Australians at War Film Archive

Well as far as I’m aware my grandfather on my mother’s side, he joined the army in 1916, at the age of 43 and, he did his

training at Blackboy Hill. And then he was shipped off to England to join the war in France. And whilst he was in England he, he contacted or contracted a bad case of scabies and, and whilst he was in hospital the doctors found he had a heart murmur so he was shipped back to Australia

and discharged from the army. So, that was about his contribution. But from what, from what I’ve learnt before he joined the army he was a stagecoach driver for Cobb and Co, up in the goldfields. And I presume that because he was sitting on a stagecoach all day, he never walked very far. And, this is probably what caused his heart problems.

So yeah he was our first hero. And, and my father was, joined the army in the Second World War in 1941. And he was a transport driver and due to the fact that he had an accident and smashed his leg up he wasn’t able to go overseas but he spent the duration of the water in the army

driving up north and, yeah around Western Australia mainly. So yeah that was about it for the, family history of war.

Yeah. I was born in Midland and we lived in Guildford for the first 5 years of my life.

And I do have little snippets of recollection from Guildford. We had an old Ford ute that us kids used to sit in whenever we went anywhere. And I remember a truck at the railway line full of wheat got hit by a train and so everybody in the street went up there with their bags and filled them up with wheat for their WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s. And the police came around a few days later and

wanted everybody to hand in their bags of wheat.

Oh the police came around and knocked on everybody’s door and asked them if they’d taken any wheat out of the truck to hand it in and of course my Dad didn’t want to do that so he hid it in the

wardrobe and my Mum had to tell a little white lie about the fact that we didn’t have any wheat. And I think to this day she feels guilty about that. But yeah it was pretty interesting. I also remember my Mum used to tell me how after I had lunch I used to go for a little wander because we were in a cul-de-sac and I used to go to sleep on the

road in the afternoon. There wasn’t many cars then. There wasn’t too many.

I don’t remember because at the age of 5 we moved from there but I do remember we used to go to the pictures on Saturday nights into Guildford. And we used to go picking mushrooms over at, over near the Woodbridge

Hotel. There was some paddocks out the back where we used to pick them in the winter.

At the age of 5 we moved to Bassendean. And I remember moving in there, it was Christmas time and, we didn’t have any lawn or anything, it was just all black sand and Mum often tells me how, how difficult it was to try and keep us clean because we used to get out in the black sand

and play in it all day. And we, we were pretty black when we came in. It was a good place to grow up. I remember a lot of, it was a very carefree and easy sort of life there. And I guess Mum and Dad didn’t really worry too much about us. We spent a lot of time swimming down the river at Sussex Hill

and playing football and just riding around on our bikes and going down to the bush and, playing there. And some of the things I always remember about Bassendean was the baker came round with a horse and cart and, he used to have a big basket that he would put all his bread in and he’d take that from house to house and the horse’d just plod along the street. As he moved to the next house the horse’d

move up. And he used to let us have a bit of a ride now and then and he’d give us a horseshoe roll which was, that was fantastic, ‘cause they were nice and fresh. And we had the bottlo used to come around with his truck and he’d ring his bell and my Dad’d say when you see him call him in and get rid of the beer bottles down the back and we’d give the bottlo a hoi and

he’d come in and I’d have to go around to the bottle heap with him and count every bottle as he put them in his box. And then I had to watch him on the way out because Dad said he, if he could find any batteries or scrap metal he’d take that and not pay us for it. So I had to watch him til he got in his truck and left. And we also had the night cart in the early

days in Bassendean. I suppose the first couple of years, we didn’t have a proper toilet, it was just a pan job. And they used to come around once a week and pick up our pan and put another one in there and you’d often hear about, stories about people who were sitting on the toilet and next thing there was no pan underneath them and there was the blokes looking up at them. But

it never happened to me but I’m sure it happened to quite a few people. And we used to have a guy come around called the prop man. And he was an old Aboriginal bloke and he lived out in the bush and he used to make these clothes props because in those days we had clothes lines which were just wire strung between two cross posts and we used the prop to lift the

line up from the ground so the clothes wouldn’t touch the ground. And he’d come around every so often and for two shillings you could buy a new prop off him.

Oh the school holidays, well in the summer we spent I reckon 90% of our time in the river, swimming. And you know it was just all day and

just going for lunch and then back down to the river. And during the winter months it was, used to play a lot of football and plus do a bit of pure adventurous like, in Bassendean they’d opened drains along the streets and we used to play in those and sometimes we’d walk for miles through these drains and underneath the railway line and through this tunnel and it was a bit of an adventure for us.

And catch tadpoles and frogs. And …

You go.

We’ll get this right.

Yeah. Better do that.

I guess it was something that I saw in the newspaper one day was an advertisement for the navy and, I guess that was when I was probably about 12 years old. And I thought to myself, well I’d like

to be in the navy I think. And there was no particular reason, we didn’t have any family history of anyone been in the navy or anything similar to that. So I think it was just something that I’d decided on early, you know that was what I would like to do. And yeah and so I, when the time came that’s what I did, yeah.

Well I saw an advertisement in the paper for apprentices to join the navy between the age of 15 and 16. And I thought at the time I’d like to be a shipwright because I used to like doing woodwork at school. So I applied for it and I sat the exams. But my

my maths weren’t as good as they could be so I, I failed in getting into, as an apprentice. But at the same time they were also advertising for junior recruits to join from the age of 15 and a half to 16 and a half. And they said that if I wanted to I could apply for that which I did and sat the exams. And yeah I was accepted for that.

So that was the start of my after school career.

Well I think they were quite happy for me to do it. It was something I wanted to do and, they really had no problem with me joining the navy. I think it was something about that time that the Defence Forces weren’t a bad thing to be in and there was a lot of good things

in it because, although jobs were easy to come by, I think to have a career was seen better than to just be a, just be somebody who went to work each day and really didn’t have a lot of future. So yeah they, they didn’t have any problems with signing the papers, even though I was so young.

Sorry?

Oh there was, in my intake there was 150 and we were all between the ages of 15 and a half and 16 and a half. So, some were close to 16 and a half and like me I was just 15 and a half. So yeah pretty close, between the oldest and youngest was probably nearly a year. But we were

just kids anyway.

Well I suppose to start from the beginning like when you join most of the Defence Forces you have a haircut whether you need it or not. And they take the civilian clothes off you, and probably put half a dozen needles in your arms and make you feel miserable for a few days.

And then the training actually started. We - our day’d start at 6.30. We’d do PT [physical training], and breakfast and we’d clean up our area in our, in our mess. And we’d have locker inspection and then we’d be down to parade ground by 8 o’clock and we’d do

rifle drill till 9 o’clock. And then we did academic studies as well which were navigation, maths, English, science and … yeah I think that’s all we did. Yeah academic. So we’d go down to what they’d call the school block for

oh till about 3 o’clock and then we’d finish and then we’d all do sport. And sport was compulsory like PT and you selected the sport you wanted to do. And we represented the navy in different things. I represented the navy in swimming and hockey. And we fielded all sorts of teams you know to play, ‘cause we were the same age as sort of high school kids, to play

high schools on weekends as well as during the week. We were also - compulsory things we had to do in sport were cross country running and boxing, which came towards the end of our second 6 months there. And whether you liked it or not you had to do boxing. And…

No well I didn’t actually because, when the first day we were going

they were going to teach us how to box we went to the gymnasium in what we called my division which was 30 guys, we all lived and slept and ate and did everything together. And the PTI [physical training instructor] said, “I want two of yous out here to - and I’ll show how to spar.” And he picked me out and the other guy who was the biggest guy at Leeuwin and he said, “Now I want yous to just spar around

and then I’ll tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.” And I woke up a little bit later laying on the deck ‘cause he’d just hit me and down I went. So that was my introduction to boxing in the navy. But, yeah we all had to go on and do a bit of time in the ring and progressively the better ones were moved up and, till it came to a night that they had every year at Leeuwin and

the governor came along and a few other dignitaries from around the place and they actually televised it. I think Channel 7 did it. And they had the finals for the boxing and, the guys that had got to the top, they went out there and put on a bit of a show for everybody. Yeah it was quite - it was interesting yeah.

I guess when I got there it looked a bit foreboding but, the buildings that we lived in and there was 30 of us in each one were made of timber with corrugated iron rooves and it was just one big long building and we had our beds spread along the outside and the lockers were on the inside. And

most of the buildings were very old because it was built during the Second World War. They were cold during the winter and warm in the summer. And our parade ground was gravel. But it also doubled as the hockey field so we had to play hockey on a gravel surface, which was a bit harsh on the old knees and hands if you happened to go over.

There was - we had a lot of sporting fields around it. And there was also a boat shed up the road where we had quite a lot of small boats, whalers and work boats. And a large boat about 80 foot long called an SDB. That’s where we did our seamanship training.

We used to row up and down the row, plus sailing in our whaleboats. They were very heavy and it took quite a lot of effort to row them especially under the Fremantle Bridge with the tide going the opposite direction. There was big fence around it I know that. And a few of the guys used to climb over or under the fence.

And go out for a few hours from time to time. Because we were so young we were - we had very restricted leave and we were only allowed ashore on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons. And for those who lived around Perth you were allowed to go out overnight or you could take somebody who lived - who came from another state you could take them with you overnight.

We also had a scheme where sponsors, people out in the community could actually sponsor a junior recruit and they could take them home on the weekends. And a lot of the fellows liked that because it gave them a bit of home life, which I think at our age we missed quite a bit.

Oh most weekends I used to go

home and I’d take somebody with me who was from another state. Yeah we’d just, I’d go and visit me mates and we’d go down swimming. Yeah just general things. I think it was just nice to sort of have a bit of home cooking and family companionship.

Yes. We - it’s a bit hard to put - for our age we were expected to do virtually what people a lot older than use were expected to do in the navy. Although we weren’t trained in any particular job, there was a lot expected of us but by the same token they punished

us fairly severely. And we had, what they call the staff, which were the people who were actually in charge of us and on each division you had a leading seaman, a petty officer and an officer who was the divisional officer in charge of the division. And, I remember one day I was sitting on the steps

outside our hut having a smoke. And I got - because we weren’t allowed to smoke in the hut I got charged with smoking in the hut, which I wasn’t doing. But then I had to go and do what we called WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s which was, an hour and a half down the parade ground with a 303 rifle and then we’d have to double around and duck walk with these rifles above our heads. And anything else they could think of to make life difficult

for us. But quite a few fellows did that and I guess because of our age and our fitness it really didn’t affect us that much but it was pretty hard on I think for, fellows of our age anyway. And, there was a particular chief petty officer there who was in charge of parade training and gunnery and he

was a nasty little creature. He was only a little short fellow but he had that chip on his shoulder and he really liked to let us know that he was king pin and that we were just the garbage. But I think, you know most of us got through it alright.

I think I enjoyed the - I liked the seamanship and the sport.

And I think the, you know learning the different facets of the navy. We also did what we called overnight expeditions which was, they’d drop us off in groups of 5 on a Friday night up in the - up Chittering Way and we had a map and a compass and we had to be, at a particular place on Sunday. And

we just had some ration packs and a ground sheet and off we’d go. And I quite liked that because, you know it was good fun, yeah. Although a few of them got lost and so on it was still, yeah it was good fun, yeah. And we used to go over to Garden Island before it was developed into Sterling and they had some huts over there and we’d spend a weekend over there. And a lot of us had snorkelling gear and spear guns and we’d go out

snorkelling and bring home, bring back a lot of fish. And yeah we had a lot of fun there.

Actually there are some that I have kept in touch with from time to time. Because last year we had a reunion in Tweed Heads of our intake and out of the 150, we had 90, a bit over 90

turned up. And, yeah there’s a couple of them there that I really remember well and that I’ve seen from time to time and we had a good weekend. And, generally you know, at the end of the year I send Christmas cards to a lot of the people that I knew in the navy, just to keep in touch and perhaps one day we’ll get together and that. So

I think it’s pretty important ‘cause I guess that was most of me life. Yeah.

We were at Leeuwin for a year from July 1962 to July 1963. And towards the end of that time we were asked what we would like to do after we left Leeuwin, which branch of the navy you’d want to go into.

And I selected aircraft armourer in the fleet (UNCLEAR). And I was fortunate enough to get that and so that led to, I guess the next bit of me life.

Well he looks after the weapon systems on aircraft. All different types of aircraft, helicopters and

and that time anti-submarine aircraft and attack aircraft. And weapons systems, basically the guns and rockets, missiles, ejection systems and apart from that you also prepare ammunition for use on aircraft. And you store it. And

work in work shops on different types of weapons. You know servicing and repair and that. And just the day to day I suppose operation of the aircraft where you may have to just small things that may need to be done.

Well I suppose I’d always had a bit of a thing for firearms

and although I hadn’t used many I - it sorted of attracted me to. And I thought, well that’s the sort of thing I’ll be doing but of course it’s not quite as simple as that. And it, you know, 20 millimetre cannons are a little bit different to a 22 rifle or an air gun. So yeah it was bit of an eye opener.

Well when we finished at Leeuwin we all went on leave and, for a couple of weeks and then all the guys from the Eastern States went back home and we went home for a couple of weeks. And then we went back to Leeuwin and we caught the train from Perth across to Moss Vale in New South Wales. Which is

sort of in the highlands of New South Wales, Southern Highlands. I vividly remember the trip because you know there was - I’d never been on a train like this before, it had compartments and sleepers and toilets even. And I got locked in one of the toilets actually one day and the, the conductor had to come and smash the lock off the door so I could get out.

But yeah we went across to New South Wales and I’d never been away from home before. I think a hundred, probably about a hundred miles was as far as I’d ever been. So it was very interesting. And we arrived at Moss Vale I think somewhere around 3 o’clock in the morning. It was July, it was cold, it was windy and the wind over there generally blows off the mountains

so it was, it was really cold and I’ve never been so cold. And we got an old bus, old navy bus and proceeded to go to Nowra which was over on the coast and which took, it must’ve taken about 2 hours because we had to go through Kangaroo Valley and it was all hairpin bends down either side so I sort of wondered where I was going at the time. I was getting a bit worried that perhaps I’d let myself in for something that

that I never expected.

Well Nowra’s where the fleet air arm base is. Where all the aircraft are kept and all the training’s done for the fleet air arm. And that’s done at a place called HMAS Albatross. I know that when we arrived there

and it was so cold and, we then went down to our huts where we were billeted and they were old corrugated iron huts and they were so draughty. And I think I was pretty miserable for a few days because I, the cold weather never let up and I was having a lot of

bad thoughts going through me head about this one.

Oh the first training we did was, we did what was called airmanship which really entails learning how an aircraft flies and what an aircraft does. And how it’s flown and what sort of, what sort of aircraft we

had in the fleet air arm at the time. And we finished that one and then we then went and did our branch course which was aircraft armour. And I think that course lasted for something around 3 months. And I really enjoyed that because it was learning about things that I knew nothing about.

And I think it gave me and the other guys on the course a good feeling because we were, we were going to be something when we finished this course. But anyway we finished that around about the end of 1963. And after we’d done that, after we’d finished it we then got posted to

either workshops or a squadron or even the explosive area where the ammunition was kept. And we - and one thing I do remember, when we became armourers we had, the armourers had their own combination block and it was the neatest and tidiest and had the best garden. And when we moved in with the armourers

and they were pretty good guys, they were all a lot older than - I was only 16 at the time and, a lot older than us. But they took us under their wing and, we felt pretty good. I remember going down to the, the junior sailors canteen and having a few beers one night. These guys took me down and I was only

I think I’d just turned 17 at the time. So I was under age but, nobody said anything. And yeah I felt like a 21 year old. And I guess ‘cause we, the armourers did a good job of looking after their old tin hut they built some brick, new brick accommodation blocks and we were given the first one because we looked after

ours so well. Which was a bit of a pat on the back for us. Yeah.

