Australians at War Film Archive

Yes well to the best of my knowledge I was born

in Perth in West Australia on the 3rd of May 1920. My parents lived at South Guildford to the best of my knowledge. And I started Primary School there at South Guildford and then we shifted to Rivervale and I went to High School at Perth Boys High School. After

that I got a job as an office boy in Perth and was there for a while and then I got put off. And so I got a job at a station in northern Western Australia

or part northern. I was there for a couple of years and then came back to Perth and lived with my brother at 277 Hay Street and there I joined the Western Australian Railways, as an engine cleaner, which is the bottom of the list sort of business. And after being there in

Perth for a while, I was transferred to Bridgetown. And then from there I joined the Light Horse and the Citizens Military Force and I joined the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] from there

in 1941 as a young bloke; very unspectacular career there. What did I do? I did my recruit training. I joined in Bridgetown and then went to Claremont up in a suburb of Perth which was the gathering place for

recruits for the army. And then I did my basic training in Northam and from there went to the Middle East on the good ship Queen Mary. I’d never seen such a big ship in all my life. That’s the first time and only time I saw the Queen Mary.

We landed in or we were offloaded in [Port] Taufiq I think the name of the port was in Egypt. And then we went up the Suez Canal to I think it was El Kantara

where we crossed the Canal there and then by train up to Palestine. We went from the basic training unit at Gaza, I think it was a place called Gaza and we went up to join the 2/11th Battalion who at that

time had just moved to Syria. And I was put in to A-Company 2/11th Battalion; 7 Platoon A Company. It’s coming back. And we stayed, did various jobs there in Syria until the Prime Minister of the day decided that all the troops of the day should come

back to Australia because of the perceived threat from Japan. So we came back. Retraced our steps back down to Palestine and then by train back to get on the boat again at Taufiq. We came back on

a ship called the Durban Castle, which took us a fair while to get from there. We went from Taufiq I think to Colombo and then from Colombo we were at sea for a fair while before we landed in Adelaide. Then what happened?

I think they sent us on leave yeah. We were sent home to our various states for some leave and the battalion acquired us all and we moved just north of Perth to up in the Gingin area

and we were stationed there and various units did coast watching. We used to have to go out and camp on the beach and walk the beach for a certain area and report on anything we saw and, coast watching-wise, we were there I’m not sure how long.

I think, I can’t remember how long we were there. And then we came back. There’s one part I missed out. We stayed for a few or a couple of weeks. This is when we came back off the Durban Castle. The battalion was stationed

around Mount Lofty and we were billeted in a guesthouse there for a while. They sorted out where we were going to go to then we went across to Western Australia, and we had some leave there. And after this coast watching business we came back across to Queensland

via the great Australian various different gauges of railway and back up and went to Queensland. Now that I was doing jungle training there and I caught some wog [germ] that used to make me shed

my skin about every 3 or 4 weeks. So I was shipped into a hospital at Rocky Creek from memory. After that they couldn’t seem to fix me up to get me ready to go back to the battalion. So I was sent back via the various hospital units

to Western Australia. And I was in the hospital in Western Australia for some time until they. In the drier climate, I think it must have been, I was used back in the services again. And then my boss from the Western Australian Government Railways met

me in the street one day in Perth and he wanted to know what I was doing and I told him. And then within 3 or 4 days, I found I was released from the army and back to work. Which didn’t please me very much. And then I became a fireman in the railways and was stationed

at various places. The last one I think I was at was at Katanning. In the meantime, I’d got married and went to live in Katanning and from there I rejoined the army. And it was a start of all my wanderings.

I did my recruit training in where? I’m not sure, I’ve forgotten that part of it. It’s written down somewhere. And I was attached eventually; I was posted as an engineer sergeant. Because I’d worked on engines on trains and things

they thought I’d be most suitable in the engineers [Royal Australian Engineers]. So they posted me to the 17th National Service Training Battalion, which was just at that time starting to train National Servicemen. And I stayed there for some a fair while I think it was

after having various trips to New South Wales to the School of Military Engineering [Casula, NSW] to do army courses and so forth.

They were, we were doing both. We were training the National Servicemen and in-between helping with training blokes to go to Korea.

After that let’s see. I was posted to the School of Military Engineering in New South Wales as an instructor and there I spent a fair amount of time. Until

I got shipped to School of Military no not the School. From there I went to Army Headquarters to the Engineer in Chief’s branch to work there and I worked there for some considerable time. Until I was posted

to the Engineers Stores Branch as a sort of an expert on building materials. After being a bit loud in the criticism of the materials that we were sending to our troops in Vietnam,

the boss of the day - I think it was a Colonel Hutchison – said, “Gouldson, you go up and have a look for yourself and tell us what’s going on up there and tell us the right things to send up”. What caused it, my friends who were in the engineers that were being sent to Vietnam and who were using the

materials that were being shipped from Australia, most basically New South Wales, they found that when they opened a pallet of timber it all stood up and looked at em. You know, the Australian stuff didn’t work. So and those sort of things and we were expecting our engineers to use materials that weren’t suitable

to be used up in those parts of the world. So anyhow we changed our tactics and used the local materials and bought them locally. And also we started to build windmills for the locals. The first one was built as an experiment in the

unit lines to see whether we could. We had the blokes there with the wherewithal to build a windmill. We found that we did have blokes had come off farms and so forth. And so it was decided to build or make water supply units for the locals by building or putting down

in a bore in preference to wells. Putting down bores and pumping the water up into overhead tank as we do in Australia and reticulating it to various points so the people in the village could get water. It worked. Because I’ve seen photos of

the windmills that are still working after all this time. Little problems you have with those.

Then after I, you only do 12 months at a time in Vietnam, so after I’d finished my 12 months I was

brought back to Army Headquarters again to pass on the knowledge that I’d gained by service up there. And after that I retired and went to work for a firm called Manor

Homes as a building supervisor. And then from Manor Homes I went to work for Civil and Civic in a bigger bit. Cause Civil and Civic were doing a lot of refurbishing and rebuilding government offices and so I worked there until I retired. I forget now offhand.

In bout ’76 or something. But somewhere we’ll find out in the books and then after that I retired and went to work from there I retired and came down here and I’ve been here ever since.

Yeah. Got soon as I put my face in the joint, I got a job with

the RSL [Returned and Services League] sub-branch as the Secretary there. They didn’t have one or they had one but he was getting a bit long in the tooth so got that job. And we got involved in local things here. The one is the Committee that decided we needed some accommodation for old people in Sussex Inlet. So then we

got ourselves onto the building on to getting money to build a retirement village for old people. Which, when we got the funds, we built here and we’ve gone on from there. And I’m still with the Inasmuch Retirement Village as a director. And that’s my life in the

time. I lost my wife along the road and were still here. I haven’t been pensioned off yet. They named a part of the village after me and we went and celebrated. It had been going for 12 months a couple of weeks ago.

Charles Gouldson Court.

If you

go round to the other side of the village Inasmuch you’ll see it there. Can’t miss it. If you go down go round the other side of Inasmuch down towards the water you’ll see it there.

I have three children. Two boys and a girl. The girl lives at

what do they call the place near Bowral. And I’ve got one boy lives in Victoria. And he joined the army like his old man and finished up a major when he retired. And I’ve got another son that works in Toowoomba or out of Toowoomba at a little

place called Oakey. He’s a sort of an expert on telephones or telephone stuff. The firm he’s working for contracts to the Services in some funny unit that’s based at Oakey in Queensland.

Signals unit.

I couldn’t very well much cause they died or my father died when I was about 10, I think. Probably earlier than that.

And my mother died when I was about 15. So I don’t you know it’s

Not very much. I know one thing he worked a lot with horses. The farm drive.

Because in those days they used horse teams and so forth rather than tractors [which] had only just sort of come on the scene. But I’ve forgotten. We had a very simple life as I remember. But I forget exactly when.

I think my mother died when I was 14 and then I went to live with my elder sister and after that with my elder brother and then I branched out on my own.

I can’t very much. I know she used to look after us kids very well but I haven’t got a great deal of memory of her. That’s where my memory lapse cuts in and I can’t remember. I know I used to be a handful. I was always in bother.

Yeah, well as a kid yeah. I think always. The state welfare officers always used to catch up with me and so on. But I survived through school and so forth without too much fights and squabbles but we got there.

Didn’t turn up for school

when I should’ve. And we didn’t have, as I remember, after my father died, we didn’t have much money and we did things a bit hard. Those days nobody had motorcars. You walked wherever you, we lived about I think about 3 miles out of town and you walked and.

Not a great deal of memory of that time of those days but. I mean I was well looked after you know and you never starved. But we didn’t have any flash food and we didn’t go on flash holidays or anything. But we survived.

I had a brother and

two sisters.

Oh no, not very. I had three sisters in fact. I had one sister younger than me. Another one was the next one up was 7 years older than me. And then my brother was about 12 years older than me and my other sister was,

she was always old widow. Don’t know how much older but my memory is she was much older than we were. I don’t think any of them had much time for me because I was the rebel of the team sort of business.

No I had a younger sister, who has since passed on. My brother

used he was a carpenter and the last I knew of him he was living in South Australia and he got that motor neurone disease and knocked him off. My eldest sister, the sister that was just older than me she

was married to a railway man and she died bout nineteen forty something. I’m not sure. No it was after I came out of the army. Seventy you’re in. Sixty between in the Sixties.

Well you’d call it a farm. It

was only a small place. I don’t remember my time on there so much as I can remember. No I can’t remember that very well

Well she got the dole I think.

Oh yeah it was some assistance from the Welfare Department. Yeah

Yeah.

No I can’t remember. No that’s something I... I do remember that you had to walk, we lived 3 miles out of town, and you had to walk in to the Post

Office to get it. So I just can’t remember. That’s gone blank that one.

Well we lived a fair way out of ... This is when

we lived at Guildford. We lived a fair way out and it was too far to walk to go and get into any other bother and so forth. But that’s where we used to cast our nets far and wide sort of business as kids. We’d gather round there. I think the nearest house with youngsters in

it would have been about 2 miles away to the best of my knowledge. And as a youngster we didn’t have electricity. It was all kerosene lamps and so forth. We didn’t get electricity until the family moved to a place

in at Belmont. When we rented a house in Belmont yeah.

No, I had sisters. I stayed with my elder sister for a while until I

went up to work on a sheep station in Northern Western Australia. I think the name of the station was Moogery [?]. It was out to buggery I know that. It used to be the common thing Moogery it was out way out. It was somewhere north east of Carnarvon.

Yeah rather I think. But one of those things. We were not a very close family and my eldest sister took me and I don’t think her husband

appreciated me very much. I don’t think I was one of the angels around the place but I used to travel far and wide in the district. Cause there wasn’t a great deal of houses you. There was plenty of room for movement around. Used to go out fishing and so forth. Making

a nuisance of ourselves.

Oh yes but they lived a fair way away and we’d get there after we’d done our chores sort of business, we’d go and see them and so forth. But we were too far away from people to make very close friends. Can’t remember any

kids although one. A chap he was an orphan and he was in foster care and we got to be fairly good mates at one stage. But then when I shipped out to working on the sheep station

I sort of become a loner then.

Yes.

Yes normal office boy stuff. Yeah

Oh very good. Yeah, office was standard. I was the last in the line of the office sort of business and you do running all the errands and so forth

and doing the mail. Going and getting the mail and so forth. As I remember the mail wasn’t delivered; we had to go to the Post Office and get it out of the post box and bring it back.

Yes.

Car sales. Skipper Bailey Motor Company it was named at that time. They

were agents for Hillman motorcars, Comet trucks and Hardpa [?] tractors. That’s about all I can remember of them.

It’d be

It’d be ’34. I wouldn’t have been allowed to leave school until I was 14 and

I would’ve left school as soon as I was allowed to.

Oh didn’t impress me very much. I wasn’t a good student. I used to pass things with reasonable in the middle of the class sort of business. But I wasn’t impressed.

Now you’ve got me. Trying to remember those things.

Fair number. But it was nothing. Cause I’d never seen a big city before. That’s the biggest city I saw until

I joined the services and we thought it was big. But you went everywhere by either train or bus. There was very few people owned motorcars. Not in our groups of people. The only farm people that owned motorcars were farmers or we thought that.

No I can’t remember much about that.

Oh yeah they were all dagoes [derogatory term for southern Europeans]. If they didn’t speak English they were dagoes as far as we were concerned. But there didn’t seem to be many around. We never had any there

same thing there were no aborigines around much to speak of there. That brought me to mind the aborigines in Guildford. They talked about ‘em so and I couldn’t remember. There were no aborigines at the primary school that I went to and

No

I don’t think there were any around. I know it’s strange but I can’t remember any being there. Cause I’m sure if they’d been around, I’d a known. I didn’t strike aborigines at all until I went up the north west.

Well I was the rouseabout sort of person. We had to

well day on in the day, it’d have to be get up and feed the animals and the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and so forth. And make sure that the meal was or set the table up for the older blokes and the station hands and so forth. And then after that it’s they’d finished and gone out to work. Clean up after them

because the station hands and so forth had a separate dining room to the manager sort of business. And then they’d be allocated jobs by the boss before he went out, or the foreman and you’d carry. I was responsible for the vegetable garden. And

I used to have to kill the sheep and dress it as one of my jobs. Get the meat and so forth from the meat house for the cook and generally be the

general factotum around the place for any odd jobs that were on and so forth. Yeah, fairly all the menial tasks around the joint.

Well I was the only young bloke there. The nearest too me was about a bloke about 20

he was the next, one of the station hands. And then there was a boss and older blokes worked there. But there weren’t any married couples on the station. They were all single people. And the manager of the station he was a single bloke. He had a housekeeper. So now looking

back over the years I would’ve suggested she might have been his general factotum. But she wasn’t married to him, I knew that much. But that was only like working around the place as a general hand.

After I’d

been there a couple. I got a check up so I decided it was time I’d had enough of station life. It was getting a bit lonely for me. The only time it really started to move was at shearing time when there were a few different young people around. Then I came back to Perth. Those days you didn’t if you went to places up you didn’t go

by car from Perth to it, you got on a ship. And I’m not sure yeah the ship went to various places up the coast and then the passengers went on that. Oh that came back out of the blue.

