So that there was there was a lot a digging. A lot of dirt moved.

We were actually we the tents our advance party had put up the tents

and we lived in tents. Senior NCOs had 2 to a tent. But the rest of ’em had four to a tent which is sort of what 8 by 8 or something like that.

And that was for the duration, yep. All the tents then had sandbagging was another thing that it was a bloody nightmare. It was filling the sandbags and stacking the sandbags in blast walls. Cause all the tents had to be packed with sandbags two. There’s two sandbags wide right around the round the tent

up to about 3 foot 6 [inches] high, 4 foot high. So that if you’re in bed and they mortared you’d have a pretty good chance of surviving the shrapnel. Not the not no necessarily the direct hit. So yeah and that happened you had to sandbag around the weapon pits and in the – around the edges of the mortar pits. So sandbagging was a full time or not full time job but one of those things that had to be done most of the time. Cause they – in the tropics, the bags start to rot out so then it’s

replacement time. The wall starts collapsing so you’ve got to rebuild the walls and things like that. So it was always a defence task that went on. Same with barbed wire. It was always, you know, had to go out and check that and re and run some more or whatever. So that and that’s nasty stuff to work with. So it’s they were the sort of tasks we did first up. It was, you know, sandbagging we actually put up some of the tents for the tankies. So it was all that sort of defence work. And

without touching a tool apart from a pick and shovel and those sorts those sorts of tools. Not hammers and micrometers. So it was a lot different. That was that was just in that first month and a half or something. But it was also good because it gave us a chance to sort of become acclimatised under the worst circumstances. Cause you could you could say to the boys, you know, get in and do two or three hours now and then you can go and have a have a bit of a kip or lie down and get out of the sun. And so before the pressure of really fighting a war got on us

we had a chance to get to sort of acclimatise to the different circumstances weather conditions and things like that. So that was good.

Well we didn’t see new people too much. Cause, you know, I didn’t. I met some Vietnamese but it was another 3 or 4 months down the track. You know apart from that, you know, you only had your own guys. You didn’t you didn’t cause once night time came there was no movement out of

your area into another camp area. So that’s you didn’t get to meet all that many other guys. And you didn’t get to meet any Vietnamese at all, cause there was no Vietnamese allowed in the barbed wire at all. Which is a smart move compared with what, you know, what the Yanks do. See half their half their staff were local Vietnamese. So into their secure areas. Well that’s silly fighting as far as I’m concerned. You know if there’s a potential enemy that you that’s got a face with slanty eyes you keep

em out. Anyone that comes in there is gone. So and I think we fought the clever way. But and we stopped over in Camp Alpha I thought, you know, who how do they know any a these guys aren’t Viet Cong? And guys, including the gender of girls. Cause there’s a lot of them as well. And they’re doesn’t make any difference the kids they’re all Viet Cong or potentially. And that’s a worry in a in a in a war situation. When you’re no one wears a uniform but

everyone can be an enemy. Or any everyone can be a friend you just got no idea.

No. Not really, no not really. I only got out outside of the wire about 5 or 6 times in the 9 months or the 10 months that I was there. One was to come home on R & R [Rest and Recreation]. One was to go and relieve at Vung Tau.

And that’s where I met the had a couple of Vietnamese working for me during that I think it was about a month I was there. And the other time was to go on go out on ops [operations]. And the rest of the time was inside the barbed wire. And when you out go on ops you may as well be inside the barbed wire cause you don’t see too much there either. Cause you don’t there’s not too many people waving friendly hands at ya. Yeah so.

Oh it was –

Oh, I assumed they were. No one no one actually filled in the trenches and dug new ones so I assume they were happy with the work. But yeah I think they were they were quite contented. They then they just they just formed took their tanks and just formed up around the perimeter around that pimple I was telling you about. So that the task force then had a complete continuity of defence. And at night their tanks would be manned as

control points and or battle points and they’d be. And we felt much happier then. But

No, they were only positioned around our little. Well their little area. Their little area, not our area. The area that we’d prepared and they in fact they had an advance party that sort of said this is where – this is the way we’d like to go so, you know, we they had to be fairly happy cause they had representation in where we put them.

So it was and I think they were fairly happy about it. Or they should’ve been. Cause we spent a lot a lot of man hours diggin’ their thingo, and puttin’ their barbed wired up. Cause we had had all their barbed wire strung for them and all their pits dug before they arrived.

Well directly under me probably 30. I was also, you know, like the chain of command I had a warrant officer who was in charge of me, and some of the rest of the guys as well.

Yeah so.

Keep talking? Yeah, okay yeah. Well then. The, yeah, the normal thing was for the tanks would normally do a – one tank would do a clearing patrol in the morning. They’d just run out around our front to make sure there was there was no one out there. Well it saved us a job cause, you know, normally we had to send out a clearing patrol which is always a bit of a worry. Cause you can get caught out there in

no man’s lands and you’re you don’t like that very much. So that solved a lot of our all our defence problems basically were solved and we only had one strong point to man which was which was where our fitters tracks was or one of our fitters tracks was. Cause it’s fitted with a 50 cal [calibre] machine gun which makes you feel happy when that arrives too. So it was pointing down towards Hoa Long, which was a resettlement village for bad Vietnamese. If you like to put it that way. So there were known Viet Cong

or it was known to be a Viet Cong stronghold so we had our strong point pointing in that direction. And we never had an attack, but that’s, you know, you don’t know these things fortunately I guess. And then you just wait then for the command, the task force commander to allocate you to whatever he needs whatever he wanted doing. So that might involve an operation. Might involve a TAOR [Tactical Area Of Responsibility] patrol which is, you know, it’s a

what are they? I can’t even remember what the initials stand for now. But it’s just the area our area of responsibility a patrol of that which might involve tanks it might involve foot walking. So that was the normal thing. But most of the time the tanks were obviously because they’re a major a major source of mobile fire power apart from the sort of fearful aspect cause they’re a bloody terrifying sight. Particularly to Vietnamese cause they were bigger than the one the Yanks had at the time and they’d never seen tanks this big. So they were – they had

a demoralising effect, so he obviously the task force manager obviously wanted them to be fairly visual as far as the local community was concerned. So they had they were tasked pretty regularly and depending on the size of the tasking whether two or three tanks or what went out depending on what our commitment was. Normally when they were out on ops, it was usually a pretty quiet time for us work wise in the camp and when they came in it was mayhem. Trying to get everything that, you know, all these

things that bamboo had off the trees had snapped off brackets and all, you know, everything had to be fixed cause you didn’t know when they were gonna be called out again. So it was often or not often but sometimes it was a day and night job until all the tanks were ready were A1 condition again. So we had that several times. And they had a couple of major alterations to the tanks. That – they found difficultly getting through the bamboo so we had to weld these big cutting plates,

like sort of half dozer plates to the front so they could actually chop of the bamboo and to get through it. And that was a major project that had to be done immediately of course. So that was, you know, 24 hours around the clock, until they were finished. I think it was about 3 days or 4 days or something. So

Oh 16 I think something like that. So then there was another one where they wanted to carry spare road wheels, just in case the RVUs hit their road wheels. Cause

they don’t run without road wheels cause they’ve got nothing to sort of drive the tracks or run with the tracks. So they wanted carried two spare road wheels with on each tank so that meant, you know, making up and welding brackets on the on the tanks to fit those road wheels on. Also I think they’re what was it? The 113s, they also had 113s as sort of command vehicles and things like that and they and we had to make up gun shields

for those and fit them on. So there was lots of little jobs that weren’t so little, you know, that took a lot of time, and a lot of labour and a lot of material I guess. But and I think they probably saved lives. That’s the big the point of the game. But as far as the guns the guns went themselves. As I said, no – next to no trouble with the guns. It was only a matter if when you were out on ops before or, before the live firing just pass the gauge down the bore to make sure that the bore was clear

and the projectile’d get out. And that was about all the work on the on the guns. It was it was all the peripheral junk that hangs off a tank that was or to drive it drive the gun was sort of the major work. I was mainly involved in small arms repair anyway. Which and that was sort of a non job if you like to put it that way. Cause once again the paperwork thing continuity of and making sure guys had something to do once again it’s all part and

parcel of the deal. So often you’d have them doing pulling rifles down for the sake of pulling rifles down I guess. But just to keep them occupied. Particularly when they were all out cause they that was that was the boring time of who was left the people who were behind had not a great deal to do often.

Oh some were varied you know. Some a month. I think at Coral they were away for three weeks or something. But so

it could vary but most a the time it was at least 2-weeks they were away for which was, you know, became a little bit monotonous. And sometimes we used to send another fitters track out with a relief crew so that the guys could come back and other guys another crew could go out. So that was only on the working level, not on the supervisory level if you like to put it that way. So I was, that’s – and that’s why I said I didn’t get out of the wire much. It was only on the major – the two major exercises apart from I –

or Coral was the third major exercise. I didn’t go on that one. But these other two were major exercises we spent the whole the whole regiment was virtually out, which meant that we were all out basically. There’s next to no one guarding the camp. Then they I think they pulled a company of infantry in into our area just to sort of man the area. But yeah that’s so that was sort of in the Long Hais which was sort of a renowned area for enemy. It was

riddled, a mountain range full of full of caves and of course they really liked to employ the tanks in that role because the tank guns have got a very straight trajectory. Where as most guns are technically Howitzers anyway, which means they launch up like that and they can’t get into the cave. Whereas the tank can fire direct in a straight line straight into the cave. So they were very much in demand for that type of warfare. And of course if they put a load of a load of canister

in. Which is, you know, sort of all these little steel pellets hundreds of them of about an inch by three eighths steel or something it’s pretty devastating in a in a tunnel complex or in a in a cave complex. It’d just go ricocheting everywhere particularly if it’s hard walled. So they were big they were in big demand in the Long Hais. We spent a fair bit of time there. The other one was I think we were sinking sampans on the Mekong River. Or I think it was a

tributary to the Mekong. They used it – night time it was – the rivers were no go at night time. The fisherman were allowed to go out during the day but no one was allowed on the river at night. And anything that came down the river at night wore it. So we I think we got 18 sampans in one night or something like that, so it was a good result. Probably all carrying rice or fishermen or something but who knows. But the rules were there and I think, you know, they’d been around long enough for everyone to know.