I think at the time there was probably, oh … I’d say 12, 1,300. And it was all different trades of aircraft maintenance and…

I do remember the place was fairly antiquated at the time but we had a picture theatre there and, because we were 7 miles out of town we didn’t have much opportunity to go into town. The only way you could get in there was either hitchhike or, hope that somebody had a car who could give you a lift.

So we, I think the movies got a bit of a hammering for the first 6 months there.

Probably go somewhere and have a few beers because, the town was, it was, I guess like towns that have military bases near them. Even though the people like having the military base there

they don’t really like having the servicemen in town because, we tend to get a bad name which I think is wrong. Because sometimes, someone was getting into trouble. But I think that just goes with young blokes who like to get out and let off a bit of steam.

I think people locked up their daughters a lot. Because there wasn’t many young girls around. And I only ever went out with I think two or three girls from Nowra, and that was only a couple of times. I think mainly in those days we were sort of seen as people who drank a lot and caused a lot of trouble. And I suppose they were right, we did drink a lot

because we had nothing else to do. But I don’t think we got into much trouble. But I guess like any young guy we needed to just get out there and have a bit of fun. And we’d spend weekends in Sydney whenever we could. You know like we could get a lift up to Sydney and stay in the Royal Navy House in Sydney

which was pretty cheap. I think we could get a bed there for 2 and 6 at the time. And everything else was pretty cheap. So yeah we had good times up in Sydney.

Yeah well I guess because we ate, slept, worked, played together you know we, we generally there’d be a few of us go up together and yeah, we’d all stick together for the weekend. And I guess we looked

after each other too.

I think I was. Yeah I would’ve been the youngest, yeah. When I was still 17. And because I was - when I first went to Albatross I was only 16 and when I went ashore I had to be back by midnight because I had what they called Cinderella leave. If you were under the age of 17 you weren’t allowed to

stay ashore past midnight. So I was the one that always had to go home, back early to the base.

In?

Oh no. After doing the course we then - I was posted to a squadron called 704 squadron which was, we had Vampires,

some old Fireflies which were Second World War aircraft actually, piston driven aircraft. And Sea Venoms, which at the time were our front line fighter aircraft in the Fleet Air Arm.

Well in our fleet air arm they were but they were pretty sort of antiquated aircraft then. But you know we though they were the best so…

Yeah and we looked after them. Yeah we used to do a lot of, air to ground firing so we spent a lot of time loading ammunition and preparation of it. Nights as well as days. And it was fairly exciting sort of stuff I guess for a young bloke.

I do remember - that was in 1964, early ’64 one night we were night flying and I think we finished about 9 o’clock or perhaps a little bit later and we were putting the aircraft into the hanger and we, these people came running over to us and said, get over to the other hanger where we had helicopters and help them get them all out because that was when the [HMAS] Melbourne hit the

Voyager. And so we had to - we helped these guys get all the helicopters and the aircrew came down and they took helicopters that were unserviceable at the time. And yeah that was a long night. We had to prepare our aircraft, ones that could carry life rafts to go out, the next day in case there were any survivors still in the water.

I guess I know what I was told what happened. We never actually went out there, but we just sent aircraft out to look for survivors. The

Melbourne and Voyager were exercising off the coast of New South Wales and the Voyager was what’s called res des, which is the rescue destroyer. And when the Melbourne launches or recovers aircraft the rescue destroyer is notified to move behind the ship for night time operations, because if any aircraft crash then they can pick up the

crew out of the aircraft. And the Voyager was ahead of the Melbourne and in turning to come around behind the Melbourne, it continued its turn around so it actually came in front of the Melbourne and the Melbourne hit it about midships and broke it in two. I think there was over 80 killed in that one.

It was a pretty sad day. I remember the next day when we found out exactly what happened but, I guess life goes on and that’s what happened. And, I was then after the Melbourne and Voyager I was posted to

817 Squadron, which was Wessex anti-submarine helicopters. And that’s what were called a front line squadron because it was a squadron that would embark to go to sea which we did a couple of months later. We went onto the Melbourne along with other aircraft and I think in total

there was something like 14, 15 aircraft on there. And this was my first time at sea on a ship and I was pretty excited. And I remember when I went on there and we went down into our mess, there was about 160 bunks in the mess three high and it reminded me sort of

pictures I’d seen of slave ships and that, you know with all the people in there. Admittedly it wasn’t as bad but I felt like it was pretty bad. We spent I suppose a month exercising off the New South Wales coast preparing to head up to Asia. And we then

I (UNCLEAR) life was never dull on the ship. There was always something happening and a lot of times you didn’t get enough sleep. And I remember barking my shins a couple of times on the doorways ‘cause they were all steel. And it was cold, very cold out in the - down the south coast. But anyway we then sailed

for Asia and I suppose there was all up around about 20 armourers, maybe 25 armourers on the Melbourne at the time, and we - someone came around and said, would you like to have a, we called a piss up in Hong Kong and we all decided yep. And they said right it’ll cost you

2 shillings a week. And we’ll collect the money and then we’ll have a big do in Hong Kong. So I guess that was something to look forward to. We headed up north and we stopped at Manus Island on the way. The navy had a small base there at the time and we stopped there overnight and then we headed for a place called Subic Bay in Manila, in Philippines. And this was a really big American navy base.

And I don’t know there’s probably 20, 30, 40 ships there. And the airfield right next to the wharf and the aircraft could actually taxi off their aircraft carriers and onto the airfield and take off. And it was the biggest I’d ever seen.

Well, we didn’t really have a lot to do with them. I know that when we first

went ashore, we went to the nearest bar on the base and had a few beers and that. And then we decided to go outside the base to the town, which was called Olongapo. And the town was basically one main street with, and it was just bars. And it probably went for I guess a mile. And it was all bars along either side of the street. And the street was mud

when it rained, and dust when it didn’t. And to get out there we had to go across a bridge over this river and kids used to be in the water and they’d ask you to throw down coins and they’d dive for them. And they were pretty good because I doubt whether you could see an inch in front of you in the water. It was so dirty and mucky and that. Yeah so I remember going out there and this was my first time ashore in a foreign port.

And it was a real eye opener, because all these bars just really, no holes barred in them and there’s all sorts of things happening. They show pornographic movies on the walls and the girls’ll do just about anything for a few pesos. And there was lots of beer and yeah, it was pretty good. At my tender age of 17

it was, I suppose the experience you tend not to forget. We stayed there for a few days and then we headed off for Manila and we anchored in Manila Bay and that was where the fleet formed to do a SEATO [South East Asian Treaty Organisation] exercise, which was America, Australia, New Zealand and Britain I think. And we spent a few days there

and Manila was a nice place to go ashore and we could do pretty much the same as we did in Olongapo so it was all fun and games.

Well whenever the aircraft were flying we were up the flight deck. And the flight deck always had something going on. You know you had helicopters landing or taking off or fixed wing aircraft landing and taking off.

There was aircraft moving around the deck all the time being put in different positions and, we had ammunition that we had to bring up and we had to load. And yeah so there was always something to do. There was never, we never had to sit around for too long waiting for something. And when the aircraft weren’t flying we had to do maintenance on it.

And as an armourer on the helicopter there wasn’t a lot to do as far as maintenance goes but we used to help the air frames and engines guys to do their work. And those helicopters we had to oil every few weeks. We had to wipe oil all over them to stop them corroding. So that was a job that nobody liked by everyone had to do. And I guess

when at nights when there was no flying you know they had movies in the cafeteria. Or they played a game called tombola, which is a bit like bingo. Same sort of thing. And you could play that if you wanted. Otherwise we could play cards or write letters. I know we did a lot of that.

Oh just Mum and Dad. At the time I didn’t have a girlfriend and, so I’d just write Mum and Dad letters. I guess I probably wrote weekly when we were away. And I guess it was good for them because I was the only one in the family that had gone overseas and they were pretty interested in what we were doing and that.

I never

got seasick but I do know of a few that did. Because of the size of the Melbourne it wasn’t really too bad. The smaller ships had a lot of problems with seasickness but, it never really worried me. But I guess when you have people around you that were seasick it didn’t help those of us who weren’t seasick.

Yeah we used to get quite a bit of rough weather in the south coast of New South Wales. And I guess after a few days of rolling around there you get used to it. And everything just rolls along, keeps going.

Oh, it deteriorates especially… It’s not so bad when you’re like, just out for a week or so but

when you’re away for weeks going into months the food, particularly up in Asia, the food starts to deteriorate. It sometimes becomes monotonous because I guess they do buy things that last longer and they tend to be the same sort of things. And the freshness of the food pretty well goes out the window.

But we lived through it. It was okay.

Oh yeah. Manila we, it was the most ships I’d ever seen. There was probably 50, 60 ships involved in the exercise. And we were out for 2 weeks and the exercise took place in the South China Sea between Manila and

Thailand. And at the end of the exercise we went into Thailand for a couple of days.

Well the ships were broken into I think green and orange forces and, we sort of attacked each other. And there were submarines that attacked, we were in sort of convoys and submarines

attacked us and aircraft from the other groups. Plus shore based aircraft. It was, basically trying to simulate war as much as possible. And we used to have things like, we’d have to prepare for a gas attack or a nuclear attack or things like that. Which is part of our basic training as to

protect ourselves and our ships from those sort of things.

We had respirators, Second World War vintage - nothing was new in the navy then except us. And we’d have to don these respirators and all the ventilation in the ship would be shut off. And the hatches

closed on all the intakes and that. And we’d just go below and, for the duration of the exercise and then after that the ship would have to be cleansed, which meant fire hoses and everything to wash everything off the ship whether it be a biological or gas or nuclear attack. But I do remember it was pretty hot in the ship in the tropics with no ventilation.

And we used to - it would probably last for somewhere around an hour at a time and it became very uncomfortable.

Well it’s basically the same thing. We’d go down into the lowest areas in the ship that we can because the steel of the ship protects you from radiation to a certain degree.

And all ventilation shut off. Unless the nuclear attack was on us and we wouldn’t need to worry then. Yeah and I guess the rest of the exercise was going through all facets of things that you might encounter in war.

Yeah. Yeah there was.

I think we had probably 4, 5 ships but most of them were American. And a lot of old ships like the Thai Navy and Philippines Navy, Second World War ships. But it was very interesting. It sort of kept us - it was a hard two weeks but, it was very interesting.

Yeah we went to Thailand and we stopped there a couple of nights. And from there we sailed to Hong Kong which we spent 2 weeks alongside. And in that 2 weeks they had all these Chinese people hanging over the side of the ship with chipping hammers and they chipped all the paint off one side of the ship and repainted it, while we had a good time ashore.

Yeah Hong Kong was - I still like Hong Kong. It’s one of those places that sticks in your memory.

Oh we used to do things like, we’d do what you call the tailor run and you’d go ashore and because you didn’t earn a lot of money in those days - you’d go ashore and you’d go to a tailor shop and you’d say I want to buy a suit and so they’d bring

out all these samples and material and patterns of suits. And they’d give you a beer while you were looking through all the books and when you’d finished the beer you got up and walked out. And went down the road to another one, so you could get a few free beers. And that was, as I mentioned earlier, we all put in 2 shillings a week towards our piss up in Hong Kong. And couple of guys went

ashore and organised that and we had it in a bar. And there was beer and food. And we just drank and, there was bar girls there too. And with the money that was left they bought one of the bar girls for the night and then we had a raffle and whoever got it, got the girl for the night. So that was the big prize, yeah.

But as armourers we were a fairly close knit group and we did have a lot of piss ups. And we were probably the envy of a lot of other branches in the navy because we all stuck together and looked after each other. But after Hong Kong we went down to Singapore for I think a week.

And at that time the Communist insurgence were operating in Malaya so we had - everywhere you went there was road blocks and armed soldiers and police. And we had to do what we called Operation Awkward on the ship where we had sentries on the ship 24 hours a day all around the ship. And divers to check the bottom of the ship because there was

they were worried that the insurgence might attack us.

I think the reality was there. There was a few incidents in Singapore of attacks and that and, I remember one night I was duty and we were told

to prepare ourselves to go into Singapore because they had riots in there which was a bit worrying. But fortunately they managed to quell the riots and we didn’t need to go in. But, yeah I guess it was something I never thought would happen.

I don’t know. I never thought of communism

as being anything. Perhaps I wasn’t as informed as a lot of people. We didn’t have newspapers and we didn’t hear much news or anything. So I don’t think I ever formed an opinion on any political thing or, any conflict that was happening around. I think I was like a lot of us, we just enjoyed life.

‘Cause it was probably more important.

Oh only for a week I think. And then we went and exercised for a couple of weeks with the Royal Navy and New Zealand Navy. Which was basically the same as the SEATO exercise which was anti-submarine and fleet attacking fleet

and shore aircraft. And then back into Singapore for another week and then back home, back to Sydney. That was about 3 months or something. That was my first taste of South East Asia. I quite enjoyed it.

Oh we just came back and we

we disembarked all the aircraft off the Melbourne and went back to Albatross. We went on leave and, after leave it was back to Albatross. And I got to add there, when I went on leave my birthday’s on Christmas Eve and my Dad, every time I came home on leave on Christmas Eve he’d go down and buy a keg and we’d have a party at our place and

that was for my birthday. And I thought it was pretty nice of him to do that. So yeah, all our neighbours and friends used to come around and, yeah we used to have a good time. After Christmas back to Albatross and, then we went back on the Melbourne I think in February or March. And

for another trip up into Asia which was basically the same as the one the year before. And then back to, then we came back about the middle of the year to Albatross.

Average day? Well depending on what was

happening. If you were flying generally that was early start. We’d start flying from a bit after dawn so it would mean getting up pretty early, perhaps 4 to 5 o’clock in the morning. And we’d go to what they’d call flying stations and, we’d prepare the aircraft to send off. We had to

help the other guys because the rotor blades were folded back on the aircraft so we had to unfold them and that was all done manually. And if they needed any ammunition of any sort we’d put that on and, generally they’d be off and we could have breakfast then and then it was back up there again. And it would go all day long sometimes 12, 14 hours. I have done

28 hours straight up there but, generally it would be 10 hours. And there’s a lot of up and down ladders and, carrying things around so, it was fairly strenuous sort of time.

And you know meals was, you’d get in a big long line and stand there for probably 15 or 20 minutes before you could get your meal. And you’d go into a café that was crowded with people and sometimes you’d have to stand and wait to get - somewhere to sit.

Oh it was just a little bunk, probably wouldn’t -

probably 6 foot long and 2 foot wide. And there was very little other space in them. There were some small areas where you could sit, you know. But we didn’t have tables and chairs to sit at. It was just sit on whatever you could find to sit. But I guess one thing we - when we were in the Tropics - because at the time the ship wasn’t air conditioned it was very hot

particularly at night trying to sleep. So the foc’sle of the ship which is the bit up the front - at the end of the normal working day people could go up there and they’d take stretchers and hammocks and that and put them up there because there was a nice cool breeze used to come in over the foc’sle. And a lot of them would sleep up there but it was always a race to get in there and get a spot for your stretcher or hammock.

But yeah it was pretty hot down below. Everywhere was hot. We just sweated all day long but I guess you got used to it. And we used to take salt tablets. Yeah sometimes we would work at night, into the night or, when we were exercising we were generally flying around the clock so

we would split into 2 watches and do 12 hours or split into 6 hours or 8 hours at a time, just around the clock for perhaps 2 weeks.

