Australians at War Film Archive

It’s rather strange. I was about five or six when we first went there,

and I stayed there until I joined the navy. I always hated the place. It had a population of about twenty or thirty people and almost as many kids. Twelve of them were Harpers. Once you got to a certain stage, you went on to correspondence and

we had to go to the ordinary school and do it and it’d get posted down to the teachers’ training college at Claremont. They marked it and put their comments on it, so it served its purpose.

No, well there were twelve of us for a start.

Yeah, well it was. Early days

of the school, a lot of the kids were migrants, like mainly from England. There was always a bit of a clash there. You keep your sides we keep our sides. Very narrow-minded people at that stage, but as all us kids grew up together, we all became one. The Poms [English] became Australians and so we went on.

No, English. The Poms were sort of the big bosses. I forgot what I was gonna say, that’s right, I lived there all those years. I had not seen a kangaroo until I

joined the navy. In the navy, Flinders Naval Depot.

No water. When you got away from the mains there’s just. The irrigation and reticulation hadn't got a, never got it going until after the

‘39-44 War [World War II].

I’m pleased

to hear that. The first interview I had, I think they were from the office. Sydney I think. I never got around to telling them about the important parts. One of them concerned Moorine Rock. Always a bit of a concern.

Cow Gully water pipe passed through. Got away from that. They had carpe water in them. Hadn't been for the Cow Gully water service, it never would have been a Moorine Rock. Now, of course it goes all over the place.

Definitely.

Yes. He got hounded so much, he ended up committing suicide over it.

It is really. He’s also responsible for building the Fremantle Harbour. No two ways about it, he was a great engineer.

Very rough actually. Mainly a teacher and an offsider, I can’t think what they used to call them, a trainee teacher. They took it from

infants through to sixth, seventh standard, to a couple of kids in each class. So I say again, it took all the Harpers out, there wouldn’t have been much use at all.

Rather strange this, out of the kids at my

particular group, I think I’m the only one alive. My brother died and the kids we grew up with. My brother went into the army with one, he’s gone. A couple like, they’ve all passed on.

No. He didn’t die in the war. He had a good thing.

Ended up warrant officer. I was the only one that never got any of the things after. Even my father got a sergeant.

He was a baker. So was my brother.

Yeah, mainly. In those days they used to have, what do they call it, there were gangs of unemployed people. They’d say “come tomorrow” and they’d renew the water pipes. As a married man, with no children, you would get about three days pay in every week. A single chap only got,

if he wasn’t very old, he’d get a half a day a week. If they had seven or eight children or something like that, they used to be permanently employed. Relief work.

They didn’t always have very good steel. They

rusted out pretty quickly because there was working all the time and it was a heck of a lot of pipes between Fremantle and Mundaring. Moorine Rock was something like two hundred and forty miles. That’s an awful lot of pipes. All the way from Fremantle, Mundaring actually,

to Moorine, I forgot what I was talking about now.

Well, I’ll say it was. That used the business skill up a bit too. The interesting part of it probably was the

living conditions. A single chap got a tent. A husband and wife got two tents, and between was what they used to call a fly. That’s where they’d eat and bath and everything else. I don’t know how the heck we put up with it and so much else. We didn’t care as kids.

Yeah. There’s a heck of a lot of travel one way or another. Married people were beyond at the west side of the work area, and the single chaps were on the east side. They weren’t supposed to mix and all those sort of narrow-minded things

in those days. They did do a very good job. But the pipe, when it first went through, they buried it in a trench about four feet deep. Because when they had to replace the pipes they also had to dig the old one out.

That created a lot of trouble. One of the weaknesses was, during the war, so I’m told, some of the pipes were made out of the Yarra trees, because they couldn’t get cement. So they had a heck of a job. They got relieved a bit at the end of the war, because all the DPs, displaced persons,

a lot of them went straight on to these sort of jobs and they straightened it out rather quickly after the war. There were a lot of improvements in the working conditions and the instruments, the tools they had to dig trenches with.

I’ll say.

