Australians at War Film Archive

Actually, if you want to know going right back to where I was born. I was born in England in a little village called Linton. It was in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire in England. And I was born in 1915, in April 1915. And when I was a few weeks old, I lived in Scotland for a while

and then my father was in the Old Contemptibles [regular army British troops] of the British Army in the First World War and he got severely wounded about the time that I was born and my mother took me to Scotland where he was convalescent.

In France. You don’t mean the part of his body, just you mean here.

And then I lived there and then

he came over from there and he went to he got sent to India. He wasn’t fit enough to go back to France they sent him on the occupational forces in India. And just before the war ended, he was going back to the front and the war ended and they sent him to Ireland. And then we went to Ireland with my mother and my other sister and we lived there for a while. And then we came back to England and in 1923 we came to Australia.

I think mainly because there was nothing for them in England.

There was thousands of unemployed ex-servicemen round England at that time and Dad did go into business but he wasn’t progressive enough. He went into a transport system and he bought horses and drays and carts and those things and at that particular time motor transport was coming in and he couldn’t compete against that, and I think he decided to come here. And in England at that particular time there was a big movement on for the Group Settlement Scheme. You know all about that do ya’ in the south west?

That was a Sir James Mitchell had an idea and this come in the 1920s of bringing a lot of English migrants out here and settle ’em on the land and clearing lands around Manjimup, quite a few places. Pemberton. Northcliffe. Some went to Busselton, round that area down there, and we went to Manjimup with the Group Settlement Scheme in 1923.

In my family. My original family?

There was my mother and father of course and when we came to Australia there

was four of us, then we had another two after we lived here. So there was the six.

There was four.

Yeah.

We had, my mother was pregnant when we came here and she had another baby just after we got to Australia and a bit later on we had another one. So, that makes, yeah.

No, he carried ’em right,

practically till he died a matter of fact. Although, he did join up Australian, in the forces here when the Second War broke out he never fully recovered and he died as of war wounds and he was classed as a, my mother was classed as a war widow from Australia, yeah.

Oh yeah. We went to Group Settlement, they gave us a big area chunk a land down there full of Kauri trees and everything else and gave him a cross-cut saw and an axe and a shovel and he make himself a farm. That’s what it was all about.

We lived in a tin shack; it’d be smaller than this room. Then dirt floor and no windows just a bit of a door and that’s what they put us in and we struggled and it was cause there were hundreds of ’em down there. There was 19, Abbott and the cooper [makes wooden barrels]. And there was I s’pose, we were number 79 Group seeing as though there must’ve been a lot of them and there was a lot more coming after us. And it was a scheme that the, I think the Depression really killed it. It went really well. We got

quite a nice little farm going down there and was doing all right until the Depression hit us and we were supplying butter fat to the local butter factories down there. We had cows…

Dairying.

Well, they for the Group Settlement Scheme, everything was provided by the government. As you worked, they gave them a subsidy. Like I think they gave ’em 3 pound a week to live on and as they wanted things they were provided and then later on when the farm

became operatin’ it was re-valued and you carried on from there with a mortgage on the. The R&I Bank which now is Bank West, now of what it was then and then just had to manage from there. And that’s what really killed it. When they, as I say, was getting 1 and 6 a pound for butter fat and then when the Depression hit us it went down to 8 pence. Yet, the mortgage on the farm still remained the same and interest rates, and that just killed ’em and hundreds of the farmers walked off.

No my father

didn’t leave it. When he resigned from the British Army he was on a retirement officers list and he offered his services to Britain but they manpowered him on his farm. Anyway, so then he decided that’s when he got of the farm so he could join the army. He wanted to get back in the forces again which he did. And I joined the army at the same time you see.

It was pretty rough. As I say, we had this little shack with no… Dirt

floor and a corrugated iron roof. You can just imagine what it was like. And you ever seen that the men’s toilet in Kalgoorlie?

Down at the two-up school.

Yeah? You never been to the two-up school?

Well, you wouldn’t know what I was talkin’ about then. They used to have four rooms made a rough timber and iron roof and corrugated iron round the sides that’s all it was yeah. Homemade

furniture. They used to get boxes if they could and make up furniture and that kind of thing. But we kids didn’t know any different. We had for us it was a great adventure. But my mother never liked it never. And we had no school. We had…

It was. We had a lovely home. She had a two-storey home and well furnished and everything else in England and all that went to come here.

Dad never did but Mum hated it. She never even by the time she died she never liked living in Australia. But

we had as I say we had no sanitation. We had to get water at the creek and we had no school for 18 months and us kids we just looked like a like a wild kids runnin’ round the place. Then they gave us a school.

At the Group?

What they did they put us in a little camp? There was about six or seven of us. No there was 19 at Spitters too. So, there’d be about 10 families in our group and about

9 in the other or something like that and then as they got land cleared on the farms they cleared a house site and they build a four roomed weatherboard house for us. And one by one we moved out a the camp into the house when the house was finished. So, my mother had been havin’ the youngest baby we got the first house that was built. So, we went down to Manjimup in October and we got our first house in the following June I think it was when we moved into the house. But some of the others never got them for several months

after that and then they had the winter in these shacks down there. It was a rough old life.

Hot and flies. Flies and fleas. You’ve never seen as many fleas in your life down there.

Fleas. Yeah, droves of them.

Well, I don’t know but there was this. I’d never seen fleas since like it. But they just come in the camp and where they was there. The only time I ever saw fleas like that was in the Middle East when we went into a Bedouin camp one time.

anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah, the whole lot of us were all come. Most of us came out on the same ship from England.

We had plenty of company know about that yeah.

Well, we used to play the games that normally kids got. We had no

cricket sets footballs none of that to play with. We had to just roam around the bush and do all things we had you know could find time to do. The parents used to get together and run you know bits a sing songs and that type of thing. And one lady did have a piano which was quite an asset you know. A course got the school going it was pleased there was dances in the little school and that sort of thing. But that was later on. But we had quite a hectic. I s’pose in some respects it was a good life because we learnt a lot about the bush and all that sort a thing

that the kids don’t they. Cause there was animals down there those days there was plenty of frogs and kangaroos and wallabies and course there were snakes and goannas and all that round the place too and we kids used to get interested in all those. Had to watch the snakes but the goannas didn’t worry us very much.

Yeah. We used to wander round the bush. And there was a creek. As I say, we used to paddle in the creek. Catch yorkies down there and things like that.

About 18 months. We landed then we went in October and in the following February 12 months before we got a school built.

The school was a one room school with one teacher. It was built of asbestos and wood and it had a bit of a schoolyard fenced off and the schooling was we got. John Tompkin was one of the teachers you know he used to be the Premier of West

Australia here one time. He was one of the first teachers we had down that way. He wasn’t at (UNCLEAR) but it was at one a the locals not too far away. I think he was over Margaret River way somewhere over that way he was a school teacher.

No Manjimup was going long before we were. We was about 7 or 8 miles out of town out of Manjimup

and we had one horse and cart to service the whole area the whole group of and one

day a week someone to drive the horse and cart to town where they would buy the groceries and that sort a thing and also anybody want to go there was a doctor in there. He was there one day a week and we’d have to go and see the doctor unless they were emergencies. And there was a hospital at a place called Jardee they call it now it was Jardinup then. And they had a hospital there and that was another 3 mile on the other side a Manjimup. So, if you had any emergencies they had to put you on a horse and cart and take you down to this hospital.

which there were. We had troubles you know like you would in any community.

People would get the same thing as they get now all sorts of flues and that illnesses and there may be accidents occasionally where someone got a. I can remember one time when a horse bolted with a man in a cart and the cart tipped over and the man was unconscious for several days and course he had to be carted in the cart into town and.

Pardon?

Yes well he was. He was you know but that sort of thing used to happen here. Course people used to get appendicitis and that all those sort of thing where they had to go to hospital for and.

We did later on yes. When we got away from the camp we did. In the camp we didn’t grow nothing. We had no fences nothing around us but when we got into our own we grew we had a little we planted an orchard and we used to grow we’re almost self contained from that type of thing yeah.

Gettin’ up in the morning to milk the cows before we went to school. We kicked off with one cow and then we got two and we gradually built up. But as the cows built up well it was before we went to school in the morning we had to help with the milking and the farm and then we went to school and then we’d come home from school and go to get the cows and help again and milk again at night.

It was all hand milk. There was no machines in those days a course.

There was no motor vehicles around the place either they came in later. There was some contractors in Manjimup that used to contract and cart stuff out to us. And now and again they’d hire one of those and they’d put some boxes as seats on the back of the truck. And he might take us down to the Donnelly River which wasn’t really far away and we might have a picnic down there the river and things like that.

Yes it was. Also, we might come back to Bridgetown with the Blackbird River. Sometimes we go there.

The Blackbird River at Bridgetown. But the Donnelly River was our favourite spot. We used to catch marron and all that type a thing there and swimming down there. It was quite good. There was no restriction in marron those days and there was plenty of them there. There was the One Tree Bridge down there. You may have heard of that. Many years ago some of the early pioneers of Manjimup long before us they found a graphite mine down there and to get to it they dropped a tree across the Donnelly River and built a bridge on it and they call it the One Tree Bridge. It was just wide enough to get a cart

across and it was we used to go down to that and play around there.

We learnt to swim at a place we called Muddy Boo. It was a there used to be a peat swamp and you know what peat is? Peat would burn. When it got very, very dry we had no water would sort of fade up and it caught alight and a great hole burnt down in this peat swamp and there was quite a I s’pose it would be quite as big as that

carport out there. Might even be bigger.

Peat is decayed vegetation layer. A lot of it they use in Ireland for fuel and after it burnt out anyway when the water filled up. The next time it rained it filled up they had water nearly all year round. The only thing you had a lot a black sediment in there when you used to come out you’re near the shower. But cause we never had showers those days either. So, we usually got bath once a week if we were lucky.

Yeah. Cause there was no bathrooms in the house

and we’d have a open tub and you had to cart it from the creek and warm it up in the kerosene tin outside and.

Yeah, the creek was running. Quite good water.

We kept away. We went there we had a separate area there where. You kept away you didn’t go swimming or paddling in there that was for the yeah.

Yeah, that’s right. It was a permanent creek. It ran all year round.

But it wasn’t a really big one but it used to it had water all the year round yeah. I don’t think you could drink it now but those days you could.

The same subject as the primary school. They kicked off at the baby infants and went through the different grades so when you got to Seventh School and you had to correspondence they used to the teacher used to supervise it but you got correspondence lessons sent to the school from the Education Department in Perth. But he’d only actually

teach to the Sixth Grade. I don’t know what they call ’em now. I lost track of the grades now but they’re different to what they used to.

Well, we used to do reading writing and arithmetic and history and geography and religion that type of thing. We used to have a minister used to come occasionally and we used to have a religion service. The Catholics used to be divided from the Protestants and used to have services like that or something.

No. No, no restrictions at all. We did have some outside farmers group. There was round about there were some people there farming there before we were there and they also joined our school too. There was a bit more friction between the kids and them than there was because we had the Aussies and the Poms [English] and they used to be, you know they used to sling off at us a bit and now and again there’d be fights and things like that among the kids but nothing serious. But…

Well, we had more

Poms than what Aussies there so we had the upper hand.

Yeah, the Aussies were outnumbered, yeah.

We used to play soccer and cricket in the playground the early days. Later on we did get as the farms developed they used to have football and cricket and soccer. Not so much cricket. Not so much football and we used to go to the neighbours place and he had a paddock big enough to put a field down and then we played cricket

and joined up with the teams from Manjimup and other places like that. That’s getting on after we’d been there a few years though.

No, not a great bit.

The main occupation there was the dances in the hall. You say what we did on the weekend? Those days people used to work a 48 hour week, used to be 6 days a

week all day. You only got Sunday off. And course Sundays are you doing things round the house or things round the unit and that.

You never had a great deal of time for fun. Like later on we as youngsters we started gettin’ round a bit. We get in a group and some of us got pushbikes later on or we’d walk and. You’d think nothing of walking 6 mile to go to a dance or see a cricket match or something like that.

We had no way of getting there and then a course later on we getting get horses we might ride a horse or go in a horse and cart something like that.

It affected very much so. The, all the prices as I say dropped completely, in you know it’s a. They only had 3 pounds a week to live on and then when the Depression hit them that even came down as low as sometimes 3 pound a month. And they used to a great job to. Well,

what they used to grow on the farm and buying food and that there was nothing left and. Clothing and that used to be very hard to get.

Clothing, yeah.

Well, we had to make the best we do. I’ve seen my mother make they used to put flour up in white calico bags. She’d use that to make up clothes for the kids and things like that. And for blankets on the beds you’d use sacks and open them up and cover them with some cheap material to make blankets and…

It was very, very rough, yeah. They talk about the immigrants coming here now they complain about the conditions. They never knew what we put up with when we came here.

I don’t think anyone ever went hungry. No, I don’t think so. They all seemed to get enough food.

Well, you had to. I mean it was the only source of a living you had and there was no work around the place. So it was in those days they had unemployment camps round the area where they used to bring in people from Perth and put them into tents and live and they used to do road and all that type of thing around there and you couldn’t get a job anywhere. Later on the tobacco plantations did start up and they…

Tobacco.

And there was a lot a that they did but they used to employ very cheap labour. The money we got from them was very, very low.

I never worked on, personally no I never.

Around Manjimup.

There was lots a tobacco down there they used to.

No, they grew tobacco until the big tobacco companies like H & O Wills and these companies sort a got mixed up with America and they bought America in from Jamaica and these places they bought tobacco over there which was cheaper than they could produce it over

there.

So, we gradually phased it out, yeah.

There’s a firm name Mike Lees used to have a big interest down there and they used to buy these big firms came over and buy all the best tobacco at their price then what was left over Mike Lees’d take. They used to make local cigarettes and tobacco and it was the first in Manjimup called Dick Faldon, local names, which very, sort of used to sell pretty cheap.

It was.

We used to get papers sent to us from England. When we come to England and my grandma used to send my father the local papers and that. But they used to take quite a while, they used to take about 6 weeks to get anything over like that and if you ever got into Manjimup, you could buy West Australian or Western Mail or something like that.

But there was no radios in those days either. Odd people did have a wind-up gramophone but that was about all there in that respect. But as I say they did make up there own fun. Then when you used to go to little dances down there people English people are very open with singing everyone they’d have a dance and someone’d get up and sing an item and they’d, so everyone in the hall’d sing a few and they’d. Not, you wouldn’t get anybody to get up sing now but in those days they used to. And for music in the dance we’d have, someone’d have a button accordion

and that’s all’d be the music and everybody’d bring a plate of supper along and during the evening they’d make supper and bring it, you know pass round. They’d bring their babies along the young ones and they used to put em under the seats put em on the side there and tuck ’em under a blanket under the seat and the people’d looked after their. When they made their coffee or tea they used to go outside, you know what a kerosene tin is, I s’pose do you? Four gallon tin and they’d put a couple of leaves on it on the fire outside to boil the water to make some tea and coffee and

someone’d bring some milk up. Some milk from one a the farms and that.

You probably worked for some farms normally the whole because I worked on the farm with my father for a few years I was. There was 5 years between my brother and myself and I had to help in on the farm until others came along and then I went out to work myself and I worked on the other people, worked on the farm worked on orchards for a while. Some, and then later on I.

Apples,

apples mainly and then when I was working there there was vacant, become a group, St Clair become vacant next to me father’s and I went home and I took on the job of running that for a while. But you never got too much money out of that.

Ploughing. Picking fruit. Pruning and all that sort of thing. Packing cases and you know general cleaning up.

Pardon?

It was all yard work anyway. Then

anyway, when I was on the farm the, when the Depression really hit us hard I let the farm go, the one I was lookin’ after.

No, it wasn’t an orchard, that was all a dairy farm was there. When I worked on the orchard, I was employed by somebody else.

Then from there, I went into there was the local brickworks in Manjimup and I got a job with them for a while.

Yeah, and I could make better money on the brickworks than I could make on the farm.

You were diggin’ clay and makin’ bricks and burning bricks and loading them on trucks, and all that type a thing. All manual labour. Things that not like they got today. It was just all done all…

It was dusty and muddy and smoky, and yeah bit of everything.

And then if they got any heavy rain you couldn’t make bricks cause you had to put them out in the open to dry and the rain would affect them. So you only could make bricks in the fine weather, so if you got a wet

day they just stood ya’ down. You never got any pay for it, just take the day off and that was all that was doing.

No.

Yeah. Then for a while too I got mixed up with another, an Italian, and we went down to Pemberton and there was a little mill down there that used to want timber to make fruit cases. And we went out on the bush and we used to cut timber and cart it into this mill where they shortened it into timber and make it into fruit cases,

and I was on that up until the time I actually joined the army.

He was an Italian migrant, yeah. They were livin’ round the area and he was looking for someone to help him with his he was busy. He was doing that sort a work for years and I just went with him for a while.

It was only him and I together. He had a truck and then we’d fall a tree and then we’d cut enough timber off to load his truck and he’d take it in and while he was away I’d work the saw on me own and cut some more until he’d come back.

Well, reasonably big trees. Although, I s’pose they’d some of them’d be up to 3 foot through. That’s about the biggest what we could handle. We couldn’t handle the very big heavy ones and there’d be

about 10 foot long then we’d have to winch them onto the truck. He had a truck with a winch thing on it and we used to load em on the truck and put three logs onto a truck and he’d take them away. Then he’d come back and when we’re on the last one cause I was coming in with him, we camped at a little shack at the mill.

It was all hard work, yeah. I did hard work all me life.

Well, the war broke out, as you know, all these were very interested in what was going on there because it was England was involved and everybody was supporting England. Not so much they do know, but they don’t do it as much now as we did then and it was all looking for you know, waiting for it to happen. We knew it was going to happen. And well, when the war broke out the…

Mainly, we did by that stage we had a radio time the war broke out we did have a

second-hand radio and we used to get the news on that every night.

I think yes. My father was he was dyin’ to get to it. Once the war started he was bein’ an old soldier he wanted to get to the war again. He was a regular army soldier before the First World War, he, that was his blood and his life his soldiering you see.

Yeah.

And I decided I was gonna go too. I was, once

I was old enough to go I was only old enough, only one in the family that was old enough to join up at the time and I was. So I joined up right from 1940, right at the beginnin’ of it.

He’d be in his forties I s’pose. Must’a been cause I was…

Yeah, but he only went. My father was terrific hornet player and he got in the, they formed the

what they called the Line of Communication band in Perth which used to be a band that used to go round playin’ for different functions and that. And it mainly consisted of old men and he got with that. He stayed with that during the whole of the war.

Fund raising and mainly on parades and all that type of thing. My father played the bugle calls incidentally when John Curtin, the Prime

Minister, died. He got picked to play the bugle call for his funeral and things like that.

Yeah.

He was an excellent musician, yeah. And all his life he played in bands right till the time he died he was mixed up with bands round the different places.

Well, what they used to do, they used to run recruitment drives in the country.

And they came into Manjimup and they took over the local town hall and they had the doctors and the there was a whole lot of us went in there and we all, they gave us medicals and checked up and signed us up, and we took the oath and all that sort of thing. Although, that was in May but it was December before they got us into camp. They had so many people joining up in Western Australia they couldn’t handle them.

They give you from head to toe, right the whole lot the heart and you know everything

that’s.

Yeah. Then we had…

Yeah, well there wasn’t too many rejected as a matter of fact. Most of those got through. The only thing that kept me back for a while was my height. They had a 6 foot. It was.. No, 5 foot 6 [inches] was the minimum they had to take you at and I was about half inch below that but. And after a few months, they cut that down to my height and I got in.

Yes, I did. Yes, there was quite a group of us went together and then when we went into camp they ran a train from Northcliffe. And it picked up people all the way to Perth on different places, stations there’d be a mob waiting to get on this train and when we went into a camp at Claremont, where we were enlisted properly, then they shoved us out to camp. We went to camp at naval base.

The train came to Manjimup. We got on the train we didn’t. The train started at Northcliffe and picked up each station on the way through.

Well, it was something new it was something excitement all the time and bein’ in the army with so much to do at the time and so many men meant it was great.

When I went into the army I was about 25.

There was some younger than me, a lot older too you know.

Well, that was like any other train journey with troops. The men, but they were all boisterous and yelling and singing and shoutin’ out, you know all the way up that type of thing. It was quite a good trip up really.

They gave us one [shilling] and threepence each for a meal on the train to see us through the day. When we got on the train they

checked our names off and gave us one and threepence in cash and that was our meal for the day. We bought a cup a tea and a pie or something on the station comin’ through.

Only on that, see only had lunch we had. Then we got to the camp at Claremont and we had a meal prepared for us there.

They put us in a tent and gave us a bag a straw and some blankets and you made yourself comfortable and that. Then the next day we

started off all the medical examinations all again. Then they swore us in and then gave us a uniform. Went to the store and they asked you the size of your hat and the size of your feet. Then they chuck [throw] a mob [a collection] of clothes over to you and we took ’em to the tents and tried ’em on and the big man’s they was all too small for the big blokes and too other way for the little ones. We had to swap ’em around till we got something reasonable to fit us and that was our clothing.

We was given a dress uniform. Like I wouldn’t say dress,

our service uniform they called it for big parades and that. Gave us what we used to call a giggle suit. It was a jacket and a pair of khaki trousers sort a thing and then they gave us underwear and all that sort of thing to go with it. A hat cap and a things like that.

Then the training we did there was course learning how to stand easy how to salute and all and marching and gradually, they gradually work us up. Was only in Claremont a couple of days and they shipped us down to the naval

base where we started our training properly there.

Naval Base. There used to be a military camp at Naval Base those days. There was another one at Melville but they’ve all gone now. And we was at Naval Base I s’pose several months and then we got they shipped us up to Northam where the main training depot was, yeah.

Naval Base was a tremendous camp. I think at one time it was a quarantine station or something in the early, early days and

we wasn’t very far from the beach and every morning they got us out of bed at 6 o’clock, this is not in the summertime. And they’d take us straight down the beach and you could either have a swim or do PT [Physical Training] on the beach. Most of us used to have a swim. Then they’d bring us back then we used to have a shower or get cleaned up and then we’d have breakfast and then spend the rest of the day learning all sorts of army tactics and that sort a thing.

You had to learn to handle a rifle how to shoot and all that type of thing and march and do

manoeuvres. We used to got out and they’d have one mob’d go out and take position on a hill and the other take the hill off that mob up there, and the umpires’d tell you whether you was dead or whether you was alive and all this sort a thing. Exciting yeah.

I was pretty fit. Some of the men wasn’t as fit as I was came, some of them came from other places they were very, you know weak and tired. But I, was nothing there they put to me there I couldn’t do. And I was a good shot with a rifle cause

in the country on the farms we’d learn to shoot and all that sort a thing before I went. And…

Well, I s’pose there was a difference really. Cause I mean targets as big as that scene behind you but a rabbit was different altogether, yeah.

Well, we never shot many rabbits because down where I lived we never had a great deal a rabbits and they used to poison ’em mainly down there.

Pardon?

No, well once they started poisoning, well you couldn’t. They poisoned rabbits down there, they brought myxomatosis and different diseases in there though, you know, but we never admit. When we first went down there we used to eat a lot a kangaroos and those sort a things. Kangaroo tail soups and those for they were great. Kangaroo tail soup was used and kangaroo was quite a common item on the menu.

Just like rows of shacks.

Rows of long huts about six in a hut I think it was. Then there was a kitchen and a recreation hall and that was about all.

Yeah, about 60. We had a big long hut there was about 60 men in a big hut.

Yeah.

Well, it was something new for me. We got on quite all right together. You know, you had about that much difference between your beds. You had your bed there and he had his down here and they outfit right down. We only had. We had no beds. We had a

palliasse. What they called a palliasse, that was a bag a straw which they issued us to sleep on, and they gave us some blankets. And you had never had a pillow, you had to make your do what you could make up a pillow yourself with some of your clothes and kit. And then you had this shelf on the top of the bed where you could put a few odds and ends and that. Put your dixies and things there. And they cooked the meals for us of course.

Meals were quite good.