Well it’s just called watch, which is actually like a shift, you know where you work in a factory or something. It’s the same sort of thing. Just called a watch.

And I suppose other things we did when we weren’t flying was we also helped the - they had an ammunition party on the ship which - ‘cause we had 20 magazines throughout the ship to store all the different types of ammunition. And we would help the armourers that looked after them in maintenance. Painting or ammunition preparation and that.

Oh yeah we had our ranks. Initially I was just a naval airman which is the same as a naval seaman. And later I was promoted to a leading airman which I guess is like a corporal in the army air force. And then petty officer, which is the same as a sergeant and chief petty

officer which is like staff sergeant. So we had petty officers or chief petty officers in charge of us. And a leading airman. And depending on what aircraft or what squadron you were on, it was dependent on how many people was on, how many armourers were on the squadron. On the helicopters there was, I think there was 6 of us.

So we were a pretty small group. Whereas on the fighter aircraft there was around 20. But we used to help them ‘cause we’re all there to do one job. And there was a lot of mateship and camaraderie and, yeah.

Well … some guys used to let others read their letters and, I remember when I first went on the Melbourne I was 17 and I was too young to drink in New South Wales so - but I got away with getting a beer issue each night. Which was a large can of either Fosters or VB [beer].

Until someone found out that I was under age and then they said, you can’t drink any more, so you can’t have the beer issue. And what would happen then is, the others guys’d get their beer issue and if someone didn’t want their beer then they would give it to me. But if everybody wanted it, what they would do is, we’d have sippers and each one of them would give me a sip out of their cans. So you know I could have a beer, same as them.

And the things like, I guess going ashore together, we all stuck together, we looked after each other. If a guy got too much to drink well the others’d get him back and if somebody got into trouble well we were all there to help. Yeah it was…

just a really, a good time.

Yeah. In ’65 yeah.

Oh ’65 we - the fuel tanks in the ship got a fungus in them and so all the aircraft on the ship were grounded.

They couldn’t fly them because this fungus could affect the operation of the aircraft. So, when we went to Singapore we had all our aircraft grounded and we went out on an exercise and at the end of the exercise we did what they called a shop window, which was a big display of firepower from all these ships and Royal Air Force aircraft. And because

we couldn’t fly our aircraft we had the then prime minister of Malaysia which is Tunku Abdul Rahman - he came on board and… Then we had this big firepower display and they did it sort of where we were because we had the prime minister on our ship and, yeah it was just fantastic. There was all sorts of things happening. Bombers flying over in formation dropping bombs. And

attack aircraft from the ships. There was ships firing their guns and missiles and depth charges. It was just, it was just like a war. But I suppose that was the highlight of that trip.

Well one of the things - as an armourer we’re aware that we handle explosives and so safety is a prime concern in the way we handle them.

And also because we work on aircraft. Aircraft are very hazardous to work around when they’re running. So safety in that respect was very important and then there’s the safety on the ship. And I guess you, you know everything you do you take into account the safe thing.

Like if we lost power on the ship, we didn’t have any lights they had emergency lights. And if we were told to, if something happened and we were told to go to a particular station - say the ship was sinking - we would all know where to go because of the lights and the way the ship was all - the different compartments were marked and that. And working around aircraft at night.

Yeah we knew where we could and couldn’t or should and shouldn’t go. So everything was - the funny thing about it was the whole thing was - everything was safety. But safety wasn’t emphasised like it is today but we all did things safely most of the time. Now and then things happened.

Oh well you can have explosives that inadvertently go off because

someone does the wrong thing. ‘Cause not everybody’s perfect. There’s people that get injured on ships because the complexity of the ships you know, with ropes and pullies and that. Fingers, people get broken legs. One day the catapult on the ship - before the catapult is used they grease the track that the catapult’s on. And the guy was greasing it and someone pressed the button and the catapult went up and

it smashed both of his ankles. So there that’s an example of things that can happen. We have aircraft that crash into the sea or crash on deck.

Oh yeah we had, we had a few helicopters that went into the water. And some aircraft that, one that when it landed on the

arrestor hook broke and the arrestor hook actually hooks a wire on the deck and it broke and they went over the side and the pilot went down with it and the others got out. A Skyhook that got catapulted off the front of the ship and crashed into the sea in front of the ship. Another one, pilot missed the wire and couldn’t get off so he had to eject out.

There was quite a few aircraft that we lost. Which is part and parcel of operating aircraft at sea. There’s nowhere else to land except the water if you can’t get on the ship. Yeah and there’s a lot of hazards around the ship. Yo can, people injure themselves quite easily. And go through hatches

and things. I saw one guy run up a ladder one day and the hatch was closed at the top and he just slid back down the ladder. ‘Cause he smashed straight into it so…

Oh quite well. They were all officers and, I think once again we were fortunate because we had a small fleet air arm and we all sort of got on fairly well together. We knew each other and

we still had to respect their rank and so on. But generally we got on quite well with them. Some of them even let you call them by their first name when you, when you weren’t around anyone else.

Oh yeah. On an exercise we stopped, we anchored off this island for a weekend. And they allowed probably 50 or 50 of us to go ashore. It was Pulo Labu and it was just an island with lots of vegetation on it. Didn’t appear to be anyone lived there and they gave us 2 large cans of beer and some ice

which we put in a rubbish bin. And we all went ashore. And we drank our beer and we went swimming and we played a bit of beach cricket and it was very hot because we were right on the Equator. And of course we’d all drank our beer and then we’re all sort of thinking, well we’re not going back for a few hours. And then all of a sudden this landing craft came ashore from a supply ship that was there. A Royal

Navy supply ship. And all these guys were gathering around it so we thought we’d better go and have a look. So we went up there and it was full of beer. You know cans of beer and they were selling it so we, we all managed to chip in enough money to buy a few cans each and we drank hot beer on the Equator. And didn’t taste very nice but you know, you have to do these things. Yeah so we got a little bit, a little

tiddly over that one.

I don’t think any superstitions. I think some people have associated it as being a jinx ship but, it never occurred to me that it was such a thing.

Traditions were mainly the crossing line ceremony. When we crossed the Equator and we have these ceremonies and people’d get dunked in muck and garbage. But it was all in good fun. Yeah if it was your first time across the line you got a little certificate and it was all good fun. Apart from that, no

there wasn’t a lot of traditions involved in it. I guess for us it was just home and work.

Sailor’s uniform. The uniform we wore ashore in winter was

we had our sailor’s hat and our uniform was what they called blue serge. And the trousers were bell bottomed and had 7 creases in each leg. And we had a jacket at the top with a collar with white stripes around it. And we wore a lanyard

and a silk at the front. And on our right arm we had the branch that we were actually in the navy, which branch we were. And on the left hand side was any badges of rank that you had, whatever rank you were. And any stripes under that meant you’d completed 4 years of good conduct. And so you’d get 3 of

them. And if you didn’t have any either you hadn’t got that far or you’d been, or you’d done a few things wrong. Our work sort of - well when we were in the tropics we went ashore with white bells with the 7 creases in them and a white shirt with a square sort of collar and our hat. And our work dress was mainly overalls because

a lot of the work was dirty and plus when we worked around aircraft we had to wear long sleeves and, you had to be fully covered in case of fire or such.

I guess one thing I’ll just add to it, what I was talking about before, was that in ’65 we went to Thailand

and there was this, we called a buzz, which was like this thing going around everyone that we were going to Vietnam, when we left Thailand. We were going to escort the [HMAS] Sydney to Vietnam. And it turned out to be true. So when we left there they told us we would join up with the Sydney and its escorts in a couple of days and we would then escort it to Vietnam.

And that was, well we’d - I didn’t know a lot about Vietnam but it was the Sydney’s first trip up there and so the navy was unsure I guess about the Sydney going up there, so they wanted all these escorts. Yeah we joined the Sydney and all our aircraft were armed and ranges on the deck for launch if necessary. And all the gun

crews were closed up at their guns and it was just like the real thing sort of. And I remember we were sailing along and we were behind the Sydney back probably a mile behind it and I was standing on the flight deck and I could hear this noise, like sort of a ping you know. And we didn’t know what it was and then all of a sudden the ship turned to port and we moved over

to the side of Sydney and then they told us that the soldiers on the Sydney were shooting at beer cans from the beer issue the night before. They were shooting off the back of the ship into the beer cans and the rounds were ricocheting off the water and over the top of us. I guess you could call that being fired upon yeah. Yeah so it was pretty exciting taking the escort and the Sydney up there because we didn’t know what to expect.

That lasted for a couple of days and then after that we headed back to, I think we went to Hong Kong. But being on the ship, as a, as the, it was a squadron that I was on, a anti-submarine helicopter. We had 6 helicopters and, we had

a section of the mess where we lived for our squadron. And we just operated as required by the ship. We weren’t actually part of the ship’s company in as much as we - ‘cause we were only there for the trip away. And so we were looked upon by the ship’s company as the people who were on the ship for probably

2 years as just sort of blow ins. But we were the reason why we were at sea.

Oh we used to get called birdies. And that’s because I guess because we flew aircraft like we flew, so we were like birds

you know they called us birdies. And we had one thing that nobody else in the ship had and that was at night if we were flying we could have a meal, whereas nobody else in the ship could have one. And that caused a lot of resentment I guess towards us and just another sort of thing that made people, you know not like us that much.

I think it was, it was … I mean it wasn’t a thing big enough to cause fights and things like that. But it was just this resentment that we were, we were given or allowed to do things that they couldn’t do.

Well I guess we, we had to just turn a blind eye to what anyone said.

I guess sometimes we said, well that’s because we’re better than you guys, just as a bit of a taunt. Yeah. But it was something that was always there and we just had to live with it.

Yeah we

well we escorted the Sydney. There was I think, us and two other ships to escort it to off the coast of Vietnam and then it went in Vung Tau and we then headed back - well we left them and headed for Singapore. It was uneventful and it was the first trip that it had done so…

I don’t know what the reaction was but I think the reaction was more in the bridge when the, when they realised what was happening. And we quickly changed position. But I don’t think we really thought too much of it at the time.

Nobody got injured or anything so it wasn’t a problem. I think you tend to get used to a lot of things when you’re at sea and there’s things happening around you all the time.

Oh we still had our discipline but I think particularly when you’ve been at sea for a few weeks, people, it was more or less a relaxed

sort of discipline. Because we relaxed our dress. When we were in the tropics we wore shorts and sandals without shirts, if you wanted to. And so your dress was relaxed and I guess a lot of the other - the day to day things - it wasn’t as military as you might expect, say back in Australia.

Oh yeah we used to - if there was no requirement for flying, they would have a day off. Like you know everyone would, you could go and play sport. They had … games up on the flight deck.

Yeah the relaxation. They’d put down the aircraft lifts down to the hanger level and they could have - we could games of volleyball in there. And they used to have sort of races and things on the flight deck and a couple of times we stopped the ship in the middle of the ocean and we had

a swim. If you wanted to go for a swim you just jumped over the side. And they had marksman out - like a couple of boats and on the flight deck was rifles in case there was any sharks around. Yeah that was, you know, it just gave a break from the continual routine and work.

Yeah. Out in the middle of the ocean.

It was because it was a long way to the bottom and I guess, I don’t know about other people, but I always think about how deep the water is. Pretty deep out there.

No. ‘Cause bullets once they hit the water they lose their effectiveness and their accuracy. But it made us feel good. And it made the navy feel good.

So yeah. But there wasn’t a lot of time for recreation. It was, yeah we were always fairly busy and we didn’t have a lot of time to sit around and think about what we didn’t like or what we weren’t happy with.

Oh yeah I quite liked it. I guess it was

looking forward to the next port was, I think that kept you fairly focussed.

Yeah. Yeah.

’65.

Well when we got back to Sydney we disembarked the aircraft and

I was then posted to a workshop where I used to do maintenance on guns and things. And in ’66 I was posted to the Royal Australian Naval College at Jervis Bay, New South Wales, HMAS Creswell. Because at the time the navy was in the process of buying new aircraft and they were phasing out the old ones

so, just to keep us useful they posted us to various places. I spent 9 months and I really enjoyed it there. It was, I spent 3 months working in the boat shed which was doing maintenance on boats and, driving boats and that, and I really enjoyed that. It was very interesting.

I learnt to drive a boat which I hadn’t - a motorised boat - ‘cause the navy has all these funny ways of driving them. You know you had signals and commands and everything. And I learnt to drive boats and I learnt a bit about the maintenance of boats. The hulls, cleaning the hulls and that, and repairs and so on. And then I spent 3 months

in the cafeteria and my job was just to clean it up after breakfast and prepare it for lunch and clean up after lunch and prepare it for dinner. I quite enjoyed that because I had a bit of time to myself in between meals. And where we were it was a really nice place, it was old but it was very nice and picturesque and there wasn’t a lot of people there

so it was fairly easy going. And then I spent 3 months as quartermaster and I was on the gate. And we had a boom gate there and I had a little box sort of thing, not much bigger than a telephone box, and we used to spend, do 4 hours at a time up there and sometimes it’d be in the middle of the night and you were the only one around for about a kilometre. That was a bit slow and boring but

yeah you got to meet a lot of people who came to the gate and wanted to have a bit of a chat with you and that.

Cordially. Depending who it was. If it was officers I had to salute them and you used to get a lot of civilians come down there because once it used to be a hotel in there and people, I remember some people coming there one day and they got

married there back in 19, I don’t know 1930 something. And they’d always wanted to come back - well they didn’t get married there they had their honeymoon there and they’d always wanted to come back to the place where they had their honeymoon and so, they asked me if it would be alright for them to go in and have a look. And it was a navy base but we weren’t supposed to let anyone in but, I think you know I thought they were very genuine

and they were an elderly couple and so I let them in. And they spent about half an hour looking around and then they came back and they were really, they were tickled pink over that, that they could go back to there. So yeah little things like that make you feel good. But, the navy wouldn’t been happy.

No. No. Only us. Yeah it was

I quite enjoyed the 9 months down there, it was something different. And I always wanted to move around and see other things, I never really wanted to be stuck in the one place.

Until December

and then I was, went on leave and I was posted back to Albatross. And we were still in the same sort of boat where there were too many people because we didn’t have the aircraft. So I was then put in the motor transport compound and I spent, I don’t know, 6, 8 months in there just repairing tyres and doing services on vehicles and that. Which was

interesting because I liked messing around with cars anyway so, it was good. And in I think about August of ’66, sorry ’67 we’re into, I was volunteered to be in the Royal Guard for the president of Italy.

And I’d done many guards by this time in me career and I didn’t really like them anyway. But the President of Italy was arriving I think in September, October. So they formed a guard and we had to train daily for this guard. And, we’d been training probably for 3 weeks and myself and

another armourer who were in the guard, we were returning our rifles at lunchtime to go up and have lunch and, a guy came over and he said, “Do you want to volunteer to go to Vietnam?” And so we said, “Yeah sure.” And I remember we discussed it on our way to lunch that it’d be a great way to get out of the guard, as neither of us wanted to be in it. And we came back from lunch and this guy came back and he said,

“You two have been selected to go to Vietnam.” So we were pretty happy about that. So we went in and saw the Petty Officer who was training the guard and I said to him, “We’re not in your guard any more,” and he said, “Why’s that?” And I said, “We’re going to Vietnam.” And he said, “Nobody gets out of my guard.” And so I thought to myself, perhaps he is that powerful that he can stop us.