Yeah,

the two I went on yeah.

Oh I think the one shooting the sampans. I’m not sure now but I think the one shooting the sampans.

Well on that on that on that particular exercise I went out as a co-truckie in the soft skinned recovery vehicle. So, you know, the everything was pretty flexible and

we set up on the on the side of the high way and had to dig in to stage three which is personal pits with 3 foot overhead cover. So that took up the first day obviously. The bloke I came down with on the on the soft skinned vehicle he chose to dig his hole but not live it. But chose to go underneath the sleep underneath the wrecker. And I slept in the hole that night and every other night

for that. Didn’t last that. I think it was about a week but by the time we got because it was flat ground near the river by the time we got down with 3 foot overhead cover you’re in the water. So the blow ups actually. You’d dig the trench narrow enough to make sure that your blow up mattress comes up around the side so you can’t go down into the water. So that was sort of same as an air cushion only different. It was lovely night’s sleep. As long as you didn’t think

too much about, you know, the foot of water underneath you. So that was that was different. It was something that I hadn’t done. I’d never slept sort of I don’t think I’d ever slept in a hole in the ground before. I’d sort of sat in one but never slept in one. And the first it was either the first night or the second night somewhere near Saigon they put in a B-52 strike and a course the ground. I don’t know how many kilometres we were away probably 60 kilometres and I was worried about the sides of my thing falling in and it was all rumbling and the dirt was falling

down. So I can imagine how terrific how horrific a air a full air strike must have been. Cause it was just a continual rumble like, you know, thunder or I dunno probably 2 or 3 minutes and the dirt was all falling down and we’re 60 kilometres, well, probably at least 60 kilometres away. So that’s it’s it was an experience I would that I don’t care to repeat but. Cause I didn’t know whether the whole lot was gonna I didn’t know how well I’d constructed me little hole either. Didn’t know whether the whole lot was gonna come in. That’s – and that’s a worry.

So basically from we operate you operate on a – from a central point and radiate and go out during the day and return to a harbour or hide of a night and – so and we – and I stayed in the base camp or whatever you’d like to call it while the tanks went out and the fitter’s track went out. So that was basically it and I did nothing during the day basically. And when they came back in then you’d go do the rounds of the tanks to see what need what work needed doing and then

allocate the men to the tasks.

Nothing. Cause it was pretty straight forward. All they did was go down to the river. Wait the night. Any sampans that come down, shoot ’em out. Come back. So, you know, there was no, they didn’t have to go through bamboo or any there was no nothing to cause any damage so there was next to nothing to do at all. So it was a nice quite little holiday, so apart from worrying about, you know,

whether they were gonna come, incoming or not.

Blades on the tank?

That was pretty that was pretty early. I think after their we had when we first got there, the Tet’s – actually by the time the tanks first got there the Tet’s – the Tet was on. So I think their first experience was to run out chasing all these Viet Cong that are trying to

surround the villages and wipe out the village chiefs and all that sort a stuff. And in fact I think I went I went out on that in a 113. But, you know, I never got outside the 113 so it was all just nothing nothingness to me. I didn’t know what the hell had happened. I didn’t know where the hell I went. And arrived back at camp and nothing, you know, no to no avail. That was a real sort of a real non event. But it was still a bit terrifying. Cause if you’ve been inside a 113, there’s nothing you don’t see much. You can’t hear much, cause the noise of the engine’s

horrific. You can’t breath much, cause there’s cramped bodies in the spaces and everything’s closed down, so it’s pretty awful experience and when you’ve been and gone and dunno where you’ve been or gone, it’s – you think, “Well, that was a waste of time.” But that was during the early part of Tet when they when they were attacking Baria. Which is the provincial capital of Nui Dat. So that was that was a bit different.

I don’t think anything happened.

We I think we sighted one enemy from what and that’s the whole group of us that were travelling. And in those days and I think during all the war as far as I know we had to ask permission to fire. And by the time we’d got permission to fire, the person that we’d spotted was no longer in sight, so that was another non event. So that was a bit of a worry all the time having to having to do that. Once they’d attacked there was no great problem but before if there was never a shot

if they didn’t fire a shot at you, couldn’t fire a shot at them. So you had to sort of wait until you were fired at before you can fire and that’s a bit might be too late. But that was the rules the rules of the engagement that we’re going by so that was all right. Where’d we get up to?

Yeah –

Oh yes, yeah.

Yeah, the Long Hais came later and that was a fairly extensive operation. Once again

not much not much technical work. We went down and dug in. During the digging we had had a major oh I think a major scare of my time in Vietnam. We heard this dull clunk and when we looked at the dull clunk it was some sort of air craft bomb unexploded that we’d hit and of course we had to camp around that for the duration of the exercise. So we were waiting daily for something to go wrong and that thing to go off which meant that we went off. Cause wouldn’t have been any hesitation. It was a big

probably 8 inches in diameter and 2 or 3 foot long. So it was a big one. I dunno whether it was a 500 I dunno what a 500 pound bomb looks like I’ve never seen one. But I suspect that it was. One that, you know, one dropped from a B-55 or whatever. So that was a that was a major concern but

No they – no, it was too late yeah. Anywhere else we might it was – hadn’t been cleared by the – the engineers had worked through first cleared the place of where we were going of mines cause they’re pretty fond of mines as well the Viet Cong. Or were.

So it had been cleared of mines so if you were anywhere else was buying trouble and you were walking into (UNCLEAR)ed territory. So we stayed where we were with this our little baby sitting there. And I think it was 15 ,or 15 or so of us in the group I think all camped around this little baby that we very gently sandbagged around and hoped like hell it wouldn’t go up cause the sandbags wouldn’t stop much. But that was interesting. It was interesting there, that I’d never we must have picked up on the Yanks that they actually used

a lysol type thing, a domed corrugated I think they’re probably used for making gutters and we actually put them over the top of our the hole that we dug in the ground and then covered ’em up with sandbags. And that was, you know, provided a good deal of protection from what. Although we didn’t – we actually didn’t get hit, I thought it was a damn good idea because anything incoming you had a chance of surviving cause it was fairly thick galvanised iron. I think we used probably use them in Australia now. But

I’d never actually never actually used them as defence in defence before or since to my knowledge. So that was interesting. We borrowed that idea of the Yanks and utilised that, and that was handy cause I had my curve facing towards the – me little baby sitting there too. So any – if he went off, I had some chance. So yeah and that was a fairly successful operation. I don’t know what the kills were and I don’t even want to recall or even think about it really. But it was fairly successful.

Then two weeks later and then we went then we went home. But all this – but the time I think I mentioned, if I didn’t mention we travelled down there in Land Rover which was the biggest worry. You know there was this 16 tanks one recovery vehicle. One soft recovery vehicle. One hard recovery vehicle. I think two Land – two workshop Land Rovers and I’m in one of them, the other and there’s another one behind me. And you think well, you know, if there’s – if Charlie’s [Viet Cong] sitting

there, he’s not gonna go he’s not gonna go for the tanks when he know he can’t do any damage to them. But he can wipe us out pretty well. So that was

An SLR, yeah. Which is a 7.62 rifle yeah. But I also but it also fired automatic. You know any. I was an armourer well supposedly an armourer and any armourer can convert it to automatic. So I had mine was automatic but that’s. It’s

still not much fire power against a RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenade] or whatever. So you did feel like a bit of a, you know, once again a bit of a pimple standing out or soft target. I think it was only those two exercises that soft skinned vehicles went out on. The rest of the time it was always fitter’s tracks. Or a fitter’s track if we could do it.

Just cause they wanted more facilities. The fitter’s tracks got next to nothing

the machinery. The soft skinned vehicles have got lathes, drills grinders a whole range of portable tools. Arc welder so you’ve got you’ve got a good repair capacity if when you got out if you take the soft skinned vehicles out. Whereas the fitter’s track, you’ve got nothing virtually.

Yes yes. Because it was a big exercise so take out as much support as you need. Because you obviously not gonna return or

or have or have anything come in probably. So you’ve got to be prepared to do whatever you can on the spot. But fortunately that was once again, you know, low work load, but you never – you just never knew.

Well I think so, yeah. I don’t think we – and the – admittedly the tankies looked after their piece of equipment. I would have no criticism what so ever because, you know, it’s their life. It’s they maintained it as well as possible. They didn’t

didn’t skimp on spending the hours to maintain their whole piece whole equipment right across the board. So and I’d have no criticism there at all. They looked really looked after their pieces of equipment. Which if they do that the – minimises our workload. See most of our workload was through accidental damage like hitting a tree or we were getting bashed to pieces on the bamboo or getting enemy strikes or something like that. But very little sort of day to day

running repairs cause we just didn’t need ’em didn’t have it have that problem. We had

Oh, okay. Well we better say. The Centurion. Better say that cause I think the Leopards are now just about gone out which was. The Centurions were replaced by Leopards. Not in Vietnam but were replaced by Leopards and I think Leopards are now just about out. So the Centurion is now – well it’s an historic piece of armour I guess. So yeah. But there were –

the gun was excellent and I think the vehicle was excellent. We had I dunno how many engine changes but not many engine changes. In Vietnam and that’s good for a piece of machinery that’s 45 tonne or something gallopin’ across country. So it was a very reliable, and from a maintenance point of view, even though we didn’t have much work, you don’t want it. Cause it means the piece of equipment was no bloody good. Basically. Cause the Leopard from what I can gather

and it’s only hearsay, is prone to a lot a particularly electronic trouble. So, you know, and the Centurion we, you know, spent very little maintenance time on it. Most of the stuff was a major repair from wear or enemy damage or fire damage and that’s you can’t ask anything more of a vehicle. So it was good to have good to have good to have those with us.