No a ship. A big ship

Ship. Oh well to us it was a big ship. I think the name of

one of them I think Calinda. She used to carry a few passengers and it was a cargo ship.

No I never heard it. No things like that didn’t come within my orbit, sort of business, I didn’t used to read the newspaper or

anything like that.

Around 17 or 18 I think. Probably about 18.

I think it was forced upon me I think that was. Because I did things during that period in my life that I would never have thought of if I’d lived in a

home. Yes.

No. What you haven’t got you don’t worry about I think. I think that was the usual with me. I hadn’t enjoyed family life so

I sort of got used to it. I tell you what did come up there from when I came back from working up north before I joined the railways, I had a job for a while with Mallick Brothers WA Netting and something company. Working there on shift work.

I think the part I had was used to clean the steel coils that put. The steel used to come from the manufacturer that was over here in New South Wales to the company in coils and it used to be my job and other

shifts of it too of putting it through a cleaning process through acid vats and washing it and so forth and drying it and going forward until it was could be drawn out to fencing wires sort of business and wire for netting and that sort of thing. It was the wire company.

Yes I worked there for a while and then a chappy who was a driver in the railways he said, “Why don’t ya? We’re looking for young blokes in the government. Why don’t you join the railways?” So I put an application in to join the railways and that’s how I got in there.

Don’t think so. No. She and her husband were people I used to have to answer to. I was a bit of a rebel.

I used to resent them I

think because they were they were keeping me within due bounds you might say yeah.

No I think of a night time I walked the streets

of Guildford. Hanging around the shops and so forth. Similar to what the kids do. And I can remember being clouted by the local copper and told to get the hell out of it. But you respected the copper, cause he was always a big bloke and his method of keeping the peace was to deal with you there and then

and that was it and everybody respected him for it. But that’s the only brush. I never went to court or anything, probably should’ve but didn’t.

Oh stealing fruit’d probably be the worst thing I did. There were a lot of orchards between around

South Guildford and so forth. Stealing fruit and even stealing vegetables at times. But

Oh yeah by myself cause the group was too far away. Only I only used to meet them when I went up into town sort of business. Town to me was Guildford.

No. Oh no. I was only one of the gang. Used to cost us sixpence to go to the pictures, I remember that. I think we probably got light fingered though with things around the place too. Cause I think if I remember right, wages then were

15 shillings a week and out of that you had to pay your board and so forth.

Yes. I wasn’t into dancing and so forth at that time. But yeah.

Wasn’t interested. Not at that

stage of my life. Later on yes but not at that stage.

Yeah it’d be our group against the kids from across the river: Bassendean-ites you know. Who rule the thing and near their nearest… yeah different parts of the suburbs’d be

Fisticuffs. Fisticuffs.

Very average. Never had any clues. Only clues I had I got from the bigger boys. And it was a wrestling match sort of business. Never learnt.

Well I suppose so yes. Cause you had to be able to look after your own gear and whatever was given to you

you had to look after. Yeah I think so. Never had any bother in the services.

I dunno. I think it was all much of a muchness.

It’s you learn very quick, oh yes. The extra duties and things like that soon smarten your ideas up and you learnt. And the fact that we were all volunteers we put up with it sort of business. You know I don’t and I had experience with these Citizen Military Forces for

one stint. But that’s probably why I got to be an acting lance corporal to start with. That’s always amused me. But that started me off sort of business as a being a sort of a leader of a team and it’s always been there.

Learning to dance and getting to know the girls in the dance studios. Yeah that was that’s one of the… we were pretty regular going to dances but

that used to be near where I lived. This is when I was living in with my brother, there used to be a dancing studio not very far away where we and some of my relations used to go there, so I gravitated and I learnt to dance. Got to be pretty good in the finish. And

so we used to go I think on Tuesday nights. It was old time that we learnt. I dunno whether you struck that. Old time dancing is Waltz, Foxtrot, oh forgotten the others. That sort of thing.

Yeah those sort of things.

You learnt those and you danced those whereas against the jazz. Jazz was sort of just coming in then and we didn’t, our dancing teachers didn’t teach us. We learnt that part of it off our own bat. We used to go to a, now you’re stirred my memory. We used to go to Anzac House of a Tuesday night,

Town Hall in Perth on a Saturday. Yeah that’s right on a Saturday night. They were our main places of entertainment. Occasionally we’d go to the pictures but not very often. We didn’t have much interest in that. It was mostly in groups.

Oh it’d be about 4 or 5 blokes and the same in the girls we’d pick up with. We’d never paid for the girls to go into the dances; we used to meet them inside. Yeah. Don’t be sarcastic but that was the system in those days.

That’s alright I was just going to make an idle remark.

Yeah right yeah.

Never, wait a minute, where did I meet my wife? It was later on I

think I met my wife at the I’m not sure which dance hall. The girls used to frequent certain dances and I think I met her at the Town Hall. Where she used to go to and then once we clicked as far as dancing partners was concerned. She was good really good.

And she used to put up with me and we got on fairly well. Had to but you didn’t take ‘em home. You left ‘em when the dance was over. They went their way and we went ours. Until later on and then we got to go out together.

No

Used to be strictly modern or old time. Your dance’d be advertised as either modern or be by word of mouth but strictly either modern or old time.

Old time. It was better dancing and the fact is you could check around on the

various girls to find out how good a dancer they were. During the evening there’d be the progressive dances you know, where you change partners often? And that way you’d soon be eyeing them off to find out who were the good dancers, who were the poor dancers and it’d depend on your own ability as who you went for.

Can’t remember. I honestly can’t remember. Must have. But

Yes yeah.

Brother yeah. I

think he’d gone and I had taken over his flat that’s right. He’d gone to Darwin and I’d taken over his flat. And then, the proprietress had a son about the same age as myself. So then

after a while she put a proposition onto me that I shifted in with him into his unit and that left the other one free and saved me a lot of money too I might add.

Oh yeah it was quite a success from my point of view. Cause he was mostly out with his lady

friends of a night time and I went my way. We only met actually in the mornings before we went to work sort of business. We weren’t that close. But then I have never been close with my family.

Say again?

Being too fragmented I think.

Been used to living on my own and sort of stayed that way.

No. it was a fact of appeal. It was something I got to know about and it wasn’t hard but it was regular. You know once

you got into the railways and provided you kept your nose clean, you had a job. And they you know provided a chance for progress yourself in the railways, cause they used to run schools and courses and where I started was in the

big depot. There was a number of engine cleaners there and all the big engines. That’s big engines from the Western Australian point of view. That’s where they used to be housed. Because the main, where we worked at East Perth it was the main railway depot and the engines sort of branched out from that you know. Whether they were goods or passenger engines.

Yep. Yeah that’s right yeah. And then from there you progress by being a learner with the engine crew and then you became a junior fireman and so you worked up.

Oh yes yeah. Not too closely but as all that it required for the job that we were in. Cause we weren’t highly educated but we had enough sense to the knowledge to get on. It’s just

It was more practicing putting your shovel of coal where you wanted it in the firebox and you soon learnt that. And the better cleaners get the good jobs on the good drivers and get them, you’d go with them on that. Otherwise you used to gravitate

through a shunting engine and they used the smaller engines for shunting the goods trains around and so forth. And then you graduated to suburban passenger trains and then when you became adept enough you went on the express trains.

Well after you’d been a cleaner for about 6 months and you’d attended the various courses that they ran in there. And the boss that you worked for he would recommend you to get a job there and you’d be rostered on with an engine driver as making up a crew and the engine drivers would sort of foster you through

the very thing. So you had to do as you were told sort of business. Wasn’t bad.

Steam and how it worked and so forth and how the various, what caused the troubles on an engine. How the traction and so forth. Generally that very basic thing. It was

mostly by experience with the driver that you worked with. That’s where you got most of your knowledge and talking to the rest of the blokes.

I can’t remember on that one. I think maths and geography

they were my. I was never too good with English I always never too good at that.

No I was quite happy. It was a

job.

Never gave it a thought.

Never gave it a thought and I don’t think the girls did either. Not at that time.

Yes. When I was stationed in Bridgetown as a cleaner. That’s where I joined the CMF. Because in the boarding house that I was in, a couple of the blokes were in the CMF and so I joined. I wasn’t in it long because the war started

sort of business. But

I can tell you exactly. Just hang on. I’ll have to put me goggles [spectacles] on. No not. Yeah that one’ll do. I don’t know whether it’ll tell me my age or not in there. Yeah that.

Quite interesting that. I was definitely a street kid at that time and I must have been light on my feet because on the dance nights I never had any trouble getting’ a partner. Never ever. That’s where I met my wife. She was a pretty good dancer.

She went to a different dance studio to me. She went to Sammy Gilkinson’s studio. That was, he used to teach dancing or he ran the dancing for and.

No no. We didn’t pay very [much]. I think it was about 2 shillings a night we used to pay for a dance learning to dance. And it was a gathering place as well because I had several cousins that went to this thing and then I gravitated with them to the dancing at Anzac House so.

A good dancer. Good. Be able to dance. Be able to waltz well and to handle yourself in the quick dances. You know like the Gypsy Tap and those sorts of thing so there was plenty of movement. I must have been a bit agile

so I had no bother getting a partner. But

No. No. Very seldom. I can’t remember any special reason for going to the pictures. Not for dancing anyhow. There was more

action ones with I think some Tarzan sort of shows, they’d be most popular with. But I don’t remember the old ones. Certainly don’t no.

Occasionally, very seldom but occasionally. Because you didn’t have the money to take ‘em for a date. You just didn’t earn that sort of

money. But occasionally yeah.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Now you’ve got me.

I just can’t remember that one. Because I’m not sure if I was going with her before I went overseas or not. I don’t think so.

Yeah I knew her as a dancing partner.

No. No. No. She

had a brother in the same battalion as me. He got grabbed in Greece. Yeah he got caught in Greece and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war.

Oh I don’t I can’t remember. Somewhere in Germany cause he used to talk about Germany a bit but I never I didn’t

get very involved in it so I can’t remember.

No I don’t. I’ve often thought about it but it probably

didn’t register sort of business. Cause my elder brothers and sisters always had jobs. And I came out of school and went into and got a job and. No, it didn’t. The

fact that there was a Depression on didn’t register. We were on the lower end of the scale so it didn’t affect us. It affected us I suppose but not that much.

I don’t

think I ever knew about it or thought about it. I didn’t think about it when I was in the Citizens’ Military Force. Going to war it was just being with the boys in the service. I don’t think when we joined up it was the thing to do.

I don’t think we had any burning ambition about lets go and get them or I think it was just the thing to do to join the service.

Yeah.

We didn’t come in contact with anyone we just got on with our job and

didn’t register you might say. We were sort of in a cocoon where we did our job and that was that and so forth and it didn’t affect us very much. Cause I was at where? In Bridgetown and didn’t seem to affect us very much so I couldn’t say.

About 6 months and probably not that long. Then, from one to the other. It’s in the book.

I just can’t remember.

No I can’t remember. I think there was a few of us joining so it was the thing to do sort of business. Mind you in the country it didn’t come up very much. Because we

were young blokes we didn’t even go to the hotels and so forth in those days. I can’t remember where. We didn’t drink we just went on and did our job and no there was no burning ambition to go and fight the Germans. I wouldn’t a known one if I’d a fought ‘em over here.

I can’t remember that. I cannot remember.

Exercises on you know drill and so forth. It was rifle drill and how to look after rifles.

Shooting. I don’t know how it came about but, whether it was natural ability, I was always a good shot. And I always got good scores in shooting and those sort of things. But no I

No, 1 Light Horse was. But we were the 25th Light Horse, which was a machine gun regiment on trucks. We had trucks. It was the first of the mechanised you might say units in the Australian Army. As I remember they either hired or

bought 1 ton 3 hundred weight trucks and they mounted I forget what we used to call them. Anyhow, it was boxes on the back with seats on them. Half your team was on one side and half on yours. They’d carry a section of men, which was 11 men. Corporal in the front and 10 men on the

back. Now you’d probably in that section there’d be two machine guns and they were Vickers machine guns we used, we didn’t use any other. And those what they call em? Panniers I think. Yeah we used to slide the gun into one pannier and the tripod that it was to be mounted on went in the other one and then all the boxes of ammunition and so forth.

Gee wiz. That’s a few years ago.

Vickers? Yes. It was still used and that when I was in the AIF. And it used to fire 400 rounds a minute as I remember. And the problem was keeping the rounds up to them. So you didn’t fire long bursts

a) because the gun jumped around too much and b) because you had to carry the ammunition and you had to load the ammunition into the belts. They fired 303 ammunition yeah. Same as were in the rifles.

Better shots would be get the job as number one gunner. He was the bloke that used to sit down behind the gun and pull the trigger. Number two used to feed the ammunition. [Numbers] Three and four were ammunition carriers and they carried the extra ammunition so. Gee wiz.

That’s going back a year or two yeah.

I was number one and I carried the barrel. And remember you carried the barrel. You’re holding onto the end where the trigger was and your arm underneath

the sort of the front end of it. Which was what? I forget what they called that. You carried that plonked it on and then dived down behind it and on with it up with the sights and away yeah. Jeez.

Oh yes. Well I was a fairly husky young bloke at that time anyhow. Yeah I was about 5 foot 10 [inches] and fairly strong.

I’d been swinging a shovel for a long time so I was fairly fit.

I think it was he was a lance corporal in charge of the gun.

A little bit but not very much. Pride didn’t come

into it much in a soldier’s run. I mean it was just one of the gang. You had a team you were the number one, well fair enough. The number two you’d change round every so often so they all got experience on the gun. No hang on. No, it was a sergeant I think that was used to be in charge of the gun team.

I can’t remember too well on that one. Who used to direct the fire and so forth I just can’t remember too much on that.

No. Goodness gracious no. I went along to the drill hall on their training night and became one of the

crew sort of business. But I don’t remember when.