Yeah, but

the part I seen wasn’t so bad. We got up, went to school, came home, went to bed. One of the things with the migrants, they were mostly that, we weren’t allowed to have, one of the locals rules, have an Australian rules football. It had to be a soccer ball.

As the kids got older, say the ten year group, that broke down pretty quickly there. Most of them ended up quite good footballers, the only difference being the shape of the ball.

We had a lot of rock to climb and run around and

quite a lot of rocks there and the granite, the blue metal for the roads so cut, cut always.

They have got a big quarry there, but of course all through Western Australia there was a heck of a lot of jarrah.

So there’s no shortage, but that meant make the pipes and everything else.

Very sore point. I had to grease the tins for cooking the bread in. I hated it. I’ve

refused point blank to have anything to do with it, once I got out of the business. I don’t know what I was going to do.

My brother. He became a baker. The only job he ever had was baking.

No. I ended up getting a job as a very primitive

garage mechanic. The chap I was working for, just prior to the war when things were looking grim, he opened up a little business building charcoal gas-producers for the tractors. My main job, once I left the bakery, I became

an oxywelding. The chaps, he knocked up a gadget for turning a flat sheet into a cylinder that was another big turnout.

Definitely not baking, yes.

Mainly push-bikes. Cars were very few of them. There were very primitive. They never had a very long life. I was pretty good as a kid mechanic, making and fitting the gas-producers. I was rather disappointed and found it had all been scrapped. Petrol was becoming into reuse again.

The gas producers?

About fourteen. You wouldn’t get a kid fourteen doing that sort of work nowadays. Electric binding and such likes.

School wasn’t a very fashionable place to be in those days.

Playing in the school cricket team. Only that one. No not really.

No. I lived at home. So

the employment changed.

I joined the navy on the 1st April ‘41, 1941. I’ve only been back for a few visits since.

There was also a dam at Moorine. Quite an important place. It used to catch the water off the rocks and keep the steam trains going.

They dug the big dams and then they put a great big tank up on top of a tank stand, and they used to pump the

water out of the dam into a big tank about twelve feet above the deck. Then the trains used to fill up every time they came through. It was a watering place.

Well. There’s not a lot you can do, you

have to do it. I was only sixteen when the war was declared. I had a wait til, my birthday was in December, so the war was about September or something like that. The day

after the war was declared, I’d became eligible, turning seventeen. I whacked in my application very quick.

Yeah. I know I wrote away to get the application form before I turned seventeen, because you had to be seventeen. Unless

of course your education to become a trainee. There wasn’t many of them around.

I don’t think they could sign it quick enough. It wasn’t too bad.

Pretty, I say particularly, Stubbs

was building his little factory and building gas producers. I did that before the war was declared. Making them and selling them. We used to burn charcoal as something to do on weekends. The vehicles and that, Dad had one and not too many of the other people, not many had vehicles at all.

Then the navy done the dirty on me. Once I got my applications in, passed my medical exams and everything, they said, “We’ve got enough in your group, you’ll wait till you’re eighteen”.

I never went in until ‘41.

No,

Southern Cross.

No, we had medical. Once you passed that you were really in. The doctor sent, it was only a medical incidentally, they very much heard about educational qualifications and all that sort of thing. I did actually qualify.

By choice, I went for a stoker, because a couple of friends who had gone in, actually one joined the navy before war was declared. He was older that I was. He joined up, and he was in, he was mobilised the day that Hitler invaded Holland.

Well, I started up about that high that I was going to be a sailor. Among the English migrants, there were quite a few ex-navy men. Of course I used to hear wonderful stories about life on the sea. The other, probably the main reason, my

grandfather, I think he was my great grandfather, he and his family were Swedish and they sailed their own boats to Geelong in Victoria. Then my father, he’s a nice old mix too. His grandmother was German, so the family,

we ended up as German, Scots, Swedish and Irish. That’s the full family. So there wasn’t any love to the mother country or whatever they called

Yup, I can take a pick. 90% or 95% would have been English.