Oh Tankies I guess. It’s, you know, I didn’t question. You’re just told what to do and

this is the why you’ll do it so I suspect the tankies.

Well the actual the actual design would’ve I didn’t do it, but it would’ve been done within the workshop itself. But they would’ve said we want this, and we want this, and we want that. They were hardened – they were actually hardened steel blades off a – and I think they were probably off a dozer or something. And we just cut ’em to length and made brackets to weld ’em on to. But no I don’t know where I don’t know whether they were actually achieved their purpose

but as I said their major was better than our major, and he had had priority so what he said went. And that’s fine you know. Kept my boys occupied for some time cause we had I had ’em polishing guns empty cases because they wanted the empty cases in the to send back home for the first shell fired in anger and, you know, cause this is the first time the tanks had been to been to battle since

World War II. So –

So, we’re talking about X operations. I think they were the only two that I sort of went on that was significant. I missed out on Coral which came a little bit later. And that was sort of the major conflict as far as Australia was concerned. There’s sort of the big thing, probably the biggest operation in the history of the war. But prior to that, just in just in passing because of

these slack times that I was explaining before and because I was mostly involved in small arms the small arms side of things repair system the task force commander said, could I go over to – asked me whether I could go over and help, or in fact through the boss – not – he didn’t ask me personally could I go over and help the 7 RAR who was – because it’s a bit difficult to explain. What happens is that the equipment in most in most a the bigger units stays with the unit and then and the new people come

in just take over that equipment. Which meant that because the war had been going for a number of years most of the equipment held by in this particular case by 7 RAR had there and continually used on a wartime scaling for the period of the war which meant that it was getting pretty close to being RS, you know, had it. So that they wanted me to go across firstly I think it was to I dunno which order it was but one was to gage their 81-mm mortars. Which meant that I you had to measure the

the bore of the mortar to see whether the bore was wore beyond reasonable limits. And I think a few of them were. And also to gage the gage the strike pin protrusion which is a firing pin in the bottom to make sure that hadn’t worn to the point where you’d get miss fires. Cause the last thing you need’s a live round in the tube ticking ready to go off. So that was – they’re the sort of the two essential features I had to examine these mortars for. So

that was one of the tasks. And I think – I dunno how many mortars there were probably 8 or something like that in the battalion that we had to gauge and make sure that they were in serviceable condition because obviously they’re a major component of their defence and offensive capabilities. So that was one task that we did. And the other task was almost soul destroying. Because they’d had the rifles each bloke had had his had his rifle and he’d done what he wanted to it and we had to

return them to serviceable standard. And of course they had notches carved in them and their girlfriends names and in the wood in the butts in the woodwork on them. And of course we had to take them all off supposedly to burn them and put new woodwork on because they didn’t they weren’t up to up to standard. A lot of them had taken trigger guards off their rifles so they could get in easier to press the triggers and taking flash eliminators off to loosen, lighten the load and all these wonderful things that they’d done

and we had to return them, I had to return them to, or me and their sergeant, the armoury sergeant had to return them to their original as issued state. And which meant that all this wood work had to come off and the flash eliminators. That didn’t worry me so much the flash eliminators had to go back on. But the woodwork with all these notches carved in ’em and all the names of their operations and their girlfriends names and love letters and all this sort of stuff. They’re all thrown in a big heap ready to burn and so that was that was a

bit deep and demoralising, cause the guys were obviously attached some of ’em were in tears when we when we threw the wood in the big bonfire to go, but the fire hadn’t been lit and then we said we’ll we’ve got to go for morning tea. So what they did from there I don’t know and I didn’t – don’t want to know. But I suspect that the heap was a lot smaller when we went back. So they had their – they had their own little souvenirs on. I haven’t seen one in Australia, so I can’t – but I suspect that they brought them home with them, and that’s fine.

But that was just a little sort of an aside that I thought was worthwhile mentioning cause –

In tip top condition yeah

Well they were still, you know, apart from the flash eliminators and the trigger guards. The trigger guards only make sure you don’t have an accidental discharge so basically. So that’s not a great drama and

neither’s the flash eliminator except that without it they give away their position or give away their platoon’s position. Because the flash eliminator’s designed to disperse the flash so it doesn’t stand out. And of course by removing that they’re really potentially killing their mates and so that was a concern. The woodwork wasn’t a concern at all, but because the law says they can’t be cracked and they can’t have this on them so we got we actually got rid of them. So –

Well you would’ve you would’ve thought their NCOs would have been responsible to sort that out and they had. What annoyed me from a digger’s point of view is that they didn’t have enough initiative to restore them for the purpose of the exercise. You know cause there’s no trouble getting parts usually and there wasn’t any trouble getting parts of their off their armourer or they had to do was go down and ask him for a new set of woodwork and they could’ve restored

em all if they can take them off they can certainly put ’em back on again. I don’t know why they didn’t have enough nous knowing the inspection was coming up to do that. I just lose my faith in diggers that’s all. But they normally a digger would would’ve known with that much warning cause they knew for a week or so that this was going to happen and why they didn’t have enough nous to go and do that. It’s got me beat.

No this was just –

No this was just because

the weapons had been used with we had to go through a full inspection. That was only part of the deal that we had to take the woodwork off. We had to make sure that the head space was right and lots of other little things as well. Trigger pressure and all those sorts of thing were right but this was the sort of thing that was so visible it wasn’t funny and so easily solved that one wonders why they why they didn’t do something about it. Particularly seeing some – a lot a them were Nashos too, and they should have more nous than to let that sort of thing happen.

Yeah so anyway that was that’s just an aside. And from there basically we, you know, spent some time in Nui Dat and then I had the detachment for a month down to Vung Tau just prior to coming home on R & R. And it was interesting because it was my really my first contact with Vietnamese as such. Cause I had one Vietnamese girl, Cookie, I dunno what, you know, it’s obviously a

Vietnamese name Cook-wa-char or something. I called her Cookie. And Ling – they were two and one was sort of about I guess Cookie was probably 20, maybe bit hard to tell but maybe a bit younger or a bit older and Ling was about 50, I guess. And I mention them as an aside, because they were one of my big concerns in leaving – in us leaving as a country – leaving Vietnam to their own thing cause we

wonder what happened to these two people. Obviously because they worked for us they’d be dead set against or the regime would be dead set against them. And one wonders whether they ever had to go for re-education or whatever the equivalent was. So that’s it’s a wonder that it’s something that’s always in the back of your mind. And something that, you know, because they were so such good workers and so and good friends and you think, you know, you just left in the bloody lurch and still don’t know to this day what happened to them. And

that’s only the two that I knew. There’s a whole in Vung Tau there was probably 250 civilian employees all of who would’ve been black listed or marked down on a list from someone somewhere and no one even very cares very much what happens to ’em I guess. So that was a bit of a concern. And Ling was particularly a worry, because he during the initial phase of the separation he opted to come out of North Vietnam to South

Vietnam so he would have been really marked. Cause he I think he came just near the border of Cambodia and Vietnam. So he would have been really marked and I think, you know, I wouldn’t like his chances, put it that way. And so that’s, you know, just as an aside, it was a bit of a concern. Down there we were sort of involved in maintaining the bulk store of weapons for as replacements to the front line or as going back or as

classify them for repair back to Australia if they were beyond repair in country. So that was sort of basic thing there. So we went through oh probably 3 or 4 or 500 weapons a week basically assessing what their capability was. Whether they were too big or too far gone for repair in country and then back load ’em back to Australia or else make ’em serviceable so they can be issued again. But apart and the other part of the job was all the returned or all the

captured weapons came through to or the AD [Aircraft Depot] or the ordnance depot and I had to make that they were safe to back load ’em back to Australia. That, you know, that none of them were booby trapped or any anything that, you know, just make sure they were safe to be sent back home. Cause they were all going to museums and places like that so and that was –

Oh anything. You could name it they had ’em you know. I had bits of bits of water pipe that with a with a wooden thing on ’em with a nail sort of for

for a firing pin that was captured so, you know, it was obviously. So it but everything made up made up. We had a glass gun that was water, a down pipe off the thingo that fired just fired a broken glass out of a water pipe. A down pipe. Then we had the Carl Gustav sub-machine gun that I’d never seen before, but it’s obviously a fairly sophisticated piece of machinery made by Sweden. Had a…

Is it a Grand? Anyway, we had – there was a whole heap that extended right across the board. Some of it was as old as the hills or older. And some of them were fairly modern. Cause the AK-47 I think it was 47 then. It’s 57 now. The AK-47, they were made by China and Russia and there were lots of them. So that was an interesting aside. And of course, once again, my time at Balcombe at apprentices

school never taught me to do this sort of thing. So it was another learning experience, but it was good and it wasn’t –

Oh yes . Well they’re a very inventive race, I think, the Vietnamese. Well their Chinese decent and the Chinese have always been fairly ingenious. And the Vietnamese have probably picked up a lot from the French and a lot from the other wars that they – well all their booby traps are very ingenious.

Little punji. I think you’ve heard of punji spikes

and things like that. Where they did a pit and put spikes in and everyone I think everyone’s heard of them. Poison them with human excreta so that, you know, if you get blood poisoning or whatever if you tread on them. And swinging gates that everyone’s seen in the movies that, you know, the where they drop down when you walk through and trip wire and they get spiked and things like that so. But they are ingenious and they’re and they’re a well they were a hardworking people and they’re not frightened of work, not frightened of being inventive,

I guess. Cause they’ve – most of ’em have got to be inventive just to live.