And he said, “Go and get your rifles and fall in,” which we did and we did guard training for about half an hour and then he walked along the guard and he told me to fall out and John my mate fell out. And he said, “Right, you two,” he said, “I never want to see yous again in me life.” And so we were right and then we were going to Vietnam. By this time

they’d formed what they called a helicopter flight for Vietnam in the navy and it comprised pilots and ground crew, and they had 44 people in it. But they needed two more armourers so we were the ones that were selected. So we joined this flight and they still had a few weeks of training to go but we’d missed out on most of the training. And then we were issued with jungle greens

and boots and, an SLR [self loading rifle] rifle. And that weekend we went up to Gospers Mountain, which is in New South Wales. Flew up there in a Caribou with everyone else and we were going to do this week in the bush up there. And yeah I felt pretty, I was a little bit confused as to why we were

doing this because I’m a sailor and not a soldier. And anyway we went up there and we had to dig ourselves a weapons pit which was a little trench and we had to erect a little shelter to sleep in. And we had some navy helicopters up there and we were to do some realistic training for Vietnam. And we had in charge of us a warrant officer, army

warrant officer who was ex-training team Vietnam. And anyway he, he showed us all the things that soldiers do, dig latrines and things like that. And that particular night we had to do sentries out on the airfield with the helicopters and I was out there with the cook ‘cause we had a cook on our flight. And we were just standing there talking, having a smoke

and he said, “Ssh, you hear that?” I said, “What?” He said, “Out there.” I couldn’t hear anything and he had a dolphin torch and he turned it on and here were all these guys on the airfield and they were the enemy, they were soldiers and they were armed with 303’s and they were the Vietcong. He said, “We’d better raise the alarm,” and he took off. And before I could move I got grabbed by two guys. They were sitting in one of the helicopters

watching us all this time. And anyway they grabbed me and took me back over the airfield into the bush and in the meantime the attack took place and then, that was it, they withdrew. And these guys took me right up into the bush into their land rover and there was a captain, an army captain and he, so he radioed back to where, to our warrant officer and said, “I’ve got one of your guys here, what do you want me to do with him?” He said, “Make him

walk.” So they just turned me loose in the middle of the night and I had to find my way back. It was a fair way, I don’t know, probably about a mile and a half. And when I got back the warrant officer wasn’t impressed and he said, I want to talk to you in the morning so next day he said, “Right we’re going out on patrol and we’re going to set up an ambush,” and the normal things that army boys do and he turned to me and he said, “You can carry

the M60 machine gun.” So I had to carry it all day long and that was to make me think about what I’d done. But yeah that was a bit of the training. And then we were sent home for a week’s leave before we went to Vietnam. And I was 20 at the time so me Dad put on a party and we had my 21st birthday plus a

farewell for me. And we then met in Sydney and we flew out from Mascot in a Qantas jet to, Manila, stayed there overnight. And then to Saigon. It felt really good flying in these nice aircraft. But when we arrived at Saigon I remember we were put in a holding pattern above the airfield

and we looked out the window and all we could see was these military aircraft. It was like heaps of them, they were everywhere. And then we landed and we were welcomed to Vietnam by some Americans. And we were still in our civilian clothes because we didn’t have a proper dress uniform to wear up there. And then we, we went out and got into a Chinook helicopter

and they flew us to Vung Tau where we, where we joined the 135th Assault Helicopter Company in the US army. And we were then integrated into that company, for as it turned out the next 4 years. It was very interesting because we’d never worked on these helicopters and I was an armourer. There was 4 of us.

And of course we all thought we were going to be working on guns and things. And the helicopter company comprised of 20, I think it was 22 helicopters and we had 6 gunships and the rest of them were what were called slicks, which were a bigger version of the Huey [Iroquois helicopter]. They used to carry troops. And our gun ships had

mini guns which were a battling type gun and rockets and carried M60 machine guns on the doors. And a crew of 2 pilots and 2 gunners in the back. And then they told us that we would be gunners and I said, “But I’m an armourer.” And they said, “Yeah and you’re also a gunner.” So it was my introduction to being

a gunner. And we did some training and we went flying and we used to sit in the back - I sat on the right hand side in the back of the helicopter with an M60 machine gun and, the job of the gunner was to actually protect the underneath and behind the helicopter, mainly when you’re - if you’re doing attacks on ground

defences and we could - when we turned away from it we could actually fire down underneath the helicopter and behind it to suppress any fire from the ground. And we also fire as we were doing the attack, we would fire into whatever we thought there might have been enemy or fire coming from. And we then

started doing operations in Vietnam and basically what we would do is we’d go out and we’d have 10 slick helicopters and a maintenance helicopter which carried some guys in case any repairs had to be done. And it would usually be 2 or 4 gunships depending on what the day’s requirement was. And we would we covered a big

area from the coast right across the Cambodian border down into Mekong Delta and up north to the central highlands. And we would go to wherever we were needed and pick up troops and take them to different areas, whether they be taken into an area to do, search and destroy missions or whether they were in there to attack

enemy positions or to pick them up and bring them out. And in the gun ships we were there to support the slicks, in case they were attacked and also any ground troops, we would provide covering fire for them. And it wasn’t all that - sometimes we would just as the gun ships

would just be required to escort boats up rivers or sometimes we worked down at Nui Dat with No. 9 squadron air force to do SAS [Special Air Service] insertions and pick ups. And we would also do stand by in different locations at night where they, they didn’t have the

support from gun ships and we’d go there and stay the night in case of any attack on that installation. There’s a - I guess to go back to where we went - initially after joining the 135th at Vung Tau I was sent - we got there in September so in

November I was sent with a group of others to a place called Black Horse, which was further up country up north and it was an American base. And our company was moving up there so we had to go up as the, to prepare the company area for the company when it got up there. We had to put up tents and buildings and that, and prepare the maintenance area for the helicopters.

They arrived just after Christmas and I think it was January and we started operations from then. I remember Christmas up there because, there was, I think there was about 25 of us in the advanced party and we, the Sydney came into Vung Tau and they sent a half a dozen cans

of large, you know large cans of beer to each of us. And you know we hadn’t had any Australian beer since we left Australia so that was really great. And my birthday being Christmas eve was, I remember we lit a fire and there was 4 or 5 of us sitting around a fire and we were drinking beer and one of the guys was from Puerto Rico and he was in the American Army.

He had his guitar and we sat there and sang songs and drank beer and yeah. It was quite nice.

Oh I hate to say it but we probably sang some Christmas carols. It’s not like blokes to do that sort of thing but I think we sang

some other ones you know that he - like more up to date sort of songs but I can’t remember actually.

Oh initially it was - we didn’t know what to expect. And but they were very

welcoming to us. They, I guess for them it was a novelty to be with Australians although we’d been with Americans before. They bought us beer and they really treated us well until I think after a while we all got to know each other and that sort of subsided. They - because they were army and we were navy

naturally there was a difference there in rank structure and, the way we did things. But their discipline was a lot more lax than ours and I think that revolved around the fact that a lot of them were drafted into the army. And they didn’t really want to be there and they let everybody know that and rather than just

getting on with the job and you know do it and then go home, they - I think a lot of them made life difficulty for themselves.

With their attitude, you know just their attitude towards the army and people. So we, I mean we were there, I was there because I wanted to be there I suppose. But we had a more professional attitude than they did

in relation to it all. But after a while I think everybody sort of got used to everybody else. Like army and navy. I do remember one guy in - right one of us wanted to grow a beard because sailors were allowed to have beards. So he went and saw our CO [commanding officer] and our CO was 2IC [2nd in charge] of the company. ‘Cause in the company

there was 300, about 360 altogether. And he went and saw our CO and he said, “Could I grow a beard sir?” Because in the navy you had to have permission from your commanding officer to grow a beard. And he said, “No you can’t grow a beard because you’re in the army,” meaning the US army. And he said, “Well can I grow a moustache?” And he said, “No you’re in the navy.” So I guess that sort of, that was that.

But I think we all after a while you know we sort of, like in most things when people get together they sort of feel each other out and yeah we all got used to each other and we had different ways of relaxing as opposed to Americans. They might sit there and play cards till all hours of the night and, but we might sit there and drink beer till all hours of the night. And they’d

lose three hundred dollars and we didn’t lose anything.

Oh, well they, they had a big problem with the Negroes. I mean black Americans and white Americans don’t mix, in a lot of cases. And there it was probably worse.

Whereas we didn’t really have a problem there. They were all people to us. We were there to do a job and let’s do it. There was a bit of a divide between them and then there was a thing that drugs came up. I mean I didn’t know what marijuana was. I didn’t know what a lot of other drugs were, never heard of them. But we found people there were smoking

marijuana and maybe other things, I don’t know. And for us that was you know, it was a bit hard to sort of come to terms with. They - to them it was I suppose that era was the, when all that sort of thing was okay back in the States. Smoke pot and make love or whatever. But we, yeah we

didn’t like it. ‘Cause I remember one night I was driving the sergeant of the guard - ‘cause we had to, we had to main an area of the perimeter at night and he was going around checking the bunkers. And he went in one of them and he come out and he said, he just shook his head and said, “Let’s get out of here,” ‘cause it was full of these black Americans and they were all high on dope.

It wasn’t - yeah it was difficult for us.

Black Horse was pretty big. I don’t know how big. I suppose you’d have to say it was probably 3, 3 or 400 hundred acres. And our company was 300,

I think 360 men. And also there was the 11th armoured cavalry and they were, they had tanks and APC’s [armoured personnel carriers] and helicopters and there was artillery there. It was quite a big base, I don’t know how many were there. Perhaps 3, 4 thousand all up. And it was all red, everything was red. The dirt was red and of course

the area was originally rubber plantations and they’d just about bulldozed all the rubber trees down and so it was just red dirt. And when a breeze blew the red dust blew and everything was covered in red. All our tents were red and we got this dust in our clothes. And everything, you know it was - it was all red and green I suppose to put it in the right context.

And they were about the only 2 colours there. We had a PX [postal exchange: canteen] there, an American PX and you could go down there and buy beer and watches and cameras and electrical goods. And even the Americans could go down there and they could order their car for when they got back to the States. They could pick out the car they wanted and when they arrived back it’d be ready and waiting for them. It was

was a real eye opener to us to see all this. But we lived in - we had a tent which we lived in and it was a wooden - the tent was put over a wooden frame and we had just a wooden floor and we had bunks in there. And there was about I think 10, 10 or 12 in

each tent. We had a fridge so we could keep some beer. And yeah it was fairly basic surrounded by sand bags and, we had bunkers around the area where, if you had a mortar attack or rocket attack you could get in the bunkers and protect yourself. We wore jungle greens and we adapted to wearing

American army helmets and flack jackets. And the food was, it wasn’t real good but we, we got by alright on it. The bread was usually 3 or 4 days old when we got it and, everything had preservatives in it. Yeah it was not the sort of

food we were used to.

No. No I don’t think so. I’d have to say it was worse. And when we were operating, when we were away for like the day we’d take ration packs with us to eat. And they were okay. You got little packets of cigarettes in them, which were probably the best part of the whole ration pack. And

we, towards the end of our stay there we built a bar and - so we could go and have a few beers in there at night. But the rest of the time we just sort of, just a little group of us get together and have a few beers after, at night after we’d been out flying. We got on pretty well. We found that you could do a

a lot of trading with Americans. And so we, we did quite well. We got a really nice fridge because we - one of the guys bought back a nine mill machine gun that had been taken off a dead prisoner - a dead Vietcong and he he swapped that for a fridge with these

Americans. We had a really great fridge. It was a big 2 door job. And they did really like Australians. I think we probably were more relaxed and easy going and that than they are. And we found it was fairly easy to get things if we really wanted them. I have to say Americans are very generous people.

And I think we probably took advantage of their generosity a few times but, you needed to do that to get the things that you wanted.

Oh yeah we’d had a bit to do with them in places like Subic Bay and Manila. And a few in Hong Kong. And from time to time we did get them

come to Albatross for you know visits and that. And I guess because we watched a lot of American movies we were pretty used to what Americans do and say and that. But it was, I guess we were a novelty more than anything initially

but it - I guess it’s … yeah even though seeing lots of movies and things I think the average American is, probably fairly nice people. We did have some guys that we, in our

platoon who were really nice blokes. There was like everywhere I suppose, people who you don’t like and that but, yeah they were nice blokes.

As Soldiers? Well, the ones we had in our company were not foot soldiers, they were aviation

so they, they only really did their basic training and then they were put in aviation. So they weren’t, you couldn’t really compare them as a foot soldier. But we did operate with a lot of American troops and they’re, I think their discipline and their training probably lacked a lot.

They got themselves into a bit of trouble from time to time because they took everything so, in a relaxed fashion. Whereas compared to the Australian soldiers who were a lot more professional and approached their job in a totally different way. And I think that our discipline was far superior to what the Americans were.

Oh yeah I think there, there has been a lot of good said about the way we went about our job because the motto of the 135th was get the bloody job done and that was the motto that came from the Australians. And I guess we were there to do a job

and that’s the way we looked at it rather than they were there because they were told to be there, and I guess they didn’t want to be there. But not to say they weren’t good at what they did because, they did have some - there were some very good pilots and maintenance people there.

Oh yeah I think

they probably didn’t understand it to begin with but, yeah I think they realised what it was all about and it was a good motto.

Oh I think we all tried to set an example for them. I think we had some pride in our job where I think they

lacked pride ‘cause I guess it comes back to why they were there in the first place. And I guess, I didn’t really realise that there was so much going on back home in opposition to the war but in America they knew a lot more about it than we do. There was much more happening there. Maybe that had

some bearing on the way they approached what they were doing. Yeah, I think they, in general, they didn’t lack courage and, when they had to do the job they did it. But I think there was a lot of reluctance at times to do what they were there for.

Well as I say we were flying and like 4 crew in a gun ship so I guess the way - I mean it would have been quite easy when things are really getting hot around and you’re receiving a lot of fire, it’s very easy to sort of, in a helicopter perhaps to, to pull out a bit earlier than you should do or to

maybe sort of keep a distance from what’s happening but that never happened. I guess I - there was a couple of times when we had an American flying it and flying us and I thought we were going to die. But the fact that they were good at what they did, got us through that. And when you

I guess you’re - between you and the ground is probably a bullet in the engine. It takes a lot of courage to go in knowing that you might not come out. So yeah I think they, but not to say we didn’t do those things too.

Oh I guess I remember early in the piece we were operating down in Mekong Delta and the slicks had picked up some American troops and they were going to an area to do a search and destroy, which was a sweep through this area and it was rice fields

and palm trees and that sort of thing, huts and so on. Anyway we were there - we got there before the slicks and we just flew around in the landing zone. And the slicks arrived and they dropped off the first lots of troops. And they carried 8 in each slick so there was 80 of them brought in at a time. And we just stayed there on station flying above them

and all of a sudden you could see like little spurts in the - they were wading through rice fields with water in it. And you could see the spurts in front of them. And I, often thought to myself they’re very casual about all this because they were right out in the open and they were just spread across in a big line, which is not the best way to do this sort of thing. And then a couple of them went down and they all took cover and

what I thought was, probably maybe a couple of enemy in this, these palm trees, in this grove of palms. As they day wore on it turned out to be a lot you know. And we got a couple of them early in the piece that were out in the open and, then things got hotter and they brought in more troops and we expended all our ammunition there

and we were running low of fuel. So we went back and refuelled and rearmed. And we came back and we knew we’d taken some hits because you could hear them. And because we were so low we could hear them, the crack of their weapons as they fired. And we were doing a, a run on these palms and we come down at an angle and we were firing into it

and then just as we reached the bottom of our dive, and the pilot was just about to pull out a round came up from underneath and it hit the controls in between his feet and it actually hit, we nearly nose dived into the ground because he lost momentary control of the helicopter and because we were sort of going fairly fast

and we in a dive the - fortunately he was able to regain control but I mean we were only probably a half a second from death and, you know that was pretty terrifying. But at the same day I think we had something in the order of 8 or 10 helicopters were shot down and they were spread around rice fields everywhere. But fortunately no-one got killed in our

company.