No only. No. There was nobody else there. If you wanted to be in the air force and there was a couple of our blokes went to the air force, well you had to go away. There was nowhere around. But mostly from down our

area they were army blokes. None of our blokes were in navy to my knowledge. But we had a couple of my friends join the air force but I don’t know or I can’t remember what happened to them.

Cause we’d been in drought here for ages. And…

I dunno. I think it was it because it was the thing to do. I got a bug in my head that I should be in there and

the fact that, no I don’t think I had any special reasons, because nobody else in my family or associated family. Oh yes, my brother-in-law eventually but I didn’t know it at that time. No just felt it was something I should do and I just did it.

Not really. The information we had at that time wasn’t very much. You know we didn’t know a great deal about Germany. Well we knew more about it from the First World War but not from the Second World War not very much.

No not as I recall. I can’t remember anything that was notable that we knew that caused us to go. I think we just joined because we thought it was the right thing to do.

Well we’re a free country and we needed to protect it.

And that’s about all I could say at that time. I might’ve got a bit more patriotic you might say later on but I wasn’t very patriotic at that time; it’s just that it was the right thing to do join the army and.

That I honestly can’t say. You know I can’t really say why. Whether it gave me a yen to get into the services, I couldn’t honestly answer that one.

Marching, marching and more marching. Lot of exercises at the section level. You know crawling through the bush sort of business. Where we did our training

in Western Australia wasn’t much thick bush country because there’s not a lot of bush in Western Australia only in parts. Did a lot of rifle shooting and practice with the rifle. And as always marching, marching and more marching.

Guard duties. And I don’t think we got very greatly into it. Just we took it was more as fun than anything else. We weren’t very dinkum you might say.

Oh yes. You always gravitated through that and then they allocated various shows. From us we either went into the 2/11th Battalion, the 16th Battalion or the 28th Battalion, that was the 2/28th They were the three

battalions that were raised here in Western Australia.

No it didn’t have a special one, it was just Northern Military Camp.

Oh time of. No wait a minute. I think people from the south west were

were graduated into the 2/11th . The 2/28th Battalion was, no the 2/16th Battalion was metropolitan and some country but not a great deal. And the 2/28th I think was Kalgoorlie and so forth. You know we didn’t have actually

a very great connection with them. The 2/11th Battalion was mostly metropolitan and south west. The rest I mean I don’t think that came into it very much. It was just as they were calling up you just got shunted into that. It was decided on by Canberra where you went sort of business.

2/11th.

I was in a section as section commander, that’s what I finished up as. I was a rifleman to start with then a section commander.

I was number one on the Vickers gun. But I shied away from the Vickers gun section when I came into the infantry because

what was my reason? The fact that I’d to carry the damn thing, it was very heavy. It weighed 40-odd pounds, 45 pounds and that was going to be awful. I couldn’t see myself carrying that in the infantry and that was it.

Oh well a little bit of a choice not a great deal. You blokes are in as a recruit. Where they wanted you they

put you and if your records showed certain things well you went that way. There was no strict things of where you went and what you showed aptitude to you know. No. I think I was an NCO [Non-Commissioned Officer] almost

from the word go. Because I’d been in the CMF, I was made an acting lance-corporal. Because you know I’d had some experience. I knew how to march. I knew how to use a rifle and knew how to drill and so forth and you got used up.

No. Goodness gracious no. You couldn’t feel special in the service. You were just one of

the people and that was your job in there.

Most I must admit when we were brought into the. Firstly when we were still civilians we were given a time to catch the train in our various spots to go up to Claremont to be

inducted, most of the blokes I went up with were timber-getters. Big raw tough blokes and farm blokes you know. Either they worked on the farm or were timber-getters. They were pretty rugged individuals. Cause I know I was one of the younger ones and the officer gave me something to do and

I started to shout and this bloke said, “Hey pull your head in. You say what we’ve got to do and we’ll do it. Don’t try your sergeant-major tactics”, and I got the message. But most yeah the blokes that came in at the time that I came in were mostly out of the timber trade

you know and farmers. Cause we started off at Bridgetown and loaded up people on the train from there up to Perth and there we went. Crikey that brings back memories yeah. We were shipped into the Claremont. Claremont was the – it

still is – the showground and that was where they recruiting people were and they were brought in there and you were given a palliasse [straw mattress] and shown where the straw was and you put some straw in your palliasse and off and made up your bed. And I think if I remember right it was 3, you were issued with 3 blankets. No pillow and you had to use

your gear for a pillow. But anyhow that’s how it started.

Yeah.

The first thing oh we were given clothes to start with. I think somewhere before you go, I might be able to dig out my kit as issued. You know it was

first things in the first day or so you were given a giggle suit as we called it. It was a smock jacket and trousers. Giggle gear. And boots. They were very fussy about the boots that you got. You had to make sure that they fitted. And you got 3 pair of socks.

Because you looked like a giggler [girlish], now that was the

name given to it and you looked like a gig. And it was one thing everybody was the same. If you were an NCO well you painted your rank with boot polish on your jacket. And that’s the first time. Then you got white stripes after that.

But then after you’d been there a couple of days they put you through the clothing store again and you were kitted out with all the necessary stuff.

That’d be I think it was 2 shirts, undergear you know a singlet and underpants,

3 of each I think if I remember right, khaki shirt and a tie, and a khaki uniform, and a khaki hat.

I can’t remember really. I can remember that we went from Claremont they shipped us down to naval base and we were there for a few days. All there was at the naval base was some huts and we did marching there and the usual things

recruits did. And then we were shipped out by train to Northam and I remember we had to walk from the station in our new boots and all to the camp which was about best part of 5 miles. And you found all the sore spots with your feet and new boots, and you soon learnt how to look after them. And once we got

there we were allocated to what they called reinforcements. I think there was 80 or 100 men in a reinforcement and as I remember I was in the 11th Reinforcements. And you were allocated to a battalion and I was allocated to the 2/11th Battalion.

And there were a few old blokes who had been in the 2/11th Battalion were our instructors. Some of them were blokes from the First World War who were in the 11th Battalion in the First World War and they formed the nucleus of our instructors. They gave us the rudiments and so forth.

No, I don’t think so. I know there was one thing they all used to say was keep your head down. That was always the thing it’s sort of based on. Keep your head down yeah.

But I think it was mainly getting us fit you know marching and running. We did a lot of running and a lot of marching up hill and down dale. But then came a time and we were trying to I think we were lined up and the bloke said

you’ll be leaving within such and such a time and they gave us some leave. They called it embarkation leave I think if I remember right.

It means you go home for 7 days and that you fix up all your things that you hadn’t fixed up with your family before you joined and then back into and usually at the end of your

embarkation leave it was only a few days before you departed. Never forget that. We marched into Northam with all our gear. Got on a train. And down this is we left as I remember we left up there in daylight in Northam which is Northam’s I think about

60 miles east of Perth and we went from there and they took us by train through various things right down and onto the wharf. And they got us off there and they put us on a barge because the Queen Mary couldn’t come into Fremantle. It was anchored a way out and most of us had never

seen the sea around that place cause we were bushies. And the whole of our reinforcement was on this barge and you were standing with your gear on the barge, not down into a boat or anything. Wasn’t any. It was an oil barge and that oil barge went out to supply the

ship with you know fuel and took us along with it and we got out and then got up onto this whacking great ship. You can think I suppose we were about 4 or 5 feet above the water and we’re out at this ship that looked massive. All that you could

see was the side of the ship with some portholes and blokes slinging them ladders from up on top. You know, “Don’t want you up here, you sandgroper [Western Australian] types,” and so forth.

Yes they were all east. They were all eastern states. Because the ship had loaded up in Sydney and Melbourne before coming around and we were the last port of call and they topped up their

fuel in Fremantle and to get the fuel to the [Queen] Mary they had to send it out on barges and the troops went out on top of the barge. We left it was in the middle of the night. It was daylight when we got out there but when we left Fremantle it was the middle of the night. We didn’t get a sent off sort of business it was

get yourself on the way. That was something.

Always.

There was always rivalry between the eastern states and the sandgropers, always especially in football. Oh yes Victoria and Western Australia are always at loggerheads

when it comes to football and if it was anybody else too. We didn’t, it wasn’t very much rugby league played over in Western Australia. Only the ra-ra boys [College students, GPS schoolboys] played rugby.

Aussie Rules: Australian Rules Football. Everybody played Australian Rules Football well except the ra-ra boys as we called em, the Secondary college students played Rugby Union.

I don’t know that Rugby League was so popular. Didn’t know much about Rugby League.

Rugby Union they were always called the ra-ra boys. But that was a

They reckoned we were always the sand in the place the sand in our eyes and walking in sand. Wherever you went in Western Australia,

they reckoned it was sand. They didn’t realise that in Western Australia there’s more rough country than anywhere else in Australia. You know you talk about your ranges over here; get up in the back blocks of Western Australia, my goodness there’s rough country. And it doesn’t rain a lot over there so its. But they’ve always been called the sandgropers.

I had seen the sea before but not to go on it.

I’d never been on the sea before. Although I’d had a trip to the northwest I’d forgotten about that. But to go out on this confounded barge. That stuck in my mind. It always has stuck in my mind.

No the fact that we had to go out on a flat barge out there. A bit petered.

I think there was about 300 to 400, in all honesty I wouldn’t’ be able to tell you because it didn’t’ really concern me at that time. All that concerned me was my Reinforcements. The 10th and 11th Reinforcements for the 2/11th. There were engineers.

There were air force. There were artillery, there were a few of those too but I couldn’t’ tell you how many. But the ship was full. Hell of a lot of people on board there were.

No I’m afraid I can’t remember.

No except we realised it was a bloody big target but never seemed to worry us. Oh we had to do boat drill a couple of times, which we didn’t understand too much about.

Knowing where to go on the ship to get off the boat on you know a lifeboat. I don’t remember ever seeing a lifeboat either. But they must have been there. But we didn’t worry too much.

I don’t think I remembered her at that time and I think she was a. No I went to my family. There were some people I was living with at the time and called the Hay family. I don’t think my own particular family knew

even that I was going away. They [didn’t] even know I was in the army. I wasn’t at that particular time very friendly with my family. Had very little to do with them.

Oh no. I was too self-centred for that, at that time. All we thought about

was getting there and getting over it and getting on with the job.

Had no idea. I’ll be honest we had no idea. It was something completely alien to us. Even when we got up into Syria, didn’t worry very

much about what was going to happen whatever.

Yes yeah.

No we didn’t disembark till we got to the port of Taufiq and that was again onto a barge.

At Taufiq, we were taken off there onto a wharf and into trains. They were pretty rudimentary trains too as I remember. Wooden carriages, wooden seats, wooden everything, yeah.

We went from there up the Canal to I think a place called El Kantara that’s where you crossed over

the Suez Canal and we were taken over the Suez Canal and I can’t remember whether it was a barge that went over with or a boat. I can’t remember on that one. And went to the other side, got on trains again and then headed north up into Palestine. We didn’t know much about it.

Yeah.

At Gaza. Below

Gaza. I think New Surat [?] I think. No I can’t remember the name a the place the camp where we were

No quite happy. Sand and more sand. That’s all it was. It was you know it was in sand hill country where we were so didn’t seem to worry us. We didn’t get leave there.

Only certain members of the unit got leave to go into, I think they went to Jerusalem. I didn’t know what Jerusalem was at that time. I didn’t even think about it. But a few of our blokes went to Jerusalem. But mostly we were

interested in playing football and

Aussie Rules. Oh yes of course. It had to be Aussie Rules.

Oh no I can’t remember but most of the one’s I had do with was Aussie Rules. Don’t remember.

Oh yes, when it come down to the individual, it was quite OK yeah. At a distance you had a bit of mudslinging but that’s all. But not individually, you got on all right yeah. You had to. But we didn’t really

you know at that where we were at Palestine it was marching and then they put us on trains and we headed off I think as I remember we went via Jerusalem but I just can’t remember very clearly on that one. You

didn’t see many Arabs at that time or Woodjies [?] for that matter, mostly Brits [British]. There were plenty of them around. They ran the country. But then once we passed over into Syria it changed a bit there. I can’t remember

much about Syria because I think we went through most of Syria by night as I remember.

They did run it.

Oh no only used to see them. We had no contact with them whatsoever.

It was only that we saw them. And everywhere it was. Wherever they were around they were British yeah.

Oh OK. No problems. They were good soldiers. They were soldiers and we were only civilians in uniform.

Well it was a fact. They looked

liked soldiers and we didn’t think we did, just as civilians in uniform not anything else.

Oh yes but that’s not. Not until you really get into a unit that you really do the training. But yeah the British they ran everything

at that particular time. They ran the railways. No they didn’t drive them but they controlled the railways, and the police and everything, and in Syria too, yeah. Our most contact was with the Brits. Could always tell the Brits: they were in shorts and we were in long trousers.

No I can’t. I’ve got a fair amount of blanks in that part of my army career although we didn’t see that much of the most. No it’s all going through there was on trains.

No we weren’t very impressed with the trains in those parts. They were pretty rough.

Well there were no comfortable seats to sit on. Across they were all just carriage with wooden seats. That’s

all they had. And the thing that really upset us the toilets were a hole in the floor and that sort of didn’t impress us at all.

No we hadn’t. Well I must admit we hadn’t been around very much. But after the Queen Mary where it was real

real living on board the Queen Mary cabins and all, there were no living rough.

Oh of course It was a real flush flash ship. They hadn’t altered the Queen Mary at that time. You know she was still a cruise ship. It was really something. I was in the Sergeants’ Mess at that time and of course the sergeants were

really somebody. Yeah. But still I don’t remember a great deal about it. So.

No they were all troop trains. A few in the slow parts going

through parts of don’t know the name of the towns. I can’t remember. Had a few traders hop on the side and so forth but I’m afraid we didn’t have any of their money so we didn’t worry about them much.

Oh yes. I had a few blokes I got pretty matey with. There’s one Bob Tucker, Tommy Tucker we used to call him. He was fairly close, and a couple of the mates they since got killed at You don’t get

too close to anybody in the services. I mean you’re moving too much. You change partners you might say. But you get friendly with them yeah.