No. No. No. I came across what I thought it was one. That was enough of a fright for me. I was actually on that first operation I was telling you about we had to go out on a clearing patrol and where it was sort of open, very open country and it had a charcoal kiln. Cause they’d have these little dome things that they’d burn the wood in to make charcoal to take home

to do the cooking fires. So and they’re sort of got four little entrances where they stoke up the fires and burn the wood so. And they just sort of man hole or man size where they could just crawl in and sit there and fire and be quite protected. So there was about 4 or 5 of these in this paddock. So that was a concern to start with cause we were watching those and the grass was sort of probably 3 foot high and I stepped in a hole and felt meself going down a foot and I thought, “Okay,

there’s no punji spike at the bottom. But what happens when I pull me foot up?” So here I am standing there like a goose. Couldn’t see anything in the long grass. Am I in a punji pit or not? And I thought well the only way I’m gonna find out is to pull it up. But I’m gonna pull it up slowly so I’ll know before I get too far up. But you’re instinctive movement to – was to – is obviously to jerk your foot right out. So no but I had the sense that I had. And I thought well that’s

but that’s the closest I ever came to what I thought was a booby trap.

Yes, yeah.

Only, well, we had the engineers went out on mine – what they called mine clearing patrols. And they went out with flails on their on their bulldozers and flailed the ground in areas that we’re going through or potentially wanted to go through and the

engineers they also have the, you know, the mine detector type things where if we were going into like when we were going into Long Hais, the engineers went in first to go over the ground where we were actually going to squat for the time and they actually cleared it. But other than that, you’ve just got to take a bit of pot luck, I guess. But there was no reason why this place should’ve been booby trapped and no reason why it should have been mined. Cause it was just open paddock and no pathway. But that doesn’t stop you from thinking the worst. And it’s amazing how many things pass through your mind in that

split second. You know but I had enough nous in that split second not to lift my foot fast enough to go through the punji spikes. And it was only a split second. But that, you know, it’s amazing how the mind works for you.

Could’ve, would’ve, might’ve triggered, tumble over the mechanism to drive the spikes into my – into the top of my foot. Cause they got used to – because we had steel – because early – in the early days we had no steel plates in our boots at all. Then as time went on, they put a steel plate in the bottom

of the boots, so the punji spikes wouldn’t come through the bottom of the boot. Then they invented the tumble over mechanism or so that when you lifted your foot, out the spikes come down, so that you got it on the way out. There was always an answer to it so. But no, I never come across never saw one and well I’m like everyone else I’ve seen the only things I’ve seen is on TV and what’s in the manual. I had a manual, a US manual of booby traps somewhere. And they’re the only one’s I’ve

seen. But they’re a lot of ’em are exquisite.

No see, I think we well we cause we were responsible Phuoc Tuy Province, and it wasn’t a big jungle province. You mostly the booby traps apply to basically the jungle. You know they only work well in the in the jungle type of environment. And we didn’t have all that much jungle. We had rubber plantations. Open savannah.

Some low bush, bamboo thicket scrub type vegetation. That’s all there was in Phuoc Tuy, in the province, so that wasn’t a big drama as far as booby traps go. Though there of course there were mines, and I think they mined a couple a tanks and mined some 113s at a period of time. And I think some of our guys got caught in personnel mines. They were mostly ours that they’d removed from. Cause I think the biggest mistake we ever made we put in a major mine

field to protect what they called the Horseshoe and it was made by Australians with the view to stopping them coming up to the Horseshoe, which was sort of an artillery outpost over looking a control, a Communist controlled area. So we mined it and of course with a mine field to be effective you’ve got to be able to provide covering fire. But because the minefield was so extensive and because we only manned the

Horseshoe periodically, when we were going into an operation into that particular area, when it wasn’t guarded, they just come and took the mines out. You know cause they’ve got plenty of time they’d just probed away. Cause you find the mine gently with a bayonet, you know, as you see in the movies or even a – they technically might not’ve had those even who knows. So they just took the mines out of our minefield, put ’em somewhere else and that’s. And they did the same thing to the Yanks and the Yanks were probably more

indiscriminate. And of course, a lot of the Yanks were cluster mines seated by air. So they just dropped ’em out of a plane. So very well I hate mines cause my first view would be ban mines from any kind of warfare. They’re, you know, they don’t necessarily kill, that’s the problem. It’s usually the maim that’s the problem, and that’s not nice. I think I’d rather be killed

than have both legs blown off personally. But that’s I’d rather have none. Neither of the two but I think that’s a problem with it.

Well actually when I. I spoke earlier about Hoa Long, which was a known Communist – well it was resettled with people that were known to have VC [Viet Cong] affiliations,

so they were isolated from the hamlets where they were doing, you know, where they were slaughtering their teachers and doing all this sort of stuff. So they were isolated there so that we could keep some sort of control on them I guess. Without them being in a prisoner of war camp. Cause you didn’t –you weren’t sure whether they were innocent or guilty until you find ’em with a rifle shooting at you. So that was the problem but I think at one stage the New Zealanders were – the Kiwis cause some of the – we had a Kiwi company of infantry

attached to most of the battalions. Whisky or Yank. Zulu company. Or they were Whisky, Yankee company I think. Anyway they were both there, the tail ends of the alphabet. They were they were attached to one of the battalions and they came through and got fired upon and opened fire back. And then they just grabbed the bodies on the side of the road and just left ’em there. So anyone that was driving past saw them. So and I just happened to be driving past and saw them. It’s not a nice sight but, you know,

war is sometimes shit. Most of the time it is.

No, I think the worst I saw was someone driving back with a head sitting on their bumper bar but, you know, on the on the carrier. I think that was the worst I saw and that’s, you know, there’s no excuse for that in my book. Cause they, you know, they’re only doing their government’s job the same as we are.

They do what they’re told, the same as we were doing what we’re told. If anything the politicians should be out there shootin’ each other. Yeah cause they were and they’re, you know, a lot a the Vietnamese were nice guys. As I found out when I went back you know. They don’t hold any grudge against us. They don’t like the Americans very much, but they don’t hold much grudge – they don’t hold a grudge against us in Phuoc Tuy and the provinces north we’re quite well accepted still. Had a yarn to a bloke, I dunno what side he was on

but he knew where Nui Dat was. In an antique shop cause I’m into antiques a little bit and had had a yarn to him and he said, “I know where you’re from.” As soon as I said I was Australian. Oh Nui Dat yeah. And we had sort of a yarn, and he held no bitterness. In the north they hold bitterness against the Americans because of the mainly because of the bombing. Cause it was sort of a bit haphazard I think against Hanoi and

what’s the harbour? Haiphong Harbour I think. Well bombing’s – air bombing is very is usually fairly indiscriminate anyway, well I mean this is the days before smart bombs. And they’re not very tolerant of a mistake or wind or anything else. So but they in fact I spoke to one bloke when I was in North, when I was back in the North, he was a taxi driver that was taking us somewhere and he pointed to the bridge and he said, “Ha! We used to tie the

American pilots to the bridge!” So that when they came to bomb the bridge they blew up their own pilots. So and he had a good giggle about that. And I thought well I’m keeping my mouth shut about being involved in Vietnam. And it often pays but and particularly up in the north of the country I wouldn’t sort of say that I was in the army or been there before. But down the – further I got down south, the more comfortable I was saying, “Yes, I’ve been to Vietnam and before and blah blah blah.”

And this bloke in the antique shop, we had a reasonable yarn. He could speak fairly good English and I could speak no Vietnamese, so. But he might’ve only wanted to sell me something too of course. Yeah so that was interesting. It was good, it was actually good to go back. Because I don’t think even these the two people that worked for me fairly well in a month. I got to know them fairly well I thought, they were the only two Vietnamese I’d really had contact with. And I thought, you know, it’s

nice to go back and have a yarn to someone else and it was nice to go back and see the country. Cause, you know, from what I saw, I saw inside the barbed wire. The Long Hais were no one ever – no tourist wants to go. Down on the river at Ap-sui-nai or wherever it was, and a bit of Vung Tau and that’s it. So it was nice to go back and do the whole country and find out that really they’ve come to the place where we’ve

wanted to them – wanted them to come anyway without all our interference in the first place. They’re now back to being a progressive country and going ahead. So, you know, you think I often wonder what we really achieved apart from a lot a people dying. It may they may have remained Communism and severe Communism, but Russia’s gone. China’s quickly coming out of pure Communism. So would Vietnam, cause they don’t know that just

doesn’t work. So given time it would’ve come to a round circle where back to where we are now and everyone’s being prosperous. So I don’t know. So that’s Vung Tau isn’t – basically.

Well, Vung Tau –

Oh they were cleaning – they were actually cleaning the weapons. That was their main job was just to clean and oil the weapons. No matter whether they were coming

back to Australia or remaining in storage they still had to be cleaned and oiled to preserve ’em against, you know, the tropics. So that was their major role. Mine was sort of inspecting to make sure that to categorise them to make sure whether to make sure they were serviceable or not serviceable. Or what repairs, cause I didn’t actually do too many repairs. I had some spare parts there and anything that was fairly simple I did, but if it was sort of repairable in country because we had a workshop in Vung Tau. If it was repairable in the workshop, I’d send it repairable to them.

If not, I’d say ‘beyond local repair’ – BLR – it and send it back to Australia. And that usually meant locking shoulders or something like that. Which is the major locking thing against rear ward action. So that was and they –

Well I didn’t have. Most of the time, yes, yeah. We did main engine changes which is probably the biggest job. That’s, you

know, I think their turnaround time eventually was. Can’t remember exactly but it was sort of in hours. You know 16 hours or something to change main engines in the Centurion tank was an achievement cause it’s a – and they were doing that in the field. You know taking the flying the engine out under a Chinook or a Iroquois and doing the engine change in the field. And that’s phenomenal. Cause I, you know, I dunno whether you’ve seen a Centurion motor, but they’re pretty big.