Well, we used to get porridge and cornflakes or

cereals that for breakfast and for lunch we’d have probably a cooked meal and same thing for tea and things like that. Some of their meals were great.

They had showers, cold ones of course, and taps. And then we had, they did have some coppers or some troughs where we could wash clothes and that. But they had, all the showers were cold right through for the first while. I never had a warm shower in the

army until the following June when we was up in Northam and they put a shower in up there. We used to have to have cold showers. They used to give us shower parades and every man that’s already had a towel wrapped round him he’d go through the, gee. And you had to go through the shower and have a shower and then he’d come out the other end and the doctor would inspect you when you came out. Lookin’ for venereal disease mainly. And that used to be on bout once a fortnight you got that.

Yeah, every second week we used to get three days. We used to get Saturday, Sunday, and a Monday leave and the alternative weeks you were in camp but we used to get that. But they were on that, all the time with the venereal disease.

There were. No very, very few men ever caught it but they were just a, you know more checkin’ up to see if we did get that.

They used to tell us some of the stories. They told us about what used to happen with the venereal

diseases.

Well, we were in the Middle East, the story they used to tell us over there, you know about different parts of your body, and I mean if you got venereal disease and you had any dependants they stopped their money.

Yeah, and you had to go and ring up and tell your wife or your whoever the person was why they weren’t gettin’ any pay and of course that used to frighten people. But they did have.

But they did. They were

presenting things for you, if you wanted to go out on leave or take ’em with you, they used to have condoms and blue outfits. They used to call ’em different things that you could take with you to prevent diseases and you were supposed to take them if you went on leave or anything like that with ya’.

I think it was mainly training. I think it was a part of the, to get him cause when you were in the Middle East you went to places over there where there was all sorts of brothels and things. Over there the temptation

was there and they were gettin’ the blokes trained for that before they went over there.

Yes, I think they were, yes I think so. Yes, I think that was the main part of it.

Well, I used to go home. I got married durin’ my first few months in the army. So I used to go home to my wife and well I’d go home and see my parents and things like that. But some of them used to go different places. Most of us used to go home to their families. There were a

lot a country boys that had families living in country towns and that and they’d go home to them.

We used to hire in Manjimup, we used to hire a bus, one a the bus companies and that would take us right down and take us down on a Friday night. Let us go and then we’d come back Monday afternoon and back to the camp then.

I met her at when I was at a dance actually. When, before the war

and we became engaged then we decided we’d get married before I went overseas.

Pardon?

I got talked into it really. I wasn’t really keen about it. I thought that goin’ overseas. I said to her I was goin’ overseas, I might get killed or I might get, you know, come back wounded and all that sort a thing and she wouldn’t have a bar of it. She said if we got married, she said we’d have each other for a while before I went away.

And then she said she wanted to have a baby to remember me by and all this sort a thing and so that’s the basis of it I s’pose. It worked in the finish, I gave in, and we got married.

Well, I wanted to marry her but I didn’t think I should. That’s how I felt you know. I wanted to do the right thing. But she said I was doin’ the right thing and my parents backed her up a bit too. She got really friendly with them and my mother went through the First War as a, you know, and as a wife of

a soldier and she said it’s quite all right so I did. And I think in some ways it’s a good thing I did because once you got overseas where you had temptation and that I was married I was true to my wife and didn’t do anything and so didn’t get mixed up in any of that. So on the whole it was quite good.

Bout 4 or 5 months.

The elementary army training, you know with the, as I was saying, we had to learn to march and to, and draw the weapons. Then we had to learn how to use weapons and all that type of thing. We was issued with rifles from the First World War and machine guns and that type of thing was all the old stuff but we just had to

learn the principals of it. Then we used to do route marching too and things like that.

I had no problems with it at all. Didn’t worry me one little bit. I was never ever AWL [Absent Without Leave]. I never got into trouble any time in the army. But I used to, well I went into the army I thought well, they’re the rules just obey the rules that was all there was too it.

Some of them used to muck up. There was always an odd one here and there but the majority of them were quite good.

Most country boys are I’ve found. There’s you got more trouble from the city ones you did from the country ones. The country ones are used to, you know, mucking down and doin’ things. And course bein’ from the country too we never had you couldn’t step out at night time with your girlfriends who you knew down the road cause we had no one here. We had all our relations were down the country. No, I found that I liked the army life very much so.

We never had any trouble. We

all sort a settled in together and that was all. It was new to everybody. We did have big, I say a big, some of our mob that came in were ex-militia who served in the civilian army [CMF – Citizen’s Military Force] before the war and they came in to us. Most of them got promotion really early in the piece, you know, they soon got stripes and they went up the ladder. But us country boys not too many we had to fight our way up there.

We were and we used to swim there quite often.

And we used to have. Often they’d take us down there and they’d decide to do PT [physical training] or swim and we’d swim and we used to sometimes we’d go fishin’ there at night and we’d take fish and the cooks…We had some friends in the cooks who cook up the fish for us. We bought some fish in, well we’d share the fish with them and they’d cook ’em for us and we’d have a fish supper or something like that which was quite good, yeah.

It was very, very good there.

It was good. On the whole

the army food, generally speaking, right through was before the war I reckoned the food was good allowing for the conditions you was under. Sometimes it was, we found, I found the worst food we ever had in the army was in the transit camps. But usually when you’re in your own unit, you got your own cooks and that sort a thing and the food was great.

We had a, we went December. It’d be February when we left naval base. We went to Northam and when we got up more training, extensive training

there and when I was at Northam we, I got put into a transport school where I did a…

Up by train. Just took us up there by train then they put us in camps and that. Some similar to Naval Base although Northam, they had about up to about 8,000 troops, but where we were it was only about 4 or 500 so that means a difference in the size of the camps there.

At Northam? Same

as we were. We all went together and we just went into a separate part a the camp which was empty and that was all right. Some of the older some there were some blokes up there we already knew. I had blokes who joined up ahead’a me and they was in camp already there. Met back up with them you know. Then we had good recreation halls up there where they used to had all sorts of games you know darts you name it what they’d do you know in these places and reading rooms and libraries and always a canteen.

Every where’s a canteen in every camp we practically anywhere. Beer used to be supplied and that type of thing. Or you bought a beer you’d didn’t buy it didn’t get it supplied.

Accommodation was they, were bit huts and they were both sides. We had there was sixty to a hut but Northam they were down to about 25 I think but they were smaller. And they were made of corrugated iron and that sort of stuff so they were very cold in the wintertime and hot in the summer. And

they had plenty a windows in ’em and they had. Say one year you only had about that much space between your beds where you or you never had a bed you slept on the floor and that was same thing. And then you had a corporal in charge a ya’, they used to put the lights out about 10 o’clock and that was supposed to gone to bed there.

Now and again, there used to be some hijinks in the place at night time. But overall, it was they settled down pretty quiet.

Well, you might play up with your mate’s bed before he come home or something like that. He’d get in his bed and find he’s been ankles it’s upside down or short sheeted or stuff. Or you never had sheets but short blanket I s’pose you’d call it you know. But we used to, we had some good times up there.

Six o’clock you got up and you had a roll call, and then you either, they used to trot you off to for a bit of a time of it

down the beach, we used to go where you had the choice of either a swim or PT. Then you came back and then you went did your ablutions and cleaned up and then breakfast. After breakfast you’d have a parade and you’d start your whatever they’re gonna do. Used to be say an hour on subjects and they’d change you round from subject to another. We used to do map reading and learning how to use your weapons and all that type of thing. All in sessions and then route marching.

Sometimes you’d go all day route marches. You’d take your lunch with you and go for a route march all day.

Well, you must do 20-odd mile I s’pose on some days, yeah. I used to love the route marches when I got there. They were lovely. They were better than I reckoned it was better than mucking round on parade grounds sometimes, yeah.

In the army used to every hour, you stopped for 10 minutes.

No, beg your pardon it was 20 minutes you stopped for. Every half hour you stopped. You marched and had 20 minutes break, then you started again. That was it, yeah.

Usually sat down on the ground where ever we could find a…When we was overseas a bit we used to by there, might be when you stopped you’d get the local’s who’d come round tryin’ to sell you oranges and souvenirs and things like that, but which we never had in Australia.

Good. They were very, very good and very friendly and they were most of the instructors we had were First World War or men had been through it and they knew what it was all about and they were really good and very friendly to you and help you any way they could, yeah.

Yes, that used to come up quite a bit. In fact, I think we was trained too much on the One War principle because things were different between the two wars. We never had the trenches and that sort a thing they had in the First World War. It was always open

warfare mainly what we were.

Yeah. They mainly taught how to. You had to learn how to recognise things and distances and map reading. And in Northam I did a transport school. I found that really good. And that way you was driving and not only driving you was taught mechanics and different things what could go wrong and then you had to do map reading

and find your way around by grids on maps and all this sort a thing. But it was great I thought.

Well, they asked for applications, anyone like to go into the school and I put me name down and they accepted me. And the, you didn’t go away as the transport unit, they gave you a provisional licence which you took with you and later on in the army when they wanted drivers in the infantry, where I was, I just applied and they gave me a test there and they gave me a put me on a

off siding on a truck and I stayed there for quite a while. And that was driving in the infantry you wasn’t in the base. You was forward with the troops all the time, backin’ them up. When they was in action you was backing them up with ammunition and food and all that type of thing.

We was at Northam from February till July I think. The 4th of July we left for overseas, yeah.

Yes, we used to get the, every second week they used to give us 3 days off.

Go home as a rule. Go home to your family or who.

I used to take the 3 days that was issued to us. The whole half the camp used to get leave one weekend and half the next so you all went out.

Yes, occasionally. But mostly we used to come, they used to run special trains on the, to take us bring into Perth then we’d go from there wherever we wanted

to go. Or some chaps had their own cars and transport, they were gettin’ around a bit and they’d go home in their own vehicles and that sort a thing. And when I got married my wife come and lived in Northam. She got rooms up there and I used to stop in there of a weekend. I got to know some of the local people in Northam and, you know we used to go out with them. Used to go to church sometimes with them and different functions in Northam and my wife got mixed up with people there.

Well, they used to run dances and pictures and different things like that and there wasn’t much else.

Well, that when the we were training right up to the time they put us on. They gave us a week’s embarkation leave as they called it and then we come from that we had to be ready all to move out and just one day they put us on closed camp and we couldn’t communicate the telephones all went out. You couldn’t

get anybody. That night we marched out, put on a train and taken down to the Fremantle wharf and loaded onto a oil tanker thing that was on the wharf thing, and took us out to sea. And here was the Queen Mary sittin’ up in the air and we sat alongside the Queen Mary for a couple of hours and eventually they took us aboard.

Went home. We went, the wife and I we went down to Manjimup where her folks lived and my folks lived and spent some time with them seeing some

friends and that down there.

Well, they gave us. In Manjimup, they had a public farewell for each group of troops that was going away. They had the hall out and they had quite a show there and they had a presented us with wallets and those sort a things, you know for souvenirs to take with us to go away. I’ve still got my wallet here somewhere here now that they gave me in Manjimup to go to the war with.

Quite a bit occasion. Lot a people in the town

turned up and lot a speeches telling what good blokes we were and all that sort a thing you know.

Not so much drinking no. There was a bit but no, not so much as you might expect.

No, we was stopped in our own units but they just made it a closed camp you wasn’t allowed out.

At Northam.

The section of the camp that we was in we wasn’t allowed to communicate with anybody to tell anybody that you was going. But yet when we left Northam there was people all the way at every station between Manjimup Northam and Perth there was a group of people to see us through but they wasn’t supposed to know we was going. And we didn’t even know what we was goin’ or where we was going or anything. Early in the piece, they said they put us in the groups and they said you was going to be reinforcements for the 2/11th Battalion. Then they changed that to the 2/7th. Then they finished up they said and they put us on the

2/43rd which we’d never even heard of. Nobody in West Australia had ever heard of. And we didn’t know who they were till we got on the boat and we found out they were from South, they were a South Australian battalion. And in West Australia we had so many people joining up, they couldn’t handle ’em. In South Australia, they couldn’t do enough so they transferred some of us to the South Australian units. So, I actually joined a South Australian unit. And we didn’t know on the boat where they were or anything until we got on the ship and they told us they was in Tobruk.

The Queen Mary? There was thousands on there from all over from New Zealand and Australia all on the boat there. All different units. We was last on the boat and we got right down the bottom and in hammocks right down below water level. It wasn’t really comfortable down there either. But.

Everybody you’ll be sorry was the cry the common phrase that everybody used to say to everybody. If you’d been there a day longer than the new bloke you first thing you said you’ll be sorry. That was going on.

But the meals on the Queen Mary wasn’t bad. We had plenty a room we used to do they had two swimming pools and picture theatres and there was about 6,000 of us I think on the Queen Mary. And they used to run races round the decks and we used to get lectures and PT and that type of thing on board. And then they had a gambling gamlet which is like a casino thing and they sold beer at night time and it was quite we had plenty to do on the boat.

At night time the only drawback at night time there was a complete blackout. You wasn’t, course the boys most a the boys smoked. I didn’t but most used to smoke, you wasn’t allowed to smoke on open decks and all that.

No, not anything nothing exciting no. Quite a, people who on the voyage were seasick but generally speaking they got through all right. The only thing, where we were down below we were lot of ’em had cabins

and that sort a thing but being the last on we got put on the bottom there. As I said, we had hammocks and the toilets wasn’t very good and what we had was very hot down there. And what we used to do, we was allowed to take our blankets and sleep on deck which quite a lot of us did. I didn’t sleep down below at all. I used to, every night take me stuff up and sleep on the deck up in the open.

Well, the promenade deck. There was a lot of decks. They’ve got six decks on the Queen Mary so she was quite…

That was quite good. It was quite it was covered in but then on,

there was a section that was out of bounds to us that had nurses and officers and they got a different part’a the boat than what we got. We had, the they had all the first class carriages and that sort a thing. The cabins and that, they were good.

Well, they were that close together that when you all got in to em you had no room to get out. I dunno how many there’d be there but lots of ’em though just slung across the room.

We went up to straight up through the Indian Ocean of course. We went to Trincomalee or Ceylon in those days I think Trincomalee, then we stayed there for a day or two.

Well, the we never got any leave there but they reprovisioned the boat and brought fresh water on and that sorta thing. A lot’a the people used to come out to the boats and they’d give us baskets and you could sell us fruit and stuff like everything over the side. And then I think we was there, then we was it was quite a big. There was quite a few boats in

the convoy.

Well, at different times we had the Queen Mary and the Aquitania and the Queen Elizabeth and some of those so you know quite...Some of the biggest boats in the world in those convoys. Then when we left Trincomalee.

I don’t think they wanted us there. I think there was too many of us.

And we sat on the boat for. It was only a couple a days actually. Mainly they were putting fresh water on cause that took a lot’a water all troops like that you know.

No. They didn’t seem to mind.

We had water in the for washing yourselves and drinking water. The showers were all salt. They gave us salt water soap

and towels and all that sort a thing you know we had it that way. But there wasn’t very much water on board you couldn’t. But round the deck, they had little drinking fountains where you could go and get a drink of cold water and that. I mean, I think if I remember rightly that the wash hand basins had fresh and we, if you wanted a shower you had to use salt.

We left Ceylon, we went up then through the Gulf into the Red Sea and the Queen Mary

left the main convoy. She went on her own and we just sped off and you’ve got no idea how fast that boat could go. And then we went to Tewfik. And then when we got to Tewfik that’s when we suddenly woke up there was war on. There was ships that’d been sunk there and some of em sittin’ out of the water and half in the water and there. And.

Well, all of a sudden you woke up then that there was a war on because in Australia they didn’t know there was a war on in those days when we got there. They took us ashore and we sat on these, took us on

lighters [type of boat] and took us ashore and they mucked around with me all day in the mess. They put us on a train and took us up to Ismalia. Then we crossed over the canal and they put us on another train and took us

The train? There was quite a good train going up there. It was quite a passenger train. We was all in carriages and that was quite good. We were a bit crowded but it was quite a comfortable train ride.

It was only a few hours so didn’t

have much time to put in. There’s nothin’ else to do anyway. But when we crossed over the canal and got on the line to go up to Palestine through the Sinai Desert they put us on empty wagons there. There was no seats just sat on the floor and that wasn’t too comfortable. Nothing we could do there. Had to just plug along.

It was a big rugged.

Well, it was pretty warm. Pretty hot. We left the doors open so we got a bit of breeze

through but it was quite an experience because we’d never been everything was new and now again you’d see things you’d never in a new country it was quite educational. But where they did make a blue. When we got to Palestine they stopped of all places right beside a field of watermelons and a course, you can guess what happened to the watermelons. Blokes out both sides and the watermelons they got disappeared but we had a reaction to that later on. They when we got into the camp they got told off about these watermelons and they all the money was taken to

pay for these melon they had to come out of our pay so that it didn’t pay to pinch watermelons.

Near Gaza. We had our we went to a training depots at near Gaza. Mughazi was the name of the place where we was at. It wasn’t really far from Gaza and we had these camps there then we just start off training there or getting acclimatised to

the desert.

The camps, all tents and yeah, slept on the ground. We never had anything flash there. The meals were weren’t quite as good as we had in Australia there. We never saw potatoes for weeks on end. They used to get pumpkin and onions and that type of thing. But they did the best they could with them. And of course we had, they were more strict on guards there. You had to watch the local inhabitants didn’t come and raid your places.

And all your rifles had to be locked up with chains and guards at night time.

Mughazi they called it and there was quite a few different units there. And we had

I was in the 2/43rd when I was there, 9th Division mainly where I was. It was 9th Division. You know 9th Division Units do you? In Western Australia we had the 2/28th, 32nd and 43rd were the main ones there.

Then there was reinforcements then of course the 48th and somehow they used to say teams to us the 43rd. I was the 43rd.

Was Mughazi then they formed what they called a specialist groups and I got whizzed into one a these specialist groups and then within a week the first mob who wasn’t in a specialist group was shot off to Tobruk. And then the week or two later another lot would

go and then they finished up the cancelled all the specialist groups and we went and we went the got into.

I was there about 6 weeks I s’pose.

Mughazi? It wasn’t bad. You got sand sores and that sort a thing there and it used to be very hot and when I got into the specialist group. I got into transport again in the specialist group.

A couple a days. Once you got there they went we got after we got settled in they come and selected the specialist groups. The specialist groups they took people out for machine gunners and mortars and different sections of the army you know what’s in infantry. And you still did infantry training as well in between the two and we used to take these trucks out in the sand hills and do work with compass training and all that type of thing so you knew what you do when you got in the desert. That you could handle trucks.

in the desert.

Some didn’t. Some did. I had no problems, I was you know.

Gettin’ ’em bogged and you had to get ’em out, and things like that.

Well, you had to go through these sand hills. Well, they did give us sand trays which every vehicle had them and they were about

about as long as that couch I s’pose. And you had to put them down and get on ’em and then take, add another one and till you got through just put them down in front and drive over them. That’s if you got bogged but you had to dig yourself out first.

No, once or twice I did but what the… We found over there, course driving in Palestine you drove on the opposite side of the… The car drives on the opposite side of the road and yet the steering wheel was on the other side. We had to get used to that too, you know, for a while.

Yeah, caused a few.

I found when driving on the opposite side when you got an emergency you had a tendency to swing left instead of going right you see, and that was dangerous there.

There was a few minor ones. Nothing serious. Another thing they did to us there when we got over there, they gave us a tour. A lot of us, they took us up to Tel Aviv and to Haifa and then we went round to the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem and some of them places on a tour right round and that was quite interesting. Course…

being new.

Did a lot of night training manoeuvres at night.

Well, you did practise capturing a certain section. They’d have one section to go out would take a hill and you had to practice going in and capturing that hill, how you could go about it. A course then the other mob up there had to spot you and if they had umpires around

to say, “Well, you’ve been shot. You’re dead.” You’re wounded and so forth and then, so you fell out and finished up like that. It was training mainly for the officers more I think than for the men to handle anything.

Some of us did. I did. I reckoned well, it was our lives depended on it and if you didn’t know what you was doing, well later on when you did get into action what you learnt there you had to use.

Mainly yes, they were very committed yeah. There was an odd larrikin round the place but

most of ’em were serious there.

Well, they just took, you didn’t worry about ’em too much you know.

Yeah, some of them were, yeah. Course goin’ round that place too, you struck a lot of the local amateurs too, a lot of the Bedouins round the place. We strike those and there was always, everywhere you went round Palestine those days they try to sell you oranges or watermelons or. You could buy a watermelon this bloomin’ big for about 6 pence

something you know, and oranges used to be about 8 pence half penny each but you know 2 cents bout a cent each or something like that. They were beautiful fruit. They had a lot a fruit there we weren’t allowed to buy because they used to their methods of hygiene you know wasn’t all that good. They had grapes and figs and all that they used to look lovely but we were banned from buying those cause they could carry diseases and that sort a thing.

Well, mainly

one of your survivals was to do without water. That was one of the biggest things we had. There was cause you had a huge dry ration you had to learn to provide the stuff they give you which and then you got roughly one water bottle a water a day which that’s all you got for all purposes washing, drinking, everything else, making your tea.

The only thing we was rationed on was water. Food used to be used to get. Often you only got

biscuits and bully beef as you call it, beef that sort a thing. Then they brought a new one out they used to call M and V which is meat and vegetables and stuff like that.

I found it in the training, I found it a bit hard for a start. Although, when I did get into the desert at [El] Alamein and those places, I was very fortunate there because they put me onto a water wagon and I

used to cart water to troops at night time in this wagon up to the troops and I always had water.

Well, that was something similar to we had in Australia. We’d get up always a roll call first in the morning and a rifle inspection. Every morning they used to come in and inspect your rifle to see that you had it. And they used to check your rifle off to see that you hadn’t lost it during

the night. And we did have an occasion where there was six rifles stolen out of a tent while a bloke slept in it. And a course that caused a bit of a panic. It wasn’t my tent, I was lucky. Although, I had mates in the tent there. The rifles were you had a tent pole going up through your tent and your rifles used to be put round it and you had a chain going through the and locked with a padlock on it, and how they got that I don’t know. Rumours got around that the boys sold it and I still don’t know how true that was

but there was a bit of thieving going on there.

Well, you had roving guards on and roving pickets going all night. As a part of your job at night when you were on this roving picket you just kept moving around cause out on, the Arabs took an idea over there, if you wanted anything you kept it. You didn’t lay it down. If you laid anything down when you’re finished with it, they’d pick it up. They’d take anything you put down unless you had it they would

they’d take it and…

Yes. That was very good. They took us in these buses and they had, the army had places for us to stop where they had army rations and meals and they looked after us very well. It was quite good. Really interesting.

Well, we went to Bethlehem and

Jerusalem and all those places, and Haifa and down to the Sea of Galilee and all those places you know come from history and the Bible, and we, any of us that knew anything about the Bible at all as I did know, I found it most interesting. We went to Jacobs Well, and then we went and I went on a tour, we went down to the Dead Sea and places like that.

I don’t know whether I could pick anything especially because it was so many things all strange to us and we didn’t know anything about.

Well, it was just something new it was like, you know going on a tour, you go say when you went go to Bali you, everything’s different and you take it all in and that. And we weren’t allowed to associate too much with the local inhabitants, they barred that but now and again you’d get talking to somebody. But course a lot of them you couldn’t even talk cause over those in Palestine in those days, not like it is now

the Jews got there, they were mainly either riding donkeys or walking, and there’d be camels and stuff like that around goats. And you never saw an old model car. You’d see Mercedes and big flash cars that’s all, an odd one. They either had plenty or nothing. They either rode round in a Mercedes or they had a donkey.

No, we didn’t no. But there were

plenty of ’em over there. Yes, it was surprising. But they, sheiks, and the well-to-do people, they had plenty but the poor people had nothing.

Well, we thought it was rather bad really, you know to think that they be. They were surprising that…Some a that the Jews were going in in those days and they’d lend a farmer some money, say 20 pounds would be a fortune to a Arab

over there, and after he couldn’t pay it back and they’d foreclose on his land. And that was when they got the land over there they’d put bores down. There was ample water, well the Arabs never had that water. Never had a thing. Never had the machinery. They’d bring in machinery and there was some lovely farms and plantations around that place. Mainly run by Jewish people of course. Then we went on some of the Jewish communal farms, they were good to visit too. I went to visit some of them.