They were slicks. They used to get a lot of fire, particularly and you know at times like that they’d receive a lot of fire from the enemy when they were coming in to land, when they were on the ground either disembarking troops or taking them on. And when they were taking off. So for them it was, you know they could get in some really

bad situations on the ground whereas we were up higher and we - we didn’t get as much ground fire as them. But we went back - we stayed there for a while - we did a few more runs and then we had - one of the slicks had gone down and we flew around above them until some other gun ships arrived

to give them covering fire if they needed it. And we went back and we shut down and we had a look at all the holes. And the hole that came up, the one that when I thought we were going to die was - it came up - up between the pilot’s feet and it went right through a control rod which was what - when he lost control it was when that round went through that control rod. And, we had some in our rotor

blades and one through the tail boom of the helicopter. And so we, they decided that we shouldn’t be flying much more that day so we went back to base. And when we got back there the maintenance people said, “Oh we can fix all that up and you can go back if you need to.” And I didn’t want to go back that day, I’d had enough.

Not that day no.

But yeah that was one of the times. Another time we, we dropped some, we dropped some troops off for a sweep through this area and, they took fire from this treed area along the river. Anyway we - there was a few of them got - got a few killed and injured

there were a few medivacs [evacuation of injured] from there and medivacs were going in under fire and it was all pretty bad down there for them guys and we were … we were doing - we doing covering fire and we pulled out of a run and we heard this noise and it was a noise we hadn’t heard before. So we were all 4 of us were

sort of looking around. What’s the noise we can hear? And so we were listening to the engine thinking maybe we’d been hit in the engine and something’s gone. And then I looked to the right of me and the next - on either side you had a rocket pod and there were 7 rockets in each one and we’d fired a couple of them and, the one on my side was on fire - the whole thing was just burning you know

really, it was quite - big flames leaping out of it. And so I told the pilot we had - that it was on fire and we had a - a mechanical jettison handle in between the two pilots and one of them grabbed it and pulled it, and that should have jettisoned the rocket pods. And the one on the other side fell off and the one on my side released but it was held with an electrical plug, a quick release electrical

plug that didn’t release. And so it was hanging there and the rockets were sort of pointing straight up at me and, in my mind I knew if one of them went we’d all be dead. So I sat there and kicked it. And it fell off eventually but, you know perhaps I had a really good kick

that day I don’t know. Or perhaps it just fell off when it was ready. But yeah that was pretty terrifying.

Well that was the only option we had.

Oh everyone was pretty relieved, yeah.

Yeah I just got a well done I suppose. It was something we had to do. It was either that or die I suppose. I guess in - whilst I was there in January - 31st January I think it was in 1968, we had the Tet Offensive, which was

supposedly the turning point of the war. And I do remember the day fairly vividly because we left our base about 5 o’clock in the morning and we were going out to a place called Tay Ninh, which was near the Cambodian border. And there was 10 slicks and 4 gun ships and we were flying over Saigon and there was traces coming up from the city. And we sort of wondered

who would be shooting at us when we were flying over Saigon because Saigon was a secure area, well fairly secure. And then we got out to Tay Ninh and we couldn’t land there because they were under attack. And that was, that area there was where - it was big supply route for the North Vietnamese, they used to bring supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in through what they called the Parrot’s Beak. And that was a close

that was an area reasonably close to Saigon and so they’d bring in troops and supplies in through there. And anyway they were under attack and… So we diverted to another place and we landed and refuelled and then the rest of the day we just spent - we were up there just supporting everyone that we could sort of thing. ‘Cause everybody was under attack. The whole country was

under attack. And, yeah we got - I don’t know we must have been flying at numerous times during the day and we - at one stage we landed and refuelled and rearmed and, we were sitting on the runway with all the rotor blades turning waiting to take off. And the gun, mini gun on the other side wasn’t working properly so I went around to have a look at it and, next thing the crew chief grabbed me

and just threw me in and we took off and, what’s happening? And he said, there’s mortars coming up the runway at us. And they were walking mortars up the runway towards all of us sitting there. And that night we ended up at a place called Long Binh which is a really big stores depot and ammunition depot. And they were under attack and so we

we spent a few hours there supporting them. And we, I think we got back about 11 o’clock that night. And so I spent 13 days, 13 hours that day actually in the air flying. And you know, it was just - all day long was just - everyone was just under attack so it was a pretty memorable sort of day.

And then we had to go back the next day and the next few days. You know it was just all day long, was happening.

Oh it does - it’s mentally draining and I suppose along with that comes physical because after a few days you know when you’re - when you’re going, I suppose 12, 14 hours a day

or more - yeah it wears you down a bit. Yeah. I suppose there’s the stress side of it.

Go and have a few beers.

Yeah we were fairly lucky because one of the guys who was with us, his job - he was Australian and his job was to - to fill up the showers, you know the water tank above the showers and he’d fill that up each day. And bring the water for drinking and he also looked after the fire truck. And one day he went up the PX

there was a guy throwing all these loose cans of beers into a storage container and he said, “What are you going to do with them?” And he said, “I’m going to throw them out because we can’t sell unpackaged beer.” And so he said, “Well can I have some?” And he said, “You can as many as you want. 5 cents a can.” So he filled the back of this three quarter tonne truck up with beer and then he went and - ‘cause there was an ice works there and, he went and conned some ice and that night we came back and

he said, “Do you guys want a beer?” And we said, “Love one.” And he said, “Up the other end of the tent,” and he had the truck backed up on - up to the tent and it was just full of beer. And yeah that lasted us for quite a while. But yeah that was probably the way that - you know when you come back at night. Just to

sort of, relax a bit. ‘Cause I suppose we were lucky in as much as we could come back to a, to a bed each night. A lot of the other guys up there couldn’t. And yeah we did drink a lot. When we could we did.

Oh. Well… the beer we had was American so it was like mid strength sort of beer. But it was more the time we - might sit up till 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning drinking and have a couple hours sleep and then go flying. Maybe it was up a little bit. I think after a while

you needed to do it to - probably to face the next day. And I - I mean we did a lot of things that your average sailor was not trained to do. I mean we used to sit out in the perimeter at night, in a bunker and, from 4 o’clock in the afternoon till 7 o’clock

the next morning and - I remember the first night I went out there, there’d be 2 in each bunker. And me and this other guy went out - Sludgie we called him. And we had a 50 calibre machine gun and an M60 machine gun. And claymore mines and I knew nothing about claymore mines or 50 calibre machine guns but we were expected to use them in case of attack. Which sort

of concerned me a little bit. Because I wasn’t trained for it. But, I guess like most things you adapt to the situation.

Oh we, we - we didn’t get attacked much there. There was a couple of occasions of mortars

and rockets coming in. I do remember one night I had been over and had a shower and I come back and it was somewhere near midnight and I was just about to climb into me bed and next thing I heard this almighty boom. And then more explosions and - across from our company area about 150 metres away was a

was an ammunition area, a storage area. And the whole lot was going up. And it went up for the next 4 hours. You know there was live ammunition being blown around the place. And we didn’t realise till the next morning how bad it was. It was pretty, pretty scary. So we ended up sitting, sitting behind

sand bags and drinking beer till it all stopped.

Oh I think a couple of blokes got some - just some small minor injuries but yeah we were pretty lucky. The next morning we got up and there was unexploded ammunition laying all around the place. Bit like the old cracker night we used to have in, over here. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah it was. And I’ve .. can I?

I wrote some things down so that I wouldn’t forget. Oh there’s a few other things. One day I was

me and another guy were preparing rockets. We had to screw the heads on these rockets and we’d unbox them…

Okay.

We were preparing these rockets ‘cause we had a ready use point for our own use and any other helicopters that needed to rearm. And we got all these packaging and we put it in the back of the truck and took it out

to the rubbish tip which was outside the perimeter, which was just a big hole. And they had a sentry on it because and only one truck was allowed out at a time because the week before there was a grenade was in some packaging and it went off and the sentry got injured. So they made it one truck and checked the stuff as you took it out. And I backed the truck up to the hole and

we just, we pushed all this packaging out the back and it dropped about 10 foot into the hole and it was just smouldering. And next thing the - it stirred the fire and the whole lot just went up and all these flames were leaping up into the back of the truck and everything. And I jumped in the truck to start it and I flooded the - the carby and I’m sitting in there and all these flames are leaping in the back of the truck. And I was expecting the

whole lot to go up any second. But there was another truck waiting to come out so they came tearing out and they had a chain and they just wrapped it around the bumpers and pulled me away. And yeah all the back of the truck was all blistered and burnt and yeah. Another exciting day. We used to do what was called stand by at this place called Long Binh and

a couple of gunships’d go over there - we did a rotational basis with some other helicopter companies and, they had a little small helicopter pad and a demountable sort of building there and we would go over there and stay the night, and if they got attacked then we could help and - assist them. And

first time we went over there I remember we were looking for this place and, and all of a sudden out of nowhere - because it was late in the afternoon and sort of dusk and out of nowhere were these power lines right in front of us and we barely missed them. And the second time we went over there, I was the only one who had been there before and so… And I said, there’s some power lines around here somewhere, you’ve got to watch them. When were coming in on our approach.

But we were looking for this (UNCLEAR) pad again and at the last minute the power lines were there again. Just like they come out of nowhere and we nearly hit them again. It was pretty, it was scary when you see things like that right in front of you.

Yeah. Everything we did we

did ourselves. Yeah it was built out of stuff that people scavenged up from different places and that. ‘Cause the officers had a bar and we didn’t, so we built one and - yeah that was, that was towards the end of my time up there. But it was good to be able to go into a bar instead of just sitting in your tent you know. I suppose

we got to know the others a bit more by doing that ‘cause we used to sit in our little group and drink and - particularly when we’d had people killed you know it was pretty - well I think we all felt pretty bad and that. But when you go to a bar like that - a bit a music and that cheers everyone up. But yeah it was good.

Oh we were mainly - we were in the - what we called the gun platoon. We were the 3rd platoon, which was the gun ships and it was - 4, 5 Australians and I think there was, we had about 4 Americans there in our tent and like we were all pretty close. There was me and John

Pert. And Terry Brooks. And Tom Burton, and Jim Hill. Jeff Macintyre. We were all Australians and then there was, a couple of the Yanks we had in there, they were pretty nice blokes. One of them his name was Willie. Or Finell was his last name and we Australians tend to call people by

you know it might be someone who’s - some note like Willie Finell, I don’t know whether you know him. He was an entertainer way back before my time even but the name was there and so we called him Willie. You know and, well he was a nice bloke. He was from Fort Lauderdale. And he did his 12 months up there and his girlfriend was pregnant so, he’d gone home during his 12

months for R&R, and of course she got pregnant. And so he said, “I’m going to go home and marry her and I’m going to sign up for another year up here.” And - because he needed the money, ‘cause they got fairly good pay up in Vietnam. So he went home and he married her and, he came back and he brought us all a - a rebel

flag. I’ve still got it somewhere. And yeah he got killed, oh a couple of months later. He never got to see his, his kid.

Did I see any?

Oh yeah we…

I’m not sure how many got killed all up but we had - 3, 4 - 4, 5 Australians killed. And there were numerous ones that were injured, various ways. Americans I don’t know. Couldn’t tell you. I would have to

research that one. There’s quite a few. But the sad thing was that because we had crews of 4 in each helicopter, that generally people got killed in four’s, because they get shot down, crash and… It was - now and then you would get one that was killed but generally it was 4 people at a time.

I don’t know who decided actually. Can’t remember.

I had rest in country - I went down to Vung Tau. With our platoon we had a platoon sergeant who was in charge of us and our platoon sergeant was an Australian.

He was a petty officer, P.T. Jones. Nice bloke too. And, he used to just tell us to go to Vung Tau. We’d just get a lift down in a helicopter or one of the courier planes that came through there and stay with the air force down at Vung Tau, couple of days. And I’d drink a bit and whatever

else.

Oh it was just a busy, a pretty big town. With lots of people who were trying to get your money off you, in various ways. If they weren’t picking your pocket they were trying to sell you something. Yeah it - I didn’t really like - I didn’t care much - I used to go down there and I would stay with the air force, Australian

Air Force down there. And they had a movie theatre - an open air picture theatre. And they had a little canteen there and Australian beer so, that’s about all I needed. Drink with different people for a few days. But I never went on R&R because

I don’t know I never really wanted - didn’t really bother me to go on R and R [rest and recreation]. But, yeah P.T. looked after us. You didn’t need to have form or sort of - permission to go and do it, he’d just say, “Go. Have a couple of days away.” So we went.

Yeah a couple at a time and, yeah just have, relax.

Oh yeah. Got you away from all the things that were going on up there. I suppose, we never - I mean we weren’t in action every day but, we weren’t being fired at every day

but always you were thinking about it and it gets a bit stressful after a while. And apart from the fact that someone might shoot you down, you got to live with the fact that your helicopter might have a malfunction and you could end up down there too. That was always on your mind.

Oh yeah. I don’t think anything ever happened there, not that I know of anyway. But they had a nightly curfew there - I think, I don’t know whether it was 11 or 12 o’clock at night or something. And you had to be off the streets by then. But as I said I didn’t, I didn’t really go into town much I just stayed at the air force place

and drank their beer.

Oh we used to, on days when we

weren’t, when the whole company wasn’t operating we, we sometimes went to Nui Dat and we were on standby there for the Australian Army and when the SAS were doing, were being inserted or picked up we used to fly escort for the, for the helicopter which was usually from No. 9 Squadron Australian Air Force.

We used to fly back from the helicopter when they were going in and they just stop - hover the helicopter and they’d all just drop down on ropes and then they’d leave, and then we’d come along so they… And when they were picking them up we’d, we’d be there in case we were needed. Several times they needed us to suppress areas

that - where they suspected they were being followed. Because they don’t normally try to get involved in anything so I guess they left it to us to do. That’s, that’s basically all we did with them. But, we used to work quite a lot with the Australian

Army. We did a few troop lifts with them around the area of operations. And during the Battle of Coral which was in 1968, we provided a couple of gun ships to go up, down to Coral Fire Support Base to give them support, during the night.

And I guess there was a couple of Australians in there I suppose so the guys down below thought they were all Americans but, just a - something that I’ve found in talking to people that were there.

Oh I guess a fair way into it I should think.

Yeah I …

I guess I did a couple of trips to Long Binh in convoy and I had to drive a truck with ammunition. And, on one occasion we did receive a little bit of fire from somewhere. And being in a truck with ammunition you know I was pretty scared, as to what might happen. But

fortunately we got through that all right. I remember we were out near the Cambodian border one day and it was, it was late in the day and there was an American platoon I think, had to be picked up by a Chinook. So we went out there and

because they were a relatively small group we flew around as, in case anything happened to them while they were waiting to be picked up and I remember the clouds came in real low and, all around us was destroyed tanks and trucks. It became a very eerie sort of

a day and it started to get late in the afternoon and we were running low on fuel. And, because we had to fly so low below the cloud we, we were I guess, a very good target for anyone that was below us. And a burst of machine gun fire - from somewhere sort of, it really put me on

me toes … but where it came from I don’t know. But I was, I think I was really worried about something bad happening. But everything turned out alright in the end so.