You didn’t have any at all. I really, when I was about six, seven, I went on one of those schemes of that kids up in the bush see a bit more, we had a weekend going down to the West Leederville boy scouts, and we had seven

or eight days seeing the sea. I had no trouble falling in love with the sea. It was something called a marginal area. You gotta love it. They talk about the east trails, but I reckon they were not as bad as they were in those days. Because the catchment and that, you know, oh, no you can’t do that, it won’t hold. Because the whole thing

what it was in 1930 to what it is today is the old pick and shovel was the most important tools. Now they’ve got great bulldozers and you name it.

Yeah. The only time until I joined the navy.

Came down.

No, I was a volunteer. I wasn’t, I can’t think of what they’re called.

I just waited until that letter

came. It came all right, telling me they had enough in my age group. So I just stayed there at the garage, and then the (UNCLEAR) came along, and I was mobilised on the first day of, I was an April Fool. 1st of November I came straight down to Fremantle to the naval depot.

On train, yeah. Went to HMAS Leeuwin. I was there for twenty eight days.

Just marching. There was practically nothing at Leeuwin. On the twenty eighth day we left Leeuwin,

this was my group of course, went to Flinders naval depot.

Train.

Oh, quite good, except we didn’t get to sleep, we had to sit up the whole night.

Well, being a country chap, and not knowing anybody in the city, it was pretty dull. Then, once we left Flinders, sorry, once we went to Flinders, we were all in the same boat. No place to fall back on. So then, Melbourne was a great place to go. The museum and

go and have a look at Phar Lap [famous race horse].

No, actually I think we all mixed in

very well, because the numbers were about the same country and city. Much the same.

It was. First, mostly completely new friends. Because you had the stoker train from Queensland, Sydney.

I’d say they were excellent. Never wanted for anything except we weren’t allowed to drink. That’s at the depot, you’d gotta get right away from the navy.

That was the main reason.

Although, once you qualified and you were seagoing and all that sort of thing, age didn’t count. Although I must admit, I didn’t drink in those days. I waited till I got to Sydney. You had to be in it because I think just about every chap

learned to drink in Flinders. Once qualified there used to be new entries, while we were being kitted out and tidying up loose ends, making wills and all that sort of thing. The food was excellent.

I think we were probably the best fed in Australia.

It was a very big depot. There was only one actually at that stage. I always had generous, the army chaps used to complain they weren’t getting enough to eat, it was horrible and all the rest. We had up to date kitchens and baked cake and all that sort of stuff. Everything we’d want.

Except we could have done with a bit more fine weather. A bit of a wet spot over there.

I was there from the 1st May and around about December ‘41.

Yeah. You could say we got all of winter. There again, it was a big depot and of course you walked everywhere. I suppose I should use the military term and say marched. You had to be in step and all that sort of thing. Then over the first twenty eight days of actual training was polishing up on the

marching. It wasn’t quite as good as it should have been in Leeuwin. Then we went into what they called the engineering school. That was how to shovel coal and, but I was lucky, I only ever had an oil burner.

As well as the engineering?

Polishing brass. Scrubbing plates. Cleaning boilers. That was the very thing. Then you were also trained in the very important business of fire control and firemen and all the rest. That was

probably the most important one of the lot.

We had straight out water, depending where it was. Then how to use the equipment. Another one was what I think they called a Baton 230 or something like that. That above all was

a gas mask with a great old tube going outside. So you get that out on account of smoke. I never had to use it. That was one of the things. Then you were taught a little bit on first aid. I reckon they took the attitude that if you weren’t gonna last long, you were unlucky.

My friends from Moorine, two of them were stokers. So that made me go to the stoker more than anything. I couldn’t’ say I was Swedish or anything like that, because they never had stoking in those days. That’s the only. Then it was quite a thump we got. A

couple I went to school with, they were on the [HMAS] Sydney and unfortunately lost their lives.

Hammocks. They’re good to sleep in. There’s a set of bars running all over the place in the depots.

About 7 foot wide apart, and they were made into, I forget what they call them, joined together on. The things that are gone

on the ship. So that was good. You slept on stools, benches, tables, because you were actually in the navy. Once you steam and you move out, you’re on duty twenty four hours a day.