They, we used to go there for the day

and they used to feed us and take us round. They used to show you how they lived and when a couple got married they had to get permission to marry, and when they got married they live in a little unit. When they had a baby after a few days the baby was taken from them and lived on a, looked after for them while they went out to work and that sort a thing. Not the life I’d like to live but still it was interesting to people who’d never seen it before. The communal settlers there, they always worked together. There was no, when they bought anything they always buy it off their own people off,

not the Arabs.

They treated us very well. They did for a start but some of the boys later on did play up in one of the villages and they stopped takin’ us out there. They didn’t want us here.

They played up with some of the women, I think you know tried to make 'emselves a bit cheeky and that.

Nothing. The Jews,

I found the Jewish settlers very good to visit. They didn’t.

Well, we went to a farm and if you hadn’t been there or if ever they had they’d take you round, they showed you all the different things and the way they’ve got things compared what we did ’em over here and that type of thing. Give us fruit and they’d give us a meal and that type of thing.

I didn’t like their life. I reckoned it’d be

they were like bein’ in the army. They wanted a pair a boots, they took their old ones up and they issued new pair. Cause they had no money, nothing like that. Once a year they got a holiday. They never had their kids with them and all things like that which to me it seemed a bit strange. But still, that’s the life they led. If they wanted to leave, they could. But they if they wanted to marry somebody from another village they had to get permission from that person to come and live with them or they’d go there and then if they met up to the standard then they’d allow em to court

and then they’d get married. And as I say before, no children. The children were bought up separately. They had, I think they had access to the children on weekends. The rest of the time they’d look after ’em in these kindergartens and that.

It was very restricted, yeah.

Specialist group, yeah.

Yeah.

Lot a rumours used to come through. We never got too much news but we was told though the living conditions over there, they were same as you got probably got. Course you wouldn’t remember those days you wouldn’t be around. But so, if anything we was a bit frightened of Tobruk. We didn’t know what to expect when we went there because, you know we’d heard it was so bad.

Well, there was also in the camp where we were, some of the chaps that had been wounded or lived in Tobruk, they got

ill and they brought them out of Tobruk and they’d recovered and they was back in the camp with us where we were gettin’ ready to go back. And we made friends with some of those and they told us a lot’a the exciting stories of what was going on in Tobruk. So, we had a fair idea of what was going on.

Well, they told us how the living conditions, how they lived in these holes in the ground and the water restrictions was worse than what we had and the food and all that type of thing. General conditions and they knew what they had.

I wasn’t, no I wasn’t.

But I never actually myself I never actually got there. But that was a story coming up later, yeah.

Well, no. Well, I got detailed for a group to go to Tobruk and we got as far as outside Alexandria where they used to, there was a big staging camp called Amiriya. We got to Amiriya and we was there for a few days and was already packed up to go to Tobruk. They used to take you in by boats

at night time. They couldn’t get you in the day time. And the boat that, to pick us up never turned up. It got sunk apparently, so they told us, in the Mediterranean, and they kept us back a few days till they could make further transport. Then they decided then they were gonna bring the troops out of Tobruk. So, the little group that I was with we was put on the staging camp to look after the troops when they came out. But of all our groups that went away there was a dozen or so of us never actually got into Tobruk. We got held back.

Well, by trains. There was plenty a trains. They had some lovely trains over there.

What do you mean what detail?

Well, we was going to just going as infantry reinforcements. But we just joined up with the, when we got into Tobruk, those that did get there they just spread out among the different units in the

as and joined up with the mob you.

No, I was going, no I wasn’t. I was going as infantry. Straight out infantry.

Only, we had our rifles and of course, we learnt how to handle grenades and machine guns and all that type of thing, yeah. That’s about all.

Well, I just remember

everywhere you went you had to take your rifle with you. You had to sleep with it. Then you had to learn how to handle grenades and machine guns and some of them had light machine guns like the Bren gun, and all you had to learn how to handle all those before we went up there.

No, not till I got to the Middle East, we never, no.

No. The fact that we never had ’em in Australia. They had nothing. They never even had any Bren guns or nothing. I never saw a Bren gun till

I got to the Middle East. All they had was old stuff from the First World War. We did our training on those.

Yeah. But later on, we got new rifles issued later on but those days we had only had the single shot rifles. Yeah, that’s right.

No, we did the specialist training in…

But we just, that was all there was to it.

We just took us out then went away with, we just like everybody else did. We had no, we didn’t go away as specialists. Some, as I say, had the machine gun training at when they got to Tobruk they were put in with the machine gun units and that sorta thing but…

Yeah well, so they told us, yeah.

Well, we didn’t know what to make of it. You know we thought well we was lucky we wasn’t on it when it got sunk. That was my first reaction I

took to it.

Yeah.

Well, right almost, we were only there a few days when they decided to bring the troops out of Tobruk. They could only bring troops out from Tobruk when there was no moon. So, when there was a moon shining it was stop. So, when they used to bring a load of troops in, say they’d land in the camp early in the morning. They’d leave Tobruk and travel over night and they’d land at Alexandria

roughly, just about day break. Then they’d come out to the camp where we were then we had to arrange accommodation and feed ’em and re-equip them with any new clothing and some of the stuff they bought out was woeful. And then they came and normally we put ’em on a train that night, and they went left that train that night for Palestine. Then next day we had to clear up the camp, all the mess they’d leave behind, and then be prepared for another lot to come in the next day. And this, that’s the nights with no moon. When the moon rose then we

had a bit of relaxation there and we was allowed leave in Alexandria and those places like that for a few days and then we’d… They had a lot a troops coming in.

Well, just they never told us. They just said the boat sunk, then a few days later they said they’d cancelled the going to Tobruk and they were going to bring the troops out and we would

be doing the staging camp.

Well, yes. We didn’t know for a week or so anyway.

No, it wasn’t. We didn’t know what. Well, the others went, I mean we just got prepared to go. We didn’t.

Yes, it was more or less, yeah.

Well, I dunno. I

just thought, well so I sorta thought if they don’t get a boat today probably get one tomorrow, sorta thing. That’s what I thought. And then when they said they were gonna bring the troops out of Tobruk cause they would’ve stayed there so long, and you’ve probably heard the stories of Tobruk there were conditions were terrible up there, and you know the Japs. But they want to come relieve them which they did. Everything had to go into Tobruk at night time and out at night time.

No, I never got to Tobruk. As I said, I was at Amiriya and they were bringing the troops out of Tobruk. They used to bring them in by boats at night.

Actually, while I was in this camp every person in

our group was given a job. A few days before these troops came out I got tangled up in some barbed wire and I had a very bad leg. It festered and my…

Just pokin’ my nose around where I shouldn’t a been I think. Lookin’ round and weren’t bad, I just scratched me, you see. And we had’a, for our camp there was a South African doctor there, quite a nice bloke too he was and I went and saw him and I’ll tell ya’ what he said, “I can either send ya’ to hospital,” he said, “Or I

can, if you like, I can treat you here.” I said, “I’ll stop and be treated here.” So, then they allocated every person in our group some job in our camp. And there was two things left to be done. There was a runner and a batman to the doctor in the officer in charge you see. So, another chappie there took the, I couldn’t do the runner’s job, he took runners on so I got poked in to do the batman’s job which turned out to be quite good. I had practically nothing to do cause

they, and even they, every day they, someone’d come and take their washing away and I used to put mine with theirs and it got cleaned up and that type of thing. And all I had to do more or less was just go into their tent and tidy it up and the rest of the day was free.

This is in Amiriya, yeah. And then more or less, when this thing was on, when we had one of these break downs in the, and there were no troops coming in these and officer another one, they decided they’d go and have a few days in Alexandria and they’d go into the

officers’ club. And they had to take someone with them so they said to me, “Would you come in the club with us?” And they’d have to have someone to wait on them there. I said I’d come in there. So, we go and I went into the officers’ club with them and.

Tremendous, like bein’ in a flash hotel.

Well, like a jolly hotel and that’s you know. But they was going out all the time and I used to be with the staff, and when they was out I used to go out and look

around Alexandria. Alexandria was a real good place for leave. One of the best places I’ve ever struck. There were a lot of English and French communities in there and they put on a lot of things on entertainment for the troops and that there.

Well, they’d have clubs dances and entertainment in the different places. You always got free meals wherever you went and all this sort a thing. But what I can tell ya’ about this place, the officers I went with, he was only there for two or three days and he went to hospital.

The officer I went

into the tour with took sick and went into hospital you see.

So, I was left in the club on me own but that didn’t worry me, I had kept fillin’ in me time. Everyday I’d go out somewhere and enjoy. And I said to the blokes, “What’s happening to me?” I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll…” He said, “They’ll find you when they want ya’.” Well, this officer, he got discharged from hospital and went back to the camp and the first thing he got back to the camp he looked around and he said, “Where’s Jim?” “He was away with you. We wouldn’t know where he was.” So the next thing they found out later he carted me in and

brought me back to the camp.

Mainly go sightseeing. Lookin’ round the different things that was on in Alexandria. There was quite a good bit. Alexandria’s a big city, you know there’s quite a lot to see in there. And then the bit a spare time we’d go into these in the huts they used to put up for us recreation centres where they had, you know different things to go with the… There might even be dancing on or talking and things like that

concerts.

They were run by the English and civilian communication people in Alexandria. Alexandria was like, it’s quite a very big, still is I s’pose, a prominent place there. And anyway, after I got back to camp course the troops started coming back again.

No. I didn’t know anybody there. I just, but didn’t take you long to

to hit up with somebody you know. Alexandria is, I used to reckon about two thirds of the population in Alexandria, they used to make their livin’ cleanin’ boots, shoes. Everywhere you went there’s shoe shines blokes come and want to clean your shoes and if you didn’t get them done you’d walk down the road a few yards and someone’d dirty ’em. So, the next bloke’d come along and look at your shoe and you’d have all muck spread over so you’d get your shoes clean. Cause they’d make you pay for that, then they used to sell you, they used to have a lot of dirty photographs

and all this sort of thing and souvenir stuff like that, which was only really rubbish but they used to always trying to sell ya’. But then a policeman used to chase ’em, if they caught doin’ it they were chased. The police’d come along and the bloke’d give you a handful of photographs to look at, when he looked up he’d see a policeman’d come round the corner and he’d nick off and leave you with these things in your hand and things like that. But as soon as the policeman disappeared, he’d come back for his photos, pretty smart bloke just the same. But doesn’t seem I objected to ’em, wouldn’t buy them

but you know used to have a look to see what they had.

Then they used to sell ya’ a whip. They used to sell you little whips. Give you this little whip to keep the hawkers away and things like that you know. Very funny there.

It did, yeah. Had one’a them in your hand, they kept their distance, yeah.

Went back to my normal duties there

and then after.

Well, I was supposed to have been the batman for the doctor, the officer I was there with, and then I used to give the other boys a hand in the camp while that was going on in me spare time and when the troops were coming through, we did that.

They didn’t tell us too much. They’d land in the morning and they of course, they had breakfast, they wanted showers and clean up

and that sorta thing, a lot of ’em were tired and that afternoon they’d gone. Until our own units come through and then a lot a blokes in our own units a course I knew who’d already gone ahead of us and then course they told us their experiences in Tobruk and then…

They just told us what the general experience about living in these dugouts all the time with the, and the raids they used to get. They had air raids all this sort a thing up there.

Their morale was quite good.

They were so thrilled to get out of it, and most of ’em had clothes that they’d had on ’em, you know were dirty and hadn’t been washed and that. And they give ’em all clean, fresh clothes to put on. And they used to leave all their dirty stuff laying in the tent and they weren’t even livin’ there. And then we had the job of getting rid of it next day.

Then when they that went on for a couple a months I s’pose then the our the last of ’em came out and we followed em up back to

Palestine.

Yeah, when they’d gone we had we got sent to Palestine. And then when I rejoined them, the unit I went to in the first place, the 2/43rd, I joined up with them again. And then I went into an infantry.

Went back to Palestine, yes from Amiriya.

I went back to my, I joined up as a reinforcement to the 2nd 43rd Battalion and I was posted to a

rifle company and then we was doin’… They come back, more or less to have a rest there for a few weeks but we was doing the general duties guards and general things in the camp.

Well, in the mornin’ there they were very easy to what the training camps were very much so. We’d they’d give you a bit of talks and things like that and training. Might go for a bit of a route march and keepin’ you fit and that. That was just right before Christmas and we had Christmas in Palestine.

Well, they had a, there was snow on the hills all around the place in Palestine believe it or not. There was snow in Jerusalem and all them places. And the night of Christmas Eve we had a storm come through there and blew a lot of the tents down and things like that. But our place we was lucky we never got anything.

Oh yes, they put on a Christmas dinner for us. All the officers waited on the tables and all that for us there.

We had all the usual turkeys and

good food, you know. Really turned it on for us at Christmas.

It did a bit, yeah. It was while we was there too that we heard the news come through about Japan coming into the war too. That dampened our spirits a bit.

On a radio. They had a we never had our own one but in the recreation halls they did have a radio and we went and heard the news of,

going to hear about Singapore and all those falling over. That was very bad news for us. Didn’t know what was happening back at home in Australia.

Very much so, yeah.

It was. As time wore in, yes because they took a lot a the troops away from the Middle East and sent ’em home and we got kept over there and that upset us very, very much. Over there and all the other troops and we’d get letters from home and they’d were saying about these people coming back and they were seein’ the, we were volunteering

to stop overseas which we didn’t, and we got really very upset about that. And some of the boys really broke down over it, yeah.

Anyway, when we was in Palestine we got shifted to Syria. We took over from one of the Australian divisions up there and they reckoned they come back to Australia cause they were the mob that went to Kokoda Track, actually the mob we took over from.

We were building fortifications. They were putting a line of fortifications right across the top of Syria. They thought the Germans might come down through Turkey and through Palestine and down into the, and take over the Suez Canal. And we was getting, we had hundreds of the might’ve been thousands I s’pose locals helpin’ us building these fortifications. They’re putting tank trips and barbed wire and building pillboxes and all sorts and that and we was supervisin’ all that sort a

work.

Supervising the building and doing training at the same time. We would do. Some of us would be detailed to look after some of these and others would go out on mountain training. Be doing route marches and training in the hills and that sort a thing. And while we was up there we went up to the Homs Desert for the great big division show, and we did a lot a training up there.

It was the training up there. They got all these

divisions. They had tanks and trucks and aircraft all in big lump goin’ across the desert. Then they’d do a right about turns and left turns and things like that in the desert and the whole desert become a great big mass of dust and you couldn’t move, and water restrictions up there. It was a terrible show really and we, they were gettin’ ready I think to meet Rommel in the desert. That’s what the idea of it was. So, we never used the tactics we trained on up there.

It was very uncomfortable, that particular show was. It

only lasted about a week but still it was really bad.

We just, like you would in army, just slept on the ground wherever you could and they brought your food round. But we found Syrian people there, the local people in Syria, were fantastic compared with Palestine. The Syrians and we got on well with them. They were very friendly and they were, you know they wasn’t tryin’ to rook you or rob you any time. And we’d get things off them and I thought they were great.

Well, you could buy eggs and stuff like fruit and stuff like that which you know without bein’ robbed to get it and they just charged you normal price. They were very good. And they had beer. They had plenty a beer up there. Almost any person you saw up there you wanted some beer and I guarantee in 10 minutes they’d turn up with some bottles of beer. Must be home brewed. I dunno what it was I didn’t like it very much but it was…

Yeah, it was rather strange. Wherever they turned up, they’d have beer. But that wasn’t the desert. That’s when we’re back on the doin’ the fortification I was talkin’ about.

But I can tell you a very funny incident happened if you’re interested.

While we was in Syria some of our blokes were cartin’ sand from the. In the trucks they’d bring sand up from the and on the way up they picked up some girl on the road and

she was a good thing. You know what sorta thing I mean, understand what I mean. Anyway, the boys installed her in one of the pill boxes and gave her a bed and food and all that sort a thing and she was doin’ a good business up there, and there was a steady stream of the chaps going into this pill box and this went on for several days. I never knew anything about it till it was all over.

No. But then when the crisis came. Then one officer noticed that the,

couldn’t understand why these chaps were going to this particular pill boxes. So, he blew over and went and investigated and he found this girl in there and what was goin’ on and so matter of fact the next thing the military police come out and this girl was taken away to hospital and there was a big battalion parade. Everybody on the battalion had to go on this parade and the CO [Commanding Officer], he roared it up about men actin’ like animals and all this sort a thing. And next thing he said, “I want every man,” he said, “Who’s had anything to do with that girl,” he said, “To fall out on the side there,” he

says and there was 80 men fell out.

Yeah, 80 of ’em fell out and they all had to go get checked up at the doctors and all this sorta thing, you know get examined and, but nobody got any disease. They said she had disease and all this but she never had. We found out later on. Weren’t these boys crooked [angry] when they found out later they took her to the hospital and checked her out and news come back from the hospital that she was all right. All these men confessed to goin’ with this girl and…

That was one a the incidents happened

up there.

Well, actually we was up there. But I mention about doin’ this desert training we come back form this desert training and packed up immediately and went to Alamein.

And that was we didn’t know we was going home. A lot a the troops from over there bar our division had all gone home and we was, we didn’t know whether we was going home or to Alamein. And we’d, I was when I was up in Syria

they called for volunteer drivers and then I produced my credentials and they put me on a truck and I drove up in Syria for a while. Then I drove a truck then we drove the desert up to meet Rommel, then we were the first troops of the 9th Division to meet Rommel in the desert.

Well, to me it wasn’t exciting. It was rather frightening. We didn’t know what to expect. Rommel was forcin’ everything and before him

and when we got going over there we had to go through Cairo and these places and you couldn’t get down the roads there was all these base troops all comin’ away from the front line. And there was thousands, and boats and they were coming in cars and trucks and anything you could get on and we was trying to work up and they was trying to work back and you know it was quite frightening to see ’em. And these Pommy boys used to sing out, “You’re going the wrong way Aussie,” and you know I think we were expectin’ to see these tanks come over the hill at any tick’a the clock. But anyway, we got up to the desert

and only been there a day or two and one of our companies did the first attack up there and a course I’d never. I had struck a quite a few air raids in Alexandria when we was up there in Amiriya but apart from that I hadn’t had any experience of the war at all of fighting. But then we…

Well, actually when we first went in, I think it was on the 17th of July our battalion had to make a big

attack they were gonna have a go at Ruin Ridge and we had to follow the troops in towards the. On my truck I had a load a water and ammunition. I was drivin’ a little ute and thing and as the troops went forward we had to follow them up over the desert through the mine field and that there and then we got over we got into a spot there. I don’t even know how we come to be at but anyway the Germans saw us comin’ and they bombed us with everything they had. They even had Stukas come in to us and we got down a holes and

anyway we

We got to trenches that was already dug with other people left them as they’d cleared out.

Minefields, they were a problem. When we come out a that place we had to go over those minefields and I can remember goin’ down and seein’ a mine sittin’ on the road and a bloke, there’s a mine and I stopped with one wheel each side. But some a the trucks behind they got blown up on the mines and that was the first we really got under fire. And a

chappie came out and an officer came out and told us to get the hell out of it and we got the hell out of it and a course he the poor beggar he got killed a few minutes later. He got directly hit on his thing.

Mmm. But taking these troops and that sort a thing and hangin’ back waiting for something to happen was a bit nerve racking I’ll tell ya’. Then you saw these chaps coming in on stretchers and all this sort a thing, you know you knew there was a war on.

They were bringin’ em back to the RAP [Regimental Aid Post] then

they got shifted as they. They just give ’em temporary accommodation. Ambulances come and take them back out, yeah.

We couldn’t see much at all. Only dust and smoke and then noise and they were bombin’ us. So, we’re getting all this stuff come in round us and the well it come out all the trucks that went in there, I think I was about the only one that never got hit with something. They got tyres blow up and things like that you know.

I was lucky. I was lucky right throughout the whole war. I always reckoned I was

lucky. Anyway, and then we had to come back then that night we had to go back up again and take water and rations up and we stayed up with the troops all night.

Well, they’d send out runners and officers who wanted or they had people who knew what they wanted and draw off my truck the water then they’d take it away in cans. Only, we’d only do that for a few days then they brought me back to

base. They said I’d been up there long enough and I wanted a rest and they come back and they put me on a water drawing truck then for a few days. And then the other bloke on the water truck said to me one day, “Jim, these things are pretty quiet,” he says “Let’s go up to, in the day if they let us. If we go up in the day time and supply the troops in the day time with water we’ll be quicker.”

He said that things are a bit quiet up there. He says, “Will you come up with me, we’ll take our water trucks up and take water up.” Cause we knew the troops up there wasn’t gettin’ very much. So, we went up and we

gave them all the water they wanted and we gave them, they had tins and buckets and everything else. We spent all day cartin’ water. We had to go about 10 miles to the water point. There was plenty a water up there at Alamein itself but we was about 10 mile further out at Tel Aviv. Anyway, from there on we…

It come from the Nile I think.

They had a, they had a big pipeline, something like right pipe going to Kalgoorlie from Alexandria up to

Alamein. And actually, there was plenty a water there, it was only a case of getting it. So, the other bloke and I, we spent night and day we carted water all the time right throughout the campaign. We’d a spent half the night going round the front giving water and we got a few hairy shows too and that sort a thing. But we never.

Well, you suddenly find you’re under fire and there used to be one place there was a railway cutting

and they dug out a hole so you could just go through this. And the Germans had their machine guns on this thing, then you’d get, you’d sit and wait there and you’d see these tracers coming through and there’d be a military policeman. Say, right one tracer you’d go up over this thing down the other side and once you got over the other side you was out of range of fire again. Had to sit there and wait. They only had to hit one truck and it’d stop the whole thing working. But we used to do that every night. Then we’d go out to where the troops were and they’d come bring their containers to bring their water and then

these ration trucks used to go and they’d bring the wounded and the dead people out.

The noise used to be terrific at times or it’d be very quiet. See when they started that big Alamein started they had the biggest bombardment ever had in any army anywhere in the world up till that time. And there was this about 30 miles of guns all opened up in one hit and the flash and the terrific the noise

and you’ve got no it was. You wonder how anyone ever lived through it but they did. Cause they caught the Germans napping. They didn’t even know it was coming. Even Rommel wasn’t even there. He was back over back in Germany when Alamein started up.

Well, yes he did have a, he had a good reputation and he accomplished a lot. I mean the, we drove the Italians back right early in the piece

another unit, I wasn’t there then but they did do it. Then when Rommel took over they just took everything before ’em. So, when they got to Alamein or it was a bit the other side of Alamein actually where the ((UNCLEAR) - slime) was, he stopped them. And that was the finish of the and that was the turning point of the war.

Well, we didn’t. We didn’t know what was gonna happen. It was, we was on pins and needles all the time because the they made raids and we

made raids on them and we didn’t know what was gonna happen. And so, when Montgomery took over, that was the turning point as far as we were concerned. He was a terrific general, General Montgomery.

I only ever saw a glimpse of him but he. He didn’t come round much where we were but we did see glimpses of him on the road and that. But [Sir Winston] Churchill even came up to us while we was there too.

Well, he just came and looked around with an officer. We didn’t actually have much to do with him but he was round. We knew he was

round.

The boys thought a lot of him. Cause the generals we had up there up till time Montgomery turned up wasn’t very popular with the boys at all but Montgomery was. They thought the world of Montgomery. And so, we had Morshead a course was in charge of our division. He was a very popular man too.

Well, they liked his style, you know he didn’t just stop at a dugout and give orders. He got around and saw the

boys and he knew them and they knew him and that.

Well, that’s all I ever knew, just what we heard about him and the way the war was bein’ conducted you know he was.

I s’pose he would’a been, I don’t know.

Mainly, I practically spent all the time then carting water.