I think they’re very professional. I always compared

the Americans or the, South Vietnamese to Australian ones and, they didn’t seem to be, didn’t seem to be as disciplined or professional in the way they went about their job. And particularly I remember the first time I saw the ARVNs [Army of the Republic of Vietnam], which are the South Vietnamese troops. And they’re

all little guys and, and they were all outfitted with American you know equipment and their rifles were nearly as big as they were ‘cause they were old Second World War rifles. And one guy had a Browning Automatic rifle which was pretty - compared it was nearly as long as he was. And I often wondered how these poor guys went when they were dropped off in rice fields and that with water in them. I thought they’d

probably sink. And that actually did happen to some of them, with all the weight they carried. But they never, they never really - when they disembarked from the helicopters they, they never really went straight to ground and take up a perimeter defence - they sort of wandered off as though it was a Sunday picnic. You could really

see the difference between them.

Well I was never in the jungle so, which was pretty lucky for me. But yeah they used to - where the Australians never wore rank insignias, they never had anything of any colour or that might be

on them but see the Americans - they’d have cigarette packets stuck in their helmets and, they all had - they had their rank insignias on them. And they never carried their rifles at the ready when they, when they disembarked. They just sort of, wandered along with it hanging down by their side. Yeah so, I guess having seen what happens to them from the air when they

get into a bit of a fire fight and they all just hug the ground and bring in a lot of fire support, meaning us or artillery or…

Oh the Australians were, they - if they were going into an area a lot of the times they walked or they went by truck. Helicopters weren’t a good way of doing it

particularly it there was enemy - known enemy in the area because they would hear them coming and they’d know where they were. So the Australians did a lot of footwork to, to get somewhere but they did it in such a way that the enemy weren’t aware of their whereabouts. Whereas the Americans just all clattered in in lots of helicopters and things. And yeah made

a lot of noise and, a lot of movement. And everybody knew they were coming. And I guess it showed in the way that, as soon as anything happened they just called for support, they - whether it was one or a hundred of the enemy it was just, destroy everything in the vicinity so we must’ve got them all or got one or whatever. Mm.

Oh it gave me a good perspective of what the results of the war were I think. Actually what was going on. We could see a lot of the things that were happening on the ground but, but we couldn’t

I don’t think we could really appreciate what was happening. You could just see - I guess it’s like watching an ant’s nest. There’s lot of little people running around everywhere, a lot of explosions and things like that. So, yeah I, I think more to the point was I was able to see what had happened

after a lot of these events and, and also too what we’d done to the people. ‘Cause I think that we did a lot of things to them that were not necessary and we caused them a lot of suffering and, pain and…

Oh we used to - I remember one morning and I didn’t know why we ever did this thing but it was the first time we did it. We were down the Mekong Delta and it was fairly early in the morning. And we refuelled and we went out to, it was a village. And all the people had been cleared out of the village and then we were told just to shoot anything that we saw, anything that moved. And there was ducks and pigs and water buffalo and that, and I and I

wondered why we were doing that. There didn’t seem to be any, any need for it and we were destroying the people’s homes and their livelihood and, everything that they had for no real reason. And I think, we always did try and

identify an enemy but I guess there’s time when you can’t identify them. But I think, we randomly fired at - what we thought were enemy without really knowing that they were so, maybe we killed a lot of people that were really just innocent.

Yeah well for us it was different I guess because at the beginning of each day there was - like the operation was planned and then there was a briefing for all the pilots. So we went out and we had a helicopter that usually flew above us that

controlled the operation and so, unlike people on the ground who could make a decision on their own whether to, whether to shoot at something or someone, ours was a more controlled sort of environment, where we were given perhaps buildings or, bush or something like that where we, where we

were - where we had to fire. So in most cases we were just given, given a - told where we had to fire and that’s what we did so we didn’t make a lot of the decisions ourself unless we could actually physically seen that there was someone or something to fire at, that we perceived to be the enemy.

No. No we - each helicopter had what they called a crew chief and he, he actually looked after the maintenance of the helicopter or the day to day maintenance - the refuelling the re-oiling, cleaning filters. Any minor maintenance jobs.

And he flew in the left hands side in the back of the helicopter as a gunner and when he - when the helicopter wasn’t flying he was doing maintenance. The pilots could be any two pilots and, as for me, I just flew in whatever I was told to fly in. You know the night before they decided who the crews would be and we were told then

when we - what one we’d be flying in and basically where we would be going. So it was yeah, different people all the time.

A week? I don’t know there was a weekly average but I’d say that

depending on where we were operating and what sort of operations we were doing, it - we could lose one or two. If we - if we were receiving enemy fire you could probably expect maybe one or two would get shot down or, maybe none. It was all a matter of luck I suppose but I, suppose if you want to look at an average on a weekly basis

probably two to four a week. A lot of times they were able to, to land without too much trouble. If they lose an engine or something else, there are ways in which you can land a helicopter. Some of them did get written off and you know really badly damaged

but, there were plenty more to replace it.

No I don’t think so. I guess I just thought I was probably lucky to come back and have a beer that night. Never really, never really been into lucky things.

No but it was more or less a standard practise that if you got shot down and everybody was okay, then you would get out of the chopper and set up a - like depending on where you were you could set up a perimeter with the fire arms you’ve got. ‘Cause you’ve got 2 machine guns and a couple of rifles and, and so you could set up a bit of a perimeter to protect yourselves

until assistance came. And usually there was always other helicopters in the area and they could, help if need be. But I think the most we ever got shot down any one time was 10 in one day. Which was pretty devastating.

When?

Where? It was down the Mekong Delta.

When they were all, they were all slicks, none of the gun ships got shot down. They just received a lot of fire when they were landing and taking off so, and because they had to do repeated trips in there, it just increased their chances. But, yeah we sort of expected a couple now and then.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, of those of us who flew regularly probably, probably 60 or 70%. I suppose being shot down’s not quite the right word because sometimes it was through mechanical failure. But mostly it was

from ground fire that the engine or hydraulics or something like that. Some guys got really badly smashed up when they went down. But…

Being shot from underneath. We sat in a very exposed position in the helicopter and we had a little seat that was about a foot by a foot and that’s what we sat on, right at the doorway. And our only protection was a, what they call a flack jacket which protected you from shrapnel and we had what they call chicken plates and these chicken plates were armoured plates that you could put

under, you could put on underneath the flack jacket but they were very heavy and very uncomfortable. But they probably saved a lot of people’s lives. And we also wired one underneath the seat that we sat on because we found early in the peace, that bullets do come through the floor. And one guy nearly got one straight up underneath him so we thought we’d better do something about it. So we

put these chicken plates underneath us to give us a little bit of protection from ground fire. But, yeah I think that was the thing that worried me most although it was the least likely thing that was going to happen to me. ‘Cause I couldn’t think of anything worse than a bullet coming up your bum.

Well I think in the exposed

position we were in, I would’ve thought if we were going to get hit would be perhaps in the face, or legs or arms. Because we had these chicken plates on which more or less protected most of our torso. So I would’ve expected that to be, where you would get it. And there were some who did get shot in the - in the face

and were killed. Our first, casualty - Australian casualty was - he got - he got - a round came through the front of the helicopter and hit him in the forehead and killed him. And that was one of the few places that he wasn’t protected. Yeah.

Oh they had evacuation

hospitals staffed by Americans. They were all very good their doctors - you know surgeons and that sort of thing. So I, but they were everywhere - I mean if somebody did get injured they would just go to the nearest hospital - wherever it was, just fly them there.

Um

if you were in the air I guess, probably 10 minutes. ‘Cause you could fly to the nearest, the nearest hospital. I don’t think - I don’t think I ever thought about how far away I was. I just probably thought more about, if I got shot I’d probably die you know. So worrying about a hospital was, probably not so much on me mind.

No-one in any of the helicopters I was actually in but, yeah in - guys in other helicopters that we were - on operations with - yeah had been hit. And

others that had crashed.

Service? Yeah we did but I - I never went. I - I just thought - you know what’s the point?

I just put it out of me mind you know. I did, once I came back from Vietnam, I went to a service for a guy that I knew that got killed up there but, not while I was there. Just didn’t seem like, that was going to make any difference.

No. For me I, I didn’t actually do the full 12 months. With about a month to go I was asked if I would go back to Australia and - well not so much asked as told - go back to Australia and do a little bit of training with the guys that were coming up to relieve us.

And I think I was given a couple of days to, before I left and I, I didn’t want to leave actually. I felt guilty that I was leaving and the others were still there. All the fellows that I’d been with for all that time. And the things we’d been through together.

Yeah it was - I don’t know - a feeling that I was deserting them. And I was going home and they may never get there sort of thing.

I don’t know whether - I’m not sure about that. It didn’t really worry me that much because - I mean I was single and I had no, didn’t have a girlfriend or anything and so for me it was just, I suppose I was just there and we - we had what you call a short timers calendar which was usually a picture of a girl or like a photocopy type picture with, broken up into 365

squares and so each day you could cross out another square. And as the, the squares became less you had less time. And I think a lot of people did dwell upon those things, you know they’d say “I’ve only got 30 days to go,” and there were those that thought they were going home soon that didn’t go. I don’t know I guess it’s like counting

on, you know that your time’s nearly up and you’re going home. But you may not go home. Yeah some - I think there’s quite a few of them that looked upon it like that. When they only had a few days left to go they’d go home but once again they may not have made it.

Me?

I wonder who told you that.

Well I, I knew I was going and I was catching one of the courier planes that were coming through. And

P.T. and John took me out to where - out to the airfield and … I don’t know I felt a bit sad that I was going and, but anyway I got on and we flew - I flew to Saigon. And I was picked up at the airport by a sergeant - an army sergeant in a kombi van and

he had to take me to this place where I was staying the night and, I remember we stopped on the way to get some fuel in the kombi van and he went around the back and opened up the door at the back, you know the - ones that lifted up. And I had my bags in there. And then off we went and when we got to this place where I was staying the night we got out and my overnight bag wasn’t there and the back of the kombi

was up. And, my bag had fallen out the back of the kombi. And in my bag I had my camera and, quite a few films that I was going to get developed when I got back. And my passport and health certificates and some of the clothes I was going to wear back. So I reported the loss of it, particularly the passport and health certificates ‘cause

they’re - you have to have them you know. And I was told not to worry about it. The next morning they would take me to see a doctor and I’d have to get some injections because you have to have certain things to come back. So I had to go back in the morning before I caught the plane. I had to go and have a course of needles before I could come back to Australia.

No I don’t remember them actually.

Can’t remember which one. But about 3 months later I got a letter from the department of external affairs and they’d sent me my passport and health certificates but I lost everything else. But you know, it was - and that night I went on the roof of this building and, I felt a bit lonely and, sad that I was leaving.

I just sat up there for a couple of hours I think. Yeah.

I caught a Qantas flight the next day. A charter flight. And it was full of all these army blokes all going home. And me. Yeah we flew back and we arrived in Mascot, at Mascot late that night

and they were all happy to be there, they were all cheering and carrying on. And I, I felt pretty empty and we got out of the aeroplane and, through customs and immigration and, I didn’t know where I was supposed to go or anything. I was just there and I thought, here I am in Sydney, what do I do now? So I caught a taxi and I went and stayed at Royal Naval House in Sydney.

And - which cost me 7 and 6 I think for a bed. And next morning I went down the nearest pub and, proceeded to, to drink a lot of beer. And…

No. I was supposed to - I knew I had to go back to Albatross so I went to the to the

RTO at Central Station and a guy there said, “Oh” he said, “You’re supposed to be down at Nowra.” And I said, “Well I’m not.” And he said, “Well you’d better ring them up.” So I rang up this petty officer and he said, “Why aren’t you down here?” and I said, “’Cause I’m up here.” And he said, “Well you’re supposed to be here today.” And I said, “Well I’m not, I’m getting pissed, so that’s it.” And so I did, I - yeah ended up going out and, by meself and got pissed.

He didn’t really say much. He outranked me and I thought, you know there’d be some threat over the phone, that perhaps I’d be charged with something. But he just said, “Oh okay.” And that was it. So… Yeah and I was sitting in a pub and I was feeling miserable

and I thought, I might go and have a steam bath and massage and cheer me up a bit. I got in a taxi and I said to the guy, “I want to have a steam bath and massage.” So he took me into this massage parlour and, it wasn’t really - didn’t know much about massage parlours. And I went in there and this woman was sitting there in a white coat. She said to me, “What would you like?” And I said, “Oh steam bath and massage.” And she said, “Oh we don’t do that here.” I said, “What do you do?” She said, “Oh we give sex.”

And I said, “Well what can I have?” And so she read out various things I could have and I thought, oh well I’ll just have, just have sex. But nothing happened. So, another failure.

Yeah.

Yeah. I caught the train back there the next day and the guy who’d I rung up the day before he was there. People treated me in a funny way because I was the first one to come back, because I was in the first contingent that went to Vietnam from there and I was the first one to come back apart from those that had been medivaced back.

And they all treated me sort of funny like everyone didn’t really know what to say to me or something. So, I felt like a bit of a - like I had some sort of pox or something. Nobody wanted to come near me or talk to me. Bit strange really. But, yeah I helped with the training of the next lot of guys going up and expected

to go on leave and then they wanted me to do a display down in Melbourne - a naval display. So, I went down and did that and then I went on leave I think in December. And, proceeded to drink myself silly every night for a long time.

Well like me they knew nothing about what they were going to do. So, well very little - so you know I gave them, I guess a good idea of what sort of things they would be doing once they got to Vietnam. And because we didn’t have the type of - helicopters they had in Vietnam I had to give them some sort of an idea

of what they would be working on, and how they would go about it. But what I done while I was in Vietnam I actually, I broke a mini gun, just a 6 barrelled that fires 3,000 rounds a minute. I broke it up into pieces and I sent half of it back in a RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] Hercules and the other half on the Sydney. And so when I got back it was all there I was able to show them exactly how this gun worked.

And how to pull it apart and so on. And I just used you know, some pictures out of books and things to illustrate various things. And plus went flying with them and give them an idea of how they would go about being a gunner. What sort of things they had to do and so on.

Yeah they - I don’t know they

I guess they didn’t - like me they didn’t realise what they were going to do. But you know they seemed to be okay with it. I mean I couldn’t teach them everything because I just didn’t have the - the training aids to show them. But at least they had a better understanding

and a better idea of what they were going into.

Oh I think the following year. I didn’t really have much to do with that sort of thing when I first got back. And I went on leave and I read things in

the paper and I suppose it was there but I didn’t - I chose not to think about it. But I think there were, it was later that 1969 that I really became aware of the attitudes of people. So, but yeah I just

for me I just thought, well just keep away from people like that. ‘Cause I really felt that even though I didn’t fully understand why we were in Vietnam, that we were doing what we should do. I never for one minute thought that I shouldn’t, shouldn’t be there or shouldn’t have gone there. And as far as I’m aware the other guys that were with me didn’t feel much different to that either.

But, it was - I think it made me - it made me a little bit angry to think that there were people out there that were just protesting. And I thought, oh they’re just protesting for the sake of protesting. And probably a lot of them are professional protestors and they like doing this sort of thing. But it wasn’t quite the case no.