Not really, but it was very good because at night time, when you wanna get a bit of, four,

four on and eight off. That gives you eight hours a day.

About that time.

Yes.

Quite a few. While you were working four on and eight off, you were changing work reliefs all the time, and you got to know them very quickly. The watch, that’s right. You work in the navy with a watch. You watch

the fire, the other person that type of thing. You were going off working with the same people all the time. Because they were changing every four hours. Which means that you had two reliefs.

I think it was a good thing.

Again, you mix with, you go and establish. All tied up

with certain crews and all the rested. You got to know more of them again, otherwise you’d, like some of the permanent working eight hours, what they call day workers or something. You’d only see them occasionally. So working on the rotating shifts, red, white and blue it had to be of course. So we went on.

Kept the eye on the notice board and staff members and everything. Some of them, they just about watched it every day from the first day there until the last. You never had a worry about it because there were people going all the time. They’d tell you if you were on it.

It was great day we were told we were going to the Sydney, no to the [HMAS] Perth in Sydney.

How do you mean?

We were ten foot above the earth. That was the day. You couldn’t get a greater day in your life. Then

to be on the Perth you were very fortunate. We were that lucky, we were very good. We went on in a little group, because incidentally, when the Perth came back from the Mediterranean, they had a refit and repair and everything. Nearly all their stokers and so, all went off.

All new recruits took their place. We had a refit and given some more up to date equipment. But the main job of the stoker of course, in the engine room, was polishing brass and scrubbing plates. We had to keep moving or discontent might have got the better and

there was a few little skirmishes occasionally.

If they’re relieving you at quarter to four and don’t come down until three o'clock or something like that.

Yeah. Men will always fight.

Yeah. I’m not certain now, it was one or two men under police escort. There was nowhere else to put them except on earmarked

for the Perth sails. The copper he was quite friendly. Seems strange him walking up the corridor. As he turned he’d got the, I forget what they call them now.

Yeah, something like that. I’ve forgotten so much.

Wasn’t like a place for sailors. There were just too many sailors there. Al the big depots were there and advanced training and all, Mainly went to Sydney for that.

Yeah.

I was posted on the Perth. It was the only posting I had.

Stoker. In what’s known as the aft engine room.

Flash title, but all we did was polish brass. It was based on the theory that anything spent in a vacuum was more economical than one that’s not in a vacuum. You had a little wheel spanner, about that big, it either turned that way or that way.

Because to the alteration, we had to keep full vacuum on all the time. Saving on oil and all the rest of it.

Speed, I think.

The staff of the engine room, the evap [evaporator] and distil [distiller] stoker.

We made our own water. One of the few ships we had that turned seawater into freshwater. Then there was the chief engineer for the boiler room. That was another. Then electricity was generated by the stokers in the engine room.

Then others were just general maintenance. Keeping it clean.

Engine room.

There were two boilers on shift all the time.

A and B boilers and engines. Then there was a chap, he had a very busy job, answer the telephone might go a week and not get a call. But they had everything covered.

Yeah, and walked around and talked to the other

chaps. Any messages to be taken, all that type of thing.

From the control of the engine room could send messages through and that’s gotta be verbal or something like that, he does that type of thing. Just a messenger more than anything.

Signals. Bells, they used to have a bell.

Yeah,

it was in a central position. The two actual engineers, one each side. Why they ever had him, I don’t know.

Well, he was paid to do absolutely nothing. He had direct telephone call to almost any place on the ship. If the senior

engineer, engineer commander I think was his title, he used to get the phone watch keeper to ring through and he had a return telephone chap down below that the engineer commander would be phoning

in the engine room in say ten minutes. You had to make sure he was there in that phone and he didn’t move until that call came. Because in the engine room, if he wanted a call, everything in that section had to stop for his message to come through. It was all stopping then jump, nothing to do most of the time.

No.

Yes, I did actually. I’m a pretty peaceful sort of a fellow. I never had any trouble with anybody.