We used to have to supply the cookhouses. We always used to be cooks back a few miles behind the line we had to keep them supplied with water and then we had to take water up to the front line all the time. The trucks that we had used to only hold about 2 or 300 gallons. They wasn’t big tankers. And then we’d have to go 10 mile trips backwards and forwards to the water points to get them. Then when you got to the water points you’d find hundreds of trucks there so you had to wait your turn to get in. And they’d be they’d have a you’d be controlled to get your water and get out

and then we’d take ’em to the… We used to be going till sometimes two or three in the morning the other driver and I and then we’d…

It was a bit tricky but it’s surprising how you found your way around. We used to nose our way around there with no trouble at all. But to start-off, you know you had no lights on your vehicles and if they shifted troops ever shifted, they’d have a guide come take you to where the nearest troops were. Once they took you, once you had to find your own way there back

from there on.

No, I think daytime would’ve been the worst because you they couldn’t see you at night and you had no lights. But cause there was a lot a air raids durin’ the day time and they’d pick you out while it. Well, I’ll tell ya’, I’ve had, the wind is blowing on my truck and I’ve been laying down under the wheels more or

less and they’d blast it that in daytime. That didn’t happen at night. But…

Dust storms were on, they used to go on all the time. We used to like the dust storms actually because we used to go right forward to troops in the daytime instead of waitin’ till it got dark. If there was dust they couldn’t see but you could find your way around the tracks and that. But the Germans couldn’t see you coming up in the daytime. We had strict instructions to once the dust left we had to get out a there as quick as we could. But we

never ever got into trouble. I got, I thought I was lost once in a dust storm I didn’t know where I was. I was coming down this track and next thing I found a lot a barbed wire right across the track I was on and I thought I was on the wrong road and the next thing out the gloom comes these the patrol blokes and they had these balaclavas on. They looked just like a mob a Germans. I thought, “Hello, this is the finish of the war for me.” But it was one of our own chaps coming along and I heard this bloke yell out, “What are you doin’ here Jimmy you so.”

Anyway, we found the barbed wire had blown down by the wind and knocked the track off so I was on the right track but I though for a moment I was out of my in the German lines. Cause at night time out there you wouldn’t know. Some of our blokes there they’d when we was out takin’ rations out there they got mixed up with the German lines up there then. But I never did but some of the others did, yeah.

I was never frightened. I dunno why

but I think I was more frightened when I wasn’t doing anything. When I was active I never thought about fear you know you was going all right. But to lay around when there was nothing on that’s when you got scared.

They used to mark them.

Mark them with a stick and something on a bit of you know a notice like you’d see numbers on it. They all had numbers and you’d see a little stick

with a number on it and you knew that’s the number you had to go down. There was, no it was only…There was one bitumen road that ran right through along the side of the coast up there. The rest was just wheel tracks that’s all it was. But once the engineers took over, found out where the minefields were they cut a hole through a minefield and they put little white tape down each side where the track was so when you drove through you kept in between those two white tapes. So, that made you keep to…

Well, only we had air raids, we got Stukas come down and that wasn’t anything spectacular it was just routine. Only one thing that did happen there, they gave me a relief one day. I was driving a, they took me off the water truck and gave me three days on the sig [signals] truck and we spent days pickin’ up sig wire that they’d abandoned all the telephones that had done by radio

telephones. And they used to just lay the wires on the ground and we they offered me to move to that and we got scroungin’ wire and that so. They used to go and I was on that for three days and then I went back on the water trucks again then.

I s’pose they would’a done if they’d seen us. We only had the two trucks in the unit and we weren’t allowed to sleep together. So, of a night we had to keep our trucks well and truly apart.

We got a lot a air raids and you’re travelling down the road and next thing they come down strafin’ down the road. Well, what you used to do is left your truck and go and hop out. Get away from your truck. They’d be after the truck, not you so you got a…

You wouldn’t know at all. You used to watch what was going on at the side of the road. If you see somebody else running along the side of the road looking for somewhere to go. Behind the lines there was lots a troops camps and cookhouses and all that

sorta thing because you was never in open desert all by yourself and you used to keep an eye on them. If they you see any activity where they were takin’ action you’d get up and do it yourself too. Cookhouses were a favourite spot, they used to knock the cookhouses out.

No, it wouldn’t a been that good. Wasn’t good to be anything really. You all got called on. But I think one a the worst jobs I ever got in the desert though, they used to bring the dead people out at night time and I used to help the

padre and another bloke next morning few times burying ’em and that.

That was not a good job at all.

We’d have to bury these dead when they bought the dead ones out. They had temporary cemeteries up there and I’ve seen whole truck loads come out in one hit. And then the padre would take them over and sometimes we got volunteers. And I used to go with them and they had to sort these people out and they used to bury them in the cemetery at Alamein which is, they tell me is a great big cemetery there now. It’s all been done up and looked after

well. But I’ve never seen it.

Well, you just put a piece of wood wherever you could to write their name and numbers on, that’s all you could do. We had no facilities to do anything else.

The padre, he’d give them burial rights and that sort of thing, you know. We had a Catholic padre in our unit but that was we had another one used to come in from a unit next door who was a Protestant and take the, did the

Protestant services. Everyone got buried used to have a bit of a ceremony on it.

Just a matter of minutes you know. It’d only be us there who was doin’ the things and the padre and that’s all’d be there.

Yes, the Salvation Army had a recreation hut or unit with us and they used to

come up at night time and take coffee and things. They’d have writing material and stuff out to the troops out on the thing. They were good. There was a bloke named Timms used to run it. A (UNCLEAR) fellow he was as a matter of fact. He often used to follow me out. We used to go out at night time, he’d come out behind our water truck to find out where the troops were.

That was the Salvation Army, yeah. The Salvation Army did a good job right throughout, yeah.

They loved them. They were very taken to them. They used to bring ’em out writing paper and different comforts and that. I saw in one particular, this is getting back into New Guinea now, went on a trail when there was this mob coming through there, there was these two Salvation Army blokes stood there lightin’ cigarettes they were givin’ a smoke to every man comin’ along the. They gave ’em a cigarette who wanted it. Lighted cigarette, yeah.

Occasionally.

When we first went over there we got a good mail service but then when Japan came into the war it knocked it rotten. We’d get mail I’d sometimes I’d have as many as 30 letters turn up in one hit.

Yeah. And then you might go months and never see a letter. But when you first, when until Japan came in the mail service was great.

I used to write whenever I could. I used to try and write at least once a week.

Yes, I found it hard. But I think it was more difficult for her than it was for me. Cause I knew where I was and what I was doin’ but she didn’t. And I think the women had it was hard on them. And a course they had rations here and all that sorta things which we never had to worry about that sorta thing so. But we had things that they couldn’t even think about buying.

A great,

used to be a great day, oh no it used to be very great. Everyone was lookin’ for letters all the time. The postman, we had a postman in our unit and he’d go and bring the mail up and everybody’d he used to sort all the mail out into different companies and they’d come round and pick them all and take it back. Mail man’d come with a heap a mail and hand that all round and if you used to get a letter used to be very down in the dumps, yeah.

Now and again, we used to get the we never got Red Cross much though. Mainly, that stuff went to hospitals and that but

we used to get them what they called a comforts fund parcels which was a similar thing but they wasn’t Red Cross. They was run by the what they used to call themselves? The, I can’t think a the name now. Anyway, doesn’t matter. They used to make up parcels and send out to us. You might get a different odd things in em perhaps some razor blades and some cake and biscuits and stuff like that.

Yes, it was yeah. And when I was on this water truck this mate and I we there was a South African mobile canteen, we used to strike right back behind the lines occasionally we could go and buy cocoa off them and milk.

Yeah, and that was over in the desert and every night time we went home we had a dug out with a cover over it and we’d get down there and we’d had a primus and we used to make ourselves hot cocoa

before we went to bed.

That be about two or 3 o’clock in the morning when we come in and we the cooks were really good to us cause they’d we go and they’d give us food whenever we wanted it. We never had to worry about goin’ and bein’ there when the mess parades was on.

The canteens?

The canteens, they’d sell you anything, chocolates and mainly chocolates and stuff like that lollies and little things like razor blades and

toothbrushes and toothpaste, and all that stuff that you were often short of.

They used to cook a meal the, there used to be one meal we used to take out. That consisted of stews mainly. That’s about the best thing they could do and they had these big hot boxes they’d put them in. Sometimes they would make up pasties and things like that and send out.

We had some wonderful cooks.

Be surprised what they could do you know we had they were really good.

After Alamein was over, well that finished up as the climax. The day the Alamein finished we had a big lot a reinforcements come to us and they were standing round waiting to be allocated to different units. By that, the Germans had gone that night and they came up that day and there was hell to pay round the place.

All the boys got these veiry lights and pistols and had a big fireworks display, you know. And then some German planes come over and they dropped some bombs on us and then some of these reinforcements just got there and got killed on the, before they even knew what where they were. That was very sad that was, yeah. Then anyway, we had when the Germans and the Italians disappeared we stopped put. We didn’t move but they had a lot a reserve troops behind us. They came through us and

they continued on chasing Rommel across the desert. But all the Australians were bought back then to Palestine where we had Christmas and then we made preparations to come back to Australia.

Well, we were mainly resting. They got back on the beaches and they could swim and that sorta thing and then eventually when we got back to Palestine.

We had Christmas, then when we got back to Palestine I got sent to Harafam to a

water school.

Yes. It was you had to learn how to purify water and detect diseases and the poisons and all that sorta thing, and I did the school at Harafam.

Well, you just went round, they had all their equipment there and they’d bring all this different stuff in you’d have to you got lectures a course and then you went out on the field and had to do the water. They’d find a dirty old puddle of water on the road and you had to pump it into your trucks and clean it and purify it, and all that sorta thing, yeah.

Well, I found it very interesting. As a matter of fact, I got a distinguished pass at that school and I topped the school.

There was only two Australians there. There was two Australians, two New Zealanders, two South Africans, and there was a lot of other like almost every country represented there at the school. It was a privilege to go there I thought. And then at that school there was all sorts of other schools operating the same area. You know there’d be a cooking school and all the cooks’d be in trainin’ as cooks. That’s where we had our meals and we

got fantastic meals there. As a matter of fact, I had Christmas day there incidentally.

At Palestine, yeah. And they used to cook the English, they were mainly English girls they cooked this meal, and gee they put on a beautiful Christmas dinner.

Well, the first, well if it was deep enough you had to pump on your truck you’d pump this water through filters into your truck. Then you had to test unit,

you had to test the water to find out what chemicals it required and add the chemicals and the bloke in charge of us used to turn the tap on and drink it. But you’d clean it but…

Mainly, yes. But you filtered the water first then you. There’s two sorts of thing. Well, you go the stuff that floated in it. Like the clay and all that sort a stuff you got all that out. Then you had clean water then you added then germs you had to find and

kill the germs that was in the water. And actually, from there on the rest’a the war they kept me on water duties right throughout me whole rest’a the time I was in the army. When I was up in the islands I was always in charge a the water.

Not for the troops. That was only when we’re training we did that. But mainly when you was up in the other places you used the whatever water was available out a creeks or anywhere you could find it.

Yeah,

you know purify it, make sure it was good.

Well, when we was in the islands there was water everywhere all the time. Then a course in the desert I never did any’a that work in the desert at all, bar in Palestine and that was wintertime. You get a lot a rain, you get in wintertime in Palestine it’s like it here it rains really hard and it was always pretty, well water round there puddles things what we could use in the school.

I was there about a fortnight.

Yeah, I had a yeah, and we had to learn all about the water diseases like basilarchia and hookworm and all those things we had to learn all about those and how they effected ya’ and all type of thing. It was really interesting school, I enjoyed it there. Met some friends that was a couple a Kiwis [New Zealanders] and if we had any spare time we used to go out to Tel Aviv or into Jerusalem and look around and…

Well, there used to be army clubs and things like that. Course Jerusalem you got all the old

temples and different places that Christ had years ago and we were…

Yes, yeah. Tel Aviv was a good place, it was Jewish town a modern Jewish place and it was very good. It was almost like bein’ here like in Australia, it was very good and the people were very, very good there.

Mainly, it was sing songs and a

lot of it drinkin’ beer too. Same type of thing you know you’d have in modern clubs. There was nothing. Over in the Middle East they used to put on concert parties for us the army did that. They had the picture theatres scattered all over the place over there and you could go to the pictures almost every night. And you got when the Americans came into it you got all the latest films even before you got them in towns here. And they used to run a travelling

concert parties used to come over. There used to be Jim Davies and Jim Geraldton, some of the, those days they used to be the top entertainers over in Australia all got concert parties and toured the Middle East and those places and we used to get to those. And there was something on most the time. You never really got bored.

Pardon?

Yes. I was never bored in the army, always seemed to have something to do. Night time we played cards and bridge and the

two-up schools although I never played two-up much but a lot of ’em used to, they used to have two-up, you know, and that sort a thing.

Where? After we came out of the came from Tobruk. Well, we had about a few months up in Syria. We had about a month in Palestine then we went to Syria and was in Syria till July.

As I said, we was building the fortifications for the, to stop the Germans from comin’ down through the top.

And then we did training then and from there we went back to Alamein. Then when Alamein was over we came back to Palestine and then we after that we came back to Australia. That was quite a big relief when we got on the way home we came back and we went down to Tewfik and handed all our equipment and vehicles over to the people there and we boarded the Queen Mary. Well, I went over on the Queen Mary but I come back on it too. And comin’ back on the Queen Mary they had about I think there was

about 12,000 troops coming on there and we only had... No we had 10,000 coming back, it was six going over and a lot a the swimming pools and theatres and all that we had going over filled in with bunks for the troops and you could hardly move around the place. But that time I was on the first class carriage comin’ home. We had an ensuite and everything in there but there was about 12 of us in there where normally a couple would’ve been. So, we were crowded but still we was more comfortable than what we had goin’ over with the, what’s a names, the hammocks.

When we was trip home coming home it was fantastic. Everybody was, you know, excited gettin’ home and that. A course we came into…

Nothing much cause never had room. Though some of the officers used to come and give us talks and lectures there some of them were really good. They’d tell us about, you know, about what we could expect when we got back to Australia and all things like that you know.

Well, they more or less made jokes out of it tellin’ us about how the women wheelin’

their young around in prams and all that sort a thing where over where we come from they used to carry ’em in bags on their backs and things plenty a things like that. They used to make up quizzes. They’d have quizzes and things like that they’d spring on us. And course on, they had beer on the boat all the way home and we had…

A lot’a the boys used to drink a lot of it but it was all warm beer cause. And you had no glasses. And you had to take an army container or something down and a dixie and the beer used to be flat and

so I didn’t used to go much at all. You know, I kept away from the beer.

Australian beer. I dunno what it was. It came over in bulk. Then the coming home on the Queen Mary, a very funny thing happened there. They had an outbreak of bugs. Apparently the ship was the mob before us they’d used Italian prisoners on it and one section of the ship some of the boys found bugs in their beds. A course that caused a, and that part a the ship was sort a sealed off and they fumigated it and they got rid a all the bugs anyway. And then

that’s when we got back to a…

Pardon?

Yes, but we didn’t get much news about Japan, only what came over the air. But they didn’t seem to know much about it but, though we did get when we got back to Australia

Yes. We had a big convoy come back. We had a lot a boats and they was very. Matter of fact, we went right off. When we went up to Tewfik to come home we went to the Scilly Islands to start of

Scilly is it? Somewhere in the Indian Ocean

up there. Anyway, we stayed there for a day or two till they got all the convoy together and instead of takin’ us…

Just stopped on the boat and looked over the side. Then they brought us right down south of Fremantle. Instead of going, coming, they took him the wrong way round. So, they took us right down, I think to get away from the sea routes mainly I think cause the Queen Mary. And then we had the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mary, the Aquitania, the Mauritania, the Ile de France, all those great big ships

all full of troops coming home. We had 30,000 troops left over there. We only had one division but there was 30,000 troops left in the. Matter of fact Tobruk labelled us the 30,000 thieves. Dunno if you’ve heard that expression have you? Anyway, we come back and then we got. I remember the night before we got into Fremantle they this mob was sittin’ down playin’ cards then one a the officers come in and said, “You all got to sleep with your clothes on tonight, boots and all,” and he said, “They’ve picked up a submarine,” he says. So,

I got back, he says, “What, do you want me to hang it over the back a the boat?” he says. And they’re still playing cards. They wasn’t a bit worried about the submarine you know. Then we got to Fremantle and that was quite good to look and see Fremantle coming in and it was. When you come if you ever come by the sea into Fremantle there’s the first thing you see is the lighthouse at Rottnest. Anyway, it gets into port and they sent the lighter out to bring us off the Queen Mary, they couldn’t, they never bought the Queen Mary into port.

So, we were the first West Australians our units were the first ones off the boat down into the bottom of this bloomin’ lighter. We thought this is good, we’ll be the first home. But we wasn’t. And then they filled up the boat with the troops and then took got us on the wharf and we was first on we was last off. So, by the time we got off the boat it was almost dark. It was on the 19th of February and they took us out to the camp at Melville where we stayed the night then they gave us leave the next day and,

to go home to our families see. Then they gave us a fortnight’s leave. Then we came back to the…

Melville camp, yeah. We went into Melville. They took us off the boat into Melville camp. Then they had tents there for us for the night. Some of the boys there that lived nearby sneaked home. But some of us whose families were not in Perth stayed in the camp and they had to be back the next morning and they gave us all leave passes and

ration tickets and things like that to see us through the period that we was gonna be on holidays. And we had to be back on the and they gave us rail passes of course those of us going to the country.

I took, I come from Manjimup originally but my wife in them days was living in Darlington. So, if you lived in the country you got an extra travelling time a couple a days there a day there and day back. So, I applied for leave in Manjimup, so I got and went to Darlington. But durin’ the period I did go down to Manjimup just the same and saw me folks down there.

And then that was a fortnight and then we came back to the camp again and then we had another fortnight messing around there in Melville camp but we got night leave. They wouldn’t give us day leave, they just let us out at night time. But it was while we was in Melville one of those freak cyclones come through Perth and the whole camp got flattened. Tents everywhere durin’ the night.

Yeah. It was, we never got much rain, we just got the wind. The whole place

and that particular time too we found out afterwards there was a tree came down over some troops in at Chidlow and some boys got killed in some tents up with the same cyclone. But that’s the cyclone I remember several cyclones. Cause Alby came through and did. You remember Alby comin’ through?

Something similar to that it was. No rain but just a lot a wind and brought the camp down.

It did, oh yes it did. Had tents on top of you had to get out of the tents and all this sort a thing and

they had. Anyway, from then on…

They gave us a fortnight’s leave and then we stayed around for about another fortnight.

Well, you went and you saw your family and friends and things like that. I went to Manjimup for a few days and you know moved around and…

The family were great yeah. I had a

They had, no they didn’t. They

knew troops were in but they didn’t know who was home. As my wife lived in Darlington, my mother lived in Claremont then, and she came to my mother’s place and she waited all day for me to turn up. Cause some of the troops come home and they was home and there was troops everywhere around the place. But no, they were sittin’ and not us cause we never got off the boat till so late we never got out that night. And a course she went back to Darlington and she said, “Well, Jim hasn’t come home this time.” Luckily, all the troops come home ahead of us they always expectin’ us to be with ’em but we wasn’t. Anyway, I rang her up the next day and said I was home.

So, she come down to Perth and we went back to Darlington and I lived up there stayed with her and then we went to Manjimup for a few days and then came back and I used to go up. She used to come down and stay in Perth overnight and I used to go out to, during the days we had left in Melville camp before we went over east. And they put us on a train’a course and then we headed off for the eastern states. We went across to Kalgoorlie. I think we had a day at Kalgoorlie. Or we got into Kalgoorlie in the morning and they said there’s no leave but the

train’s gonna leave at 6 o’clock. Anyway, then we got a message through to say that the train wasn’t gonna leave till 10 o’clock but we all left all our gear and packs all on the station near the station at the railway. And while we was away the thieves went through and opened up our bags and emptied all our stuff onto the ground lookin’ for anything they could gather. Boys had cigarettes and cameras and all the stuff pinched out a their gear up there.

That was at Parkwood, I think it was Kalgoorlie, Parkston they call it near Kalgoorlie.

Didn’t have anything on the train. That night we came back from leave half the blokes was under the weather you know there was all their gear in heaps all over the place had to pick up sort their gear out and get it back into their bags and get on the train and. They came through and took a list of all the stuff we’d lost but never heard anything about it. Anyway, we had we spent about 5 days on the Nullarbor, gettin’ across that time. The train was slow and broke down and think they took us for route marches and they used to get out a cook in one a the trucks. And they used to cook the meals in the trucks and used to feed along side’a the train

and you got mess hall duty. You had to get down in this truck and open these tins of stuff for that they used to prepare for us on the train and some of us had carriages and some of us had cattle trucks goin’ across there. Eventually, we got to Adelaide. They gave us a week’s leave in Adelaide and that was tremendous. Cause all our mates that we’d in the from South Australians had all gone back to and when we landed there all their people that they knew of us and we met some of them. We

had 3 or 4 days there and then they we got on the train and then we…

Just looked at Adelaide. Looked around Adelaide and that and some of the people entertained us and they had different entertainment centres there where we could go, and the dances and places like that.

I rather liked Adelaide and I liked the people there. I’ve got to know Adelaide over the years I’ve got to know Adelaide very well. And then from there we went to another stop from Adelaide

we went to Brisbane and then we went to Indooroopilly, I think from Brisbane. And then we had a…

We went, I think they went they skirted Melbourne and then we skirted Sydney by train. It was on the train all the time and then they got us into Brisbane and then they put us out in a camp there and we stayed there about a week or so. And then they decided they were gonna send us up to north, to a mob of us to the Atherton Tablelands where the general

battalion had gone to. And then I saw one of the first strikes I ever seen in the army in there in Brisbane. They wanted to put us in the dog box carriages. No toilets, nothing in them and a lot a the boys are you know living it up. They had diarrhoea and all sorts a things and they tried to put ’em in these carriages and they were puttin’ ’em in one end and they were goin’ down and jiggin’ out the other end. Then eventually the train went away and left a lot of ’em behind. But they we never heard any more. They all come a bit later on on trains and got

and then we got up to Cairns. Then we went they took us up through all the tunnels up there and to Atherton, we went to Kuri and where the battalion was and we was up there then for a few months doing, getting doing training then for the jungle. And was doing all our clothes had to be dyed, changed colour and then we was doin’ manoeuvres in the jungle and that type of thing there.

We never went to Canungra. We went out to

Kuri.

It’s just out of Atherton.

It’s under water now. They’ve made a big dam where we camped there. I’ve been up there since and it’s all under water.

The camp up there was something similar to what we had it was all in trees though. Never in open country. We had trees and tracks goin’ through it. And we had it was quite a good camp. There was a lot a bush though bush camps and they got went out in the jungle up there and cut stuff down

and built huts and thatched ’em with things you know things they had round the place and made quite a comfortable camp out of it. And then of course we was doin’ and while we was there we went down to Cairns and we had to learn to do invasion barges, on the barges coming in and do what we do when we got to shore, when we was doin’ in barges. It was…

Well, we had a tent and we had a bed there. They gave us a bed no mattress and then

there was six of us I think to a tent, or there might a been eight. And then we built a humpy like I was mentioned about the cookhouse and we was quite comfortable there.

Tucker was reasonably good.

Eating mainly the sort a meals we normally got. They usually give you cooked breakfasts and you got cereals and porridge and breakfast. They often cooked meat and stuff like, often you got mince and stuff like that. For lunch

you’d get a normal vegetables and meat and that and tea and salads and stuff like bread. Plenty a bread and stuff like that was on the table and jams and…

Daily routine was training in the jungle. We used to do route marches and they were teaching us the new tactics of what like the jungle training was entirely different to the what we had in the desert and we was kept pretty busy up there.