Yeah. Well no, to bring the replacement engine out. Normally the fitters track was able or Rec. was able to or the ARV [Armament Recovery Vehicle] was able to lift it out and then put the new engine in the paddock. I think we did one or two engine changes in the paddock. Cause once a tank’s immobile it gets a bit hard to move. Like you need a pretty well the ARV will shift it. The armament recovery vehicle will shift it but it’s sometimes if it’s bogged, the ARV can’t get it out. So it’s got to, you know, get it’s main power

going again to assist the ARV to pull it out of it’s to get it out of the bog. You just can’t so that’s –

Yeah just ceased up or blown up. Cause they operated at fairly high revs. And I think at times they just you can peak, rev them and they just away they go. And they’re and I don’t and you don’t get much time out of out of a Centurion engine anyway. I think they’re I’m not too sure the figures but it’s not a

long time compared with a car for example. You’d expect an engine change probably. Under those sorts of circumstances probably to occur, you know, over a 12 month period every one would want an engine change in a 12 month period. Cause they’re pulling, you know, 45 tonne of steel plus all the I think they carry something like a hundred rounds and each round is sort of is a good lift. They carry I think 80 in the ready round bin underneath and then sort of you’ve got gun rack around the

turret. I’m not sure how many’s in them but they’d be carrying nearly a hundred rounds. And they’re all sort of 80 pound I guess. Something in that vicinity. So they’ve got a fair a fair weight of and all the peripheral garbage as well. So yeah, they’re pulling a lot and if you get ’em stuck in a bog they’re, you know, and they’ve got to prime, peak, rev ’em to get ’em out of the bog and the rice paddies are sort – been – of the biggest bogs ever been made

for – by man, I think, because they been stamped that mud and water in together for centuries in the same rice paddy. So once their wet, it’s – they’re real bog holes. I think one stage they had 6 or 8 tanks all bogged in the one rice paddy. Cause once again, “I can make it! I can make it!” “No you can’t. No you can’t.” And they don’t.

Well you – sometimes you can. In the dry season you can drive right across em. But in the wet season, it’s a little

bit different. And then in the off season when they’re – you just don’t know. Sometimes it’s only a little dry crust and underneath it’s still sloppy mud. So yeah, they can get bogged. It’s unusual but you think once again you could go around. Once one’s bogged like the artillery experience, you know, the old ‘I can make it’. I can make it, so in the end I’m – we’re winchin’ them all out. And the same with the Centurion, it’s the sort of gung ho mentality that I can make it. I can make it. You know you’re a dickhead because you got yours

bogged. And you end up with five or six of ’em bogged, you know, that know who the dickheads are the whole lot of em. Yes. Okay so from Vung Tau home on R & R.

Is there something else?

Okay.

Well not really. Well they no. Agent Orange was everywhere in my book.

Well, I believe so.

Yeah. I believe so. I believe everyone in Nui Dat was exposed to it and Vung Tau no. But everyone in Nui Dat I believe was exposed to Agent Orange. I’ve got on my Super-8 [video] film that I said was in the archives – I’ve got a picture of a Hercules, going over with a spray boom spraying within the vicinity of the fringes of the camp. And that, you know, over

spray from that could’ve blown anywhere within 10-miles. I believe everyone in Nui Dat at that particular time was exposed to that spray from that aeroplane.

We were. So I’ve got no doubt in my own mind. Whether it causes the damage that people say it causes, I don’t know. I’m not – I wouldn’t buy into that argument. I suspect that it does. Because we’ve had farmers out on the Gippslands, you know, in the

same with symptoms similar to what some of the some of the guys suffer because they’ve 2 D-243 or whatever it is. So I suspect that, yeah, and I suspect it does the damage that they that they claim it does. And I suspect it may have done it to me.

Yeah. I think so cause there’s at times when partic particularly earlier on when I first got back from Vietnam that I my temper was ferocious, you know, and although I was

I was never a gentle kid, I guess but it’s something that seemed abnormal at the time. Cause I had had my young son at the time and he was only sort of just crawling and when I got home from Vietnam I was sort of on the floor and he come up and grabbed me and I immediately grabbed him and threw him over my shoulder and I don’t think that’s me and I don’t think my reactions to that instance would be would have been that instinctive I don’t think. So, you know, it’s all these things are there’s

just a lot of little things that needle at you over the years. And I think yes there’s some chemical damage there somewhere and I think it’s in the brain cells somewhere.

Well I’ve been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]. And I don’t think it’s either of those, I think it’s damage from Agent Orange. Damage to the brain cells.

Cause I’ve got no emotional problems. Well, not really, not really. I believe it’s a sort of a physical thing rather than a rather than a mental thing. There’s actually physical damage done by the chemicals. Cause I didn’t have why they diagnosed me with PTS – you’ve got to have a trigger event supposed to have a major trigger event to establish PTSD. Well I don’t think I’ve had a major trigger event in my service in Vietnam. I’m not going to argue

cause I’m now pensionable because of it. But I believe it’s a physical damage caused by the reaction of the chemicals. Whether I’m right or not I don’t know but I’m definitely the experts don’t agree but experts don’t agree on lots of things. But that’s my general feeling that it’s chemical. Cause, you know, lots of people skin rashes I think that’s, you know, that’s the physical thing again. Rather than a rather than a nervous caused eczema or whatever I think it’s a physical thing. The reaction of the skin to the

chemicals.

Yeah I had – I come home. I had eczema when I came home from Vietnam. So, you know, it’s all everything points to me without being sort of flamboyant or anything else about it is a chemical poisoning rather than emotional thingo.

Oh yes

Yeah. Yeah. That have both, yeah. Well I’ve got one at the local RSL [Returned and Services League] who’s got – always got extremely bad

eczema, he’s also been diagnosed PTSD. And I still think it’s more a physical thing, physical damage on the brain and or on the physical on the skin. Cause that’s where the obviously where the spray’s gonna go than an emotional thing. They’re saying it’s emotional or mental I’m not too sure if that’s the case but anyway. I can – I’ve got nothing to back myself up with, but it’s just a feeling I’ve got.

No

No. All we knew was a defoliating the area around and that was nice cause, you know, you don’t want ’em sneakin’ up on you through all this jungle that grows, you know, sort of grows a foot over night. And we if you kill it it’s not gonna grow a foot overnight and you’re gonna be pretty safe from some someone crawling up. So no one was really against it. In fact you’ll probably for it for that for, you know, cause your first priority is to live. Second priority is to live successfully

I guess.

Oh fairly quickly yeah. Yeah I

Well our most the time it was just a maintenance spray I think. Cause they the scrub it was all down it was just enough to kill the regrowth. And that sort of died within a week like just like Round-Up [pesticide]. So it worked – it did work fairly quickly. But out in the in other areas, I don’t – I can’t speak for, really, because I know

the guys reckoned they flew over them and defoliated there and they walked through the defoliated areas, but I don’t know, I just – they didn’t do it where I was. But I know they did it in Nui Dat cause I saw the plane over there spraying. So it did happen.

Yes

Well as I said I didn’t get outside the barbed wire much to see anything other than what I did see, and there was nothing of great environmental importance in any of those areas that was left. There may have been before massive bombings and there defoliants but there was nothing worthwhile talking about in the Long Hais where I went, or this, or along the Highway 15 where I went for the other operation, there was nothing

worthwhile talking about there. But having gone back there was some lots of lots of jungle that seems appears to be untouched. Or if it wasn’t untouched, it’s now regenerated. And there’s lots of areas that, you know, are still are very nice now. Virgin sort of forests I guess again. So it’s I don’t think it’s had the lasting effect people said it would, but then I don’t know whether these areas were ever defoliated. So

I can’t say that either. It’d be assuming too much. There, you know, considering the amount of spray and the areas that some of the areas I passed on the visit I would’ve expected ’em if defoliant had have had a really long time effects for them to be still bare and nude but they’re not. Like around Hue, I went through Hue and around Hue’s fine. Within Hue the trees are well I don’t probably never defoliated. But around Hue itself, and which is probably the worst –

one of the worst areas of fighting during the whole war it looked okay. So and I suspect it would’ve been defoliated. So that my major concern is probably the people that are left behind. Cause they’re – when we suffered from Agent Orange, they suffered with Agent Orange as well, probably to a worse degree and they’ve got the other injuries as well, that they’re sort of licking and coping with. They’ve lost arms and the napalm burns and stuff like that. And you do see that and

No, a bit touch and go either way. I wanted to go back but I would’ve liked to have gone back with the ability to look up these two people that worked for me. But knowing that it’d be imposs – cause I don’t even know their proper names. You know I know one’s Ling and one’s Cookie well that’s, you know, they were both nicknames. Well I dunno whether Ling was a surname, a Christian name or

a – because of our tongue, it was a way to pronounce the – or what, so I had no chance. I had – I did have a photo of the girl. But that was, you know, 30 years ago. And all they all look the same the as they get older. So, you know, there was really no chance. But I would’ve liked to have done that. But failing that I was sort of two minds. I think I wanted – I really wanted to see the country as a tourist and because I never went back to Nui Dat at all. I never went near Nui Dat. In fact Saigon

was the closest I went to Nui Dat, so I didn’t go.

No, and I don’t think Vung Tau would’ve changed very much. But no it’s a – I went back sort of not with trepidation or anything else I just wanted to see how. Well really how the people have faced it and recovered. And they’ve done marvellously well. So there’s a lot a beggars in Saigon.

I noticed one woman with sort of – got a chin welded to her chest because of the napalm. You know and things like that but they make a living out of it. The in fact I believe there’s a whole village set up outside of Saigon with all they’re all sort of injured people like that and they take turns they look after each other and that’s wonderful to see, too. But it’s not unexpected because they’re that sort of people. I like them.

The ’68 one? Yeah, the big one? Yeah.

Yeah, well that was. Well you didn’t know it was happening at the time. You know we knew that it was on. We all instead of sleeping in our tents we were sleeping in our weapon pits or sleeping pretty close to them. We were all on hundred per cent stand to. So everyone was in a defensive position. So there was enough information passed around to say, well this is –

something’s going on.