The main trouble would be relieving late. A guy

can go ashore or something and you want to go away in a few minutes and if the guy relieving you won’t come down a couple of minutes early, sit there right on top until he has to go, that’s one of the, one of the most of them. You could always get back at him when he’s relieving you or you’re relieving him, you can always get back

coming down. Matter of fact, how did I get on with the engineers? I jumped over the side of an engineer. I suppose a little bit of moral support comes when you go in.

The routine was based on the, as you know the navy goes on bells. I’ve forgotten most now what they stood for. Breakfast was eight, lunch was twelve,

middle watch, that’s twelve, then there’s afternoon shift and then you come into what they call “split the dogs”.

That’s just a signal going back right into very early

of the navy. They used to just grab chaps and bung them on the ships and they weren’t allowed, even when they were in home port, they were never allowed off duty and that type of thing. You’ve probably heard people talk of the press gangs. In the early days they used to have a navy out of orphanages as well. Then

you have middles, that’s another one. That’s midnight to four in the morning and midday to four in the afternoon. Used to hate that one. Sometimes you’d virtually do an eight hour shift on the, so

you cut down, instead of to do the keeping, you do a two hour shift. That’s good, except coming up. But he goes back the next around, he has the long one. Which is very good going.

Very monotonous.

Well, the engineer and the leading stokers and that, they’re patrolling all the time. I had experience in this, we were cruising, sorry we were going out to meet the first American submarine convoy I should say, to come into Sydney.

We’re on the middles and an unidentified ship came under view, and he wouldn’t answer the signal. The first thing we knew things were not as they should be. Everything went up to full speed ahead and action sounded. I think action

sounded before full speed came through. Evidently we were put under the command of the German, oh not German, the Jap [Japanese], the American reckoned he had seniority, and he ordered our captain to about turn and join the convoy. But he’d fired shots over the bow of the Vichy free

French ship. No, yeah, the free French, that’s the ones that never went to Hitler. And he got drawn over that. But the captain, I forget.

I think it was a bit closer to

the South America. His convoy was coming down and at this stage the Japs had made a very rapid progress, and something about ships reported being in this area. The captain, he’s absolute God. He didn’t answer the signal and the (UNCLEAR)

was shot across the bows. He then answered pretty promptly.

Told him to come back and rejoining the convoy. I suppose doing the right thing is not always doing the right thing in the navy.

Heck Waller was, this was right after the Sydney was sunk. I think that was fresh in everybody’s mind. I think Waller didn’t take any chances. He put these two shots across the bow.

Those with him in the

Mediterranean worshipped the ground he walked on. Very fair, if they had a bit of strife, then sure he was very good to them. Treated them more as humans than just a piece of material.

Just out of school.

He was always the boss, he knew every thing. Sometimes he could make it a bit rough for you. Do his polishing and all that sort of thing. And you gotta pick it up after him. By in large there was very little of that went on. Anyhow, there’s always, whenever had us recruits on, there was

always fully trained men with them. So you didn’t have a great amount of trouble at all.

One of the main ones was mahjong. I was on the ship long enough to get into a school, I was only there a few weeks.

I was still very much in the training section.

Yes. You weren’t allowed to gamble. That was penny poker. I think, is there poker in the gambling game?

Yeah, poker. They had to sneak away to get, they snuck out with the four.

No.

They may have done. I never even bothered to have a look at it. Also they had a film taken about quite a while to go through so as everybody could see it. Some of them never go anyhow.

Be on daily orders that such a film would be on at two o'clock in the afternoon.

What they called the waste. It’s a part of the ship that they had no other use for.

Hence its name.

Port and starboard. You got the long ship, and then you got wide, but always on those ships it doesn’t lock right off, and the waste is the part of the ship where you used to rig up the screen and. It’d only take

about thirty men at a time.

Only went to one.

It was about a chap, he fell out of society some way or the other, and of his fight coming back to be accepted by what do you call it. And his main

headquarters was on a rubbish tip. Real American film.

I was in port mess. Mess places were set

governed by your changing shifts, shifts changing at mealtimes. So one went early, mainly ate by ourselves.