Well, in the desert you could fight at night in the jungle you couldn’t. I mean you could move at night time in the jungle you couldn’t see you hand in front of your face hardly. Well, they couldn’t either, so you just had to stay put but it wasn’t bad it wasn’t. But in the day time you had to cut your way through scrub. When you went on a patrol in the jungle you had a bloke in front you took it in turns of going in front and cuttin’ the track through. See, the foliage of the thing it was just stiff you couldn’t walk through it. Then we had to swim we had to learn to swim across the rivers with our packs on

things like that. And…

To a certain extent. Only drawback with the jungle it was always raining. We was wet through and the load particularly in the late show was wet all the time. I preferred the desert to the jungle any time. The from the health angle. It was all healthy, fit in the desert but in the jungle you was, you know,

you was sort of, all the time you was gettin’ different things wrong with you in the jungle and…

Wet, you used to get typhoid fever and malaria and dengue fever and all those, which we’d never heard of in the Middle East.

Well, we had to take Atebrin and all those kinds of things, yeah there.

Mainly the same. We’re doin’ route marches and then doin’

attacking through the jungles and things like that. Same as what we normally do.

We went down to Cairns yeah and then for several days and we was practicin’ landing on the. They had the barges with the front that down and you gotta you’d be out at sea and then they come into shore and you’ve got to rush off and make your attack in the country and that type of thing you know. Lot’a the boys on there were sea sick on those and…

Not particularly. Only the fact that you was getting in the jungle where you had trees where otherwise we had sand but.

Mainly it was. Mainly they got within reasonable distance of the shore. Sometimes they were a few yards out and you had to go through the water to get onto the sand. But mostly they were pretty good.

Carrying the usual stuff we had before. We had to carry our rifles and machine guns. I had an Owen gun [machine gun] mainly up there those days and you had to carry your packs and stuff you know you had to carry your blankets, everything you wanted and probably about 2 or 3 days rations and water and that stuff when you went ashore.

Mainly dried rations. Probably some dried biscuits or some. The Americans, those days bought out little tins of rations too we had those. They were rather tasty really. But they were

they used to get peanuts and little jars of vegemite and peanut paste and stuff like that quite. Better than some of the stuff that we had.

We was only in the Tablelands there about 4 or 5 months and then they took us down and put us on the Manoora and took us to Milne Bay.

We were given a general run down of what the place was like and all that and then we had some chappies come from to lecture us from the Kokoda Trail. They came in to us and told us the conditions that they were they went through there and what we could expect up there.

Well, I mean the German, the Jap never surrendered, and he tried to make a lot a noise. He’d try to surround you and make all these things which we found out they did. But providin’

you didn’t panic you didn’t need to worry. They all reckoned that they were invincible. They used to fall down if you hit ’em with a bullet the same as anybody else did.

Mail wasn’t bad in Australia, we had plenty a mail up there.

Morale? Morale was we didn’t know what to expect you know. We was just we’d heard a lot a stories about particularly the Kokoda Trail and those things we’d been told all about that and we thought you know it’s gonna be pretty tough up here.

Well, it was tough in many ways but the fighting wasn’t tough but the living conditions were. The days, after days you was clothes you was wet through, you had nowhere to sleep at night it was wet, and you know.

We went to Milne well, on the Manoora we went to Milne Bay.

On the Manoora that was the name of the ship we had.

The Manoora was a passenger boat that they’d converted to a troop carrier.

They wasn’t bad on there. We had good food but we had hammocks. We had to put up the hammocks in the room they’d take em down of a daytime cause they used to use that for the mess rooms and that sort a thing. But then on there we was given a few lectures about what the Japs do and that sort of thing.

Mainly PT and lectures and things like that you know. There wasn’t much room to do much

else. Then you had to practice when you landed you had to go over on the side you had to climb down nets on the side into barges to get taken to shore. They could take, there’s no wharves up there. But then once you’re on the boat you had practise with a load on going down these nets with all ya’ gear on you know. They were a bit frightening too for a while. Then when you made your landing at the other end you had to go down. Then we didn’t land there cause we went to Milne Bay, then at Milne Bay they took us down onto

Buna.

Rain and wet. I never seen anything like it in my. It was rain and pouring and mud and you know slush. I wasn’t really impressed, it was hot and muggy. I wasn’t very impressed with the place at all. But we were only there a few days and we had

We went ashore in barges off the boat. We went down the time, lower blokes onto the barges and they took us in. Milne Bay is a big harbour. There’s a lot a boats

in that.

Ashore, they took us to a camp and then we stayed in this camp and we did route marches at the camp. But all we did was route marches there. Kept us going on these marches.

Camp wasn’t bad. Just like normally just tents and stuff like that.

Nothing as far as we was concerned and we was only there about a 3 or 4 days and they shot us off to Buna.

Yes, it was a very busy place.

Where we were it was practically nothing but in Milne Bay itself was a bit depot, a big dump there. A lot of Americans and boats and things all the time but they never concerned us. We was kept away from them.

Marching and routine marching and exercises and stuff like that. Duties round the camp and that.

We never did any training there. We never, then of course we went to Milne Bay, from Milne Bay we went to Buna.

To Buna? We went there on an LST [Landing Ship Tank].

The LST? I don’t know. Never only had numbers on those boats I think. I know when we got there they had a lot a transport on there and those who had drivers licences we was told to we had to drive these transport off these LST onto the ground when we got to

Buna. And some of them then we they took ’em off us and we never drove the trucks. We just had more or less use us to take ’em off. And then they got the LST, have you ever seen one? They’ve got great big doors at the front and big ramps that you just drove down onto the beach. They were great. They come in almost that much water then everything was just drove off. They had truck loads of stuff in jeeps and all stuff all loaded up and just drove ’em off the ramp. They were tremendous. And then all round the outsides the shell a the,

they had bunks for the troops to sleep in. And they it was only on a few hours on that because when we got to Buna we had another camp in Buna and it was placed on a place where there’d been a battle and the we found corpses and all sorts a things there round the place and rats around the place. It wasn’t much of a camp there at all.

It was very untidy there and we was only there we was only there a few only got ready there and then they took us and they LCIs [Landing Craft Infantry], they called ’em

there. They took us on these little infantry landing boats we landed on those and then we went down to made a landing at Lae.

Well, we took ’em, just had to put up with ’em. You just, you know it was a bit frightful but you sort of, you didn’t seem to worry very much. You woke up at night and feel a rat goin’ over you feet and you it was a bit scary but it didn’t worry us very much.

That was very nice at all, no. They wasn’t new ones either. They’d been covered up with coconut palms and stuff like that. But we, generally speaking we had nothing to do with them. They just found them they reported them and someone else came and cleared ’em away. I never had anything to do with them at all.

Yes. The toilets was another thing there. They had line a cans and toilets with the big

drums on them and they used to take these out to sea and tip ’em out in the sea and bring ’em back. I wasn’t involved in it, thanks just the same, but some a the boys had to do it. They were told they bring this back and that was the toilet system we had there. I can’t remember what they had for showers whether they had any at all now.

We had water there. They had as far as I’s concerned I’m they had a lot a drums cut in and lowered down in the ground for water and they used ground water and my job was to go round to all

drums these tanks every day and check the water to make certain there was nothing in the water to worry anybody.

They were very. I used to work in conjunction with the doctor all the time when I was up there. I’d report to him and he’d check my findings and.

We had chemicals. We had what we called an horish box and we used to take samples of this water and used put different chemicals and so much in one

and the other. And the reaction and the colours they used to change in the water and you knew exactly what how much chemical to put in a certain amount of water.

It did. It got worse when we got there. When we went there after we stayed there the build up started to come gettin’ higher. The doctor got really concerned about it towards the finish that’s why. Anyway, they moved us out a there. And we went across and we went Buna and went to on

made the landing at Lae.

About a couple of weeks I s’pose.

Yes. They amassed the whole division there for the attack on Lae and Finschhafen. We landed on the beaches and the 7th Division came in the back end and they made their landing there and we had…

I s’pose it would a been, yeah. I mean the, in the army you were only concerned about your own little group. You didn’t know what was going on further down anywhere else, their problems or what they had. But I knew what our problems were and they…

Yes, well he told me yes he gets on to me. I report every day and see it’d be 10mls today and then the next thing it’d be 12 then, it’d be 14 he kept sayin’

it’s just gettin’ too high. It’s getting too high. And anyway, there’s nothing we could do about it.

But I don’t think anybody knew bar the doctor what was going on. A course he may have discussed it with the higher ups. But the general run of the mill didn’t know.

It is that’s right.

That’s right, yeah.

It would’ve done yeah, but it didn’t. As far as I know it didn’t affect us.

Yeah, well they was on these LCIs, as I told you, and we came up made a landing on the beach at Red Beach they called it. It was about 14 miles further on than Lae and a course we came in at dusk and they got these jigs in and we landed on the shore. Well, we never struck any resistance there at all.

The worst we did strike Japs inland a little bit and then they sort a swung round a bit to the right and we headed down the coast and the gradually fought our way into Lae. And then we come the Busu River which was in flood and that caused a concern gettin’ over this river.

Might a been about a week.

Well, they were findin’ little patches of Japs right through. We’d see ’em and they’d clear that up then they go a bit further then they’d strike another one.

Pardon?

We were operating the same as we were doing in anywhere else you know just when you struck opposition they’d make an attack. And we never had many casualties there at all. It was, quite apart from the weather, it wasn’t a bad trip at all. It rained and rained and rained all the time. It was

wet completely wet. And then the you couldn’t get any fires going there and.

It was raining all the time.

Well, first thing when you went ashore you made certain you had plenty a cover, somewhere to hide if you got attacked. We did have an air raid there while we were landing. The planes come over but we had no casualties on that.

We had a few, an

odd bloke here and there got wounded but not a great deal.

Well, the companies each company would be on the. You know you had your sections and then your platoons and your companies and battalions, well they all worked on together. And obviously, you had your own little group and you had your bit to do here and they had their bit to do there and you just pushed off like that.

Yes, the headquarters company there. They had Headquarters Battalion and they’ll be directing through the different companies. Yes, it was all under control there. But the…

It’d be about 10 mile I s’pose.

All jungle. All wet steamy wet jungle. Bar when we got to the Busu River itself and there was quite a bit of a clearing on each side a the river been made. Then the Japs

were embedded on the other side. They’d made a stand there and we had come this side then we had to get across the river. And that caused a bigger problem. We had…

Well, I can’t recall when they caught ’em. We’d hadn’t been there very long. Only an hour or two I think and some a the other companies, platoons sorta struck them, I never ever struck them. I was more or less in reserve. I was never in the first line,

goin’ across I was in the back ups mainly, yeah.

I wasn’t in reserve. My job was mainly concerned the water. But, there’s not much you can do in a case like that, because you, they just had to do the best you could.

No. There was plenty a water there but each’a the troops was given a little outfit of stuff to treat his own water as he needed to. So, he was you know.

I think they just used creeks and rivers anything we come across. I have seen a thing where we camped on a creek and then someone found some dead Japs up the. It was terrible really. I mean nobody got any diseases. A lot a the troops went down with malaria there. That was malaria and dengue fever.

Yes, personal ones. You never had any big catchments.

I didn’t do much at all. I mainly worked back with in the stores that came in for the Q [Quartermaster’s] stores they used to have. Used to give the blokes back there a hand if I had nothing to do on the water.

Well, stores’d come in and they’d have to be made up into parcels and taken up to the forward troops each day their rations. What they did, then they had no cooks and they used to hand ’em out to, you’d put yourselves into the groups then they’d give you so much for that group and so much,

and then you made your own arrangements how you sorted it out and cooked for yourself.

How did I? By just helping as I was saying cartin’ stuff up to the forward positions and stuff like that.

Carry it. We had no transport just used to carry it.

Whatever you could. If you had a few kilos you wouldn’t carry too much.

Well, they’d be in boxes like you’d have a lot a the

stuff was stuff that was in drums. There might be tins cans and stuff like that and you’d carried it like that. A lot of, we got a lot of dehydrated stuff round about that time when there used to be, you know pretty light, it wasn’t heavy to carry.

I couldn’t tell ya’ now. There’d be the storeman and a couple of them. Might be half a dozen or so. And sometimes the troops, they’d send their own blokes back to pick up stuff but

you had to get it ready for them to pick up when they come back you see.

Only the, I think they ran a telephone line goin’ up there, I wouldn’t know what they had there. But they would have communication with the headquarters and as they moved each day the headquarters’d move with you. They wouldn’t be very far behind.

In the jungle you was all in one group. There was no ,it’s not like in the desert where you had so much space you all kept together practically, yeah.

The Busu River then was running in flood and then the idea was to get across it. But the Japs were across the other side and several attempts were made by troops to get across. And then the 2/28th Battalion, they came along

and they tried to make a crossing and they got swept out to sea. Quite a lot of ’em but we had with us we had a wonderful swimmer and he got in the water up here, and he had a line and he got in the water. And he went quite a way across and he got this line across and he pulled a rope across and then they got across on this rope hanging on the rope and why the Japs never made a stand there I don’t know. They just disappeared and they never tried to stop us from goin across the river. But they

had a wonderful opportunity there to slaughter us there if they wanted to there but they never.

I think we had, I couldn’t tell you off hand but not really many I don’t think. The 2/28th had more than we did there.

Yes, it was. It wasn’t very deep, wouldn’t be any more than waist height but it was flooded, you just couldn’t walk into it. It’d take that much water comin’ down and rush you off you feet. Just comin’ down like a torrent.

Yeah.

We was only there a few hours or it might a been overnight or something there and then they produced a barge somewhere and some of us some went across and made a bridge on the other side. And this barge came along and took us round the mouth a the river and out and back we went round and come back the other side.

I did. I never crossed the river. I went round the back of it. Most of us went round the back. Only just a few went across the.

Might’a been a coupl’ a days I s’pose all told. I wouldn’t, some of the divisions got there before we did.

You just well you just made your own. When you got night time, there you just made your own arrangements.

Well, I wouldn’t know what the Q stores did, I wasn’t involved with them. But they probably covered it over with sheets whatever they had.

But no, I had a when we was up in the desert, I picked up an Italian ground sheet and I found that made a good cover and I kept that with me right throughout the war as a matter of fact. And I used to get a couple a pegs one down each and put a pole across and stretch this thing out. And then I used to get some, cut some little bits of bars of little you know, the trees and I used to put it right down and I used to make meself a bit a bed to keep off the ground.

I might’a sagged but it kept me off the wet ground. And I found I mainly I kept the, I used to have a shirt and a pair a trousers in my pack and I’d take me wet clothes off and I’d put them on and then when I got up in the morning I’d change back into the wet ones again and keep the ones dry to sleep in. But I found I kept reasonably warm during the night there.

Used to have to go out on picket and that but you’d wrap a groundsheet around you, you’d be right there.

Yeah.

We weren’t very far from the beach. A boat’d come in on the beach and land em on the beach for us, yeah. The air sea used to handle the main boats. We they had they’d supply us where we were and they’d bring us stuff on the boat. We found a lot of drums of petrol on the beach there. That was handy because we found that then we wanted to cook a meal we couldn’t

get any fuel. We’d get some of this petrol and pour it into some sand and then light it and you’d use the fire to cook, we’d boil our billy a water and make a cup a hot drink or something like that with. Cause you were batching we wasn’t they had no cooks nothing. There was five of us I think, in my little group and they used to give us the amount of food and we used to share it between us and do our own thing.

I had a couple of blokes the same as me, and a I think there was a cook and there might a been some

blokes from the administration and something like that, you know.

No, not a great deal,, no.

I can’t actually remember where the stuff used to turn up, I dunno who brought it up but it used to turn up and we used to have to help divide it up the…

Well, to the companies, the sections,

that’d be…

Well, the corporal or whoever’s in charge of them. They’d send a couple a men back to pick up some stores you see and we’d give them what they want and they’d take it up back to them.

Yes, that’s right.

Well, most’a the two days they were tryin’ to get across it and makin’ ways of getting across and they did, I think they made some patrols. I wasn’t involved in that, actually, but then a course the 28th, they tried to swim across it. A lot of ’em got washed out to sea, some come back over,

behind the German lines. But as I said, I went, they took, but they brought a barge up and took some of us round the mouth of it in a boat and that’s how I come across and we landed on the other side’a the river then we came back up. By that time the Germans, were the Japs were withdrawn from the Busu River and were back up further down towards Lae.

Well, there was estimated about 20,000 got away from us. I dunno how true it was. But see as we advanced on Lae one a the other the 7th Division

Battalion was comin’ the other way and we was sorta coming together and there’s always an argument as to actually who took Lae. We was on the outskirts of Lae and they were shelling it when the 31st Battalion I think it was and marched into Lae and they reckoned they took it. So, anyway that didn’t really matter we took it. But when we went into Lae there wasn’t a building standing. It was just a flattened mass of huts and things. Wasn’t one building.

We had patrols, yes. We had patrols going out all the time. We were main part of our fighting was done by patrols right throughout the whole war. I think we did more patrol work than we ever did. The Australians were noted for patrolling. They used to cause merry havoc in Tobruk and these places by going out on patrols and…

I never went, I did go out on patrols at New Guinea but not at this particular

stage, no.

Well, after the, as far as I was concerned after the Busu River we had about an hour in Lae and they took us out and camped us back on over in the Busu River where they were building, their startin’ the engineers, started buildin’ a bridge. And we was there 3 or 4 days and the next thing they shifted us up to, we went back to the beach head and they put us on LSTs and took us back to Buna.

No, very little. It’s just stores and that sorta thing and then we went back to Buna and then we got back to Buna and they converted, took us off the LST’s and put us on American destroyers.

Pardon?

Like great big barns, like great big things, have been you know, and doors comin’ down the front and you just drove in ’em. We went back to Buna

on those and they took us straight off there and put us on American destroyers.

No, coming back we didn’t take any vehicles at all. We just, a matter of fact it was only our particular battalion that went. Apparently, at Finschhafen one’a the other battalions had already landed there and they wasn’t doin’ too good there and we was sent up to reinforce them. And they put us on American destroys which took us into Finschhafen.

At Buna.

They took us off the LSTs and put us on the destroyers. All at night, we travelled through the to Finschhafen which I think was. I always say the Americans treated us wonderfully well, they even gave us all our bunks that night and gave us meals and bread and stuff which we hadn’t seen for days. And they treated us like royalty and they landed us on the beach head at Finschhafen. But the beach head had already been established then, yeah.

Very good.

Oh yes, it was American, the American food they treated us royally. It was a wonderful trip that was for me.

I got on with Americans all right. I think they helped us a lot and the some say. We travelled on one a their troop ships later on that was, I hated it but and that but on the destroyers it was good.

Only just

overnight

At dawn the next morning they landed us with barges invasion barges back at the beach head at Finschhafen.

No LCIs they used to call ’em Landing Crafts Infantry.

Like a long thing you all sat down they had a when you went to the beach they used to have little gangways that used to shoot out in front line that one each side’a the boat and you ran down these passageways onto the beach.

No. No, they were good. They were very good. Matter of fact, one of them got sand barred on a sand bar there they had to leave it there. They couldn’t get it off in time and the Yanks were panicked a bit and they just left it. Took the crew off it and left it and it was sittin’ there for till the waves broke it up.

Well, we landed on the beach, then the idea was that we was to assist the battalion that was already there. One a the other brigades other battalions and we sent only A Company, it was went

up towards Sattelberg and in a matter of hours they were surrounded and cut off and then we had…

It was on?

Finschhafen. Well, Sattelberg is just behind Finschhafen. Sattelberg is a mountain which the Japs had and they looked the whole area there and they wanted to capture Sattelberg.

No, we didn’t tell wasn’t told to much. We was only just told what concerned us at the moment.

Well, we had

this A Company had to go up to relieve another company there, another battalion and the rest of us stayed back near the beach head. Now we had no transport there. There was roads there and somebody, they’d borrowed a jeep from somewhere and the CO sent for me. He said, “I want you to drive the jeep,” so all the time in that particular area I drove this jeep. And I was goin’ night and day just cartin’ stores and up to the front. And then I’d go up to where the troops were and I’d bring wounded people out on me jeep and backwards and forwards goin’ like that all the time.

They were pretty tough. They were very bad roads they were rutted and wet and we had a 4-wheel, a jeep’s had 4-wheel drive and I don’t think I ever had that vehicle out of 4-wheel drive or low ratio all the time I drove it. And we used to go up the mountain and take stuff to where A Company got relieved after a few days. And then we supplied them with food and I used to go up. I did all the cartage from the beach up to the battalion just with the one jeep.

Food, ammunition,

anything they wanted.

Yeah, everything they wanted, yeah.

It wasn’t, as I say, it was going all the time. It was terrific. Matter of fact when we did we got some of our own jeeps turned up the CO sent for me and welcomed me personally for what I’d done up there which I though was rather tremendous really. They’d…

But we had one little scary moment on the mountain. We’re going up the hill one time there was, some other company had some jeeps there and we come round a bend and they was all stopped and

they said, “What’s happened?” They said, “Well, the driver in one’a the jeeps ahead of us got killed by a sniper.” And they had the road blocked and I went up and had a lot and they found out the jeep had run off the road and broken the telephone line to our battalion, and I said well I more or less took control of the thing. I said, “Well wait here.” I said, “We’ll stop here till my battalion finds out their telephone lines are broken and they’re going to come down and find out what’s wrong with it.” They did, they sent an armoured mob down to find the break and then

when they found the break they mended it and we all got on our way.

A couple of hours probably.

I would. Dependin’ on what time of the day it was. If it was at night time I would stay over night or if it was getting towards dark I’d go up to where the fighting was going on and, as I say, anybody got wounded I’d bring them back. In the dark come down the mountain in the... It used to be rather eerie comin’ down there. I’d have around about 3 or 4 wounded people

on the jeep coming down this. It was all.

They would’ve been treated by the stretcher bearers and that before they left and then I’d bring them down to where we were then they’d be picked up and taken back to base hospital somewhere down below.

I had a guard with me, that was all. But I just drove the jeep on me own for several weeks like that. Later on, we got some of our own jeeps come in

although cause Finschhafen was they counter attacked on Finschhafen, the Japs, and they had to bring a lot more troops in to help us. We nearly got wiped out there. They landed on the, Japs landed back on us, on the sea the same as we landed there in the first place.

We didn’t. We didn’t know what. Then the battalion might’a known but as far as I was concerned we didn’t. We just did as we was told. And when the Japs landed on the beach they knew they was coming. They’d

killed a Japanese officer apparently a few days before and he had full details of what was gonna happen. They was gonna light fires on Sattelberg and there was gonna be aircraft come over and there’s gonna be a push on the land and also an invasion from the sea. And it all happened to the clockwork but we was ready.

Yeah, I saw we got bombed there quite a bit with the Japs, yeah.

Well, a bit eerie. I didn’t mind aircraft if I knew what they were doin’. You could watch an aircraft and you could see the bombs coming out of it

and you knew they wasn’t gonna hit you see. But they might be half a mile away you’ll see them just dropping coming down and that didn’t worry me at all. But when, what I didn’t like so much was the Stukas. They used to come straight at you like but the Japs never had the Stukas they only had just pattern bombing.

Well, the first thing you did you made yourself a hole if you could or hid best way you could.

Well, you couldn’t see out the top it was all like a canopy. But what used to be happened up in the jungle, particularly in Lae we struck this, the smoke used to rise just above the top’a the trees and you used to smoke round that’s from the cookhouses. We had a cookhouse goin’ and they’d bomb these patches of smoke.

Cause they knew there was something underneath it, yeah.

Not too much.

You slept when you could, yeah.

Well, I wasn’t carrying anything from the base. I was just takin’ stores up to our headquarters and they were distributin’ em from where they had to go. Mainly, they’d send people down parties down from the battalion to pick up the stores and carry them back.

Just there was just a few, whatever they could find to shelter in and just scattered ’em

round the place and camouflaged as much as they could. And where the truck was at night, we used to put rows of tins across the track in case the Japs come down they’d rattle these tins and give us warning they were coming.

Well, there’s more or less, yeah.

I never ever struck one. Never struck anything like that at all. The, I know in later on in Borneo all the bridges were all, had booby traps but our engineers went in pretty quick and sort of

delanced them, yeah.

I found the hardest part was driving at night without any lights which when you’re comin’ down these jungle tracks and you had no lights and nothing. And you had perhaps a bloke sitting on one side and you had to a clear vision path through and you had someone sittin’ on the bonnet of the jeep cause there wasn’t room inside the jeep for him and things like that.