We did move around yeah. Depending on what was required you know. You’d start of in one unit or one company and it was

in a section you might say and then if you it depends whether you were wanted you were shifted to others and then you settled down. But after a while you got into a platoon and then you became very close with the blokes in your platoon and then you’re stuck. And once you’ve been with ’em for a fair while you knew damn well that if anything went wrong they were there. But that was the

whole thing of mateship, was very close in the battalion. In the infantry especially they were very close.

Well you were all the same. You all got the same. You didn’t have anything that the other people didn’t have. You got to rely on

one another and you knew that they were. We were great rivals in sport but only thing else and you know drill and things like that but overall we were very reliant. You knew you could rely on them.

When I arrived in Syria. I became

Number Two Section, A Company; A Company, 7 Platoon, 2 Section. Yeah that’s right.

Oh no I couldn’t say. We didn’t

know when we were, we weren’t told that we were in Syria just that the people changed if you can understand. The different clothes slightly differently. The people on the sides of the railway line are slightly different and so forth.

You found you were in a different country. You weren’t told very much at all. It was only your own observations. Yeah it wasn’t the policy to tell people you know the ordinary digger he was told the

basic things that were happening but no long distance. Cause I don’t think our officers even knew what was what was really going on it was just that they were going there. They were recruits like we were.

No we were going for the battalion?

We were going there. We were to guard against the supposed invader coming down from the North. We never saw him. They didn’t come, so we dug a lot of slit trenches.

Beg pardon?

No. No.

Vichy French weren’t the Germans. They expected the Germans to come down somewhere along the line. The French was our ally at that time, the Vichy French that were there, because the French were in fact running, supposedly running Syria, at that time. But there were more Brits there than

French. But they were supposed to be, I think. As I remember I think it was French, memory’s lost.

Yeah that brought back memories of things I’d forgotten completely.

Not really.

I can’t remember anything being said. Just that we were joining the battalion. And I don’t exactly remember where we got off the train. I’ve got a feeling that the last part of our journey was by truck. I’m not sure exactly. I can’t remember very well. It was getting up into North Syria somewhere.

The village of Jerdede [?] rings a bell but I’m not I can’t remember exactly where that was. I think we embraced where our battalion was stationed was around the village of Jerdede and that straddled

the road from north. I think it was Turkey north of there isn’t? Through Syria to south but we didn’t know very know much about it. We weren’t there too long to learn much about it either and we didn’t try, I must be honest. We didn’t try to learn much about it.

It was awkward.

You must remember there weren’t many in battalion at that time. The rest of our battalion was on Crete. The battalion had evacuated down through Greece and across into Crete to the best of my knowledge and they were coming back from Crete in dribs and drabs as they got off. I remember one

bloke a signaller he came he pinched a boat a little dinghy and sailed it across from Crete across to Syria. And I didn’t even know where Crete was at that time. And all we knew was that the main part of the battalion was there and what was left over was in Syria.

And they for all the time that we were in Syria, they were coming back in dribs and drabs and back into the battalion from Crete. We never ever actually acted as a battalion until we came back down into

where did we come? I don’t think we ever. We were in company sort of business in places around this Jurdede village. But we never met most of them because we were spread out in and you had to walk to see anyone and we didn’t like walking. Although I must admit

there is where I first saw snow. It was pretty blasted cold I remember and this night it’d been damn cold and miserable and there was a funny sound in the air and we didn’t know what the heck it was

and we got up and put the head out and lo and behold the whole thing was white with this snow falling. And most of us had never seen snow before in our lives and it was really something.

Get back into bed quick. It was damn cold. Because the ordinary clothes we

wore in down south of the places we were khaki drills and they weren’t exactly useful for. The only thing that we really had that was suitable for the snow and not too suitable was our greatcoat. But we had a lot of fun. We made a few snowmen and threw snow at one another and rolled around in the snow.

But didn’t enjoy it very much. Weren’t equipped for it. We didn’t have snow gloves or anything like that or mittens. Only people that had them were blokes that had got them sent to ‘em in comfort bags.

Well I think

we had 5 blankets I think then. They must have issued more blankets; had 5 blankets and the palliasse and put the greatcoat on. Oh well most of us got dressed to go to bed. It was too damn cold to wear oh we didn’t have pyjamas anyhow. But we most of us put socks on and all and got into bed.

I think I remember I wore 2 pairs of socks. Trying to keep warm but it was only a small part of my life and I forgot about it pretty quick.

We were scattered. As I remember A Company

were in two or three different orchards on one side of the road. B Company were a bit further up on the other side of the road in places and it was a bit awkward to see the rest of the blokes. And we were new chums anyhow.

“Well, took you a bloody long time to get here.”

Not bad. I mean we were recruits. We were new chums and we got the business, and any extra work that was going they passed on to us until we woke up to war. But by and large we were pretty well, it was very few of the original

battalion there, very few. They were nearly all reinforcements of some description because the battalion had got wiped out in Crete and that’s as it was.

They didn’t talk about it very much I must admit. All we mostly got is we ran like hell. You know that they went backwards. They didn’t see a great deal of the Germans because they were moving backwards and they weren’t very happy they were never actually.

They didn’t actually stand and fight because there was always up stakes and move back to another position and that sort of business. But yeah it was surprising we didn’t get to learn very much about what happened in Greece and Crete until we came back to Australia and then they started talking about it. I

don’t think they were very happy about it most a the blokes and they didn’t like talking about it, because I think they were a bit savage about having to go to back off and they weren’t getting’ the support that they should have been getting sort of business. Those were the days. We weren’t running the war.

Oh yeah.

Yeah they were. Yeah. But it’s there was only a few of us sort of business.

No, not really. Mind you they weren’t very organised in Crete. The Germans sort of bypassed ‘em and they were left isolated, and they sort of had to get back and that’s how it went. And then

of course they were overrun and they took to the hills sort of business. All sorts of stories came back. That’s why the blokes were coming back in dribs and drabs. Some of ‘em was picked up by cruising ships you know warships. Some of ‘em even came back by submarine they got on.

And others are… there’s one bloke I remember they swam the last mile or so on tins. They had tins in there for buoyancy and they used those to swim the last bit to the coastline. But then they didn’t talk much about it. We didn’t. You’d get ‘em have a few beers

into them and they’d start to you know and then they’d clam up and that. I don’t’ think the rest of the battalion that came back were very proud of themselves. They’d got done and they weren’t happy about it. And they would a rather had a fight. But that’s just the way the cookie crumbles so…

No not particularly. But

once we got back for a while things sorted out.

You didn’t hear much about them at all. What were they called? Krauts I think, but we didn’t hear much about them and

just the people that were teaching us they didn’t know much either. It was just take potluck and we weren’t exactly an organised army then at that particular point of business. We were rebuilding into being soldiers and then our government said come home.

We didn’t know why we were coming back. We weren’t told why, but we were moving back and that was that.

Never saw any others

No. Strictly yeah.

Not very much.

The ladies used to do our washing for us. That was the most thing. There weren’t many blokes around, mostly women and kids sort of thing but we didn’t mix very much no.

There was no town, there wasn’t any towns around

No, not really.

No.

They seemed reasonable to us. They didn’t speak our language so you can’t converse real good with someone that you can’t understand or they can’t understand you. They could understand the washing part of it. What was the word? Washing George. The ladies come around getting the. But they were very

honest. They’d do the washing and return it and so on. Suited us because we didn’t like washing.

I forget, I don’t remember. You paid ’em, I just can’t remember what it was.

Seemed to be, but then nobody likes other people camping in their paddock sort of business or in under their orchards and so forth and digging up their orchards. Nobody likes that.

No I had no contact with them, none at all.

The only contact we had with ‘em with my particular show is I remember the washing ladies, nobody else.

Well they’re about enough to take three blokes; down 4 or feet and about a spade width

and that was it. Dug that down and mind you the ground was pretty hard there. It was in limestone country. It was pretty hard; the old pick got used a heck of a lot, and of course Australian soldiers don’t like digging. They never have been known for it and never will be until somebody starts shooting at ‘em and then they’ll dig but not till then. No Australian

soldier likes digging trenches. But don’t remember too much about Syria. We weren’t there long enough to sort of get many impressions.

No it was moving about and digging trenches and back into the and doing patrols at night

time and that’s about it. Didn’t even do any weapon training there. I don’t think we had enough ammunition to do any training with.

Couldn’t say how long. It wasn’t that

long but we spent a Christmas there I think. Christmas what? Christmas ’41, I’d say. Christmas ’40. I forget but we did spend a Christmas there. Wasn’t a very wonderful Christmas but we did alright. But it was the first time we’d seen snow and we were glad to get out of it. Too

cold.

No I can’t, nothing in there rings a bell, nothing at all. Nah, ‘fraid not.

Didn’t have any Father Christmas or anything like that so

Pretty well bored. No Australian soldier likes to be sent out to dig holes. We couldn’t see what

was... We didn’t know where we were really. We hadn’t seen any maps of the country sort of business. Down at our level you don’t see those things and we weren’t in the picture so.

It is

Yes.

Poor old platoon sergeant he gets his ear bent a lot trying to keep the troops happy but it’s one of those things.

To be honest I can’t. I don’t think we were told

we were coming back to Australia. I think we were told, I think as far as we found out we were coming back to Palestine. I got a feeling we came back to Palestine in trucks but I’m not certain. I just can’t remember. It’s a blank period in my career. I can’t remember

and there’s none of my cronies around of my ilk who I could sort of get the information from. No.

No I can’t remember

whether we came down to Taufiq by trucks or by train but I think it must have been by train because there wasn’t that much motor transport around. It would have been by train, but I can’t remember.

Yeah

Yep. Got it written

down there, the Durban Castle.

Well she was a ship that was equipped to carry troops, so it was fairly sparse the things that were onboard, but it was quite comfortable but nothing fancy like the Queen Mary.

And she wasn’t as big by any means. Can’t remember a great deal about her but we came back. I can remember we were on the ship for quite a while before we got into…We came south and seemed to go south for a long time before we headed north again and we came into Adelaide. We never

touched anywhere else, we came straight around down and come up into Adelaide and boy were we happy. Yeah. We’d had ships by the time we got there. I don’t remember much about the journey.

No all we knew was we were going to Australia.

Yeah they told us we were going to Australia

But didn’t say where.

No. Even when we got back into Australia, they didn’t tell us too much why we were there and the information that the people got wasn’t very good either. It was pretty sparse. See we came to Adelaide and they billeted us up

around Mt Lofty, straight through on trains up to Mount Lofty which is a holiday resort area up in the hills behind Adelaide and we were there for a while. Can’t tell you how long.

Both. I tell ya Port Adelaide’s not a very nice place to look at from the sea I can assure you at that particular time, probably changed a lot since then.

But it wasn’t the sort of place that’d make you feel ‘oh wonderful place’. But there it was.

Yeah, oh well, the way the cookie crumbles sort of business.

I can’t remember on that, I’ll be honest; we were just pleased to be back. So we knew we’d got a pasting [beating] over there so we were pleased to get back to Australia. That’s you know the general run of things but.

Quite good. I was a sergeant, and with 3 others shared a cabin. The ship had been used to transport British troops out to the Far East and so forth and it was pretty well set up to handle troops. And there was none of the troops as

I recall were unhappy about being on board. Wasn’t in the same street as the Queen Mary but God no I wouldn’t like to travel on her again.

Didn’t worry me. Wait a minute. No I think was I? Hang on. No I think at that

particular period I’d gone back to a corporal. I can’t tell you for certain but I feel as though I was because I. No, I must have been a sergeant there, yeah.

We had a platoon sergeant and the section sergeants, [we] had three sections. The senior of the section sergeants, he’s also a sergeant, he’s the 2IC [Second In Command] to the main sergeant.

Must’ve,

didn’t have any fights over it and no jealousy. A lot of the blokes were quite happy to get you know you’ve got the job. But in the Australian Army of that time it was you could’ve picked any bloke and put him in as a leader and he’d of worked OK and the team and it’s

the way it worked. We’re all pretty well the same. But we could play football. Whenever we got a chance we’d play football. We had some pretty good footballers in the battalion at that time and in the company. We had a few in our platoon.

Oh average. Just average. I’d never played at dinkum you know before going into the army. You know I’d played occasionally at and that but never got anything really dinkum about it. But there it was.

Yeah.

Very happy to be in Australia; didn’t matter where it was we were happy to be in Australia, because we’d been steaming north for a couple of days and we got so far down in the cold country cold

area that we were starting to begin to wonder. Because we weren’t told where we were going and submarines were subject that was were thought of at the time. We had a submarine lookout all the time that was that.

No

Don’t think so, we were a bit fatalistic I think: what will be will be.

Oh no. Deal with that.

At the time, yeah, but we were happy to be home in Australia temporarily.

Well we were taken up there by train I think. The trains go through Mount Lofty and as we got off the train we were allocated to various places and

the people. I’m not sure how it worked. Whether they met us at the station or visiting NCOs or officers took us to the places and left us there, but anyhow where we went to we were

allocated it was a guesthouse and it was quite reasonable. I’m not sure how we were fed there, I’ve forgotten whether food was bought to us or the people who we were billeted with whether they fed us. I’m not sure, I can’t remember that much.

I know they were nice people and we got very friendly with them. After the war and that we still went and visited them so. But I just can’t remember now whether they fed us or the food was brought round to us on trucks. I’m not sure.

Oh I couldn’t tell you now.

Don’t remember. But they were nice people. But I can’t remember their name.

I can’t remember to be truthful. That’s a bit of a blank there.

Well we reckoned we were either going up to Darwin or across to Western Australia. We weren’t sure where we were going and in fact we didn’t know until

I think until we got nearer Western Australia until... We were loaded on trains and headed up to a certain place and some of our troops had gone up further

north and came back again. But it was a bit of a mix up there for a while until they sorted themselves out and then they shipped us across to Western Australia. I forget. We were shipped up somewhere in the north in South Australia but I can’t tell you where I’ve forgotten. And then

they headed us across to Western Australia. And of course spirits started to rise very considerably.

Terowie, wherever that is in South Australia I don’t know. But that’s as far north as we got in South Australia.

Terowie, that’s right.