Oh yes a lot of anger from them too you know. That - it came to be - like before I went to Vietnam I remember if we were on board the ship and we went ashore we went in uniform. But during Vietnam that all changed. And we changed to wearing civilian clothes ashore

because then you couldn’t be, you know if you were in your uniform people could say, well you’re a warmonger or whatever yeah. Whereas if you were in civilian clothes nobody knew anything about you. And that was - I don’t know - I didn’t think that was very - real good because I was always proud of the uniform I wore. But we were hiding. And I remember in 1969

I was on the Melbourne in Sydney and I was given this duty on night of flight deck sentry. And it was very late at night and I remember seeing the Sydney sail out of Sydney for Vietnam. And I thought, why are they going at this time of the night? Surely they could sail during the day. But they left at night so the protestors couldn’t, make life difficult for them. And there was this big ship sneaking

out to sea.

Yeah in early ’69 I went home, I had 10 weeks leave. I came back to Albatross in about February or March. I was asked if I would go to sea because one of the guys that was going to sea had problems at home and so they wanted somebody to volunteer to go to replace him.

Yeah so I was asked to go to sea and because of the time I was having trouble settling into a routine and that so I volunteered to go to sea. I went onto an anti-submarine squadron. We had Tracker aircraft, which are twin engine fixed wing aircraft that - used for anti-submarine work.

And we sailed for Asia in I think about March/April and we went to the Philippines and we formed up the fleet to do another SEATO exercise out from Manila and I think about 3 days into the exercise in the early hours of the morning

we had a collision with an American Destroyer and, sunk - and cut it in half - and the forward half of the ship sunk fairly quickly but the aft end of the ship stayed afloat and there was - 74 went down with the ship. So

we … when we had the collision with the ship it was doing basically the same thing that the Voyager did when the Melbourne cut it in half. The ship was signalled to take up its station behind us and it was

a forward of us so it turned to come down the starboard side of the ship and instead of doing that it kept turning around and came right in front of us and we, that was when we hit it. It was about 3 o’clock in the morning and I was asleep

on me bunk and- they made an announcement over the PA [public address] system “Hands to collision station.” And when I woke up and I heard that and I thought, “What’s a collision station?” Never heard of it. And then we just hit it and - it was, it was - the ship was actually cut

in two and we were bouncing on our bunks with the motion of the ship. And a lot of crunching and grinding and all sorts of noises. And we then went to our emergency stations and mine was on the flight deck so I made me way up there and by the time I got there you could - the forward end of the ship was just about to go down and you could hear the guys calling out

from the ship. Yeah it was pretty bad. And so the next day the - when dawn came it was - the sea was dead calm and there was all these ships just sitting there. And the, aft end of the destroyer and -

Yeah eventually a tug came out from Subic Bay and towed it back and we then set sail for Singapore to make repairs to the ship. We had 3 weeks in Singapore in which time they were able to put the ship in dry dock and make temporary repairs to the bow

and then we came back to Sydney and - for the ship to be properly repaired.

The Melbourne.

The USS Frank E Evans.

Yeah the American, US Navy had an

inquiry at Subic Bay. They were looking for a scapegoat and the captain of the Melbourne turned out to be the scapegoat even though we’d done nothing wrong. It was the fault of the destroyer and - they did try and court martial the captain of the Melbourne when he came back to Australia but there was no - case to answer.

And the captain of the Evans was - the only punishment he got was he was put down lower on the promotion list so it took him a little bit longer to be promoted. That’s American justice.

Oh it was pretty sad. It was - I don’t know I think everyone was in shock to

think it could happen twice. And - fairly subdued sort of crew for a few days.

Oh, just …

had a big gash in the bow of the ship and damaged the flight deck a bit. It was - all the damage was above the water line so there was no danger to the Melbourne sinking. So they just patched over the damage so we could get back to Sydney.

And - yeah.

Oh we disembarked off the ship. All the aircraft and us went back to Albatross and - just back to normal flying routines. Normal things.

Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah I was - I suppose every night I was drinking - I was just a - me and another guy,

John who was - the guy who went to Vietnam with me, he was in the guard with me and, we teamed up and, spent every night in the bar.

Oh yeah there was lots of good times. There was always good times. More good times than bad times most of the times.

But yeah I think 1969 wasn’t a good year for me. I got married later in December and so I suppose that was probably a, a turning point for 1969.

I was at a party - I was drunk. And I met her and

and I didn’t remember her. But I was in a bar a few nights later and I was sitting there looking in the mirror and I saw this - these two women sitting at a table and I thought, oh I know one of them. And I couldn’t remember where I knew her from so I went over and, asked her and she said “Oh you were at the party the other night.” So yeah that’s how I met her. But I stopped drinking. I didn’t drink after that. Not for a long time.

So it was good.

After I met her, after I met her the second time, yeah I stopped drinking then. So that was good. Yeah. Yeah we got married in December in ’69. We were married in Brisbane and we had our honeymoon

in Perth. We drove from Brisbane to Perth to have it. Yes settled down.

No I didn’t see any point in it. That’s just - I guess it was the female company that changed me. Even though I’d been going out with another

woman that didn’t stop me. But this did. Mm.

No, no she didn’t say anything. It was me I just stopped. I didn’t even know why.

Perhaps I didn’t need to drink any more who knows.

Oh I do too. But I mean I went from drinking every night to not drinking at all.

Oh pretty hard, yeah I was drunk every night. Just about every night. So, yeah. Wasn’t a very exciting life.

Oh I guess loneliness and people not understanding, not knowing. And their lack of willingness to do so. And I think

I think after the collision with the Evans I sort of felt like the navy just said, okay well you know it’s over - let’s get on with life. You know there’s no, there was nothing, no-one talked about it or anything. It was just another, another chapter in the life

of the navy. And I guess by then I was feeling like, you know everything’s death and destruction, doom and gloom. Yeah.

Yeah for a while.

I think about 20, 21 years. Yeah 21 years.

A boy and a girl. Man and a woman now.

Yeah so…

I’ve got to get this right ‘cause if I don’t I’m in trouble. 7 and a half years I think. Nearly 7 and a half years. Joan and I went to school together and we lived - she lived in the next street to me. And we just met up and

yeah.

Yeah we went to a reunion, a school reunion. And we got together after that.

No. She’s got three.

2 boys and a girl so we’ve got 5 between us. Yeah. So

I guess we go on from 1969 and whatever?

Yes 1970 I was just at Albatross just, just doing normal day to day operations there. It was a really quiet sort of year for me I think. 1971 I got posted in

June to the Melbourne again for 2 years. But I wasn’t on, I wasn’t working on aircraft, I was sent there to, to maintain the ship’s magazines and ammunition preparation, that sort of thing. So that was 1971. And we just came out - the ship just came out of a refit and

we sailed late 1971 and we went to, Suva and Hawaii and did an exercise with the American Navy. For a couple of weeks off Hawaii. And, in 1971 we sailed, we went to

the Philippines, Hong Kong. Which in Hong Kong there was a lady there called Jenny and Jenny had what we called Jenny side party. Jenny ran an orphanage in Hong Kong and she would come on all the ships, the navy ships that came in there and organise people to do any work

on the ships or, and also to - for her to bring on some, some of her girls who would stand in the cafeteria and when you’d finish your meal you would take your plate to them and they would scrap off anything that was still edible into one bin and the rest of it into another bin. And that food was then sent up to the orphanage to feed the kids

and she would also organise people to work around the ship painting or working down in the, the double bottoms of the engine room. And she would - they’d be paid through her. So, bit of an entrepreneur and she helped in the community too. But she, she had the rights to every ship

that came into Hong Kong, every navy ship. Yeah we went to Hong Kong and Singapore. Jakarta for the first time. We were away for about 3, 4 months. And back to Sydney. And then later in the year we went to Suva and Hawaii for another

exercise with the American Navy. And then the next year the ship went in for refit so we spent 6 months in the dry dock having work done on the ship and yeah. I got posted off the ship then. Back to Albatross.

My son was born in 1970, ’73 and my daughter in ’76. The time between ’72, 73 and ’76 I did, we did

detachments. We spent a week up in Broome at one stage with aircraft. We were doing work with customs and immigration. We were looking for a yacht that was smuggling drugs back into Australia from Indonesia and that was pretty interesting stuff. But unfortunately we didn’t find it. And we did some flights up to North Queensland to do exercises with patrol boats and

minesweepers. 1976 I was posted onto a tracker anti-submarine squadron and went to sea for, about 3 months to Hawaii. And on return of that we were then sent to

Broome to do surveillance in Broome which we did - we’d go up there for a month and we had 2 crews - one’d go up for a month, the other one’d come back. And we did that for about 6, 7 months. And on completion of that in 1977 I went into a training role then in the training school and spent 18

months as a trainer. Which I quite enjoyed.

Oh just training young sailors to be armourers. It was fairly interesting.

Oh yeah, young blokes that didn’t know anything and, just I suppose you had a lot of satisfaction in

seeing them turn out to be good sailors later on. And I guess ‘cause you got to meet different people you know every so often you’d get a new class. And I suppose they’re all a new challenge.

Oh as being a worldly

old sailor who knew all the ropes. But I probably didn’t. No I think they were all pretty interested in it. That’s what they were there for. Some of them were a bit, had difficulties in learning things but in the end they all got through.

Yeah I think so. Yeah. Probably a few good armourers out there but the only trouble is they haven’t got a job now. Yeah. When I left the training school in 1978 I was posted to Darwin and I took my wife and kids up there and we were doing

coastal surveillance work before the coast watch scheme was set up. And I really enjoyed it up there. It’s a nice place Darwin. Lovely weather and the dry. And it’s good fishing and the kids enjoyed it. We lived on the air force base and, we had some good friends around there and lots of barbecues and parties

and things. And I caught a couple of good Barramundi when I was up there.

Oh we went fishing out in some, stations, some billabongs there. But yeah it was good fun.

Oh I didn’t go, I didn’t

fly. I was just ground crew.

No we were doing it with aircraft. We were doing it with aircraft. And we put an aircraft up every day and they covered an area of the coast and reefs and islands off the coast. Because I think at the time we had a lot of Indonesian fishermen coming down and, I don’t think there was

too many illegal immigrants coming that way, only fishermen. And I guess the odd drugs and things like that.

No we never really knew much about that. We, all the information that we gathered was passed on to customs and

immigration and they, it was up to them to decide what to do about whoever it was. And then we got posted back to Albatross in 1979. And we had to be back down Christmas day because we had to start surveillance in Bass Strait, on the oil rigs in Bass Strait. There was a

I guess you could say a security thing and they wanted us to have our first flight on Christmas Day so we couldn’t have Christmas Day off with our family. Yeah we did that for a few months and then it folded up, I don’t know why. And after that I got posted to HMAS Sterling in, over here

and spent the last 2 years in the navy there. It was a very good posting and I enjoyed it.

I was a chief petty officer at the time and we were setting up an ammunition storage area up the other end of Garden Island and they needed, they wanted somebody

with experience in handling of ammunition. And armourers were about the only ones that had the experience that they required. So I was posted over here when that was set up. And had sailors working for me and we worked with civilians and we were there just in case the civilians didn’t want to - you know went on strike or didn’t want to do a certain

job or whatever. So we were there to take over if that ever occurred. That was a very good job. I had a lot of - I guess I could run it the way I wanted to run it and, we weren’t bothered by anyone from Sterling. The senior officers and that didn’t bother us so

I quite enjoyed it. And I could go fishing down the wharf because we had our own wharf. And you could go fishing during the day when there was nothing on.

Herring. I caught quite a lot of herring around there. So you’d take a feed of fish home at the end of the day.

No. No. No I didn’t say anything about it then.

Yeah and so I spent a couple of years at Sterling until I was discharged from the navy in 1983.

Oh I, when you’ve done 20 years in the navy you can, elect to get out

and you’ve just got to write a letter to the captain, giving him 3 months notice that you want to leave the navy. But I did it when I reached nearly 20 years but when I wrote the letter I thought about it and I thought, well what am I going to do? I can’t do anything but, the things I’ve done in the navy. Nobody out there wants an armourer. So, so I threw it away.

And it took me another 12 months to do and then I made a big break.

I got a job with Alcoa and became a power house operator and, worked with them for, 16 years. And I’ve since retired.

Oh yeah I - it’s not something you can just walk out of and say, well that’s it and, not have any more to do with it. Because it’s the thing that shaped my life, it’s the, it was most of my life. And - although there was a number of things that happened in the navy that were sad

that were upsetting. There was a lot more things that were happy things. You know things that, things that I looked back on and laughed about. Yeah they’re the good memories.

Oh I think

the navy shaped me to be a person who had confidence. And that, I suppose in a way it made me respect, oh it did, it made me respect other people for what they are and who they are. And it made me I guess

loyal, loyal to my employer. And it made me a team member. In the navy we all worked as a team whether it be a small one or a big one. And it re-enforced the advantages of team, working as a team.

So, yeah I think it made me a reasonably good citizen. In the end.

Yeah. I’ve been to quite a few reunions over the years. Last year I went to a reunion in - back to Albatross and we - that was a twofold thing because it was, Anzac Day and we had an armourers’

reunion and then we had a reunion and a dedication. We dedicated a memorial to - all those in the 135th Assault Helicopter Company who died and had since died. And we had some Americans that served in the company came over for it. And, we had the American

Ambassador there and Admiral of the navy. So it was, yeah it was very good. Caught up with a lot of the guys that I served with and we had a good time, yeah. And we remember the good and the bad. And I also went to Tweed Heads where we had a reunion for all of the - all of us who joined the navy back in 1962, together the 150 of us

and out of that there was 90 turned up. So, yeah we had, quite a few people there that I hadn’t seen since I joined the navy. So it was 40 years. And I’ve been to other reunions prior to that. Armourer’s reunions. We seem to have an armourer’s reunion fairly regularly and, we’ve had the guys

that went to Vietnam we’ve got together a couple of times. Went to Sydney in 1987 to march in the welcome home to Vietnam veterans, which was probably the most moving part of my whole life.

Well I suppose it meant that

to me it was, people instead of protesting they were welcoming us. And, I suppose when we came back instead of feeling like we were outcasts, I

felt people cared.

Oh well it was all - everyone that served in Vietnam in the navy helicopter flight. There was 4 contingents that went for a year each. So all of those who turned up, we all marched together. And we had

our own banner. Yeah and then we all got together afterwards and - yeah had a good time. But, yeah I think it was something - I mean a lot of people they said they never got welcomed back - well that’s true, a lot of people didn’t but some did. But I think it meant more than just a welcome back, I think it meant that people

just wanted to say that, well a lot of people just wanted to say that they were sorry that they made life difficult for us. And yeah.

Oh well people didn’t want to talk about the war and I didn’t want to talk about it because

because there was a lot of people had bad things to say about it so, the less you said, the less there was said to you. And I think a lot of people just didn’t understand what it was really all about.

Yeah I think so. Everyone had their own opinion.

But I suppose it’s a war isn’t it - there’s always people that don’t like war. I don’t like war either but I guess we did what we did because we were asked to do it.

Yeah they

I think they were all pretty happy to see me. So and I was pretty happy to come back but - I know me Dad was pretty proud of me.

Oh. We had another party and he invited lots - a lot more people than he’d ever invited before. And I think he was just

yeah, proud that I’d done what I’d done. And wanted everyone to know.

I know that when I got married in 1969 I met my sister-in-law and the news was on TV and it was about the Vietnam war and she was very much against it. And her and her husband and - and I know we had a bit of a debate about it but

she got quite hostile to me, towards the end so I just thought, well shut up and say nothing. And that was, that was mainly it you know, just learnt not to say anything. And I believe that’s quite a common thing when I talk to others here and they say, well the best thing is just not say anything to anyone.