Yeah. Well, they had nowhere else. I mean they got on the jeep and that was all. There wasn’t too much room or anything on a jeep. It’s only you

got about three seats in it and you might have a half a dozen men to bring down. Well, they all got on wherever they could. Mainly, when they’re wounded ones a course they did have the ambulances had proper jeeps made out with stretchers but I never used to bring those down. I used to bring the ones that were walking wounded sort a thing you know. One bloke I remember brought down, he had a hole where the bullet had gone through his just past his head and through his, out through ear at the back, you know what I mean.

Yeah, that sorta thing, you know we used to get and I…

Yes, they were quite matter of fact they’d guide you to a certain extent. The bloke on the front there would tell you where you’d going really slowly and he’d keep you on the track and made certain you was goin’ right.

When I got back to our medical centre they’d take delivery of ’em then and they’d arrange for the ambulance mob to come up and pick ’em up.

Well, if it’s night time I might go in and get some sleep or else I might have another job to do.

Yeah.

The same sort a thing, yeah. It was only two or three mile up to where they were but it was a very slow job getting up there.

But Sattelberg was a steep mountain and they took months before they ever got, and then Finschhafen before they ever captured it, yeah.

There were maps but I never had one. We used to we had directions we had to go and we used to find our way around and sometimes

Yeah. Well, I knew where they were. I mean I wasn’t the first one there. There’d be troops there or they may send a guide with me. When I used to go round and I used to have a guard on with me all the time and he often, the guard might be a chappie from where I was going and he’d come and escort me up there and take me up there and show me where to go.

They may come from the battalion headquarters or they may come from the company I was going to. The company may have sent a guard they had wanted some stuff bought up they’d send a message

down and he’d they’d guide me up to where it had to go.

Who?

I had a rifle with me. I had an Owen gun most’a the time but I think, but it was just in the jeep that was all. He’d sit there with a gun the guard would. But only ever we only ever struck and that particular case we only ever struck a sniper once and that was when I was telling you, when we, that bloke broke the communication wires down. They reckoned he was up in a tree but I never saw him in the tree but I they said he’s sniped us and then he disappeared. Japs

used to do that quite a bit. They’d climb up a tree and fire 2 or 3 shots if they’d see anybody then disappear.

Well, we, it was always in my mind that it could happen but as I said before when you were busy you never worried about those sort a things you know. And I always considered myself very lucky. I went through the whole war and never once did I ever get anything happen to me from enemy action.

Yes, they did. Yes, we had, I saw quite a number of people used to call it bomb happy. And they used to get it, was affected. It was very bad to see. Some of the men a real fit man almost crying on the ground you know with fear and yet once you got out of that there they’d come good and they’d be all right. But I often hated it. I thought, “I hope I never get like that,” and I never ever did anyway.

They sympathised with ’em I think. They understood

what was going on.

No, I never had to transport any’a those, no never.

I don’t know. I s’pose it’s nerves. I mean, you take some people who have an accident they got a be counselled. Another person just walks away he’s quite all right. But see, one thing you find today, a least little thing happens these people are counselled. We was never counselled. You go through hell more or less. Lots a things

happened and no one ever come and asked you how you felt anything like that. You just took it.

Well, personally its something I don’t understand, counselling, because I understand why a person because someone reacted and that and they had to be counselled. And we had it and never was never ever discussed it or even knew it existed. But I s’pose it might do a lot a good or they wouldn’t do it. But I’ve done a lot a counselling myself since connected with the Alzheimer’s disease, I used to do a lot a counselling with the

people in there like the careers of people who had the disease. I ran a counselling group for 11 years with the Alzheimer Association.

I think so. I think it might a been, yes.

Finschhafen was more open than Lae. There was a bit hilly and there was acres of kunai grass that used to grow about

this high, I s’pose. And like a bit plain and there was very little trees and on the edge of it you’d find jungle. And they was tracks. You could drive almost anywhere through there cause you could just knock the grass down. But the Japs used to come through there and there was plenty a cover for them and you could get around in the daytime too and night time and we had that to content with, but that was better. The roads there were, roads were a little bit better than they were in Lae but they weren’t 100% by any means.

None. No facilities. We had the, I was most’a the time when I was there, I was, when I wasn’t drivin’ the jeep I was in a hole. We had a little fortress on the jeep to more or less guard then we could watch the beach in case anything happened on the beach. And then we had our own little dug-out and then I had an Owen gun to use there. And I can remember one night they captured this Japanese and he had a plan of our locations, each hole and how many men was in each hole and what arms we had there. And where he got that from I often wondered.

Someone must’ve come and had a look to find out but we never saw anybody.

Well, we were. At night times you didn’t know what was gonna happen and it was very, you know, you were on edge all night. Cause you kept guards on all night pickets on.

Mainly, we used to split up between us so there was five of us we spent the night up in or six maybe even mostly it was,

and you just spent the night up on, you know. And then each night you’d go on an hour later so you got the late shift or the morning shift or the first one. But you used to be on your own and where we was, in one particular case, there we was over the track coming down and we put some tins across on, you know, like I said, to set rattles. And you’d go and sit there and watch this track all night until your time come and then you went and you called your mate who was to relieve you and he’d come along and take over, and you’d go back to sleep yourself.

Well, that was the problem. You just didn’t.

I can remember one night we come off I’d just come off one a these pickets and I was getting’ down to just take me boots of, actually to lay down next thing the somebody, yelled out fall out and there was 2 or 3 Japs comin’ down the track right into us there.

Anyway, these Japs come down when he yelled out they tore round and went the other way and they could hear these paddin’ down the track. And anyway,

a bit further down somebody else got them and they shot one of them and…

Yeah.

But it was only just a few minutes ago where I was sittin’ is where the Japs turned up. I missed them. Excuse me.

Yeah, I reckoned I was one a the luckiest men in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] cause I got a few narrow squeaks.

They were mainly connected with the battalion headquarters, something like that

you know.

Well, you always kept guard all day long. And they’d be working round in the handling stores and things like those.

Mainly, some of them were. Some of them might’ve even might’ve brought somebody down from the battalion who wanted a rest, you know. They’d thought well they spend a day or two down there might do him good and they’d do that they’d change em round a bit. That often happened too.

Not always, no.

Yeah.

I made some real good friends in the army but unfortunately they’ve all died now bar about two.

In the daytime? Well, I was usually busy in the daytime. I only mainly got back on that picket business at night cause I had, I was busy on the jeep and they were doing

things other things and getting things ready for me and…

Yeah, we used to do our own cooking there. Later on, we did get a cook but at that particular time you’re talking about we never.

Well, we just used to, they just used to ration, they give us a tin of jam and a tin of meat and some biscuits, depends how many, maybe six men to a tin of jam, and say two to a tin of meat or something like that for a day how it worked out and you just worked it out yourself. We used to get those big army

biscuits and soak ’em overnight and use ’em for porridge in the morning and get some condensed milk on ’em in the mornin’, use em for porridge and things like that. You learnt as you went along.

Usually, we got enough. In Lae we were a bit short. At once stage there I think it was a high job, they couldn’t get this food up and we scrounged a bit there but most a the time we had enough food. I was never really all that hungry, we never went without food for very long.

I dunno, if I couldn’t fix it meself, I don’t know what we’d do. I never had any trouble like that.

Well, when I went through these schools I was tellin’ you about early in the piece, we were taught basic mechanics so that we could troubleshoot and things like that.

I went to a mechanical like an army transport school. I did two. I did one in Australia before we went away and I also did one in Mughazi when I first

got to the Middle East and we had an idea that you know, if it stopped we got the spark plug leakers or petrol blockage so we could handle all those ourselves. But with the jeep it was quite good, they had handles on it and six men could pick it up. You got bogged six men come and pick it up and get you out of the bogs they were quite good. They were really good.

Yeah.

Well, as a,

when we was young before I went in the army I had used to have motor bikes and cars and that and we always used to do our own repair work in those old vehicles you could. You can’t touch ’em today but those days you could. Like even before I went in the army I could quite easily pull a motor down and de-coke [remove carbon from engine] it and do the valves up and all that sorta thing. So, I knew a little bit about it.

Possibly yes, yeah. They knew before you went into there they took you for tests and sort you out a bit.

They knew what they were doing.

After Finschhafen, well I say we had. They counter attacked Finschhafen and the Japs they came in on the beaches and that’s where the Yanks to me excelled emselves. They had a machine gun post just on the beach not very far from where we were and…

Yeah, a boat came in and this is at night time, a boat came in and laid its ramp down right in front of this machine gun post and these Americans they, well

one particular American, he shot his machine gun into the boat and killed a lot a these Japs. And some got out’a the boat and they came round the back of it and they clubbed him to death and he fired his gun there.

Yeah. And anyway we had some other people there and they you know put a bit of a show up. Lucky they never come near where I was but down the beach they did, and they drove the Japs, two of the boats, the Jap boats got away. They pulled out and another one was, they stayed there and they couldn’t get out of it and you could hear these Japs crying in the boat as the boat pulled out.

Anyway…

Very little. That’s all. But some a these Japs got out of the boat and they came along the beach down along in front of us we never saw them and just down from where we were there was some caves.

You could hear ’em.

And they got down in these caves and 3 or 4 days later they were still there and we never knew they were there. And then somebody went out one day and they looked down this hole and here’s two Japs a course diggin’ there. They got a patrol out and went down and cleaned ’em out. But that particular night where we were we was in danger of bein’ wiped out. They only a little pocket of us on the beach.

There might’ve been about 50 or 60 of us. There mightn’t a been that many, I just forget now. And there was a mob like a medical centre

with a lot a wounded blokes in it, and they bought some of the troops who was further back to come back to the beach to take over the beach, which they did. And it was a sticky there for 3 or 4 days and then eventually they gradually drove the Japs back again.

I wouldn’t have a clue.

I know some of them went away there we went out and had the job to go out and bury them. See, we killed quite a few of ’em and they just laid around when they retreated, the Japs they just went. The Japs used to do, that they turn up and then

all of a sudden they’d gone. You wouldn’t even know they’d gone then they just leave and then they’d come back in the same way. And then we was there and then we had to, I remember we, when this show was on, we had a company up at, well forward and when they came, rushed back to relieve us, they left all their equipment there. Well, after the Japs disappeared we got those items they picked me up another bloke we had another jeep turn up then and we had to go up to take these jeeps with trailers we had those days. So, I had to go up and pick up the gear they left behind and we was

halfway up there when we met some a the New Guinea people that was with us, the guides and that to come back. Anyway, a Jap man came really fast, we had to turn around and come back and wait for the…

A lot of firing mainly. We could hear the machine guns going on the beaches

where our troops were firing on the boats. And when the Jap, one boat pulled out the Jap you’ve got no idea they were screaming and yelling you could hear ’em as the boat pulled away from the shore.

The Japs were themselves on the boat.

No, we didn’t. We just sat tight just hopin’ just waitin’ to see anything. We wasn’t gonna move, we just had to stay there in case anything come our way which fortunately, as I say,

they didn’t. Only these few did come down and get down in that cave I mentioned but we never saw them. They was out of sight from where we were.

It was a frightening experience, yeah. One a the most, that particular stage that was a very frightening experience, yeah.

Well, next when it got light the next mornin’ you could see, just have a look to see what was goin’ on and then when the other troops came down from the other companies came down they just went through the whole area and cleaned it up to see what was going on.

Then bout a couple a days later they went on the boat, as I said, one a the boats never got away and they found there was two Japs hiding in the boat who’d been there for a couple a days. We didn’t’ know they were there.

Yeah.

Well, I mean you had to tidy the place up where anyone got wounded or killed or something like that you know there was had to be handled. The Japs buried them and things like that.

No, the Japanese, very

few Japanese ever surrendered. They just they committed, if you didn’t kill them, they killed themselves.

No. Actually, there was this was, at Lae I remember one time they captured a Japanese but they were bringin’ him in and he wanted to kill himself and they give him a hand grenade with no detonator in it and he kept trying to get this thing to blow off on his head. That’s how they were. Yeah, they wasn’t frightened to die.

Another one we had there on the jetty one time he tried to bash his head in on an iron bar that was on the side of the boat. Then he tried to roll over into the water and we used to bring him back and let him go. It was cruel. You could do anything for amusement in those days you know. But they never you never captured a Jap. They reckoned that we used to eat ’em. I don’t know where they got the idea from but.

Well, that’s where the rumour got around that the Japs used to think that we ate them but I dunno where the rumour come from but it got around, yeah.

Mean us, on our side? Yes, if you could souvenir anything. The Japanese swords used to be a very prized if you got hold of one. I never got one but some of the boys did. And a lot a the officers used to carry swords with them all the time which our blokes never did. But the officer always had a Japanese sword hangin’ on his side and they souvenired them.

Well, you,

Japanese often if you found a dead one you’d always, one thing you always did when you found a dead Japanese, you’d rack him to see what he had on him. And sometimes he had like watches and Japanese money and stuff like that. I know one boy found his brothers watch on a Japanese who got taken in Malaya. In Singapore, and he found a watch on this Japanese.

With his brothers name on the back of it, yeah.

It was an extraordinary coincidence, yeah.

But there wasn’t much we wanted to souvenir. They had their rations that they carried were only sweet potato roots and stuff like that what they dug out round the place. They never had rations what we did, you know tins of food and all that sorta thing what we carried. They had nothing like that.

Well, they didn’t seem to be too bad. As far as we was concerned we never had that much to do with ’em. Once a persons died you had no idea what he was

like and you saw very few lives ones.

Well, they wasn’t very big, well Japanese are not normally very, very big. But later on we did find ’em, when we got to Borneo, in another campaign we did find ’em there, where they wasn’t too good at all physically.

We left there in the following January I s’pose it’d be. Must a been

round about 6 months I was there. I know I caught Dengue fever while I was at Finschhafen.

And they took me away in a duck, took me down to several miles down the coast where there was a medical centre and I went in there and they put me to bed, and they said, “You’re gonna be, gonna have a sore throat there. Lay there yourself for a few days,” and I did, and in a few days later they said you’re all right. Then they sent me back to a staging camp.

Pardon?

Well, I reckoned

it was a terrible break. The food was you got very little attention, very little food. They just used to give us some aspro, something like that, to cool ya’ down a bit or it’s quinine whatever they used to use on Dengue fever. Dengue fever’s a bit like malaria, I s’pose you know. And then if you wanted any water to wash you had to go and look for a water truck down the road and help yourself. Nobody looked after you there.

No, there was no nurses there. I never saw a nurse all the time I was in the army in that respect. And then they said.

They had men in there. Like men trained

as orderlies and that sorta thing.

Well, they supposed to been, no they wasn’t doctors. There was doctors round. One doctor come and see you and he’d tell an orderly who was only the same as you, was he just had a bit of first aid training. And they wasn’t very much to do. If they had a wound or something they’d a sent us to Moresby. But for the dengue fever the worst thing I had a temperature well over a hundred. That’s about the only that was really wrong and I felt really rotten. And then after a couple’a days there I asked to be sent to the staging camp. I got fed up there.

I don’t know really. I know people often was leaving us all the time with temperatures and that we thought it was malaria. I though I had malaria till they diagnosed the dengue fever. But I never did get malaria, not in the army. Not till I come later on.

We used to have mosquito lotions and they gave us these Atebrin tablets which you had to take one every day and that’s s’posed to kept it

in check, which it did because I was out the army just over a month and stopped taking Atebrin and I went straight and got malaria.

Once a day, every night you had to take it.

Well, it’s supposed to have been, yeah. If a person got malaria at one stage he was on a court marshal and the blokes in charge, he was cause I had to go up for a witness a one cause.

One person with us got malaria and the sergeant who was in charge got charged with not supervisin’ this bloke, and he bought me up as a witness that he was supervising. He did us anyway.

I just had to say that we were bein’ given Atebrin and told to take it. Well, the sergeant actually, he was quite a nice bloke, he come along and said, “Hope you buggers are takin’ your Atebrin,” sort a thing. Well, everybody said yes, well one bloke was sayin’ yes and he wasn’t doin’ it. He was a cook, as a matter of fact, this bloke anyway.

I think they wasn’t doin’ the right thing. I mean they gave us these tablets and things to take for our own good and I used to take them and a lot a people they reckoned, you know they were a lot a rot and they just wouldn’t take ’em.

I wouldn’t. It was nothin’ to do with me. I just kept mind me own business let ’em go. If they wanted to go that way, that was their business. Cause we got other things apart from that we had to take too, you know ascorbic tablets and vitamin C and that sort a thing.

Vitamin C. Vitamin C and that sort a thing we used to get those. They was all available and

I used to take mine regularly and I know I never got sick all the time I was there. Bar that one attack of dengue, and I was only away say, when I got temperature went and I asked to go to the staging camp. When I got down the staging camp I found that they were using the people in the staging camp to unload some of these LST boats coming in and that was no good to me. I wanted to get back to me unit again. So I did, I got back. But you had all sorts. When you was in these places you had all rumours what was going on in your own battalion. They, where they were getting fighting they were

doing this and when we got back nothin’ happened at all. Everything was quiet.

There was rumours all the time. I dunno where they come from. The rumours that used to come in the army, you’d be surprised the stories that used to get out.

Well, they was tellin’ me when we was down at the staging camp that my unit that I was in was in a battle with the Japs and there was so many was killed, and all this sort a caper. And you wonder who they were and that, and then you get back and you found out it was just a yarn that got around. I dunno who used to make them up and where they came from but they used to

turn up.

This was at in near Finschhafen. A part of Finschhafen they used to, Finschhafen’s a pretty big place. There was various names for different localities there.

No, but you were just in a tent and got rations. There was no medical tent in there. The staging camp was actually where you supposed to have go to till they could send you back to your unit just more of a…

I asked to be sent back. I said, “Can I go back?” And they said, “You feel fit enough?” I said, “I’m all right.” So I went back and they sent me back.

Well, they sent me back the way I come in, the duck.

They used to have a duck. You know what a duck is, didn’t ya?

A duck is an amphibian truck. It can run on land or in the water and when they come to the sea. They used to start a propeller up at the back and go in thing and go straight and when they come out the other end they just used to use the wheels.

They’d get about a dozen I s’pose. Plus more. They used to use ’em a lot

along the coast in New Guinea for cartin’ stores and that. It was easier to go on the land on the water than it was to go on the land. They did a lot a transport a lot a stuff used to come into our place by ducks. They carry a fair load it’d be like a small truck, you know.

Probably an hour or so.

Yeah.

No, everything was just as I left it.

I got back even’a little hole I’d made meself there a little doova, we used to call ’em was just as I left it.

A doova.

Yeah.

We had a Christmas in that at Finschhafen. I remember that.

Not too much. We, a lot a the boys made their own jungle juice as they used to call it. They used to get anything, potatoes and all sorts’a things and they used to put it in a container and

fermented it, and then strain it and kept the liquor off. But I think it was terrible stuff. I wouldn’t drink it.

Anything they could get hold of. Anything they could get from the cookhouse. Potatoes, dehydrated spuds, and water and anything that used to ferment and they’d put it in a tin and after a while it would bubble and they’d drain the stuff off and some of the boys drink anything. But I was wasn’t actually a tea-totaller but I was always, you know a bit fussy, what I drank.

I’ve seen some’a the boys crying drunk with drinkin’ some of that stuff. Woeful.

Yeah.

I s’pose it was. Sometimes they used to make it out of coconuts too. Coconut juice and stuff like that.

No. Depends if you like that sort a stuff. But I…

We had, now and again I used to be on the jeep. We had some of our own transport

turned up with some of their drivers and I used to relieve them an odd job like that, yeah.

But we was there just after Christmas, though they packed us back into LSTs and brought us back to Australia.

And coming back on the LST that was a…

No, Liberty boat, beg your pardon. They bought us on a Liberty boats. They were American boats that were made particularly to cart stuff and troops backwards and

forwards like that.

Before we left to come? About a month or so. I got an idea. My wife gave birth to baby when I was in the camp and that was born on the 4th of December then we had Christmas there. Then we came back perhaps January or so after that is when we came back.

We went on they put us on Liberty boats. I don’t know if you know a Liberty boat was a welded ship that the Americans built in their thousands and they used to use ’em for cartin’ stuff from American to England and they used to use ’em up there for their general. They reckoned they did one trip and they’d pay for themselves. Anyway, they made ’em up into with temporary bunks in ’em and they used to use ’em to transport troops.

Well, they put us on one’a these Liberties, there was two in a convoy and a corvette and we came through the Coral Sea in a cyclone. And I dunno whether you’ve ever been on the water in a cyclone, it was quite an experience. The, I guarantee out of our battalion we had roughly I s’pose 8–900 men there wouldn’t a been more than 20 of us that wasn’t sea sick. And the whole boat, even the members of the hospital staff ,and everything else the cooks and everything else everything closed down. There was no, nothing on at all. But we

I was one of the survivors of that. But there was the other boat you could watch it, it’d come right out of the water and you could see it’s propellers turning up in the air and the next thing she’d go down and we’d be up, and it was a frightening experience. That lasted 2 or 3 days. But we got through it we didn’t sink anyway luckily.

Not too much. It was very, very funny really. They had on the boat they had toilets. There were no toilets on the boat and they built toilets and sat them on the deck.

Just put ’em all in, just sat there and they had these pans in ’em and a lot a these blokes in these toilets with these, when we struck the rough sea and these thing took off and went across the boat, you know. Every time the boat moved they’d be on this side a the boat and when the boat rolled they’d go back on the other side. And I remember the first time it happened they sittin’ there watchin’ these blokes in the toilet and they come out there with their slacks down their ankles and all sorts’a things. It was a funny picture really watchin’ on. But we never got any meals provided. They used to give us

help yourself, if there was any rations that was around on the boat. You just did the best you could yourself. But gee that was a rough old trip that. But there was always everybody was sick bar a handful of us.

The Liberty boats? They were fairly big. And they were like big hollow cargo boats. There wasn’t much comfort in them. And they built some of these for transport they had these temporary beds about 6 high.

No, it wouldn’t be six high about 3 or 4 high in tiers and then they that’s where you slept. But we didn’t sleep down there. A few of us got together and we kept well away from down there. Every time you poked a nose down there where all the sick was, we kept out of it and kept up on the deck where the fresh air was and I think that’s why we weren’t seasick too.

Decks on the boat? It was only really one deck, just like a big cargo boat with one deck round the top that was all, with the bridge up the other end.

Where did we eat? Well, we ate where we could on the deck. They had a temporary cooker on top there when they were cooking and you just lined up cooked your meal and sat down wherever you could find room to sit. But when the cooks all fell crook they never cooked any meals and we just. I can remember when the boat we first struck this they had got some 44-gallon drums and they chopped ’em off bout that far, you know, and they had one a these big things full of fruit juice and we had an officer standing there.

And when the boat rolled he sort of lost his balance and he sat in this thing which we thought was a great joke but he didn’t. He’s sittin’ there with his in this drum of fruit juice.

That was one a the funniest things that happened on that trip. But we enjoyed when we got used to it we enjoyed the trip coming right though there.

Well, I don’t think it was. The crew used to tell us, they used to on the seas. If this in an anti, gets the seas like this, they’d break in

half they used to tell us things like that you know. The Yankee crews on there. Some of them were all right we’re around. And now and again they had a separate. They ate separate from us and now and again they would send out food to us up there. They’d send half their meals or anything left over they’d shoot out to us outside and sometimes we had pork chops and things like that which the other troops never got. That’s cause they never wanted ’em anyway. They wouldn’t have eaten them because they were too sick. But then they got us back to I think we come back to Townsville.

We never, as far as their troops concerned, we never had much to do with ’em. We only struck ’em on the boats and that sorta thing.

The Yankees? They were good, we found them tremendous the crews on em. And anyway, they got us back to no we come to Cairns they put us straight on a boat and sent us home on leave and we come home cause they gave us leave.

Come home to Perth.

We come round the railway.

We come right down the coast and across the Nullarbor in cattle trucks and they dumped us, we got to Perth and we had I think they gave us 2 weeks.