It’s a town somewhere there. We went up to there and they decided then that we weren’t going north to wherever and that we were going across there, yeah that’s right. Sorry bout that.

We felt a bit at that particular time. We felt a lot of sympathy for the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion because they were

in Singapore and we found out that Singapore had fallen and there was a lot of our friends in different units that got caught up there. But then as young blokes you don’t dwell on those things very much.

To be honest, not very much but the fact that we realised they were pretty good because they were winning and we weren’t, although we weren’t getting much of a chance

to have a go at em. But no I can’t say we thought a great deal about it other than the fact that we were there.

Oh a few weeks. It was only just while they decided what to do with us.

Marching. I know there was plenty of marching attached to it. But that was all. There wasn’t much you could do. You were in a suburb; even though we were in an outer suburb there wasn’t much we could do.

I don’t think so, might a given us day leave

you know around the place. But I didn’t go down into Adelaide so I don’t or wait a minute. I must have been given day leave there cause I had a sister-in-law, my brother’s wife was in Adelaide somewhere and I think I went to see her so we must have been given day leave. Just can’t remember where she was, somewhere around Adelaide. I went

to see her so we must have been given day leave there. But not long time leave, no. But then we just shipped out.

No I haven’t.

She’d be wondering because her husband was in Darwin or coming back from Darwin and he was a civilian carpenter. He was either in Darwin or coming back from Darwin or something. So I don’t

Yeah, I don’t remember at this stage, got a blank. I

can’t remember at all.

No. Oh hang on, he had a gammy leg. They wouldn’t have taken him. He had broken his leg pretty badly in a motorbike accident before the war and they wouldn’t have

taken him in the army or in the services, but he was working building hangers or something in Darwin at one stage. But I don’t know what, I’m not too familiar about what happened that time at all. Not until later on that I sort of caught up with them. That’s

the way it goes.

No, it was really disorganised. The fact is they hadn't had a chance to get back. They’d been decimated in Greece and Crete

and they’d just started really getting organised when we were up in Syria and then came back to Australia. We got really decimated again because one brigade of the division was sent to Darwin; another brigade I think went to New Guinea;

the other brigade, part of it, we were sent to Western Australia. I couldn’t tell you any more on that one, I don't know much about it.

I don't know, I think it was all right. They were all happy to have had some time at home, then they had to get on with it.

Until we had a chance to worry about morale, they got shot off to duties. Our brigade, the 4th and the 8th Battalion of our brigade were sent at the start to Darwin and all points in the

Northern Territory. They were everywhere. We were shunted into Western Australia and worked over there.

Well, sent.

It didn’t worry us one little bit; very nice being stationed around home, got a bit monotonous after a while, but it was nice to be

stationed close to home. Although we were a bit monotonous on beach watching duties and so forth. Since reading in letters and so forth very recently in the paper about how there was a Japanese landing in Western Australia, at that time we didn’t know

anything about that. We were on the beach, so I think someone must have had a very vivid imagination. I think it was a little bit of flying kites. We covered the beach up as far as Dongara, or close to there, and that would have covered all the places that the Japs

were alleged to have landed. They weren’t, but they must have thought they were going to have something, because we were shot [sent] up. We’re up there and patrolling the beach and nothing happened.

Not really.

Nothing, not from an infantryman’s… we weren’t very well informed of how the war was going. Newspapers weren’t very freely around the place then. There wasn’t any news in the newspapers anyhow. We were mostly informed that the action was taking place

in, Singapore was finished then, I think. Not sure.

Yeah. I didn’t know at the time, but eventually we were.

Don’t remember.

Yes, we thought we might be getting some attention. Didn't come to be. There was talk of it. Nothing ever happened.

Was people flying kites more than anything. We were there patrolling the beaches and so forth. Then nothing happened. What happened after that? In truth, I don't know, I can't remember.

I don't think so.

Well, it could have been they got that because they were the first division to leave Australia to go overseas. Of course the others were probably still civilians when they went overseas. They largely finished up as prisoners of war eventually.

They served up in Tobruk in the first instance, when they captured Tobruk the first time and they came back, the Germans hadn't come there then. If they had they weren’t in strength. They went up into Greece and Crete and got a caning there.

They came back, reformed and, at that time, was Mr Menzies still in power? He said “Bring them home.”

Curtin was it? I wasn’t sure who it was. He said, “Bring them back.” That’s not how we heard it, but still, he said, “They’ve

gotta come back to Australia”. We weren’t privy to those excuses or stories. We just did what we were told sort of business.

No. We didn’t have anything to do with them. We weren’t anywhere near in the same theatres of war.

7th Division came after and so did the 9th [Division]; 8th [Division] got captured in Singapore. I don’t think so. The originals of the 6th Division, we were the reinforcements. I don't think we ever,

most surprised. They could have played up when they came home, but then we were in Western Australia and you don’t ever hear what goes on over in the east. Not at that time anyhow.

No, we were quite happy over there. Had our own war going. I don't think

we were worried about it, we were just there.

How do you mean, “How did we live?”

We had our own tents. Except when you were on actual coastwatch you didn't have any tents. You just made improvisations,

your own set-up. We were quite well looked after. Never went without food or anything like that, that’s all a soldier worries about. We got our Swan Lager [Western Australian beer].

At a price. You had to pay for it.

We used to run a truck into the local town and get it from there.

Mostly, as I remember, for any of our fresh stuff we lived off local stuff, but the stuff that was in tins came from supply. Didn't have much worries.

I think the thought was there, but I don't think there was any worries about it. We were there and would take care of it if they came. They didn’t come. Although a couple of ships got sunk off Western Australia between Perth and Geraldton

I think, at that time. Nothing else. There was a batch of submarines allegedly Japs, around; German ones too as a matter of fact. You never actually saw them. There were none ever came ashore to my knowledge. The word would have

come through very quickly, through the old boy network [informal communication channels among service colleagues, not by official means].

One signaller telling another signaller, “Such and such happened”, word gets around.

No, we didn’t have watchtowers; we all had our own radio set-up.

Yeah.

Wasn’t very good ones, but they worked. I forget what we had in there. Gone blank. I can't remember that one.

How do you mean, “Work on our own”?

You’d be in a group. You wouldn’t work by yourself. You’d work down as far as sections. A platoon would be responsible for a certain length of beach or area, and work it out. A section of troops would be responsible for a certain area and in contact by radio.

No, only the sigs [signallers, signalmen] used those, the sigs had them. It didn’t come down to the blokes in the unit except if you were on a fixed place and had a radio, but mostly it was the sigs used to be attached and carry the burden as you might say.

I think after that

Yes, I think we were through to somewhere in North

Queensland, I’ve forgotten where it was now.

On the Atherton Tablelands, I couldn’t say exactly where. It was somewhere.

Jungle training, so called.

Going to New Guinea, yes.

I got a dreaded wog there. My skin apparently didn’t like the climate in the tropics, so I finished up going to hospital.

Living and moving through the jungle,

not as you see it on TV, but very carefully covering a certain area of country and keeping a watch over it and see there’s nothing happening and see you don’t get attacked and this sort of business.

People.

No such thing, the only wild dangerous animals you get there are tree kangaroos.

Never saw one, not up in the Atherton Tablelands. They’re down the swamp country.

No actual dangers, only mainly falling when you’re trying to climb up these muddy slopes and so forth, only an inconvenience living out in the rain and slush. We were used to dry desert and that’s not the

sort of country that we liked, or anyone likes as a matter of fact. Not as bad as it was in New Guinea. It was quite authentic training I must admit.

Basically the same, but you’re working in thick foliage.

When you were training to go to the Middle East you were training for open country. Definitely not open country around where we were in the Atherton Tablelands, vastly different.

Well, we didn’t know,

I suppose we were. The ordinary soldier didn’t think so, but still they weren’t very happy about that sort of training. They benefited from it.

Just that you’d get dry, that was mainly the general talk, and the usual thing around

talk of home and so forth. It’s that long ago, I’ve forgotten mostly. I get mixed up with my next posting. I don't think there was anything very drastic about the training we received.

I don't remember. I don't think we were, while we were there it hadn't started in New Guinea so much. It hadn't, I think

it was on further north, the fighting. We hadn't heard about it. The troops don’t hear about it anyhow. Only when it becomes local do you really hear about it.

I think it was still in the process of coming down. I can't remember to be truthful.

We surmised. We didn't know what had happened to them, but we reckoned they got captured. It’s a bit disconcerting

when you hear of units and mates getting captured, but not much you can do about it.

We had bad reports on the treatment they got from Japanese.

It always had been that way.

I couldn’t tell you. They seemed to think there weren’t a great deal of prisoners being taken and that sort of business. Couldn’t, we surmised, on the treatment more than what we actually heard authentic.

Well, the Germans allegedly looked after the prisoners a lot better, but in fact after the war you hear

other things. Still, that’s how it is. I don't think we actually heard any authentic things. We talked about the Japanese being a bit rough on their prisoners, but I don't think we knew at the time other than

that. No.

Yes, we knew we were going, not actually Papua New Guinea, but we were treated as service further north, yeah.

I don't think we thought about it in those ideas. We were just soldiers. I don't think we thought about that. Might have at the time, but I can't remember having given it a great deal of thought. We knew we were going to have to get dinkum,

but we didn’t know when or how or why we went there. Just that is the soldier’s lot. You sharpen up their senses a bit more. Our crowd didn’t get into it until

Buna and Gona, I think our crowd got into the fighting. That was all swamp country. Very unhappy.

Yeah. They were pulled out from up around Darwin and so forth and shipped into past where the

9th Division were.

No, I was not sufficiently fit, so I got tipped out.

I got some wog in my skin and they couldn’t correct it.

I spent a fair bit of time in the hospital at, I forget the name of the place, Rocky Creek. From there I got passed through the various hospitals there and I finished up in Melbourne in

Concord [actually Concord Repatriation Hospital is in Sydney; Heidelberg is in Melbourne] I think. Yeah.

Don’t know exactly.

Skin collapsing. You have great ulcers on your legs

and arms.

Itched more than anything, very itchy, a bit of pain but not very painful. Didn't look very good: instead of having skin you had raw flesh on your legs and arms.

In

a matter of days. Then you’d get treatment on it and it sort of healed up. Then there’d be a thunderstorm and you’d break out again.

Mm.

All sorts of different treatments on it,

you name it, they tried it. They tried everything on the darn thing. Didn't seem to work any. They’d get it fixed up it’d bust out again. I became a liability. So when you spend so much time in hospital you become a liability. It’s cheaper to send you back out to somewhere else and

give you a job there, rather than waste more time to get you set to go back into the unit, that’s how it went.

Rather. I wasn’t exactly a happy person at all. Yes, I’d get the thing all set up and

so forth. I used to have salt baths every day and had to paint different things on different parts of the body to try and fix it. Everything’d be going all right and all of a sudden there’d be another thunderstorm and bang, away she goes again. What had happened, the skin used to sort of become

like raw, all come out in sort of sweat then it’d bust and back we go again. So I got sent back out to the thing. Became a support soldier.

Train.

I forget now where I went. I was sent down as far as Victoria to a hospital there, then they sent me eventually back to Hollywood Hospital in Western Australia. From there, it was a different climate, and I got posted to training over there. Training people.

Yeah.

Not so much in hospital, I went to what they call a con camp, convalescent camp. Then I’d become an encumbrance and back into hospital again.

Yeah, there was quite a considerable number; skin hospitals were fairly prominent during the war. It’s one of those things. Depends on how your system sustained it. I wasn’t a very happy chappie in those days.

The fact that I was laying there in hospital and the blokes were getting knocked off up in New Guinea. It’s not a very happy thought.

No, that’s not what I was supposed to be doing. I was supposed to be soldiering, not be an invalid.

Didn't work out that way. I was posted back and became an office man. I was a unit auditor; used to go around checking the units’ books.

It was myself giving myself a hard time. They just reckoned I was lucky cause I wasn’t there. The few of the blokes that were invalided back say, “You’re lucky you missed out on that mud.”

They understood.

There’s nothing you can say. It’s one of those things.

No, the convalescent camp attached to a hospital. Once you finished in the main ward in the hospital, you

either get sent back to the unit or get sent into the convalescent, so that the beds are available for the next people. As you get better they send you on, or if they can’t fix you they transfer you south to a general hospital until they can’t send you any further south. I saw a lot of hospitals that

I’d never heard of until I got back to Hollywood and I was in there for a fair while, i forget how long. Then I got shunted into staff in headquarters Perth. I was there for a while, then

moved around the countryside examining the books. That was part of my job until I met my boss in the street one day, my civil life boss.

Only just ordinary, a tented hospital.

Mm.

New Guinea. Gradually worked down as they were sent back so they were in the main hospital. Then when they were sufficiently

got right, they put them in the convalescent hospital so the doctors could keep an eye on them until they were ready for discharge, but still under the hospital rules.

No, it wasn’t the convalescent home. It was a tent.

No, weren’t too bad. Some were blokes with missing limbs and they don’t stay very long. They send them right back out. In the convalescent camp is where they send the people who have got a chance of getting sufficiently ready to go back to their units.

The blokes that are really bad stay in hospital until their discharge if necessary.

Yeah.

A part of the headquarters staff.

No, I was sent out of the division altogether.

I don’t remember to be truthful. Discharged is not the word they used; ‘released to industry’ was the one.

I happened to meet my civil life boss in the street on the railways. He asked me what I was doing. I told him and he said, “We’re short of men. You’re wasting your time there”. Within about three days I was discharged and back to work.

I think I was just walking along the street.

Doing audits on quartermasters and so on.

Going through their books and seeing they kept their books right and they weren’t robbing the army and that sort of thing. An auditor.

I forget what section they called it. It was part of the headquarters. There was about 10 of us altogether. Used to send us around in pairs checking, doing the books. You’d spend a day or so with each unit

and soon pick up if there was something shonky going on.

No, nothing to worry about. Just often you find blokes get a job of looking after the stores who are not suited for the job. Their books are not exactly

good. So you’d have to set to work and organise the bookwork for them and put a report in and then they’d get moved on and somebody else’d do the job, that sort of thing.