No. No. No. It was, you know, I think they deliberately avoided us as such. And went for the heart of the people. It was obviously more a political thing than a I think than a than a soldiery thing. They were there to sort of intimidate the population. Cause they couldn’t – can’t intimidate us.

So they went to the population that couldn’t defend themselves basically and I think that was what it was all about. And then they of course lost a tremendous amount of numbers then the war swung, you know, the war swung against us because we lost whatever it was you know. In Australian terms not many in Tet. You know we only lost 501 out of the whole war or something. So we didn’t lose too many during Tet and we and body count was thousands. So, you know, we

didn’t lose Tet we lost political gambit from there I think.

– than in Nui Dat. Because you didn’t expect us. In Nui Dat, no one could get near us. The only way we could get killed was for ’em to actually throw a mortar bomb, in cause they hit the wire we’ve got them. In fact that’s we were in, you know, come and do it. Come and do it. We were encouraging them to do it. But no they never did after sort of the early days they never had a go at Nui Dat. And they – because they’d be totally repulsed. And that’s where we wanted ’em, cause we had ’em in the open. In our killing ground. So that, you know, but in Vung Tau

it couldn’t been anyone could’ve slipped a knife into you. So you’ve still got that fear, cause you can get out in the streets. You know you were free to run around at night in Vung Tau. No restrictions at all, or except you – I think you had to leave your rifle at home and that was even a bit of a worry. You just left your rifle at home and you just went out like a tourist. But there’s nothing to stop you being stabbed there. So you know that’s – there was no real let up, even though you – when you went down there,

they sent us to sent us down for a week’s R & R or a weekend R & R or something to Vung Tau, in fact they didn’t send us at all. We didn’t get any leave I don’t think for the first 6 months or something so that. But anyway you could go down to Vung Tau have three days off. But whether those 3 days really did you a whole heap of good as far as relief of tension goes I don’t know apart you can get smashed out of your mind and maybe do other things, you know, the normal male things. But

apart from that, there’s I don’t think there was much relief from the tension. Cause it was just as dangerous there, and probably more so, because there was so many bloody cowboys and people wantin’ to make a hit on us, I guess, one way or the other. It was either the women wantin’ to make a hit or the men wantin’ to make a hit. The hits were hits were different. Some wanted money, some wanted blood but you know. So that’s the difference, yeah. So.

Well just the local Vietnamese cause, you know, it was sort of was a sort of a wild town. Because I believe from what I can from what I read and what I’ve heard is that the Viet Cong used to come in there for R & R too, to Vung Tau. Cause it was a beach, it was a French beachside resort in the early days. So everyone used to go there for their holidays. So they were camped one side of the one side of the wire and we were camped the other side of the wire and we were both havin’ a good swim in the bay. So, you know,

and whether they were the cowboys were sort of the younger guys that were just finished their National Service or being called up for their National Service or just the local bodgies or whatever you – whatever the local equivalent is that just wanted to have a big time. But they were they were around. I didn’t know I didn’t have any problems, because I didn’t go into town very – cause I was coming home. But obvious reason why I wasn’t going into town. There might have been some one of those female soldiers there

waiting to trap me. Yeah so that’s the last thing you want to do is bring home something bring something, yeah, bring something home like that, so. Wouldn’t be nice.

Oh yes, yeah. I think any and I must admit, I’m probably – looks like I’m throw throwin’ it at the Yanks, but anywhere the Yanks seemed to go and they were based – they had a big air base in Vung Tau. Everywhere they seemed to go seems to generate I don’t know whether they ever

believed in safe sex or whatever but wherever they go there seems to be a higher than average cases of VD [Venereal Disease]. And of course they hit Vung Tau, and we hit Vung Tau, and most of our guys well we they look after themselves pretty well in that regard. Cause they’re – a soldier with VD is a soldier that’s not at full value. And he’s puttin’ himself on the line cause he’s, you know, and he’s puttin’ other people’s lives on the line. So our guys were pretty good in that way.

But the Yanks weren’t. Cause the VD run rampant so.

I mean they were issued with Blue Light. What we called Blue Light Outfit when they were going on leave and the one’s I spoke to used them. So it was as simple as that. So and I know – I think the Yanks were too but it, you know, it was a totally different thing. Cause they, you know, they can beat the averages the Yanks. Bit a Yank bashing now but.

But everywhere they do go there’s a high prevalence of VD. So.

No. No. I had nothing to do with them much at all except I think. It was a funny one cause I don’t know where I was but I was driving the Land Rover and this black Negro come up to me, and said, “Hey man, that vehicle’s got the steering wheel on the wrong side!” You know, I thought, “Okay.”

Yeah but that was about the only wasn’t much. I did first of the 83rd was an artillery battery, American artillery battery on the fringes of Nui Dat and I did go – they asked us down there once to have a look at one of their guns that they couldn’t fix. Cause they’re – the Yanks are a bit different to us. They are far more specialised. And even on – instead of not only specialising on one gun

but one part of the gun. Like one would only do perhaps hydraulic. Say the gun had hydraulics he’d only have to do the hydraulics. Another bloke would only do the bridge mechanism and things like that. So they were very specialised and this and apparently they’re specialist in this particular field and I can’t even remember what it was had gone on leave or gone home and their replacement wasn’t due and their gun was out of action and they called us down to have a have a look and see if we can fix it. So well, you know, there was nothing greatly wrong with it. Fixed it in no time flat. But the mere fact that we

went there was sort of one of the few dealings we had with the Yanks. But that was another sort of thing that sort of pointed out that our tradesmen to my way of thinking were far better than theirs. Even though they had, you know, they had everything going for them they all as far as tools and parts. And had never any problem with supply and we did. Cause we once at one stage had to get some M-16 parts which Armalites. Everyone calls Armalites. And we didn’t have any

and I sent a bloke down to get some off the Yanks and the Yanks said no. Here’s 6 Armalites. Take them instead. So instead of six springs or whatever, they gave us 6 rifles. So they really had no problem with anything except looking, you know, the taking the trouble to look for the part we wanted. So yeah but that was about all the dealings I’ve ever had with the Yanks and that was enough. I was quite happy. Vung Tau.

Yeah, I don’t know. I suspect that’s probably the case but because I’ve never worked that close with the Yanks, I don’t know what they did. I know when our blokes were out on operations we flew in pretty

regularly. Cause we had, you know, to keep the tanks goin’. Keep the artillery goin’. Or keep the ammo up there’s no other way of doing it. You could drive a truck in that’s – you’re buying trouble and that can only carry so much. So we did a lot of resupply by chopper as well. And it seemed to work okay. But most of ’em by that time everyone know’s your position anyway. You know really when you’re out on an operation generally speaking the when there’s been a fire fight on so everyone knows where you are. And normally you don’t –

until you have a fire fight you don’t need a resupply essentially. Or if you do, it’s only food so food can travel up by truck or by whatever means. But, you know, once you start carrying ammo [ammunition] particularly for tanks it’s a big a big load. So I don’t know about the Yanks side of it at all. I know we did have resupply by helicopter but they were mostly into areas that were where the fire fight had already happened and we weren’t given the position away, cause they’d already knew it.

R & R home.

I was bustin’ to get home. Yeah. Yeah so I actually flew home Pan Am. Cause a lot of the Yanks were coming home on or coming to Australia on R & R which is probably all right for them. But I thought it was strange, cause I’d met an

American on that who said – in fact I got up to go to the toilet or something and when I came back, cause I was sitting next to this luscious nurse, there’s a Yank sittin’ in my seat. And I said, “Hey mate. You’re sitting in the wrong seat.” And a course they – I think even in their commercial flights they get up and walk around and sit wherever they like. So that was a bit of a surprise to find and I went and sat somewhere else. Cause it didn’t worry me. But it just seemed strange that this guy had moved into the seat that I was sitting in or been allocated, so that was the other thing, then we – and anyway

getting home, it was good to get home. Cause I’d had the son was still only sort of a baby in arms. Cause we we’d had him in –or got him when we were still in Adelaide in the later part of being in Adelaide. So he was sort of a babe in arms probably 12 months something like that. So it was good to get home and see him, cause I hadn’t seen him, you know, since. Well only for about 3 months I think 4 months since I’d been home but it was still long enough. But it was still

not worth it to have to go back. In retrospect. You know the – you’d already done your parting and to have to have part again just wasn’t worth it. And I would I would say R & R to a home is not the way to go. Cause it was heart rending.

So then. Then I went back to Nui Dat, yeah. And then just continued on doing whatever we were doing.

Oh no. That’s part of the deal. That’s part of the game yeah. I was lucky, actually I was lucky according to everyone to be able to get R & R home cause most other people had to go to Bangkok or somewhere like that and I got some sort of preference cause I was newly married. The single blokes all went to Bangkok, Hong Kong wherever so. But in retrospect it wasn’t a good idea. Cause it was hard to go back and it was one of the few times I thought, “Hey I could go AWOL [AWL – Absent Without Leave] here and not go back. And

you know that’s – and I actually and I thought about it. It and so I’d advise no one to go to come home on R & R. It’s just too – it’s too much. So having said that. Back to back to Vietnam back to Nui Dat. Back to the same old rigmarole.

Yeah

I think once I got back I was all right. The problem was making the decision to actually physically get on that plane at Sydney. Once that was over, okay, the commitment and it wasn’t a drama then. But the making just that interface between, you know, staying and going was a bit touch and go for a while. But once I got back there just, you know, just settled

in doing the same old thing all over again. And it was it part well you always miss your family but apart from, you know, the initial sort of missing them it was the same as normal. But I would’ve in retrospect I would’ve been better off not coming home. From both sides of the fence I think. You know while it was nice for the wife to see me and me to see the wife I think the heart, you know, the heart

rending was just as much on her side as it was on mine. Cause we’d, you know, we’d still only been married for 5, 5 years or something though. So still almost on our honeymoon. Almost.