Very little. You played cards and amused yourself in the carriages and we used to stop at some of the stations and some of the people used to come out and give us a. Some’a the organisations’d often meet the train and give you tea and coffee and things like that as we went through. I remember comin’ through New South Wales there they brought out buckets and buckets

of ice cold butter milk. And they boys hadn’t seen anything like that for a bloomin’ long time and they made themselves crook with this buttermilk that was there. But they used to do that and they, we got. Usually, you got coming down and in Queensland you always got steak. In Victoria you got sausages. No, New South Wales you got sausages. Victoria you got salads. When you got to West Australia you got bloomin’ army rations. But used to be on the station there you stopped, they’d pull into a station there they’d feed you

on the side of the train. And on the Nullarbor of course they used to cook the meals on the train as they come in and you sit along side the train and eat it. Used to be just, they had army cooks and they had one’a the trucks made into sort of a mobile kitchen and they cooked the meals on there. They’d feed us on the train coming through.

Kalgoorlie, I s’pose it’d be, yeah. Kalgoorlie would a been the first one, yeah.

All right. But see comin’ those days

you had to change trains at Kalgoorlie. Every state you had a different size gauge so you never got on the same train right through, you kept changin’ over.

They varied a lot. I can remember a lot of experience on trains when we’re coming down through, one through Queensland, the train broke in half, one half left and the other rest’a the train broke and a course all the vacuum brakes come on and stopped. Then they had to go and get that fixed up and then a bit later on we were leaving Brisbane and ladies rolled a

carriage full of troops didn’t tip over and no one got hurt. Then we got down and I think in Victoria and we had a carriage catch a light. So, we had a lot of excitement you see. They wouldn’t stop much coming home they’d go straight through. But goin’ back we used to get a bit more stopping in towns but. But in the mean time we got home and anyway we had our fortnight leave and we got back to Brisbane.

Well, just went and saw your families. Same thing we normally do, go kick around.

Yeah, we let them know. Once we got back on the shore we could send telegrams and that yeah, we was right we could tell ’em we’re comin’ home, yeah. They get a bit excited and…

How you can imagine when they hadn’t seen you for a while. They were tremendous, our wives and that girlfriends and that sort a thing they made a great fuss of us coming home. And they used to give us coupons to buy lot a things were rationed those days I s’pose you know that butter and meat

and all that. And they used to give us coupons to bring home to our families to feed us while we was home. And if you asked for ’em, they used to give us coupons petrol coupons. Petrol was rationed. Normally a person only got 4 gallons a petrol a week to run a car and we’d come home with some a these coupons. They might give us a dozen coupons to see that. That used to be a big help anybody had a car or we knew anyone with a car.

No, not particularly that leave,

no. I saw my daughter for the first time who was born just after we come home, yeah.

That was great. She was 2 or 3 months old and just startin’ to sit up. She was born in December this’d be about February, so she was just starting to take notice of things and that was good to see her, yeah.

I don’t remember now to be quite truthful. I s’pose I nursed her and might’ve even,

as soon as the wife saw me, greeted me the first thing she shoved, here’s your daughter into me arms and see like that.

She managed pretty good. She was a pretty good. She was a country girl same as me. She coped all right. She was a member of a big family. She had quite a number of think there was about nine in her family. Eight or nine anyway, and she was the eldest, so she had quite a bit of experience lookin’ after younger kids and that. She had no trouble with the baby.

And then my. Not so much from her family cause they was in Manjimup but my mother lived up in Perth and she kept in contact with my mother pretty well and they used to. They used to look after us and they used to look after one another, yeah. Cause my father was in the army and I had a four brothers in there too. So I mean there was and a brother-in-law all in the army together. So there was quite a crowd of us.

One particular time we did and I’ve got a photograph of it here. The time we got home, all got together and we had a photograph, a family

photograph taken of us, all in uniform bar one. And he got in the army later on. He wasn’t in the army that particular time, the youngest of the family, yeah.

Well, we come back to camp and they put us on the train and shot us back again.

We went back to Claremont, I think it was we went to this time. We got back to Claremont or Karrakatta one a them places down there, and they put us…

Well, it was just the showgrounds, you know the Claremont showgrounds,

well we lived and they had tent scattered among the buildings there and that’s all that was there. It was only a temporary more or less a reporting in. If you wanted to go in that day they used to give an overnight leave pass come back tomorrow and so on. So, you wouldn’t know from day to day when you could go. Then you got back and say we’re leaving this afternoon. Or they might tell ya’ the night before you’re leavin’ tomorrow or something like that so you could tell your family that you’re goin’ back.

The Claremont Hotel? Oh yeah. Yes, we used to we’d go there that

was down there, yeah.

Well, I was never mixed up with watering holes then. I was more concerned with my family than I was goin’ there but some a the single blokes used to. Sometimes we’d meet some of the boys in town then a course then we’d have a you know have a bit of a session in Perth durin’ the holidays. They’d bring in their wives and girlfriends and we all meet one another for the first time and yeah.

Well, when we got back to Brisbane they brought out,

they decided then that we was entitled to three weeks leave not two. Those who was on leave were granted the extra week to carry on but those that was on the way back missed out on it. So, there was the 2/28th that was in Brisbane, when we got back they’d just come back from leave too with us and they refused to leave Brisbane until they guaranteed that they were gonna get that leave. There was hell to pay there. The trains went around empty, they had the trains there and they refused to get on ’em and one of our officers got court marshalled and so forth

and anyway they all got put on charge sheets. But we was lucky. We come in the night before and wasn’t on the draft so we got back to our battalion and had nothing was taken us when we did get up there. But some of them got into trouble over it. But anyway, they promised us to finished up with, they said if you go back to your units the first opportunity they’d send us back take the extra weeks leave. Well, they kept their word there, I will say that, and that’s a few months later we all went on leave the second time. So, we got another lot

a leave and those who had their first lot only got the one but we went back for and they wouldn’t give us they gave us another two weeks leave instead of one you see. So, we copped it really good in the finish.

Brisbane was full of soldiers and one side’a the… Do you know Brisbane at all?

One side a the… There was a bridge in Brisbane all the black Americans were kept on one side and all the whites on the other. They wouldn’t let ’em meet. Whereas Australians, what they are

on both sides they didn’t give a damn whether they’re black or white we’d let them. But we found ’em, we never had any trouble with ’em. There were odd fights between them and things like that among some of the troops but I used to keep me nose out of those sorta things. I was never a person that got into trouble.

I don’t know. Girls I s’pose. See when we went over the Middle East we found that the English soldier, he had no money and we had plenty a money or in comparison. When we come to Australia the Yanks had all the money and we were the poor ones.

And a course that didn’t go down too well at all because they could out buy us with the girls any time they wanted to. Not but bein’ married I never worried about ’em but some of the others did, you know.

I kept my nose out of trouble, yeah.

Some of me mates didn’t. They used to get into trouble. I used to as far as possible I’d keep out of trouble. I didn’t plan for I thought getting like that was silly really but yeah. They used to try to put it over the Yanks.

Sometimes our blokes and it didn’t always come off.

Well, we’re playin’ two-up and those games and, you know, they’d make work shrewdies on them but anyway.

They’d work shrewdies on the Yanks sometimes, you know just to put something over them little things and the Yanks’d pick up and they’d go crook. And the next thing there’d be a fight on. Cause when we came back from the on leave from the front lines all the base ones used to be shifted out so there wouldn’t be trouble in the

town because there was a bit a animosity in Australian troops of those who stopped home and those who went away and there used to be trouble there too. So, they used to keep the local ones out of sight while we was home.

I s’pose in same ways because we used to come home and we’re the fightin’ troops you know and we had patches and badges and things that these locals never had. And we, they used to you know, we was just cocky and but we used to call ’em. It wasn’t their fault in a way but it was hard to

convince some a these soldiers that they were bludging. Well, some of them might’ve been too. You know making out that things wrong when they weren’t and all this sorta things.

What’d they used to call em? Used to call ’em ‘Choccos’ [chocolate soldiers]. Yeah.

Well, they reckoned they got in hot weather anywhere they’d melt.

I don’t think so, I think that they, I think most of ’em were genuine blokes that just joined up and never got sent away. I mean we got,

we joined up and we got sent away. We had no choice. They just said ‘you’re goin’ away,’ we went. They want you, you stayed there. But…

In Brisbane? Well, I never had leave. I had leave and we went back we went to I come back to Perth again and by that time we’re gettin’ short a money cause we had two lots a leave in one year. And we never got too much money and we had to do the best we could with what we had. The wife didn’t mind. She said she’d put up with me another fortnight without any money. So, we

stayed home and then we went back to the battalion and. We went back this time we didn’t go back to the…

I went across the country eight times.

On that leave, yes right across, yeah. And when we went back to the battalion after New Guinea we went to Ravens [Ravenshoe] instead a going to Rathborne, near Cairns, we went further out to a place called Ravens

and we made a camp there and we was there for about 12 months before, and then we did training and doin’ lots a things up there. And then we had.

Training for? Well, we didn’t know where we was gonna go. We just get trained but then when we did eventually go we went to Morotai.

Well, it was only just routine training. We was more or less just going over what we’d done over and over again, so as the, you know, same thing that go and they’d do field manoeuvres and things like that. It was

all repetition mainly.

We were. Just Australians. There was our 9th Division mainly.

Yes, the whole division was there and down the road a bit was the 7th I think, and some a them were there too and then we used to get we had quite a good time up there. We had picture shows and we used to get truck loads. Trucks to go out on Sunday’s, they’d take over different places in the

and on the whole it wasn’t bad. And we had a nice camp and we made it good and we built different things.

The location was, it was an open timbered country. Very open but not scrub in the jungle. And we had the camp spread among there. We had rows and we did a lot of decoration and put things on trees and made the place look quite nice. And the other thing down the road was the, build a big picture theatre where we had pictures every night.

They were all free a course and we’d get every now and again more or less every night there used to be a truck go into Ravens. So anybody that wanted to go to Ravens to the pictures in there, they used to get volunteer drivers to drive a truck in and I often used to go take a truck in. Sunday nights, they had the same thing for anyone that wanted to go to church. They’d send a truck into church. And I found I volunteered for that quite a number of times. I used to go to the church and then after the service the local people’d take you into a hall and give

you a night’s entertainment you know. And you met up with the people living up there instead of just yourselves which I found great. I met a lot a people up in Ravens over in that area mainly by going to the church on the church trips and those things. It was great. Another thing they had up there, they had a race meetin’ up there which was quite interesting. The local people organised this race meeting and they got the local farmers and people to bring their horses and gear in and they got the horse in and these horses were auctioned and sold for so much and the boys

used to bid on ’em, and the highest bidder got the horse. That was his horse for a day. The money they raised on that, they used for prize money to run the races. Get the idea? Then they had this race meetin’. A course you wouldn’t know what the horse you had. It might’a been an old donkey but someone’d buy the horse and we had bookie makers. Some’d set ’emselves as bookies and they’d run this race meeting and that was quite a good day’s outing really.

I only ever saw one of those. But I thought it was a great idea. When the day was over a course the farmer took his horses and that back home again

and the bookies got the most money, I s’pose as it is in most cases.

The training? Training never worried me I was fit as a fiddle. The training never worried me one little bit, I was away.

It was repetitive a lot. A course up in Ravens though mainly they got a I was mainly on a water truck. All our water used to have to be carted in and stored in tanks. We never had any area piping at all.

Only had tanks spaced around the unit and we used to have to go to a central power point and cart water and then pump it to these tanks round the so that for the showers and the cookhouse and all that sort a thing. And I was occupied with that most’a the time.

Quite a lot. As much as you could get really because there wasn’t the water. There was water there but there was so many lookin’ for it in the same place and you often had to queue up and wait to get your turn and thing. Sometimes we used to sneak a turn and go down to the river and fill up

the tank ourselves. I knew what treatment it needed and you’d treat the water and take that out and they’d put that in the tanks. And then they rigged up just an appliance to warm the water up and they used to have hot showers and that sorta thing. They used to get a drum and a big 44 gallon drum and they’d put a funnel on the top and they’d get and they had showers inside with mobile ones. You just took ’em down off a hook you know, and they to get any water out the drum you used to have to put a bucket in to get a bucket

out and you’d get a bucket a hot water and we’d have hot showers and we used to keep those things going, yeah.

By wood. They’re standing on some blocks and used to light a fire underneath it and then when it comes to get going, well a bloke’d get a bucket’a water, out’a the thing and pour it in there. Then he’d fill up his shower from the hot water and put some cold in if you needed it and have a shower. That was great.

They were good. The camp’s reasonably good, yeah.

Made, built our own mess huts and all those sort a things up there and we had it was quite good.

We had tents and they gave us, I think at this stage they give us stretcher beds. I kind a think we had up there which were more comfortable that what we had anywhere.

We didn’t know. There were a lot a rumours come we was gonna go to the Philippines was gonna go here and was gonna go there and eventually we as I say we went down to

Cairns and they gave us some more invasion training on the boats, you know loading. Then we went from there to Morotai.

We boarded at Townsville I think. We went to Townsville I think on this American troop carrier. It was made specially, for troops and it was the worst, boat, troop ship I was ever on.

The Yanks, they got two meals a day. They gave you breakfast and tea. And the,

at night time as 6 o’clock we’d batten down below decks light there just had no lights or anything down there and they were bar in the toilets and that. Boys used to get and play cards in the toilets and on the deck. They were terrible. It was a terrible boat that. The food they gave you what you got of it wasn’t bad. But it was, you know you, it wasn’t what we’re used to in the army. Army food mightn’t be good but it’s substantial. But the stuff they gave us there was woeful.

Morale was very low there.

These Yanks used to walk around there on the boat there with pistols on their sides, everything else and if you went in that place, they’d hawke you over, you’d get the. You try and find some shade from the sun under a light but someone had to get you out and all that sorta thing. The boys got really hostile. I think they…

Well, I think they had it lasted long enough they probably would’ve jacked up about it.

The voyage wasn’t. Only a matter of days really it might’ve been a week or so but then we got to Morotai.

I think to re-establish ourselves for an attack on Borneo and we went to Morotai and we sort of regrouped in Morotai or got in the final briefing. But we didn’t know where we was goin’ till later.

Was there about a month I s’pose.

Well, and when we got to Morotai we went out. The Yanks had captured Morotai from the Japs and they established a front line over half of it

and they had their pickets and lines all established there. We went through them and established a camp several miles inland from where they were. Right in no-man’s-land. But we never struck any trouble up there though. We got carry and some of our boys scrounged and electric light plant and we had electric light for the tents and all sorts and we had quite a good camp there.

Well, I s’pose they wanted somewhere to put the tents they went up here. I dunno why they put us there but might’ve had a reason for it. I know

we had some.

We used to do guards and that same as we did anywhere else. Made certain you know. But it was more organised camp rather than units thing. And we had a kitchen established here and water was another problem there. They had a the engineers fixed up a water point and they had a lot a big tanks made up and they used to pump water into these tanks and it used to reek of chloride. You couldn’t drink the stuff and

they used to, all the cooks I know they. And anyway, I got in a bit of a stew because the water used to come in and I used to distribute the water round where it had to go but I never controlled the quality of the water on the quantity. And one officer went crook at me one time and I went and handed in me resignation, I wanted to get off the water. I wasn’t gonna have that. The bloke in charge’a me, he went to the doctor. The doctor went to see him. Anyway, the officer came back and apologised to me and they went down to the engineers and they arranged

for me, everyday I used to have to go down and take charge’a the water pumps down where the water was comin’ from. So, then I used to treat the water down there so that from there on we had no more crook water. But the engineers didn’t take very kindly to me comin’ down there tellin’ them what to do. They reckoned they knew what they were doin’ but the…

Well, they were puttin’ too much chemicals in the water and it wasn’t bein’ treated properly and you got these, there’s a limit to what you put in. You couldn’t used to be horrible, you’d spoil your food and your tea and everything,

yeah.

It was about a fortnight, a week or fortnight, I s’pose before I took over. But then from then on I used to spend everyday, I used to go down and I’d spend all day down there just checkin’ the water. Testin’ the water and arrangin’ what chemicals had to go in it.

Must a been there about a month six weeks, I just forget a lot a the time we was there.

Well, mainly it seems they were givin’ lectures and tellin’ the boys what they had to do. I didn’t get to many a them because I was always down the water point. But what they spent most a their time on I don’t really know. Basically, we all went down then we either the one a the generals come and give us a talking too and that sorta thing. He told us what was going on in this campaign and he said there was VCs [Victoria Crosses] to be won and all this sort a thing they gave us. And we did win a VC later on. Anyway, after that we got on the

Manoora again the ship, and then we did training on the boats of climbing down these rope ladders and all that sort a went all through that side again. Then I went in the biggest convoy I was ever in. There were hundreds of boats.

Yeah.

Just a few days. And then we went the convoy left. Almost, as far as you could see there was boats in this convoy going into Borneo. But I think when we got near Borneo we sort a split and one division went down to

Balikpapan and we went onto the island of Labuan and we did a beach landing at Labuan again. That amazed me that landing. We landed there about 6 o’clock in the morning and it was broad daylight and they just we just sat out from the shore and while we’s out a shore just washed ashore. Then about 8or 9 o’clock in come the destroyers and they just shelled all the shoreline and then we got in the boats and just come went ashore. Just like that. I thought they’d done that in the dark but yeah they done it in the daylight.

Every other landing we did we always did at night but in there we didn’t. Broad daylight. One Japanese aircraft came across and dropped a bomb somewhere near us. It didn’t do any harm that was all the resistance we had there. And they got on the shore then we took Labuan and we was there, must a been on Labuan

Well, you was intent. You didn’t know what you didn’t know whether you’re gonna expect to get a lot a Japanese machine guns or what you were gonna get. I remember some machine guns opened up on one side of us off a boat,

of a boat that was stuck there and the one a the navy boats went and soon settled that. But about the only resistance I saw landing there. Then we got on the shore and we sort of advanced in and they struck a bit of resistance going in. Then we went in and took the airport and the water. They had a big water dam there a big.

I s’pose it must a been probably 2 or 3 mile. It mightn’t be quite that far. Well, I s’pose they come in as

they come forward where the deep waters go. Those Manoora’s, they could come in, they wasn’t landing barges. But some a the troops did come in smaller stuff but we was actually on the Manoora itself.

That was my second trip on the Manoora, that one and I had a third one afterwards but that was up till that time only.

Well, nothing happened really. Well, they struck little pockets of resistance and a few Japs here and there that was all.

I got mixed up with the doctor again.

We had to check the water supply. They had a big dam on the area which had to be checked to make certain the water was fit to drink and that and then we had a jeep fitted up with a little with a water tank on a trailer behind the thing and we used to use that for carting the water out to the troops. Wasn’t a very big one but at least it was a good way a getting it around.

On Borneo in Labuan? Was there

about a fortnight, I s’pose and we cleared up our section of Borneo and the 2/28th had trouble in theirs. They did the other side but they were there a bit longer than us. And then we landed they we had another landing then. They took us off Labuan.

We never set up much of a camp there at all. More or less we’d just do with whatever we could do makeshift there. Until they got us ready and then we prepared to onslaught Borneo itself, the mainland of Borneo.

And we went across to a place called Mempakul and we went across in barges there and we landed at Mempakul and we never struck any resistance there either. And then we got on these. Then I got on, they put me on a barge to go up the river, up the Padas River and we travelled up this river all day and never struck anything at all. But other troops had. They’d come in the other way they just. Then we got up to a certain point and we had to go inland and walk across over to the Clears River to another river and where the

towards Beaufort, the town of Beaufort. And they struck a lot a resistance there and that’s where Tommy Starcevich won a VC [Victoria Cross], he was with us one of our group.

He got that towards the end of the landing taking Borneo taking Beaufort. It’d be about a week or so I s’pose after we landed at Borneo.

Well, out in the, we walked across the land to the other river

from one river to the other and then we, they fought their way up the river into Beaufort. And Tommy was in one battle there they had a he blew out five machine guns on his own. Just took, he invaded one after the other. He was a little Yugoslav. Australian born Yugoslav he was. He was a lovely fellow too Tommy. And then we took the town of Beaufort and we moved into Beaufort.

Beaufort was a little town up there. They had a picture theatre in and railway station and lot of it had a little space and that. There wasn’t any shops there but there was still the houses and we lot of them were damaged of course but we used to patch them up and we occupied the houses that were there and we stayed there for quite a while and I remember going into Beaufort. That was an experience again too. We was a few miles down the river and they were gonna take us up into Beaufort and they landed they put us in these barges.

They were

just transport barges. They wasn’t very big cause they used to come up the river. They wasn’t the big landing barges like the Yanks had they were only open there was no decks on ’em just a boat, you know.

Food and everything else we wanted up there they’d bring up. And all stuff used to be brought up the island, up the river to Beaufort cause there was no roads in Beaufort where we were there. There was a railway line but no roads and they used to use we took the tyres off the

jeeps and put the jeeps on the railway lines. We used to use ’em on the railway tracks. There was plenty of railway tracks but they’d blown all the bridges up so they couldn’t they could only put temporary bridges over the rivers so the jeeps could go but they couldn’t take the railway engines over. And one jeep, we used to pull one little truck on the rails and they were quite good, they were quite handy for gettin’ round in. We used them up there a lot.

Well, that was the way

we shifted troops, we shifted men and we shifted materials and food and all that sorta thing. As the troops advanced up the river we followed ’em on the railway with the not havin’ roads we used to use this railway with jeeps.

Yeah.

I was in Beaufort when the war ended.

Well, they just, the troops they just captured it. They drove the Japs out. In fact, I think more left. The Japs up there those day they didn’t stop and fight.

When you got to them they’d be there a day then they’d disappear and you’d find ’em further down somewhere else and…

Just walked in there. It was occupied when I went in there. I just went in there with they brought us up in a boat. I was telling you when we was coming up and we got we was coming up this barge on the boat and we come around a bend and the machine guns opened up on both sides the river on to the people on this boat we was all in this boat. And the only person they hit was were some

a the crew on there. We had an American boat, an escort with us and they shot some’a those fellas that was on that boat. But us, in our boats ourselves we never got. Had the Japs waited about 5 minutes later they could a destroyed the lot of us but they opened up on us too quick.

No, we. The gun boat may a done but we didn’t. We couldn’t. We had all packed up with all gear. We never expected anything like that.

What buildings? Any private housing thing that was there. They had a lot a the houses were built on stilts. They used to get terrific rain down that area and then they’d get these floods and they had these something like Queensland they used to have em up on stilts they used to have and we camped well in one place, we slept underneath it cause the houses were damaged. Someone had got there. So, they were nice and buildings there. It wasn’t long before army headquarters occupied them a course. But us lower ranks, we had the ordinary houses. We had an open air picture theatre there

and they used to run pictures there for the local people and the railway a course we had the railway station and all that there. And then gradually they crept gradually drove these Japs back up the river.

Defence? Just the normal pickets and that. They had we never got after they took the place in the first place they had no trouble from there on. The Japs all just drifted away.

We was there, I dunno forget what time. I know we was there till the war ended. I was there when the war ended. And then I left in November the war ended in September I think it was.

Well, it was rather funny really cause we got a message come through the war had ended. They’d dropped the bomb on Japan and we had that message come through and then the message come through that the war ended. And one a the officers came down to us with a bottle of whiskey and we celebrated the end of the war and then we discovered

it was a false alarm. The war didn’t end till a few days later. When the news proper come through, the whiskey had gone by then. So, we missed on that but. Then when the war ended the Japs didn’t know the war had ended and they wouldn’t believe it and they still kept causin’ trouble and we were still on a war footing, and still doin’ patrols up there after the peace had been declared. And anyway, eventually they got all the Japs in. They took out Japanese interpreters, loud speakers

and they was speakin’ in the jungle and eventually they brought them in. They brought in a thousand. They kept, brought ’em down the railway and brought in and made compounds and there. And the outside, they brought a scheme out towards the end’a the war that anyone who had so many years service and had family commitments they would, you know, they gave you points and you got discharged. Well, the war had ended well and truly before I got away when I got away and I came home. They sent me to back to Labuan and I had a

bit a time there and they put me on the Manoora, and I come home on the Manoora. Back home to Australia then caught the train again at Townsville somewhere and…

What they did up there, they opened a lot a schools. We had quite a few school teachers with us and they brought in advanced training, anyway where you could go in and do training. I did two courses in the army. I did the

advanced elementary mathematics and English and stuff like that, they just taught that in classes to fill in your time. There was no more fighting and training to do but they got some railway carriages they were quite nice carriages they converted them into classrooms and some there. Cause there was no shipping to get us home. They were tied up elsewhere.