Common sense. We were given work on same thing up in the barracks under

supervision, then you went out with someone who was already experienced in it and you soon learned. It was common sense and see that the army wasn’t getting robbed. It happened all the time, simple as that.

I’d been on about 6 months. I’d been all over Western Australia wherever there were units. We’d call in, have a look in their books, spend the day with them and see everything was going OK, write a report and

go onto the next one.

Hard to say. You’ve got me there. I became more civilised, I must

admit. I think in that period I took up with my wife and I think, no I didn’t get married there. I got married after I’d been discharged from the army.

Easier to live with.

not short tempered and so forth.

I can’t say, probably the environment. I couldn’t get any work. I got used to the fact that I wasn’t ever going to be back

in the unit again, so…

Well, I didn’t get any option actually. I received a letter to say that I was being released,

I think was the word. It was written down somewhere. Fair enough. Back up to work.

Yes.

Yeah. Well, he didn’t give me much option because I was released to go into the army, so I was unreleased to go back to work for the

railway.

Yes, but it was in its last stages. Yes, I was released in 1945. I can give you the exact date when you require it.

A bit difficult to take it up when you see the blokes wandering around and me on the footplate working for a living. I must admit I received a fair bit of shellacking [jocular abuse] from my army mates as they came past. Not to worry, got used to it.

No.

I was sure that I’d done the right thing, and about the same time I got married, so that was another firm reason for me not to carry on in the army.

I don’t really. There was a lot of dancing around in the street as I can remember.

Very relieved and happy now that my mates were coming home, because they’d had a bit of a hard time.

They were in Buna and Gona and that was a messy one from the army’s point of view. There was a lot of stuff where they got injuries that they shouldn’t have got. Keen officers pushing the troops along. That’s only my opinion.

Yes, because I was stationed in Perth and transport around was still by train and I was on the front end. I’d often see the blokes around. I lived in Perth at that time in Hay Street, which is right in the centre of Perth.

I had a few meetings.

No. They never ever seemed to want to. It’d be years later when they’d talk about what happened, but never at the time. Just the fact they were happy to be home.

That’s right.

Just happy it was over and they can get back home again.

I can’t honestly give you an answer on that one. I

felt a little bit, I think, that I’d let them down a bit for not being there, but that’s how the cookie crumbled.

No, they knew. When I was in hospital at Rocky Creek a number of them came and saw me.

They didn’t have to be told, they could see what was going on and a few of my very good mates got knocked off up there. We sent them on with honours. We still do when we get together. It’s not very

often now we get together. Wish them all the best.

Five main blokes that I miss. We’d been together for a fairly long time, right from

privates up and me I went on a bit and they stayed as privates and corporals. A couple of them were warrant officers.

Not at the time. Do now. Looked at it, and it’s easy in hindsight to see those things, but at the time they were doing the right thing.

Yes.

Cause the only mates I’d lost before was accidents and things like that. That’s the way it goes.

It’s hard to say.

I suppose the day that we celebrated the finish of the war. That’d be the top. I think that’d be, there were

all ups and downs, but that feeling of relief that it was all over, yeah, I think that’s it.

Grew up. At the start of it I was a bit of a scallywag. I grew up

in the war. That’s it. I got my head screwed on right after that and settled down and got on with living.

A thing of the past. I’d forgotten about it until people reminded me.

Most the people that were associated have passed on now. I’m the last of the few; all my relations are all dead. The people that knew me when I was getting around, I’ve outlived. I haven’t any record with the police force to the best of my knowledge.

Since the war, I’ve got in and done things for the community, pushed things along and done things for my colleagues in the service.

I don't think so, I think I grew up.

My priorities were to get myself a home

for my family and get on with life more than anything.

No, I had no ideas of settling

down before.

Yes.

I got married just after the end of the war, so I must have been.

I wasn’t a very good letter writer. I’m not sure, I might have. I couldn’t be honest and say yes or no. I would imagine I would occasionally write, but not

serious ones. No, I wasn’t renowned for my letter writing.

Hardly. I think she had her own ideas. Mutual I think.

She was in the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] as a,

I forget, she was making parachutes I think. Packing parachutes, that’s right, in the RAAF.

Mallala. That just came to me. I was wondering where she was, and yes, it was at Mallala in South Australia. That’s right.

I’m

not sure. It’s an air force base. I’m not too sure where it is. I’ve never been there so I don't know.

Yes, pretty well straight away.

Geoffrey was the first one; then I think we were stationed in Katanning. After that a set of twins arrived. My wife said,

“That’s enough. We won’t have any more.” That was enough for us. They were a bit of a handful. We didn’t have any more after that.

I was a fireman.

Yeah, enough at the time.

I was a fireman on the express service between two points on the Great Southern Line and it paid relatively well; bit of prestige in being the fireman on the express.

I don't think

it worried me very much. I just don’t know when I decided to resign, just can’t remember.

No.

I didn’t get involved in the reserve after the war. I was an instructor.

No, the light horse, that was pre-war, early in the piece. I met one of my mates who had been with me right through

in the army in the Second World War and he said, “You should get back in the show. It’s a very good thing. Get into it.”

Yes. So I said, “All right.” I talked it over with my wife and she said, “Yes.”

Well, she was getting browned off with me working shifts and the fact that we were at that time stationed in Katanning and she would have preferred to be closer to the city. Wait a minute.

No, I think I’ve gone off the beam there somewhere. I think I resigned. She got me to resign from the railway and I went to work for a tractor mob. Manufacturing tractors. Yeah,

I’m a bit off the beam there. Just can’t think of the name of the tractor mob. It was in Western Australia and

Yes, she was a bit unhappy about me being away so much because as a fireman on the job that I had, I

spent almost as much time at the depot as you did at home. With the three kids she was a bit unhappy about that.

Not really. No. I got a job with these tractor people who were manufacturing tractors.

I just can’t, I’ve forgotten the name of these things now. Might come to me.

Storeman, in the stores, I think. Yes. I think in the stores.

Yes.

I met Bob Tucker and he convinced me it was better to be back in the service again training those just coming in. He was in it and they were looking for instructors. He suggested it to me, I talked it over with the lady and she agreed. So next thing I joined the army again.

Yes. I enjoyed it and getting the young blokes and training them. I was fairly fit myself by the time I’d been swinging the shovel for a while.

I’d have to consult the thing-o for

exactly when. I can give you the dates down to; I’ve got them on a piece of paper I think.

…national servicemen, as they came in. They’d come in and do their 3 months training with us and then they were

detached to a CMF unit where they finished off their training. When they were with us, we were stationed in Western Australia at a place called Swanbourne, which overlooked the sea and it was ideal for fitness training; plenty of sand hills to run up. Good range

right alongside the rifle range. It was good. We used to work mostly in the daytime, five days a week. Weekends we didn’t use to do much training. It was only occasionally you had to work at night. It was pretty good.

General training. General marching as usual, rifle training and general discipline, army life, things like that.

I came back into the army as a corporal and then went almost

straight away to sergeant and then I went to warrant officer. I was a warrant officer for a long time.

Captain. I came up through the ranks. I had the doubtful honour of being made an officer in Vietnam in the field. Just the

way it worked.

Sergeant.

They knew that I wouldn’t stand any fuss because

if they played up, I used to race them up over the sand hills. Not only race them, I used to lead them. They weren’t game not to go. They were enthusiastic. They used to be difficult for the first week until they got the message. We used to push them hard in the first week until they got the message. Then we found they were pretty good.

Very few of the national servicemen went to pieces. We gave them a fair go. If they got disciplined, they got disciplined the hard way. We didn’t believe in writing a charge sheet, us old soldiers, cause we had to write them out, by and large they were quite happy.

They have been happy. I’ve met a lot of them since. A lot of the blokes who went to the national service are in our [RSL] sub-branch here. They’re very good members.

Hard work. Sand hills

take complaints out of everybody. If they played up, “Right, come on. Turn right and up and over the sand hill.” They’d be quite happy. It was surprising. They got the message. They knew we were there to, cause we were all Second World War blokes and

we didn’t have any blokes there that... It was surprising the corps of instructors we had been around. They’d weed out the crookies, blokes that came in and weren’t… they came in and were moved on very quickly. No, I think the national service by and large was a good thing.

I still think that. If the country can afford it, it’s a good thing, very good. It’s trained a lot of our good officers and men have come from that. Certainly a lot of good citizens have come from it. I’ve been around the place a fair bit and different places,

I keep my ear to the ground and blokes talk about national service and they line up on and Anzac Day is when you catch them most. By and large they’re pretty good. A few of them are not happy with it, but it’s only a very few. By and large they’re quite satisfied with it.

Yes, but not so much, because you had to volunteer to go to Korea, same as you had to volunteer to go to Vietnam. We didn’t have any conscripts.

I don't think they were ever short of volunteers.

Mm. Not so much for Korea because we hadn't been going long when Korea went. That was a strange, silly war that one. Mostly the chaps in Korea were trained over in the eastern states. I spent all my training

with the national service in Western Australia.

Well, off the record, we shouldn’t have been there. I think 90% of the blokes that trained them to go there thought the same, blokes that had been around for a long time. They

were there and they shouldn’t have been there. But government decision, you’ve gotta do it.

I can’t say. It’s a personal thing with them, I think.

They get emotional. I think they get to think of the things that have happened that they are not happy with. By and large they’ll talk about the funny things that happened, but not

emotional things.

In hindsight. At the time I got wrapped up in the publicity as everyone

else did, but when I get down and think about it we shouldn’t have been there. But it happened. Can’t do anything about it, same as Vietnam. They get emotional. The government said we should be there, but we shouldn't have been there.

Basic training.

Yeah, only a small percentage. They had to be volunteers to go, but basically

we gave them the same training as the national servicemen.

We just kept on national service.

I think I got a posting to a construction squadron from there. My term in the national service had finished and I got posted onto the regular army then. Regular army unit

in construction.

I can't remember now. I was a construction man, so they allocated me,

they needed NCOs in the construction squadron so that’s where I got sent.

22 Construction Squadron in Karrakatta in Western Australia. It was a fluke getting it, that was one of the things. My mate Bob Tucker was also in that squadron. He was a warrant officer there and

I became a warrant officer there too.

Yes, very much so, because training troops and working with troops on construction jobs, organising them.

At that time we were building huts

for, just trying to think, we did mostly building of huts and sheds and things like that. Repair stuff. We always seemed to be busy.

To get workers at that time was difficult. We got a lot of jobs that later on weren’t available to the army. The government put them out to civvy street [civilian tender]. We did a lot of jobs like that, work around headquarters and so forth. Rebuilding, altering offices and that sort of work.

Construction supervisor. Had been all the time. Telling other people how to do, or seeing that they did it, that sort of thing.

Yes, I was sent to the School of Military Engineering in New South Wales for periods

doing courses of various things.

Construction courses, more advanced construction that I hadn't done in Western Australia, and on explosives and mine warfare. Preparing particularly for later on.

Oh yes.

I was blowing things up. Bridge building, hadn't had much experience in that; there’s not too many rivers to build bridges over in Western Australia. We were doing a fair bit of bridge building.

Mm.

I was 31 when I came back in the army. It built from there right through. My forte apparently was getting blokes to work for me. That stuck.

I think man management is the main thing: getting blokes to believe in you, knowing what you want and getting blokes to…

Your attitude to the job and getting a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. I think that’s been my attitude right through the service. Being fair. Being able to get blokes to do things and making sure they got a fair go.

Not “do as I do”, “do as I say” and wielding the big stick. You’ve gotta lead by example. If you don’t do that,

you don’t get the blokes in. You get them to work, you can bully them, but they’re not happy, especially servicemen. You’ve gotta lead them. You can’t bully servicemen around for too long, not volunteer servicemen. They put you in your place very quickly. I learned that very quickly. Especially the national servicemen. But it was good.

I tried not to be a father figure, not it. Try to get the bloke to do the job the right way.

Not being waving the finger sort of business. Try leading them. It’s hard to put it into words.

Yes.

You see the finished job and the blokes that have done it happy with the job they’ve done. To have a happy crew is half the battle. You can usually tell them by the condition of the gear and that they make sure themselves that the gear is right, kept, works, and those things that they’re happy with the job they’ve done.

I’m starting to preach now, and that’s not on. By and large I’m quite satisfied with the job I did in the service. I’ve made

mistakes. We all make mistakes, but the blokes that worked for me still come back and wish me well and have a drink with me on Anzac Day. I still lead the parade on Anzac Day. It’s a peculiar thing. I can’t march so they stand me up in a jeep to give my orders and to lead the parade. I get a great laugh out of it. That’s been going on here for

a while now. It’s a strange thing to get down there on Anzac Day and I yell and shout and abuse hell out of them and they take it all in good fun and get down and do it. We have a, I don't know whether I’ll be able to make it this year. The legs are getting a bit shady. I might be waiting there for them at

the end of Anzac Day at the parade.

Yes well I was stationed in Canberra at Engineer Stores Headquarters who are responsible for the supply of all engineer material, all building material, all sorts of material

to the engineers in the army. And after I’d been there a while, I was somewhat critical of the types of materials that we were sending to Vietnam. And having spoke to blokes that had been there I got a little vocal about it with the leader. And our leader at that time was a

Brigadier, it’s gone from my memory for the moment. Anyhow he was a rather hard man and rather radical man. And I was holding forth about this outside his office. He wasn’t supposed to be listening but I’d forgot that he was in his office. He said, “Gouldson, come in here”, and I went

in. And he said, “Now what’s wrong with you? What the heck’s all this about?” And I said, “Well we’re not sending the right things up there. We’re sending stuff that’s from Australia and it gets to Vietnam and they try to use it and it’s no good” I said, “especially timber”. I said, “We shouldn’t be shipping timber to Vietnam. It won’t do it. As soon as they get it there they open the bundles (cause it was always in bundles to be shipped away) and it stands up and looks at em. It twists and turns and it’s no they can’t and they lose more than 50 per cent of it in twists and so forth and it’s no good. No good for building. Better to buy it local.” and that was all. Hutchison was his name, Brigadier Hutchison. God,

he was a hard man. Anyhow and a couple of other things. Once I got started, I opened up on a few other things that I thought we could do better using the local product. But we didn’t get a choice on it. We just said we wanted them and it was then sent through the procurement department and it was procured and sent there. So then after about 3 weeks he called me in and he says,

“Gouldson, you’re going to Vietnam to have a look. Find out what’s wrong. Send me back an answer as to what we should do”. And I thought, “Oh god, I’m too old to go up there”. I’m getting to close to retirement at this time. He said, “Do you good to get up there”. So that was that. So I had to go through the hoops and go to a language course and

do a few other things and get myself ready to go to Vietnam. So away to Vietnam I went, and 12 months I spent there. Oh no, you spend 6 months and then they send you home for a couple of weeks to see your family and back again.