Yeah exactly yeah. But that has its advantages too. Of course over the years it I was almost always on my honeymoon in the early days of the marriage so that was good in one way. Cause every time you’d come home from an exercise, it’s just like you’d never, you know, just like

the day you were married nearly or the day before you were married. Or the week before you were married or whatever. Yeah, so but emotionally I got over it fairly quickly and then in that was sort of May, June something like that. May, something like that, and August I was on my – in August, September I was on my way home.

No. 3 months after R &

R basically. I was there for in the country for about 3 or 4 or 5 months and then R & R, then came back for another 2 or 3 months something like that. I think August, about August I did the roll over change over bit and I was on my way home which was nice. But I think in retrospect it was because my job wasn’t that important really. Because I as a posting, cause I was there was particularly for small

arms work and there wasn’t enough small arms work to keep a sergeant going, put it that way. That’s why I sort of was doing all these other things as well. So I think that’s why they were quite happy to send me home and bring. I don’t know don’t know whether they actually brought in a supposed small arms expert and I was no expert, cause I’d never worked on small arms before. But that’s what I was posted into, so therefore you’re supposed to be an expert. But I don’t think they ever replaced me with another person specifically designed for small arms. Just had someone else do it,

so. But these things I don’t know. I never bothered enquiring. As soon as I was home, it’s – I sort of sooner forgotten as far as I was concerned. Particularly the way things were. You had bigger and bigger and brighter worries trying to settle into a community that didn’t really want you. And that was sort of a major hassle you know. I didn’t get paint spilled over me or anything like that but I didn’t get accepted either so. You know that’s and that was that was hard.

Cause, you know, having been a long term soldier interested, you know, the guys coming home from World War I, you know, got resettlement grants, land grants, gold watches, certificates of appreciation. The whole box a shit. And we got shit. So and that was and the World War II-ies were the same. They came home and they got gold watches from their local community and all that sort a jazz. And all we got well we got home and got kicks in the bums basically.

And that hurt. And that hurt for a long time. And particularly when it was in my own not immediate family, but in my in the wife’s family. One of them was a university graduate and she gave me such a hard time. You know, ‘baby killers’, the whole, you know, the whole bit and I though well, you know, I’m only doin’ my job. But it was hard it was hard to bear. And it didn’t really solve itself until the welcome home parade.

Whenever that was, ’80 or ’81 or whenever it was. I can’t remember when we needed that. We all needed that.

Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See it was a media – the whole thing was a media blow out. I think. And not the last. I mean now you’ve got, you know, war in your homes every night when that Gulf War was on and things like that, so it’s only going to get worse. And the

people unfortunately don’t realise that a soldier is still a soldier. And that’s his form of employment. He only does what he’s told. And to the best of his ability and people don’t seem to realise that and it’s something that I think someone’s gonna try and have to try and sell to them that, you know, that. It’s the politicians’ decision to create the war in the first place. It’s not the soldiers, the soldiers don’t want to fight. That’s the last call. It’s the politicians that start the wars not the soldiers.

And it’s – I would like to see some sort of campaign go to educating the people like that. And I think generally speaking a lot of them realise it now. You know without being sold the sold the thing but there are still a big percentage of people that I think don’t even think about it but assume soldiers start wars. And politicians, soldiers don’t start them. Politicians don’t – start them and we finish them. Hopefully.

No I wasn’t interested in

anything to do with Vietnam whatsoever. No I can say that pretty honestly I wasn’t, you know, wasn’t interested the RSL. Wasn’t interested in anything as far as particularly the RSL, I guess. They didn’t – they were just as bad as the general community and they should’ve known better. Or worse than the general community in some instances. So and I think a lot a guys suffered the same sort of thing. So we –

It’s a – ‘That wasn’t a war, mate’. ‘That wasn’t a

war’. ‘You know, that wasn’t a real war’. ‘You bastards had it easy’. And, you know, that the general non-acceptance of the whole deal. So and but it doesn’t take you much to get discouraged. Cause, you know, the even over there we were realising that okay the [USS] Japara is not gonna land the goodies, so you’re not gonna get any beer next week. Cause they’re on strike back in Australia and won’t load the bloody shit. The posties are on strike here so you’re not gonna get any bloody mail or if you send any mail home to your Missus is not gonna get it. And this

is and you knew this cause it was happening. And then to get home and all and to read about guys marching through the street and having bloody thrown them over and stuff like that it was just a bit over the top. So it was a disappointing homecoming. And I still look back on it and say well, you know, we’ve dipped out a lot and, you know, the givin’ you givin’ you a bloody medal is not the not the answer. We wanted community acceptance of the deal and that’s up to the politicians to try and sell.

It’s not up to me to sell their actions. It’s up to them to sell their actions. But they didn’t and they haven’t.

I don’t know. I don’t – they were misinformed, they were just encouraged to react and I think Jim Cairns was sort of the ringleader of it. They were just misinformed about the way it should be should be handled I think.

You know the idea of protesting against us being there by focussing on us wasn’t the answer. The way to do it was to focus on the politicians. Cause they, you know, we can’t do anything about it once they we’re there. Except lay down and be shot or something but that’s pretty extreme. So you’re stuck. Once those politicians make the decision, there’s nothing you can do from a military point of view once you’re there. It’s got to be done

by the politicians and the politicians and I think the politicians are to blame, cause they didn’t sell the – either A) put a kybosh on the, you know, on news coverage or sell the sell the thing to the community. So, you know, I I’ve got to blame the government because there’s no one else to blame as far as I’m concerned. You can’t really blame the community either. They went by what was seemed to be the rational norm as sold by basically by Jim Cairns [politician] and his cronies. And but the government should’ve been putting

their budget surpluses into selling the fact that they had made the decisions to send us there we were only doing our job and that and why should people. The people shouldn’t take it out on us. Anyway that’s enough of the band wagon for this, but it is fairly important because I think it is that non acceptance by the public will be with Vietnam veterans till the day they die. Irregardless I mean even the welcome home parade was

inspired by people not the government. So, you know, the government is did has done nothing to amend or make amends for it’s decision to send us there and then and worst still pull us out. So I think pulling us out was just as bad as putting us in there in the first place.

Because we because all these people that we left in lurch. And these two friends of mine who, you know, Lord only knows what happens. If we hadn’t have pulled out, who perhaps we would never have won, but

I think we could’ve. But, you know, if you’re gonna go into a thing, I think you should go in with the idea of completing it. That’s why I even though I dislike the concept of the Americans going into Iraq but they’re going in there and they’re apparently going to stay and that’s what we’ve got to do, I think. There’s no use no use committing those 501 bloody people that died for no reason whatsoever. You can’t, and you just can’t justify it without completing

the job you start. No I think I do get pretty serious about it because I think –

I think it’s a whole thing that should never happened in the first place and should definitely never happen again. And the only people that are gonna stop is the is either the general public which is pretty hard – cause the silent majority just go along with whatever happens. So it’s only the screaming majority that has any media coverage like Jim Cairns

there was no there was, you know, and the mothers of Vietnam veterans and things like that. Well my mother never went on a Vietnam – mothers of Vietnam veterans march, and I hope she never would.

Well I don’t know. In, you know, I just think it should’ve if it happened it should’ve it should’ve been finished. I’ve, you know, in the long in the with retrospect in mind maybe it shouldn’t have

happened. But the mere fact that it did and it was the politicians, it’s the politicians’ decision start the war was the politicians decision to finish the war and I think they missed they missed the whole thing that there’s a goal lacking there somewhere. And

Oh yes yeah. Yeah.

Okay well I came I went back and went

to Holsworthy, posted to Holsworthy, and by this time the army had moved my wife and given her married quarters in Holsworthy. So that was good to be able to come. Instead of having to come home and then uplift and move, that was already done, so that – and that was nice. So 19 Composite Regiment was actually an artillery unit that had both field guns and heavy artillery. So it was 25-pounders and

5.5-inch guns. One battery of each, basically. Or sorry it was also included A-Battery which is which is another sort of field battery as well. So there was 2 field batteries and a heavy battery. And it was a basically just looking after the guns again different kind of gun again. And then the M-202s came to A-2s which is an

American field gun came into service there as well. So once again, you know, about all these things before you ever see them. Know all there is to know, because you’ve obviously got all the training you need. So once again it was a learning curve to learn on the one – the 105 Howitzers and the 55. So but once again you’ve got the you’ve got the people to assist you and once again by this stage of the game I’m now a supervisor, so I already had me

diggers that knew what to do basically anyway, so that wasn’t a great drama. And they normally only practiced within the local range. Cause they only had to move – Holsworthy had a range they only had to move 2 or 3-miles to actually fire their guns, so that was fine. The same thing applied went out, you know, made sure all the bores and everything worked and before they fire and the same deal all over again. We used to assist School of Artillery. They used to

use some of the guns of these guys to fire. They used to get practice for their schools from their – from their courses. So that was fairly simple and a non event.

Well, they were actually – the heavy guns were for some sort of deployment that never happened. Caused they’ve never been fired in action, cause they’re, you know, fairly big. But they were never used in Vietnam and they’ve never used in Borneo. Never

used since World War II I guess. They’ve now been replaced by a 155 gun which is equivalent and it’ll do the same thing till it goes out of service and replaced by something else. Cause they’re just too big and heavy to move and most of our war theatres seem to be somewhere else anyway. So but you’ve got to train for all contingencies, I guess, I would say they’re probably for mainland defence in case we’re ever attacked. And that was the phase when the military said, “That’s all we’re going to do, is

mainland defence,” and that was for a number of years before sort of Iraq and the Gulf War and that sort of thing. It was sort of confined to looking at the defence of the continent only and that’s why the sort of – the heavy artillery was a viable thing and – so from there on, we could probably move on, I guess ,to various other units and probably cut them fairly short I think. Went I was posted to 2 Base Workshops

which was responsible for all sorts of general repairs. It’s probably the biggest non-specific workshop in Australia. As far as army goes. So you have all sorts of programs come through from. That’s where the guns, I would’ve sent back from Vietnam would’ve ended up at the ordnance depot there and would’ve gone through 2 Base Workshop to be fully repaired and restored and come out sparkling brand new nearly. So that’s where they would’ve gone after I’d sent them home.