After the war ended? Quite a few weeks. And a course a lot of em stayed longer

than what I did. I got to the stage where they was gonna send me home cause I was one a the oldest up there. Most’a the chaps that went away with me were all gone. I was one’a the few that was left of the original mob. They had just a few like a lot a reinforcements there had only been they had the first time they’d been away. I’d done three campaigns and they just only had did the one.

Because I was, I dunno, I was lucky I s’pose and nothing ever got wrong with me. Most’a my mates either got wounded or sick or something and

come home for some reason or other but I was I still carried on.

I’ve often said that I was one a the luckiest men in the AIF. Nothing ever got wrong with me. I never got caught with any trouble. I had a few scares but I never ever got wounded or anything to cause any trouble.

We were. And then they called volunteers to go to Japan and I thought about that greatly. I thought, “Gee it’d be lovely to go there.” Then I thought, “Gee well, I’ve been away too long now, my wife I should go home to my wife.” But then

I didn’t know at the time but when we got to Australia we found out all those who’d gone, they sent their wives and families to Japan to live with them up in Japan. And it was a marvellous experience for their wives and kids. But missed out on that. So, I would’a gone had I known they were gonna take the wives over.

I came on the, we got on the Manoora, we was bought down to Brisbane and then we landed in Brisbane on a Sunday afternoon and we come up the Brisbane River and there was thousands of people on either side a the river all cheering us up

when we came in there. Then we got trains from there back to Perth. After we had a lot a trouble getting trains. They was packed out and we you know it took us quite a while to get back.

Where?

They was all over by the time we got home. So there was a lot a celebration at the end’a the war but they’d finished when we got back.

They greeted the boat when we come on that in Brisbane, yes, it was really tremendous.

We stayed there 3 or 4 weeks. They

couldn’t get transport. All other states got priority over West Australians. They just kept the West Australians there. They gave plenty a transport to get them down to Sydney and Melbourne but any further on there they got held up, so we couldn’t get away. And they had a bit of a some’a the boys jacked up there too. They had a bit of a strike and they you know put on a bit of a turn and eventually they got us on the boat. In fact, I tell ya’, I left the battalion on the 5th of November and I had Christmas in Brisbane,

see what I mean. So, that’s how long, and it was after Christmas before I got I eventually got away. That’s how long they kept us there.

As a matter of fact, some people sent some, sent to the army asking for people who wanted to spend Christmas in their homes and we went to a private, a mate and I went to a family for Christmas day and had Christmas day with a family in Brisbane. Which I though was quite good really, yeah. Very nice family took us. Then we went back and saw them a couple a times after that too

and paid them a visit and that.

In Brisbane?

Well, what they was going crook about was, those of us that got to Brisbane they put us in charge of the camps and gettin’ the meals ready and doin’ all the work round in camp. All the other states were coming in and they was on within 24 hours, they was on trains goin’ home. And they kept us in Brisbane and some a the boys jacked about it. They reckoned

they were doing all this work for other people and they were getting’ nowhere ’emselves. Anyway, we refused to do any more work in the kitchens anywhere, else but they bought another lot in from somewhere else to do it so it didn’t accomplish much. But still eventually, we did get home.

Yeah. The war had ended then we. The war ended in September and this was Christmas time and we’re still sittin’ there.

Well, I’d been away for over five years and I wanted to

get back home. Well, I mean some’a those had only been away once a few months or a year or two, it didn’t matter much about them but I reckoned that we were entitled to get home after that time. We’d been, we was old veterans actually.

We had no, there was no way you couldn’t. Everything was controlled in those days, you couldn’t, there was no way a getting home. Except that there was very few aircraft and they’d sometimes, they had aircraft takin’ us out of

Labuan and a mob of boys in the morning’d be tellin’ us we having breakfast we’re goin’ home tonight, we’re goin’ in a plane. Back’a tea they’d be back’a teatime, something wrong with the plane, had to return back to Morotai, so I didn’t want to go on a plane. I thought that’s no good to me. Some mightn’t come back. But anyway, I was quite happy to come back on the boat. It was good coming back there. And it was great on the boat cause there was no restrictions and coming down through the Barrier Reef though Queensland coast it was a

lovely ride comin’ down on the ship down there, the Manoora.

Yeerongpilly they called it. Yeerongpilly army camps. They were proper established army camps with huts and kitchens and all that sorta thing.

They were quite good.

They were army standard. I mean they was not luxury but it wasn’t like living in a tent or that.

No.

It was quite good there, yeah. I remember once I was home on leave one time and we came down to Brisbane and I found I had a brother in Brisbane. He was in the army in a camp there and I went out to see him and they’re making a, my over water and you could buy milk at the canteen. I said, “Why do you have water in your milk up there?” So I said, “So we’ve rigged up a…”

We rigged up an immersion heater to heat up the milk. And we stuck this immersion heater in

the milk and it blew all the electric light bulbs out in the main, whole street was out, the whole lot of ’em.

Caused quite a panic. They never heated up the milk any more after that. They just used.

Yeah. Me brother did it. I told him, I said make an immersion heater. How he said. I used to have no trouble at all. It worked in water but when the milk got onto it it sort a burnt and just fused the whole thing over and short circuit the whole thing.

But had it been water it wouldn’t a happened. But milk, I didn’t think of it, not with any milk. That was a funny act that was, yeah.

Mainly, you’d go into town and go round the pubs and places like that’s all we used had time to do that type of thing, that’s

nothing much else to do. We never had all that much money. See when you was a married man you only got about you kicked of with 5 shillings a day and when you got married they took 2 shillings off you and you only had 3 shillings left. It wasn’t, you know you never had too much money to play around with.

Went back to your wife or your dependents. If you was a single man you got the whole lot but if you was married you didn’t. You had to make contributions to her payments too.

And a course bein’ away so long and not smoking or drinking I used to accumulate a few pounds. But otherwise some’a the other boys who drank and smoked never had nothing. They never had much money to spend on anything.

Both. We had married ones and single ones.

No, you were allowed to go out. They’d let you go out during the daytime. Cause the war was over.

They had no restrictions on us, it was just free men more or less free men. Though, we hadn’t been discharged they didn’t care much what we did.

There used to be general like there was in any town that’s all. The Yanks had more or less gone by that time, that made it a lot better than when we was there before I’m goin through before the place was full of Yanks, but there was a, the Yanks had gone out of there then by the time we got, yeah.

Well, never

had so much competition. You could get round a bit more. And as I say, I spent Christmas with this family we used to go out and see them occasionally. They were quite good to us they were very good. Mate and I used to go out there and they’d invite us come out for tea and something like that and we’d go out and spend an evening with them and they were.

They was just some people they sent the notice out to the camp anyone wanted to spend Christmas with ’em, they would take two soldiers. So, another bloke and I said, we just put our names down on the list. We didn’t know where we were goin’ then they gave us directions to get to this

place and they met us and took us out and entertained us for the Christmas day. And then we made friends with ’em so we went back a couple a times with ’em and brought some things from the canteen that they couldn’t get in their shops. And took out to them and spent an evening with ’em, something like that.

Rationing kept going for quite a number of years after war. Petrol was still been rationing in petrol in 1950. But that didn’t worry us over there but butter and meat and stuff like that was,

clothing. Butter and meat, clothing, and petrol were the main things we rationed in Western Australia during there, that’s…

Well, in the canteens they had chocolates and things like that were almost unheard of in the shops and things like that and tobacco and cigarettes which we could buy they couldn’t get out in the shops outside even though wasn’t rationed they wasn’t available. And we’d buy luxuries like that, picked out some children and take some chocolate out to them

and they was in heaven. Then they used to great blokes, yeah.

Peanuts was another thing that was very in short supply for the. A pregnant woman could get them but ordinary people couldn’t get them from the…

In Perth, it was that way. In Queensland it wasn’t, there was plenty a peanuts in Queensland. But in Perth, they had to be pregnant and get a doctors certificate to get peanuts.

I don’t know what peanuts did for pregnant women but that’s how.

But peanuts were available to them I remember that, yeah.

I don’t think I had any particular craving so very much at all. I…

Yeah, we did. But I don’t know, I never seemed to have crave for anything in particular. I can remember one incident when I come home. We had one little child that wasn’t very old

and we had, this is nothing to do with the war though. She was into me, a little bit comin’ home and they takin’ over the mother I think and she’s havin’ tea one night and wife had cooked some carrots and she said she couldn’t eat the carrots. She said, “If she ate those carrots she’d be sick.” Well, I said, “You eat the carrots.” And I made her eat these carrots and she was sick. The wife looked at me and said, “You made her eat ’em, you clean it up.” That cured me, I never interfered with the kids from that day onwards.

Yeah.

They put us on trains to finish up with.

They put us on trains and we come they put us and practically not a stop right to Perth. We came over and we…

More or we had to change trains but we never they never stopped at any’a the towns. Often when you come down you often got say to Sydney Brisbane or Melbourne, they might hold you there a couple’a days to organise some more transport but after the strike they got ’em on when they got some. They put on a boat and send ’em round by

boat and the rest of us got put on a train.

I don’t know. We like to think it did.

I think it did.

Yeah. Cause it wasn’t it was only a few days that they had the strike that they suddenly started movin’ us.

Those it would a take about 4 or 5 days then after we went along. When we first, the first time we went across the Nullarbor on a train it took us 5 days to get to Adelaide. But afterwards they

speeded up things. They got things moving pretty good.

Ordinary cattle trucks and whatever trains they converted for troops. You just got anything whatever’s available. Some’a the trains over the east weren’t bad but after Queensland and West Australian ones weren’t so hot.

The trains over here and Queensland weren’t so good but New South Wales and South Australia and Victoria were quite good. The transport there was

quite reasonable.

Coming over? It’d be average I s’pose.

I think we had cattle trucks when we got to from on this end of it. That’s between Port Pirie and Kalgoorlie. Then at Kalgoorlie we got into carriages again.

Yes, it was a long way across that Nullarbor. It was.

It was just, no.

They had a cover on it. It was more a van than a cattle truck I s’pose and they had a toilet in the corner. One little toilet and they gave us bags a straw to lay on the floor and that was it.

It wasn’t very comfortable I grant you that. But we didn’t mind we was comin’ home. Because when we left to come back, we didn’t like em but goin’ home it didn’t matter. Long as we got home that’s all we worried about, yeah.

Most a the. When I come home last time no. We sorta got split up a lot of ’em. As I said before, most of my army mates had gone by the time I’d left there. We had a lot a the new ones come in all the time but I was one a the older apart from the original battalion that went away. I was the probably the oldest bloke, the oldest serving members with them. Cause we had we’d joined the battalion, they had they was in Tobruk well, they was some of those and we were the next

reinforcements that they had. And I had a lot a South Australians had some very good mates from South Australia but unfortunately they’re all practically all. I only got about one or two over there now. All the rest have all died.

When we come back home? Well, it was great to be home on leave. I had to look for a job and all that sort a thing and.

Settling down and. Well, what I’d intended to do when I come out of the army was to go into farming. I thought I’d go on the land. They had this big land settlement scheme for the troops

in the scheme. But I put me name down and they went to a (UNCLEAR) to Harvey and all that year they seemed moving and 1940 come along and still no chance of getting a farm and 1950 I should say. And you know they were allocatin’ these farms so slow and then Plunkett’s, the builders. You know Plunkett’s the builders, in Perth you probably heard of ’em? They’ve gone down the road now not so much.

Plunkett’s they were building. There was a big firm in Perth, Plunkett’s the Builders, they were the biggest builders in Perth those days.

And they had

timber mills and brickworks and all sorts a things and they offered me a job as managing one a their brickworks and I thought about it and I thought, “Well, I’ll take it for a while and I took this job on and I stayed there for 30 years.”

No. No. I would a gone to Japan. If I’d a known that they were taking our families to Japan I would a gone to Japan instead of coming home to

Australia for discharge. We had the opportunity of doing that but I thought I’d better, it wasn’t fair on my wife. I thought after bein’ away so long I should go home for her sake. But had I known they were gonna take, pick them up and take the families to Japan to stay with us I would a gone to Japan then been good for her. She’d a got out of the country and seen something else a bit different.

It took awhile to get settled down you know after bein’ in the army and bein’ regimental so long to be your own boss and this sorta thing took quite a while to settle down.

Yes, I did for a while. But after we settled we been home a few weeks in January and Anzac Day was the first day. We they had in the paper there an ad that they wanted any of the battalion to meet for Anzac Day and some of us

went and…

This is 1946.

And quite a few of us turned up for the Anzac Day, there’d be about 8 or 9 of us, I s’pose got together. And then we arranged another meetin’ and eventually we got the whole, practically the whole mob who come home together, and we formed quite an active organisation for many years. And every Anzac Day we meet and we used to have meetings during the year, and in fact, we still had them one weekend but there’s only about,

of my vintage, there’s only two of us turn up now and there’s one or two that came in later. So, we’d be lucky if we can get five or six members now, all the rest are gone.

We marched for an Anzac parade and then we went to, I think we took our families to the zoo and had a picnic at the zoo. We did that for quite a number of years.

Well,

something similar it is now. You’ve seen them here I s’pose how we used to march in our own little groups. There was, I think there’s more march now that what now, that what there was those days. Although, there was more of us ex-servicemen a course you got a lot a people come in since. But it was quite good, we had a, we all marched down the street and then course we all knew everybody cheered us and waved their arms to us and that sorta thing and went down and had a service on the Esplanade.

“Where you been?” The war’s been over for 6 months, just getting’ home. People come up, “Where you been all this time?” The war’d been over for months and that sorta thing we got, yeah.

They did have a parade for us, yeah. They did organise one later on, yeah.

That was quite good. We just, everybody along the line and cheered us and that sorta thing. But we had that then a course

that and Anzac Day was about all we had. We never had much they had a lot a welcome home’s early in the piece but we missed ’em all we were so late gettin’ home.

Not particularly. We was glad to get home and that was all that mattered to you.

I stayed there for 30. I was with Plunkett’s for 30 years. They had one brickworks in over in Redcliffe and I ran that

to the ground till there was no more clay left and then I went, shifted to another one out this other way, and then I when my wife got very sick with Alzheimer’s. I had to retire to look after her and then so. But I spent 30 years altogether with the Plunkett’s firm on the brick making.

Yeah, most’a the time. Toward the finish, I was when my brickworks cut down I got shifted to the other yard. I wasn’t the boss there but I was pretty well up in the staff, yeah.

I had quite a good job, yeah.

Yeah, I went to Plunkett’s, put me through a management course when I was with them and did that sort of thing, yeah.

No.

Not particularly. My age was against me. See if you joined the army when you before you was 21 you got everything thrown at you when you come home. If you was over 21 you never got practically

nothing. They looked after young people not the old ones. They didn’t give us at all.

Well, we didn’t know how long we were gonna be there a day or a month see.

No, in the army, when I was in the army, as I said, we used to have the educational classes we were doing all those. Cause I’d been very active since I come out the army though. When I come home I got mixed up with the RSL [Returned and Services League]. I got mixed up with the P&Cs [Parents and Citizens Associations] at school.

I got mixed up in churches. I got mixed up in the Alzheimer Association and of course I am a Freemason, so I got mixed up in the Masonic Lodges and I led a very busy life.

I always, everywhere I got I seemed to land in some job. I joined the P&C and I become the President then they decided to build a new school. I joined the RSL and become the President of them and we built an RSL in Belmont (UNCLEAR) on that and everywhere I went I’ve

been through the Masonic Lodges. I been through the chairs about five times since I been. So, all the time I’ve been. And the Alzheimer Association I was acting president and a foundation member of there. I’ve got a certificate of membership from them life membership and things like that. So, I’ve been really busy all my life.

Why did I join up?

Because I was a returned serviceman. I thought well they could do something for us.

Like not individually but I think we done

a lot for people in general. Lots a things that we got today came from RSL recommendations and that, yeah.

Well, you got war service homes and all that sort a thing. It’s all helped. A lot of our pensions and things we got all started through them.

Yes, I had a War Service home not very far from here. I lived there till I come here.

I’ve been here 12 years but after my wife died I had this home over there with 4 bedrooms and gardens and lawns and I couldn’t see any sense in livin’ there by meself, and this place was advertised so I sold the home and come here.

Made a marvellous.

No time at all. I think I might’a got it pushed bein’ workin’ for Plunkett’s who built houses.

See I’s on the ground floor there, I had no problems at all. Matter of fact, I think I got treated pretty well. I used to go out and have a look and anything I wanted they’d more or less push it for me for the loans and that.

I didn’t build it but Plunkett’s did.

I moved into my house. When I first went to work for Plunkett’s I was at Redcliffe they provided me with a home there. And when they we closed down they offered me a home at out in Orange Grove there. I didn’t want to take my family out there. The reason I had some teenage girls and that, and transport was very crook and I didn’t want to go and plunk ’em out in the almost the scrub it was those days. So, I bought a block and built me own home in Cannington here or Wilson and I was,

as I said, I stayed there until as I say when I was living then my wife got very ill with the Alzheimer. And she went to a nursing home where she spent 12 years and I was on my own all that time and then when she died, two or 3 years after she died I decided that I’d had enough of it and come and lived here.

Very important, yeah.

Well, I think it let’s the people know that we didn’t fight in vain. That we went away and did something for the country, yeah.

It hasn’t changed very much. The service they put on Anzac Day is almost the same as it was the first time I ever attended one. But the only drawback about now I can’t march any more. That’s the biggest thing upset me. I have to I get taken in a hospital car as they call ’em.

Yeah, well they call ’em hospital cars. They have jeeps and then cars, well they call the cars hospital cars. I prefer to drive in the car not in a jeep so I ride in the car

and go to the service in that. They come and pick me up and bring me back down home afterwards. And so…

Well, meetin’ me mates mainly if I can find any. And then they have a usually have a luncheon afterwards on Anzac Day which I haven’t been going to. I haven’t felt well enough the last few years to go to them really. But I used to enjoy those sort a things when we all got together. But as I say now, there’s so many’a my mates not there any more. The most of them there now came to

us at the end of the war and you haven’t got the same cause they were all quite younger than me. Most of them, so could be my brother for instance he’s one of them. He’s only just round about 70, well I’m around about nearly 90, well there’s a big difference when you’re working the ages out.

One brother was in the air force. He and the other brother, he came in with me towards the finish of the war, he was stationed over here all the time. The other one was in the army but he never got out of Australia at all.

And the younger one he got in towards the end of the war he never saw action. But I had a brother in law that suffered badly from war neurosis when he come out and he was bad all his life. He died a few years after he come home with war caused troubles like that.

Yeah. He had war neurosis what we was talkin’ about a while ago, bomb happy we called ’em yeah. He got burnt up in Tobruk caused his trouble, yeah.

I don’t know. I think he was quite happy with what he was doing. You know, he was sorta mixed up. He got out, they took him out a West Australia, he did round places he got moved round quite a bit but he never got overseas. The other one did, they sent him to battalion and I claimed him. You could, an older brother could claim a younger brother if you wanted to and I

claimed him to come with me. He came with me on the last campaign we did to Borneo.

Well, you just make an application. You both make applications. He made an applications to join my battalion and I made applications for him to come with me. I was pretty good to them and the CO’s in my battalion, and I had a pretty good reputation and they had no problems at all they bought him in there.

We never met too much

after the war to be quite frank with you. The, we seemed to be split up a bit, my brothers. Well, I was 5 years older than my next brother and I, we sort of lived in different groups and it.

Father, we talked quite a lot about the war. He was a great army man, yeah.

It might’ve enticed me in the first to go after what he used to tell us. I’ve got a book on him here as a matter of fact, on some exploits he did in the war, yeah.

I think there was vast difference, different type of war altogether, what we fought to what they fought, yeah.

Well, there probably would be a little bit. I mean he was well actually one big difference between him and I he rose to the ranks of a commissioned officer, I never. I never went for promotion that way he did. And he a course, he was

a regular soldier in the British army long before the war even started. He ran away from home when he was 18 and joined the army and then he was there from till the war ended as a young man, that sorta thing. But I only got in when things were tough.

The family members don’t talk about war very much. I found that the only time that we ever talked

much about war when I go to one of our reunions, we often get together and we talk about things that happened durin’ the war years. But they’re pretty silent in the family. I find my own particular family are not interested. My grandchildren are. My grandchildren are coming here and they want to know a lot. But my own children don’t. They don’t seem couldn’t care less about it.

I don’t know, dunno at all. But my grandchildren will. They’ll come here and they want to know always asking me questions. Wanting

to do things and wanting information and all sorts a things. But one of my daughters though is taken a big interest in me, as a matter of fact. She’s got onto army records. She’s got all my army records and she’s got all the tapes I took for the British news and she’s put it all on and edited it. She’s very interested in building up a story about me. But that’s about the only one, the family does.

Possibly, yeah. As far as an ex serviceman meself, I’m treated very

very well. I got no qualms at all.

Well, I don’t associate much. See there’s the type. There’s a lot a people there, I dunno whether it’s just curiosity whether but you notice there’s a lot a young people there. We go through the, you go through the streets and on parade and the number of kids you see on those streets wavin’ flags and that. Well, my early days they were mainly adults. But not the

kids they’re there in their thousands.

I don’t know. Whether they’re gettin’ more interested in history. I think the trouble is you know they, you’re not often interested in what your Mum and Dad did but you’re grand kids that that further back that you might go. A course I’m an old man now too when you’re nearly 90 you’re a bit of a curiosity around the place.

Yeah. I get on well with my grandkids. As a matter of fact, I come out there. I got one granddaughter’s tremendous to me. She comes

and takes me shoppin’, all sorts a things and…

I mean the other family do come but I mean she’s really exceptional.

Yeah.

Well, I learnt lots’a things. Hard to understand, to put in words what I mean but I think it broadened my mind on lots’a things. Only thing that I think that in some ways I found, I’m out’a pocket a lot by going to the war. I’d a been a far better off if I had a stopped. I had a brother-in-law for instance who finished

up almost a millionaire by farming. When I was in the same position as him, when we joined up and yet he didn’t join up and I did. And sometimes I think I’d been better off if I’d stayed home. Financially, it’s but I dunno whether. As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t have a regret going to the war. I had no regrets at all.

Possibly. It’s hard to say on it but I met a lot a different types of men characters and some was you know, real cracker jack and others not so good.

But what I did find out we had the mateship. Being in an interstate battalion, I find that I can go or not so much now, I can go to any state in Australia and meet men I served with and they welcome me like. I go to Adelaide for instance and I there more invitations to go and stop and different peoples places than I ever had time to fill it in with them and. Cause that’s more or less more than most of them have all died. But in the early days, it was tremendous. I had lots a good holidays over in eastern states by just goin’ meetin’ my

mates and that over there, and they stay with us coming here. Took the wife over there and she’d come with me and they’d come and stay with us a few days and somebody else from the when you’re finished there come and stay with us. And it was great, yeah.

Comradeship there was a lot of it.

Possibly, yeah.

But I never considered meself to be a bad person, if you understand what I mean, but I think it probably it broadened my ideas on life and that sorta thing, you

seemed to see things in a different light.

I dunno. It’s a bit hard to explain that.

But what I do find out, that when after I come back after the war that friends I had here that didn’t go we seemed to have nothing in common with them any more. Although I met them and used to see them, I never had the same companionship and friendship that I had with the blokes who I come back with, yeah. I had a friend that was

almost a few years older than me who died a few years ago and we were mates from 1923 onwards and yet I never had the same recourse with him as I got with the blokes that I met in the army. He didn’t go away to that particular thing.

It’s been a pleasure doing it, yeah.

I have enjoyed it.