Yes. You’re sent to a language school

and which I failed. I’m not afraid to say because I couldn’t pick up the Vietnamese they were teaching. But I had to go somewhere else too that made you ready to go up there. I had to go through the same things the troops had to go through and I’m an old man.

Oh

I’d be rising 50-odd but I got there with the assistance of the blokes on the courses you know. We eventually headed off up to Vietnam to do my term.

Well no, we had units that are there. I belonged to the

1st Australian Civil Affairs Unit, the engineer part of it and what happens is that you replace a person that’s up there. When they finish their time, they’re replaced by the next person up there and so it takes them some time to get you ready for when you go there. But then they spend 12 months and they’re back. That’s how it goes.

Not really. We were there to do a job so we just went up and did it. I had no because we were the good guys. As I used to have great

pleasure in telling my friends in the other corps who were the fighting men, especially the special service blokes, I used to have great pleasure in saying, “We’re the good guys up here. The people will like us. You’re the bad guys”. All in fun and so forth cause they used to do a heck of a good job those blokes. They were good. They were really

soldiers.

Yes. They were good. They didn’t mix while they were up there. They were soldiers 24 hours a day and the Viets knew it. They avoided ‘em like the plague. The ordinary blokes they’d have a go at, but not the SAS.

Yeah.

I used to talk to a lot of the Vietnamese people that I knew. I got to know them and talk to them and my word. Especially the Americans, they’d do anything to get our blokes to work with ‘em because they had a

reputation and they were good.

They were very good soldiers and they were experts. A lot of the stuff that the Americans supposedly taught, they learnt from the SAS. They’re good.

Tan Son Nhut; I dunno how that came back, I’ve been trying to

think of that place all the day. Tan Son Nhut Airport at Saigon.

It was a funny sort of a place, a lot better than what I knew of Egypt. But that was from

when I was a young man and I realised it was going to take a bit of getting’ used to but it wasn’t bad. You know, it was a lot of Americans around and a few Australians, but everywhere you looked there was Americans.

Oh it was alright. But the Yanks were everywhere

and falling over one another. But the Australians were mostly responsible for Phuoc Tuy Province but it was fairly stable in the time that I was there, [there] wasn’t firefights. There was a couple but not much to speak of. Because

the Australian troops had a reputation and the Viet Cong realised that they were best left alone and they avoided the Australian troops where they could, especially the SAS cause they were good.

Oh there was about a squadron which is about a hundred and

thirty blokes plus odds and sods [assorted others].

Phuoc Tuy.

Northeast or Southeast? Southeast, yeah. It’s hard to remember.

It’s best part of a half-hour’s flying time from Saigon.

Yes, we didn’t stop anywhere; we flew straight through.

707 [passenger jet] I think it was.

707 I think from memory yeah.

The people were dressed. There didn’t seem to be

as many poor people. There probably was, but to us just seeing them, there didn’t seem to be as many poor people as we saw in our travels around going through Egypt and Palestine. But that’s only our impression and of course that was a lot of years between times. But

they seemed to be a higher quality of people for want of a better phrase. That’s only my impression at that time.

I didn’t tell anybody that I had any knowledge of Vietnamese and nobody knew about it when I got there. And I’d been there a little while

and being around until I saw somebody on the job doing something that I knew was wrong and they were trying to put it over the Australians who didn’t speak the language. And I blew up, abused them. And after that everybody realised that I had some knowledge of

Vietnamese. Didn’t speak it very well, but I had some knowledge of it and they treated me very highly. They used to rattle away to me in Vietnamese and the stuff I’d learnt at the language school in Australia was the stuff that was taught in the university and that wasn’t the same language as the people were talking in the streets. They talked a

different language and it took a while to marry up the words that I knew with the words that were being used there. But I got round it and I learnt a lot before they woke up that I had knowledge of what they were talking about. It was fun. But at

the time that I got upset and told the bloke off in his own language the look on his face was something to be seen, and the look our own blokes, my workers’ faces; they gave me a great ribbing about it.

He wanted something done that our blokes didn’t reckon was right

sort of business and he was baffling them with science with the way he was talking. So I had a few words to say about it.

Oh you lived in a tent and we had beds. I didn’t forget to tell them that never had those in the Second World War. We had beds, sheets, pillows, all

those sort of things; never had those in the Second World War. And the tents were quite good. They were standard Australian tents. And they had floorboards. They were pretty good. By and large, the quarters were quite good. They were all tents but.

Well we had a team of engineers.

They were the people I was mostly with and we had a team of agriculturalists. Medical people. We had a couple of doctors. And agriculturalists, we had those. That was about what we had. Made up a

team of about 100 of us in the unit.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah, we had some civilians sort of seconded to us but that was all.

They were all army people and some of the agriculturalists were seconded but they were all in the army for the time of their tenure up there. And they all had their jobs to do. We were the good guys; we weren’t the fighters. We carried rifles and so forth when we had to, but we were the good guys. The infantry

and all those blokes, they were the bad guys, they were the fighters. And it used to upset them a bit when our people had to at various times go and attend to the people in the villages. Now to do this the people’d be out working in the fields and the forest and

so forth and they come home at night to work. Well that’s the only time you could get them so that they could be attended to for the various things that we wanted. So to do this we had to have a guard of infantry around, and they wouldn’t be in village, they’d be out putting a screen around looking after these people and they used to

not like it very much but it had to happen. That’s the only way to get it.

Well because they were out roughing, playing soldiers and these medical and agricultural [blokes] were in the village with the people living it up as they reckon.

Well pretty steady.

There hadn’t been any major arguments. It was a couple of years after Long Tan and there was only one real dust-up while I was there but we weren’t involved. The infantry was involved in that so that didn’t worry us very much. We just had to stay back in camp for a couple of days till things cooled

down.

I’ve forgotten the name of the village area. I’ve forgotten the name of the village where it happened. Somewhere out a bit…the infantry and it was during the Tet season [Vietnamese Lunar New Year] when they

always seem to start their conflagrations during that time of Tet, and just can’t remember.

No, can’t remember that one.

Well not where we were.

Not the Phuoc Tuy province because that was more an agricultural area. And where every now and again there used to be a dust-up in the villages around the place and so our blokes then’d go in and repair it. Reminded me: the one there’d been a dust up. The Viet Cong got

stuck into a village and there’d been a fight there and I don’t remember whether it was the SAS went in and chased; no it wouldn’t have been the SAS going in and chased. The infantry had gone in and chased ‘em out sort of business and there was a few people killed and so forth, and we had to go up and assess the damage to get it fixed. So myself, couple of

contractors and so forth were told that we had to be at the north gate at a certain time ready to go up to assess the damage and see what we had to do. So we duly arrived there in the jeep ready to go and lo and behold our escort was a

confounded tank, and here we are going up the road with a tank in front and a tank behind and we reckoned it was a hell of a joke. Never had that before in my life being escorted by the tankies.

Oh well there’d been the dust-up on

and headquarters decided we had to go up and we had to have an escort to go up because the medics went with us as well. These confounded tanks. God blimey.

Well

early morning one of us would have to go with the duty chopper and the duty officer, and go for a ride right through the province in a helicopter and assess any damage on the roads and anything on the roads that we would have to send out to check to see whether there were any

mines around and so forth. You’d know that someone had been there overnight putting mines and so forth. We’d fly over the whole of the province then back. If you were duty officer of the day that was one of your jobs. Then our engineers you know breakfast the same as the normal things. And discipline

was very free and easy in the Civil Affairs [Unit]; we didn’t have to have parades and so forth, we only had one occasionally. The blokes would get aboard their vehicles - each unit or sub-unit had it’s own vehicle - and they’d weigh out to work. Engineers would probably be going to do some work in a village and so forth the medics have their

thing and so forth and so it went on.

The ordinary vehicles. The army vehicle. With your vehicle you all took a weapon with you. But they were fairly prominently marked as ‘Civil Affairs’ and so we never got into any trouble at all.

Me? A SLR [Self Loading Rifle 7.62mm] and a

pistol. And a funny thing about my SLR. I dunno how it happened but I acquired one that had a 15-round magazine where the normal magazine was a 5-round magazine [actually the normal SLR magazine actually held twenty rounds]. And the Vietnamese reckoned it was my special weapon for a big man big gun and so forth this used to be. More often than not I’d forget

the damn thing leave it behind. We’d get a way out, some a the drivers they’d turn round and say, “Sir where’s you’re weapon?” “Oh, back in camp.” But we never had any bother. The only time we had any bother in the whole time I was there somebody had a shot at one of the engineers when he was up a windmill and it hit one

a the fans on the windmill and… They tell me he came down that ladder from the windmill so fast that he almost jumped the last 10 feet. But it was just like a working day.

Well you’d go and do the job that you were allocated to.

Well if there’d

been an argument in the place there’d probably be some damaged houses and the village office or the village schools’d probably be damaged. Go and repair ‘em or set ‘em up, that’s all it was.

Viet Cong doing a movement through and every now and again if the village didn’t pay their taxes to the Viet Cong sort of business. During the day

we were in charge but at night we’d go back into our camp at Phuoc Tuy [he means Nui Dat] and then the Viet Cong’d come out then and they’d do their. They’d be good people during the day and then at night they’d put their other cap on and become Viet Cong and extract the money from the people and so forth. It was a funny situation.

We were aware of it but what the heck, you had to live with it and we were doing our job. We went every now and again, there was certain places in the province where we had to take our escort with us to make sure that we didn’t get into any trouble.

Where the element had been and so forth but very seldom.

Yeah.

Oh you had your suspicions. There it is. They did the ordinary in the daytime and come night they were the bad guys and we had a job to do and we used to do the job. We left well

alone and it worked. But I don’t think we had any casualties at all, not in the 12 months I was up there.

It was just that sort of thing. That was our blokes were complaining that

when they got… They’d put a requisition in for material, would come in and so forth and when they opened it up they couldn’t use the darn thing anyway because it was so twisted. The only thing that stopped it twisting was the fact they had the binding stuff on it and when they undid the binding to use it 50 percent of it’d be useless.

And it wasn’t practical.

Local timber. You know we had to pay for it but it was better; more economical in the long run and we got the job done. We had Australian hardwood there and American nails. Well American nails are for softwood and so the blooming things’d turn over and look at you as soon you started to use them.

And there were you know little things like that used to upset the poor old tradesmen. Used to go crook.

Oh yeah.

We’d send a signal back and get the right thing sent up on the next ship and the thing is there was so much money allocated for civil affairs and you had stay within that budget. And so if

we got these different things allocated to us through the stores system and they weren’t usable well that was money that we lost and we couldn’t get the job done.

I’ll tell you one thing I used to be very sure of. I always used to make sure or try to every now and again

about once a fortnight or something, you used to be expected to have a meal with the contractor on the job. Either we’d buy them a meal in the little villages or they’d buy us a meal. The thing you had the boss, the senior man, he always got the head of the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK because when they put the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK on the table the

head was the delicacy. And they always gave that to the headman of the Australians and I used to make sure it wasn’t me, cause I hated the damn things. I used to try and make sure that I took a senior officer with me for a look around. So, “Come and the contractor wants us to have a meal with him”.

They woke up to me in the finish. That was one point that stuck in my mind all through all the years.

But by and large the Vietnamese people we dealt with were quite reasonable people. They only just wanted to try and live. And we were great believers in the live and let live process and

we repaired where we could you know and built new places where we could and improved the things for them and generally we were the good guys. But there weren’t enough of us and we didn’t have enough money to do big efforts but that was the way it was.

Not to my knowledge. You couldn’t because we had to go back into camp every night. You couldn’t stay out of at nighttime. I don’t know about when they went down to Vung Tau; that was the place I couldn’t think of, Vung Tau. They had leave there but then

it didn’t pay to go out at night and we all had to be back in camp before dark. Before the time but not in the time I was there, I don’t remember any. If there were I knew nothing about it.

Oh yeah. I was grandfather; that was my name

‘Grandfather’. They even called me that to my face and of course it didn’t worry me any, I still got the job done so that was all that was there. The relationships between the officers and the men there was really good. We got some pretty good officers allocated to us and we did pretty well.

We were lucky in the senior officers we got. The first one was Latchford. Blokes – colonels who had had much experience in man-management and that in the army and they weren’t. They’d be at the end of their career sort of business and they weren’t trying to make a name for themselves. They were trying to get a good job

done and it went very well. No I’m quite happy with the time I spent in Vietnam. The civil affairs did a job there and. As a matter of fact, they’re doing a good job now and I can’t think of the name of the village. They built a what do you call it? Little kids before

they go to primary school what do you call that?

Kindergarten. They built a kindergarten for 400 kids. Must be an awful big one or the fact that there are a lot of people go round to it. But they done that and it’s been opened just recently as a matter of fact. And this is years after the war’s finished.

Well I’ll be honest we didn’t have much to do with them. We didn’t have a great deal to do with the Americans because the Phuoc Tuy province was the responsibility of the Australians and we were given a fairly free hand

in there and the Americans used to fly the kites.

The aeroplanes and most of that. We had a lot of mostly American pilots about the place cause we didn’t get enough

choppers, so we used to get American ones liaisoned to us; you’d get their blokes with em. But by and large we didn’t have a great deal to do with them.

No we didn’t encourage it. We didn’t do because they were our Allies the Americans so we,

and they had a lot more money than we had and they could do things that we couldn’t do because they had the money.

Mmm. But they’re pretty good, any of the ones that I dealt with they were quite good blokes.