So it was just general once again general work. School of Artillery I went to for a time. By this time I think I was a WO or got promoted in the School of Artillery to WO 2. In the meantime I’d been a staff sergeant, probably at the School of Artillery as well. And that was mainly to just to maintain their guns cause they did have. They well they had varieties of them all basically out of the 5 5s. But only a couple of each. 5 5s

25-pounders. 105s. The 40-mil crystal the anti-aircraft guns so they had the full coverage and just had to make sure that they were maintained and serviceable, and tend them when they went on training shoots. So and that was sort of about it. Once again the biggest problem biggest thing there was making presentation brass ash trays. So the officers’ courses could all get a brass ash tray when they – when they graduated from their young officers’

course. Cause I was the only fitter at School of Artillery. As a WO, so I did every everything that was supposed to be done. Including a few jobs of my own. It was good because I was really my own boss and there was no officer, I was the senior sort of rank and RAEME there. So that I was sort of in charge of myself and looked after the guys up the road who were all radar electronic types who looked after the radar. Cause part of the artillery roll was

surveillance radio radar for incoming artillery. That’s part of their role and our guys looked after them so. So that was quickly the School of Artillery. It was a lovely posting. Cause this was – it’s on Manly at North Head. Overlooking the sea, and Manly’s sort of the place everyone goes on their holiday and I used to go there every day for work and it was great. But I was still living in the Western suburbs, so commuting was a bit of a problem cause we had to go from one side of town to the other.

No for training.

Yeah yeah.

Yeah well just on, yeah, just theoretical module and then they take the radars down when we went to shoot and pick up and use the radar on the on the shoots and that was part you know. So there’d be a sort of training exercise, to exercise, the artillery on one side and the face radar on the other. So they’d use it for

both purposes. Cause, you know, obviously, you know, just firing off bombs is a fairly expensive procedure and they like to get as much as they as much money out of their dollar as they can. Or they did. I dunno whether they do now. But they did then. So you’d use it for multiple purposes. So that would be double exercise type thing. So it had a couple of advantages. So from there.

No I didn’t. Not really no. Not that’d really stick out to me at all.

No nothing that really occurs to me. Can’t think of anything

No, well nothing. Well from up until recently I think army’s always operated on under monied. You know cause we’ve always had to use the training dollar as to the best possible way we could. We’ve got a always had to economise. You know even on the replacement weapons

like the .303 was used in the First World War and we’re still using it up until Vietnam. And it’s, you know, well and truly outdated long before the First World War, just about, so. But we do, you know, we make out of our capital and always have made as much money or as much value out of the dollar as we can I think. Recently I’m not so sure. Cause I think I wasted a bit towards the end of me career. But initially for the, you know, first probably 20 years 25 years I was in the

army I believed that every dollar that the taxpayer spent was fairly well spent. Within that actually reached the defence on the ground. So I know I’ve got no – I think we did well for our dollars and –

Not really, not really, no. In the latter years, yes to a degree. But only to a minor degree. But you

it was just that sort of culture. Save a quid. Save a quid. Save a quid. It’s always been ‘save a quid’. So some of the stuff now the average person would throw away, but we were still repairing it. So rather than buy, spend money and buy a new thing, repair the old, then when – and the Yanks well and truly throw ’em away. They we were fixing M-60s sub-machine guns or machine guns sorry machine guns long after they would’ve thrown ’em right away.

We actually matched new breech blocks up with new barrels and stuff like that they wouldn’t even think about. They’d just hoick em.

Yeah.

No. Just as well they didn’t, cause we wouldn’t be able to account for ’em. We, you know, we had had so much stuff of the Yanks anyway it was pretty difficult to account for, to bring home. Because how did you get it? You know. Like these 6 Armalites they gave me. We had to leave them in country, cause you couldn’t, you know, there’s no way of accounting for how we got them.

So where they ended up? They probably ended up in the –

No not this is the stuff we got off the Yanks.

No would’ve been lovely if they if they were but no I think. There’s probably a big hole over there with this excess stuff put into it. And same with in Borneo. We buried stuff over there because we was not worthwhile bringing home. You know, new parts. Cause they changed from International to Caterpillar so that the parts we

had over there for International were no longer any good. So leave ’em in country. So it’s not worth. And then some they were what fuel injectors. Probably worth a couple a hundred dollars each. But by the time you paid for ’em to come home. Sell ’em at discount rates that someone buys the whole bundle for 2-dollars each or something it’s just not worth the – and we just put ’em in a hole in the ground.

I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Not

not in the quantity that was sort of left there. It’s a limited amount of TT-15s dozers in Borneo even today there’s not too many around. They’d never use the amount of parts we left there in their lifetime, I don’t think so. But, you know, so once again it was a matter of getting the best value for the dollar and there was just not worthwhile transporting them home cause there was no use for them back here apart from the disposal market. And it’s only gonna feather somebody’s nest, because they’re gonna get ’em at bargain

rates. So where did we get up to? Do you want to ask another question?

Oh okay.

Well I better –

I better flip over, cause there’s really I want to mention something about my final years. Cause they were probably the best years that I had. They were involved in experimental work, in mainly involved with a new family of small arms which is

the things replacing the SLR and all the sub-machine guns that had been served had served us for a lot a years. So it was and that was probably the most important part. And we – what we did, we tried four weapons that were selected to be tried. And out of that, we picked two. And one of those happened to was the – was the Armalite from Vietnam and the Steyr from Austria. And I was responsible

basically for adverse testing those. Which means that I was responsible to see how they went after they were dragged through mud sand over heated frozen and all that sort of thing to make sure that the Digger today gets what was the best available on the market then. There may be something better on the market now but I believe that what he got was the best weapon available. And I hope that he has enjoys it cause it’s, you know, it’s great capabilities optical sights automatic fire. Something that

we’ve always, I think we’ve always wanted the ability to be able to put out more bullets when the occasion demands it. And with and up until the Armalite, and we didn’t have that capability. And because it’s now a 5.56 instead of 303 or 7.62 you can now carry a lot of rounds than you could. Have more hitting power, because they’ve got a steel penetrated or hardened steel titanium, in fact penetrater in the round itself

so that you can now penetrate the average steel helmet. It can go through the average flack jacket. This one’s not gonna go too far, I hope. But it’ll go through the average flack jacket and still kill. So he’s got much more capability than he ever had with either the .303 or the SLR or the M-16. Although the M-16 will take the same round. I just wanted to get that plug in because somewhere down the track someone may say we got the wrong weapon. We had during that assessment program we had Colt come out from America

fuming cause we’d picked the other one and they’d heard we’d picked the other one and wanted to know the differences and wanted to see the results. And the results were based on a NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] standard called B-14 which we followed. We’d picked a series of tests out that we thought were most suitable to the Australian environment and any likely potential environment which was mainly South East Asia and a and a desert environment. That’s why we did a sand drag test and

and a heat test, because we maybe foresaw that something like this might happen in the deserts of Arabia and Iraq or Iran. However they in some instances they haven’t performed as best they as they could and I still believe that it’s because we as a manufacturing nation, can’t manufacture the weapons properly. We had lots of troubles meeting the standards set down by the Austrians. Cause they sent us all their drawings. We made them we

made the Steyrs in Lithgow. But they can’t – they couldn’t get down to the finer tolerances that the Swedes, the – sorry, the Austrians used. I think that’s the only reason why we have had a few hiccups and I dunno whether they’re widely broadcast. I know we did I know there’s guys from EDE [Engineering Development Establishment] that have gone across to Iraq and previously in the Gulf War, because they did have had some play ups with weapons and they’ve looked at them. Snd I still believe that it’s through

lack of Australian manufacturing controls intolerances and ability inability to meet the tolerance standards laid down. So I just wanted to get that plug in. We did our best at the time for posterity.

And just that other one other thing we spoke about informally was – that I think that there is a need for defence force or the army in particular to have a look

at their older soldiers after they’ve gotten out, to make sure they’re doing okay. And it would only take I think a – just a phone call a year after they got out, to say, “How you goin’ Joe Blow?” And then if necessary take some sort of action or at least point him in the right direction. Because a lot of ’em don’t know there’s a whole heap of help out there. RSLs, DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs]. A lot when they get out, a lot of ’em don’t know that those sources exist. They should then steer ’em in that direction

or take other appropriate action if the bloke’s having trouble. And a lot of ’em will because that’s all they ever all they know is army. And it think the army’s got a responsibility to look at look at their servicemen after they get out and make sure they are doing okay. The average employer should be doing that, and often cases do make – they make contact with their employees after they get out to make sure they’re doin’ okay, and I think the army’s supposed to be a leader in personnel management and put it on – to put on my band wagon, I think they

should prove that by looking after their diggers after employment as well as during employment.

I think it’s a – well it’s a problem that’s going to become bigger. Because everyone knows that unemployment is difficult, but when you get out at 55, if you go, if you serve right through to your eligible time as a digger, no one wants to hire anyone at 55. You know and I mean the government’s saying they’re going to push to have people working

longer. But they’re gonna have to find jobs that they can do and employers that will that have them. Like I wanted a job when I got out. Didn’t want it desperately, but I wanted a job. But it’s pretty difficult to find one. Who wants an expert in small arms? You know who wants some one that knows the ins and outs of the Steyr? There’s not a Steyr on the market in Australia and never will be I hope. Cause it shouldn’t be in the in community hands. So who wants someone that’s an expert on that you know. And it’s

and as you get longer in your service you get more specialised. Like any in any job I guess. And that on a narrow narrowing job perspective.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, tape’s over?

Good, thanks guys. Thanks, it’s been an interesting experience. And I never thought I could talk for 8 hours. And my missus.