Because then people couldn’t label you with anything. But I do remember when I was in Vietnam flying around that I always thought that it was a very beautiful country, if I could just sort of picture it without all the bomb craters and destroyed buildings and all the other devastation around the place. And I thought one day I’d like to come back here and have a look at it

and see what it’s really like without all of this. And, so my wife and I did go back there about 3 years ago. And we went in a group of people, 12 people, all from Australia and we had an Australian guide and we left - started in Hanoi and we made our way down through the country, down to Saigon and out to the Cambodian

border. But one thing that happened and it was an incident that, I suppose makes you feel good or whatever. There was one of the people on the tour. A woman. She dressed a little bit different to the others and I sort of felt she was probably a, very independent sort of person and it was only a couple of days after

we got to Hanoi and we were out on this boat and I - so I thought I should tell the guide that I’ve been here before and under what circumstances and that. So I was talking to him and she was standing behind me listening. And when I finished talking to him she said to me, “You know Barry when I was a young girl back in the sixties, I used to go and protest at lunchtimes in Melbourne against the Vietnam War.

And weekends too.” And she said, she then said to me, “But what I’d really like to do is apologise to you for what we did to you guys that went over there.” And that was pretty, yeah it made me feel good

that somebody - she was the only person who ever said it to me. That somebody cared enough to say. But I think a lot of the people that went and watched the march in Sydney probably felt the same way but didn’t say it. And we really did enjoy our trip through Vietnam and I guess the thing that stood out the most was that

all those people in Vietnam, North and South suffered quite a lot and they lost a lot of their family and friends in the war. They didn’t hate us. They treated us very well and, we felt, we never felt threatened in any way. And the people

there have got on with their lives as best they can under the circumstances. And they’re reasonably happy. Well they seem to be anyway. So I guess that made me feel like, a little bit better than what I had felt about the way we treated them. So I was very happy that I did that trip.

Well life was I suppose fairly mundane. I mean when you’ve been -

spending you know just about day in day out under the threat of being shot at or - someone wants to drop a round of mortar on you, or rocket or something - life became pretty mundane and I guess yeah, you - ‘cause I was probably on such a, a high

from the war, that I found that I just couldn’t settle. I needed to be, I needed to do something you know. I needed something to happen. And you can’t manufacture those things so I guess that’s where it was easier to go and drink. Because then, you didn’t have to worry about that.

And that’s why I volunteered to go to sea because I felt that at least that offered me a little bit of excitement. And I could go to places overseas and I could let loose and have a good time and that sort of thing but

I didn’t see much future in what I was doing and where I was at the time. Yeah.

Oh, oh they do bring back memories. But - I think it’s

I’ve probably seen that many that you - I get very critical of them. I look at all the detail of it and I think, and I say, “Well that didn’t happen,” and “You know we wouldn’t have done that,” and all this sort of thing. And so I end up convincing myself that it’s only rubbish anyway that I’m watching and it’s not worth watching, and that. But yeah you can’t get away from the memories. The memories are always there.

Oh well I suppose - when you see ones like The Green Berets, which was John Wayne, I mean wow. If we had had a few John Wayne’s in Vietnam we would have won the war in the first six months. But you know it’s just not the way it was. I mean he was pretty full on and he could beat them all and that

so, things like that I just assessed as being pure rubbish to start with. But there were some ones that I think were fairly close to reality and the futility of the whole war was ones like Hamburger Hill, where you know, guys just died for nothing, no reason at all in the end.

And - although I didn’t do that - I didn’t fight on the ground but I felt very sad about - when I watched that movie about the, the guys you know that had to go and do that sort of thing. And then walk away and go look for another hill to climb up. Yeah but a lot of things in these movies are a bit away from reality because they’re made by Hollywood

and, you have to spice it up a bit to make people watch it.

I don’t remember that bit

of it but, I don’t even remember the name of the film. I’ve been trying to think of it for the last couple of minutes. Yeah I mean the helmet doesn’t stop bullets. A helmet only stops shrapnel to a degree. It’s - yeah that’s Hollywood. The reality was that if you sat on your helmet you’d be pretty uncomfortable anyway. And it

probably wouldn’t stop anything. But if you shit yourself it’d be handy wouldn’t it? Yeah.

I guess I sat and watched it on TV and I just couldn’t believe that I was watching what I

was watching. It was like - it’s got to be a movie or something. I just couldn’t believe that that was happening. And I guess I felt pretty - disappointed and I guess angry and I guess pretty empty about it all. I thought after all of that

we’ve got to see this. If they had’ve got together and said, okay we’ll agree upon everything being what the North wanted it to be I would’ve said, “Oh well you know that’s the way it is.” But to see all of that happening and people just deserting like ships - rats from a sinking ship. I got to admit that their

probably, their heart wasn’t in it in the first place and if it hadn’t have been for us it would’ve all ended up like that in the end but, but I just think of all the lives that were wasted in coming to an end that was inevitable. And I guess a lot of people really knew that when we were - when we were all over there doing our bit. So, perhaps if they had’ve said, well let’s just leave them to it

would’ve been better too. But, yeah, a waste. Which I suppose it what all wars are about. It’s a waste of human lives.

No I don’t think so because, in my case we - when we were in action we were up a helicopter and

there was 4 of us and we all had a job to do and I guess because we weren’t, face to face with the enemy …

Yeah I didn’t actually see any myself. I suppose what you mean by that is people who couldn’t, who weren’t able to face when the pressures are on they fell apart. But no I don’t think we had anyone like that.

There was one guy

who and actually it wasn’t that long after we were up there - probably a couple of months he - one night he stole a light aeroplane and he was going to fly it back to Australia. But you know he got repatriated on psychological grounds so, maybe that was yeah - about the only one I can think of.

Bob’s bullets and bullshit. We talk about I suppose, the job we were doing. Things that happened in that job you know incidents, you know. And the trips away and what people did when they went ashore and things like that.

Yeah and like - what are people doing nowadays. But I think there’s a lot of good stories come out of those things and even - they might be ones you’ve heard about before but you know they always funny when someone tells it again, yeah.

Yeah I do actually. It hasn’t been - since I come back from Vietnam I didn’t want to march. I was given free membership in the RSL, I went there and nobody was interested in me so I never went back to the RSL for many years. And I never marched on Anzac Day. I only wore me medals because the navy required me to wear for ceremonial purposes.

But when my son was growing up he joined cubs so I joined cubs too. I became a cub leader and I started up a scout group with the help of some others and we were invited to march on Anzac Day in Mandurah. And so I put my medals on and I gave one to me son to wear and we marched

and while I was there, after the service I met some fellows that I’d known in the navy and the following year they asked me to come and march with them so, that’s when I started to march and that was probably 18 years ago.

Oh I think it’s remembering

all the guys who didn’t come back and, those that have died since and remembering the futility of it all because I don’t think we’ve fought a war that hasn’t been futile. And I think it’s also catching up with people that you may not have

seen for a while. And the first part of it is I guess the march and that is the, that’s the serious part of Anzac Day and afterwards is the enjoyable part of - the happy part of Anzac Day. Yeah so I quite enjoy it.

‘Cause a friend of mine took up picture framing and he then had an interest in medals and mounting them so he - he found out how to do it and he since

refined the way it’s done and he does a very good job. And he’s been a early creative in doing this sort of thing and so he combined the two and mounted medals into picture frames and he’s, he’s done hundreds of them. So we sat down one day and worked out a way of doing it, you know like mine. So each one is

individual and - because we’re all individuals. But I just thought it was something that sort of, my family can remember me by and it reminds me of my younger days. And one day I hope that they’ll, think the same of it as I do.

Oh … we had an Anzac Day - well we had Anzac Day when I was up there. And a group of us got the day off and we went down to Vung Tau and we celebrated Anzac Day down there and

it turned out to be a really good day you know, we just had so much fun. You know singing and all that. I think we were standing around a trailer full of beer and we were singing The Wild West Show and couple of other of these songs that we knew. I remember another time at Black Horse the - it was

broken into different company areas and like, some of the companies had a bar and so we - I remember a night going over there and there was me and John and Terry and Tom. And Tom was the oldest one out of us and when Tom had a few beers his feet were a bit unstable and, anyway we went over there and they’d dug a trench across the road for something and we all saw it so we jumped over it and

when we were coming back we’d all had a few and Tom was carrying a case of beer and he was, he was staggering along the road there, and we all jumped over the trench and next thing, we couldn’t see Tom. He’d fallen in the trench, he’d forgot it was there and so we had to pull him and the beer out. Yeah another

I was down in Vung Tau - ‘cause the navy divers were in Vung Tau - they had their little depot it was up the top of a hill - it overlooked Vung Tau. And they were down at the air force canteen and I was there and anyway we were all drinking together and, they said, “You want to come up and have a barbecue with us and a few beers?” So yeah and anyway they had a

jeep outside, an American jeep with all these lights and a siren on it and everything ‘cause they were divers and they needed this. And they’d actually stolen it from Saigon and drove it back and painted it up. And yeah we went up the hill and, siren going and lights flashing and everything. And got up there and these guys just had such a fantastic place. They were in a bunker built during the French occupation. And in it was a big

soft drink machine and it was full of beer, just like the ad on TV. We had a good time up there, stayed the night.

Um?

Not so much nightmares.

I get a bit, I get a bit upset at times when I’m watching violence and that on television or - or I guess if people ask me things, ask me to talk about things that have happened, sometimes it

upsets me to talk about it and I just, sort of break down. But I don’t really suffer from much in the way of nightmares. I think mine’s more just, it can happen sort of, out of the blue.

No I think we should’ve left them to it. When the French left we should’ve just left them. And they would’ve sorted it out in a, I’d say a more peaceful fashion than what we did. ‘Cause I think it’s more than just, just us going up there and doing our best to change

things. You had to really change the people and the people didn’t want what we offered but we just, we took it on our own back to go and do it because we thought that’s what they wanted and they didn’t really want that. I think the events of 1975 can prove that.

No. I don’t think I ever had - I never had any real opinion on it. I didn’t really understand why the Vietnam War was - was a war. I just thought it was a war that America got involved in and now we’re getting involved in and why was the war ever started in the first place.

And as to whether we should get involved was - I really had no opinion on it. I sort of feel like at the time, none of us really knew a lot about it. It just sort of happened. But I’ve since read a lot of books on it and I -

mainly because I wanted to understand why the way - why we ever got involved in the war, and the events that led up to it. So yeah I, I can honestly say that we should never have gone there - we should’ve just left them to their own devices.

OH. We, I mentioned earlier on about drugs - how we never - I know I never had anything to do with drugs, I didn’t know what drugs were really. And I think we were all very naïve about that. And

we - I could see the evidence of drugs around us and somebody must have been involved in supplying them and that. And I, I just think people like that, they’re taking advantage of the, of a war and when all people around them are getting killed and, maimed and you know. And I think people like that don’t deserve

a place in this life.

Actually I did. Unknowingly I did. We - we had a - there was a laundry in Swan Loch which was the nearest town to Black Horse and they used to come each day and you could put your jungle greens into get them washed and they came out looking

pretty nice too. And there was a little kid and, because I was Australian they called us ‘Auctali’ which was their way, their name for Australians. And he always used to talk to me and you know I thought he was a nice little kid. And one day he offered me a plastic pouch, a tobacco pouch. And he said, “You want tobacco?”

And I said, “No I don’t want tobacco.” ‘Cause I smoked - when I smoked tailor made see - ‘cause cigarettes were real cheap. And he said, “You have you have.” Alright so I put it in me pocket. And when I got back to me tent I put it in me locker and I left it there and I took no more notice of it. But when I was leaving to come back I was cleaning up my locker I found this little packet. And I said to one of the guys,

“You want some tobacco?” And he looked it and said, “That’s marijuana.” So I’d had that sitting in me locker all this time. And I guess the idea was that I’d take the marijuana off him and then I use it and I say, well I’ll get him to get me some more. And so that was one of the avenues of supply was through that young kid who I thought was such a nice kid.

I don’t know. I guess I - the harder drugs probably came from Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, the Golden Triangle. I did hear stories that the North Vietnamese were supplying it - so that we would be

in a drugged haze and we wouldn’t be able to fight them and that. But I don’t know that that’s the case. I think it was people taking advantage of a lucrative sort of situation.

But I did hear stories of drugs being

smuggled back to America in body bags. Putting them in with bodies. Because from what I could understand later drugs were very easy to come by. We had a black American in our platoon. And this guy, yeah psychedelic stuff he used to wear a bandana and we all thought, oh there’s something wrong with this guy, he must be on drugs all the time. And he’d disappear for days at a

time. He’d just catch a plane, one of the courier planes and that and he’d just jump on that and go somewhere else. And he used to meet up with guys he knew and I suppose they were into drugs and everything. And we didn’t like it you know and we complained to the platoon commander who was a black American too, he was a major. And we said, you know the guy just disappears for days at a time.

And we’ve got to cover for him, you know go flying for him. And he said, “He’s been here for 3 years and he hasn’t been home,” and he used to be a grunt which was a foot soldier. And he said, “He’s now flying because he’s had enough of being a grunt.”

And so he just said, “We’ve just got to put up with him.” That’s it. So we did. But yeah I’m sure he was into hard drugs and that. But very hard for us to come to terms with this guy just going off for a few days and the drugs and that.

I don’t know. I got drunk a few times but it was at night. But I guess you can’t. It’s like, as I said before, when I drove the, the duty sergeant around and he went in the bunker and they were all sitting in there smoking pot. And they’re

supposed to be protecting us. I guess, yeah, weak link in the chain isn’t it?

Yeah. Yeah. I think - I guess discipline was hard to administer in those circumstances.

Yeah we - when we first got there we had a - our platoon sergeant was an American sergeant and his name was Andraco. And he used to smoke a cigar and he was, I don’t know he was, he was a real peanut.

The things he used to do. And he really didn’t have any, any - well he didn’t have respect. You’ve got to have respect to be a leader. And he - nobody respected him. And we had PT who was our petty officer - he was like he’d do platoon sergeant if this other guy wasn’t around see. And this morning

we used to have - what they had formation they called it and we would all fall in in our little platoons and that. And this guy this Andraco was, this morning he was there and he’s got his cigar in his mouth. And he said something - I don’t know what it was. Something happened and PT just walked over to him and he went .. and pushed his cigar into his mouth. And the guy was so - like he was devastated. They had to actually transfer him out

to another company because, you know he’d just lost the plot of what he was doing. And so somebody else put up with him then. But yeah I mean, there was no discipline when he was … And the Americans - we had discipline because we were - we’d been in the navy for a while and it was natural for us to act in

a disciplined way but the Americans, only in there for the short term and they didn’t care. So yeah it didn’t mean as much to them.

I think it made it harder yeah. Because people didn’t care so they, they didn’t want to do things you know. So it made it more work for other people.

And morale suffers a bit too when you have lack of discipline. And when your morale’s low you don’t get the results out of people that you need. But and particularly like when you working on aircraft. I mean aircraft are - you have to make sure that you do the right - when you’re doing something on it you have to do it right. And if you don’t do it right then it could kill

end up killing people. And so that’s a big worry when people don’t care. So…

I think, I think you - be more informed about what you’re required to do. Because I know that I wasn’t. I didn’t know, I didn’t have a lot of - we didn’t have a lot of information on Vietnam so we didn’t really know what we were getting into. And I think it’s essential

that your training is, is the right type of training for what you might be expected to do. And I think that if you have to do it then you do a good job of it, do it properly. And I guess, don’t volunteer to do it because

Australians have been good at volunteering to go to war and, and a lot of them have never come back from it.