It used to be we had two interpreters with us and when you went out you took an interpreter with you and they’d interpret for the contractors to our blokes. But by and large they’d talk mostly about

the job. You know things that were on in the province. We did no politics, that wasn’t on. You didn’t ever discuss politics with them, but any incidents that they knew of that they’d talk about, especially if they had a bit of humour in it, or to try and introduce a bit of humour into it. But

Not much, no, same sort of thing. It was pretty well the same. Something that we found up there, you heard him talk about the water systems that we erected. Where the villages we came to didn’t have a decent water

system so the people could get water, we’d put in a windmill and a tank and a water system with pipes coming up and stands for getting water. So we did this in a couple of places but we found we couldn’t stop the kids from leaving the tap turned

on. So an urgent signal went back to Australia to send up some of the taps that automatically shut off. But that didn’t work either. They used to jam the thing open so that it stayed on. It was one of the problems with the water system. But it worked and from what we heard they’re still working.

When the headman of the village takes over and is responsible for it and I think he used to charge them for the water, then they’d organise it that the kids didn’t leave the taps turned on. Because the windmill fills the works and so

forth but if you leave the tap turned on well you... and the kids loved to get under the tap and have a shower and so forth.

I think they’d seen them but they didn’t have any.

No. We did the

They were using wells and pulling the water up

and that was the main thing. Cause this was out in the places where they people weren’t very rich and the women had to do the pulling the water and so forth but that was one of the things that we introduced and it seemed to work. And from what I’ve heard they’re still working.

Oh no.

Well the part I really liked was to

work with Australian soldiers improving the lifestyle of the people and the fact that while we were there as far as we were concerned we helped the people and the kids and that and felt that we earned our pay. And we

came away and when we left we were a lot more popular than when we were there, when you know when it started. Let’s be honest, we were foreigners in their country and the politics as far as we were concerned never came into it. We were doing things for

them and we’re still helping them you know in a little way. We have an association which still does things for them up there.

All ex-members of Civil Affairs; blokes who had served time in Vietnam working for Civil Affairs.

I don’t. It’s a private thing. I’ve got a feeling we do get some money from the government now and again but mostly it’s done by the blokes’ own enterprise. We kick in and our subs [subscriptions] and so forth and that’s what helps it out. And the blokes

do it off their own bat. They go up there and spend the time and do some work for them.

Oh yes they were happy. They got their schools some of them they got new classrooms. Several villages got water supplies that they didn’t have before. And we improved the roads

in the villages and so forth, and by and large the place was better from us being there. I feel that the Australians did a good job there. No fuss. Got on got the job done. We probably could a done a better job if we’d a had more money

and so forth and more people but then it could a got a bit too big and out of hand. But our people did things and we got ourselves down to the level of the people. We didn’t sort of lord it around as the

big wheel Uc Da Loi [‘Australian’ in Vietnamese]. We got in and sort of helped and made ourselves be liked. That just brought something to mind. Every so often we would see a bloke with a bullock cart go down past where we were loaded with logs.

He used to cart them from the bush down into the logs. And he’d been doing that ever since we’d been there. So when it came Tet their holiday and celebration period, we decided we’d give him a present of some cigarettes and so forth.

And when we pulled up and walked over to him, the poor old bloke cringed. And actually that’s what happened, he cringed away because he thought we were going to bash him. And when we handed him the cigarettes he was amazed and then very happy. He couldn’t understand us. He was a backward Vietnamese

and he didn’t understand the lingo that we spoke but it was the fact of him. And every time we went past him after that he’d give us a big wave and a big grin on his face and so forth and we made one friend. But by and large we mostly dealt with the contractors there.

I think the main one we knew was a Mr Lo. Just spelt L-O. And I think he had two wives and had sons who were fairly prominent blokes in the community and he was mostly our main contractor and we used to get on very well with him. Course

he made himself things because he obviously made a lot of money out of us but he was the main bloke that we got to do work for us and he was quite good.

Yes. We have this association of Civil Affairs which we

keep connected to the people and we contribute to this association. And they in turn got people that go up there on their holidays sort of business and do things in the Phuoc Tuy province. They only work in the one province because that was where we were associated with during the war. But it worked

in a small way. I mean we weren’t gods. We didn’t profess to be anything like that, but we made their living a little bit easier and I think the blokes that worked up there. And also the blokes from the units that were up there that were sent up there, they used to be

allocated work from us who were the civil affairs contacts and they’d do them in the various villages around. And I think it improved their outlook on Vietnamese and they didn’t regard ‘em as just a lot of slopeheads [derogatory term for Asians] sort of business. I’m starting to preach. It’s about time I turned, sorry bout that.

I didn’t encounter any I must admit. Of course we were only a small way but we didn’t encounter any racism. If we went

to a village and we didn’t see any women and we didn’t see any kids then we’d quietly pull up, back off and come back another day. We weren’t welcome that day. The Viet Cong were around and we weren’t welcome, so no argument. We’d get out aof the way and come back another day. We didn’t know whether that was what it was but

it meant that they had been ordered to stay inside and that sort of thing and they weren’t allowed to associate with the Uc Da Loi sort of business. But that only didn’t happen very often but

we always kept our eyes open in case of.

Oh that’s Australians. The Vietnamese that’s what they called us.

Warrant Officer Class One.

Yeah,

I was made an officer. Anyway, I was made a lieutenant while I was up there. That was a funny day. It filtered through to the troops in the morning before lunch and at lunchtime

the CO [Commanding Officer] wanted to introduce me to the Officers’ Mess and so he took me to lunch up there. So the whole of the unit lined up on each side a the track and I had to

salute every man. And it was really something. It was very emotional. And I still get, I’m sorry, I still get carried away. It is not very often you get promoted in the field and

I was quite proud of that. Getting old and silly.

But I made a lot of friends there in Vietnam and through Vietnam

and through the Civil Affairs and I associated with the blokes right throughout and they’re still going. They’re all sorts. There’s professors and all sorts of people. Teachers and blokes that have spent time in the unit in Vietnam and

we’re still associated with.

Yes I think it was. Yeah I got my highest promotion through that. But I felt that in the year that I was there we achieved something

for Australians where we raised the what would you say, I can’t think of the word, the prestige of our country with the ordinary people of Vietnam. I had very little to do with the powers that be up there,

just the ordinary people in the villages and towns and I think that the time that we spent there was really worthwhile. I went and had a look at the place where they had their big stoush that they talk about,

I forgot the name of it for the moment, it just slipped my mind. Where we had the most casualties?

Long Tan, yeah. I went out there and had a look at it and so forth; insignificant-looking place. You wouldn’t feed it to a dog; it’s a rubbish of a place. But one company of men held off an enormous

number of the other crowd and got away with it. That did more than anything to increase the prestige of the Australian soldiers. I still think we shouldn’t have been there. But we were sent there and

we have made more friends than enemies in Vietnam, even with the so-called Viet Cong. They had their reasons and so on. By and large the campaign was a success and I don’t care who says otherwise. From my point of view it

was a success.

Well by and large they’re damn good citizens and they’ll do me.

When the chips are down, they’re there and I’ve always found it so. I’m sorry about that. I…

I get a bit carried away.

It was a time we knew that we shouldn’t have been there but the boys did a job and they came away quite satisfied. One or two mucked up there but they were so far in the minority

it didn’t make any difference. It didn’t really. I’d go back there tomorrow and work if I was asked, but I don’t think I’d be allowed to, I’m too old. But I still contribute my hundred dollars or so a year to the fund to

do things in Vietnam. We don’t ask questions. The one of our team goes up and has a look to see what he thinks should be done and he sends the message back and we get on with it. Blokes go up there and spend their holidays in the area working for

nothing, and to me that means a lot.

Took a little while to sort myself

out but it was good. I had some very very good blokes to work with up there and also to work with when I came back here and it worked out alright.

Now you’re being difficult. I’ve forgotten. That piece of paper will sort of tee me up. Can I have? When I came back from Vietnam after having a little holiday

I went back to work in Army Headquarters as a supervisor and so forth and I pushed to get things moving. And we’d changed leaders by that time and we had a new leader but by and large

I felt that things worked very well and then I retired.

Captain, and I think I earned it. Wouldn’t have mattered if I stayed as a warrant officer, I still do the same job and I retired from there

and I went to work for a in the building game in Manor Homes for a while. And then I changed over to Civil and Civic and worked there as a supervisor you know. And then retired.

No. Goodness no. Quite happy, cause I was tied up still doing the same job in construction

as I was in the army. Working with blokes and I still used to meet them and so forth but I’m not sorry for the service. But then I retired after being with Civil and Civic for a while; then I came to live down here. Built myself a house which got burnt in the last conflagration and

there it is. My life. Built this. And then I got tangled up with this Inasmuch as soon as it came down here. Because we had nowhere for old people to go and when they got too old to live in their own place, they had to go to a retirement village up in Sydney and

wasn’t very good. They didn’t live very long after that. So we decided it was time to get one here. So that’s what we worked towards.

Well they were part of it. Everybody else. I represented the RSL sort of thing. It was a village affair. It was you know

the committee are the members in the village of Sussex Inlet. And you didn’t dare mention that you didn’t know anything about Inasmuch when I was around because you got an earful from me. I used to go anywhere that people wanted to know something about Inasmuch and give a talk and chase

funds when we built I; and here it is right here.

Yep. Yeah and I still am. I’m on the building committee here and just about due, I think this if I survive. Tomorrow we have an annual general meeting and if

I survive another 12 months then that’ll do me. I’ll knock off, cause I’ll be 84 then. Getting too old. I’m getting a bit forgetful and it’s time I retired. Rest on me laurels you might say. But we survived a lot of difficulties and

people that reckoned we were trying to make money but Inasmuch is owned by Inasmuch. Nobody get’s any money out of it other than Inasmuch. There’s no perks; the people that are here running it, run it for the people of Sussex Inlet. And a lot of my knockers [detractors] when we started are now living here and that makes me very happy.

My association with national service people; it did work and

it was seeing the results of national service. Not national service; seeing the results of national services. The young blokes that were villains and rebels when they came in to the worst ones of all were the blokes that came in from university students and did their thing. They were the worst to start with but by goodness

by the time they finished they were the best, and it made men out of them and I’m very happy about that.

Yes I think it’d be good. It’d keep our services. We couldn’t afford it at present.

It’d cost too much to run it. But if it could work it’d be very good. Everybody benefits from it in the long run. The industry by the people they get back are far better workers because they’ve had discipline and a few other things drilled into em.

And by and large, they’ve turned out better citizens in themselves and it’s a good thing for Australia. For those few remarks I’ll sign off if I may.

Oh sorry.

That’s a very... It’s given me a great experience in dealing with people and it’s broadened my mind in the fact that before I served in the services I was a bit

narrow-minded and things but now I’ve learned to live with people. My kids reckon I’m a bit of an old hard bloke to get on with, but by and large I can’t (UNCLEAR) I like it.

It’s the country’s not losing anything by it.

No. No, I’m afraid we’ll never see. While people covert other people’s property, there will be wars. Greedy people and that’s all that causes it.

People. I don’t think there ever could be a place. It’s been going on since the days of when Jesus was wandering around the place. Wars were on then and it’s still going on. Hopefully we won’t have any more in our lifetime but it’ll probably

be there.

I’m afraid it’d be the same as everyone do your best. You can’t do anymore. I mean if the country’s got a go to war well it’s got a go to war.

We could do without it well and truly but we’ve got to be a free people. We’ve got a fight for that freedom and the freedom is worth fighting for; but not join political wars if we can avoid it. But then we don’t make the rules.

Yes I still have nightmares, as my lady will tell you. I do a bit of fighting down the road sort of business.

In Vietnam I’m afraid. Not so much Vietnam

but associated with that.

No. No.

There was one the Vietnamese used to sing. I can’t remember it now. It was something about the allies.

I can’t remember how it goes now. No I can’t remember the words of it now. But sure enough if I got with a few of my old cronies that served up there, they’d remember it. Oh it was a humorous thing that was against us, slinging off at us. But I can’t remember the words of it now.

But I liked the songs that they sang at this football. I must admit I sang along with them.

No? No way. The

swagman’s song [‘Waltzing Matilda’] and our Australian anthem. I still sing that with gusto on Anzac Day and any other time I have to.

A day of remembrance. We remember those blokes that didn’t make it.

Oh yes. Yeah. It makes you feel very happy when you’re standing there but very emotional Anzac Day. The ceremony is very emotional.

But I’ve been known to break down while I’m giving my confounded speech. I usually have to make one on Anzac Day. I’m hoping that they’d get somebody younger next time but by and large it works a good day.

At the service is where I do. I don’t get tied up making speeches after the blokes have had a few beers, I keep quiet.

Yeah. I have my couple of beers yeah. Been doing it for a few years now and I hope to do it for a few more years, but I’m not sure whether the... Well I haven’t marched for 3 years now. I’ve ridden in the back of the jeep and I’m hoping that the jeep will be available again this year; otherwise I’ll be down at the Cenotaph

at the dawn service and again at 11 o’clock. And up the Uc Da Lois

Oh yeah they’re

taking over and we’re pushing them to take over more and more. Because there is a period after they get discharged from the service where they don’t wanna have anything to do with it and then all of a sudden they come out a the woodwork and they’re there at the dawn service and they’re there at 11 o’clock with their medals.

Oh yes, and more and more every year, very much so. We’re getting’ a bit thin on the ground but the Vietnam boys, they’re sort of taking over; and the national servicemen. Strange to relate that blokes who hadn’t marched or hadn’t come to the service at all are

now turning up and it’s beaut. Yeah. It’s a day of remembrance; and also Long Tan Day. Blokes turn up who I didn’t even know had been to Vietnam. They’re turning up and arriving on the service.

It’s very good.

Oh yeah. Yeah and they still have nightmares and I can feel for ‘em too. They got a bad… is this on record?

Well, they got a bad deal when they first came back. The Korean boys too, they got a bad deal. They were ignored and they were looked down on and by the RSL as well. The RSL blokes reckoned they didn’t but they did. They looked down on them. But they’re suddenly realising they did their bit for their country and

so they should be. Yep.