Well yeah. Mostly if you weren’t there, you could lose it. Somebody would beat you to it. The meals, generally speaking, they were in my book very good.

The Perth was well-equipped with new types of refrigeration. We only had one stretch, I think it was thirty two days from landing. We were frozen all the time. We

never had hard rations. No bully beef [canned meat] or any of those sorts of things.

No. We had it set up in control. We never ever had the ration. The drum and everything was still on the Perth when it went down. I dare say it went down on the Sydney

too. I’ve never got any grub [food].

Wherever you could find a vacant spot. Under no circumstances could you go to bed at the one time. You slept on stools and benches and little floor in the

waste areas. Or you could sleep under a turret things, by-gee if you were on there you were probably deaf.

Yeah. I mean you had a captain that believed in shoot first and ask questions after. I think it was a very good idea.

Another thing you were very prompt on was dropping depth charges. You’d be cruising along and all of a sudden a the boat would jump up in the air and the then the bell would ring, you are about to drop a depth charge, about a minute or so after it had been dropped.

Yeah. I had the

one drop while I was in the engine room. Off duty or watch that was the fire patrol. And I was on the deck level, and we had to get dressed up in

Fear not fire fighting gear. Fear not fire fighting gear is asbestos sort of a coat.

Better than dying. I made a very bad mistake when I abandoned ship. I took another part of the gear in the

engine room. A pair of boots that came over these boots. You had a pair of strides out of this veanor stuff and a coat. Well I got rid of the boots and I took the coat off and I forgot to take the jacket off. I think I went to the bottom of the drink and came back to the top again just

panic. I don’t think it was panic, but just getting ahead of yourself. And floating in the water you feel yourself going down. One of our rare bits of lifesaving gear was loaded and loaded with straps, and

somebody yelled out, or I yelled out “I got to take the jacket off, it keeps dragging me down”. So they then came over, paddled, I think it was the only carly float we got off, too. I got dragged onto the raft, the float and then took the strides off,

went back into the water. The best thing on the ship and the engine room point of view was the old Mae West [life jacket]. That’s it goes over and ties up. It’s got two sorts of boobs at the front of you and they bring you up. They turn you over if you went into. I already had mine on. All they had to do was deflate it. No, pump it up.

Then I went back in.

It’s just that it looked like it.

Oh yeah. They had lots of funny little names. Most of it I’ve forgotten. The Mae West was so important you’d never forget that.

A bit of controversy.

I know it was right aft where I was. Where I was, was never hit, but the same level but decks up. They got badly knocked about. A couple of the turrets got blown off.

I was

off duty, which meant I was on the keyboard flat. As far as I know all as they had on it was rifles, a couple of sea guns. Also a fire set up.

Yeah. I wasn’t in the engine rooms. They all got out of the

engine room I would have been on. The float, no the section of the ship above us was blocked our escape route. I had to work pretty frantically to get that out.

With wreckage. We weren’t hit, but above us were hit. And smashed.

Knocked about, we had to clear a passage was for us to get out. Likewise we had to leave ours clean for the engine rooms and the lower decks to come through. So there was, really was about it, it was an absolute 100% job. Every man had a job to do, and somebody would suffer severely if he didn't.

No, we were very lucky. Four torpedoes we got. They say four. I know there was three, and I’m certain that if I was in the water when they dropped one I wouldn’t be here today, because the concussion from the movement of the water makes a mess. I know when they dropped the torpedoes,

she jumped, but the first time the first torpedo hit, we were standing there talking, then we were sent right up, touched the ceiling and went up. Everybody up and stared. Then the second one hit. Some bright

spark yelled out ”That’s a so and so torpedoes”. Then a couple of seconds after that, all the good English had gone out the window incidentally. I forgot where I was.

Oh, yes. Real sailors what it was

and then someone said “so and so torpedo”. That was number three. But where the fourth hit, I don’t know. But all the rest, A boiler [room] and A engine [room] they were wiped out. The engine room. Then

the sick bay was blown to pieces. The galleries, they were wiped out. B Boiler room. I think some got out of B boiler room. One chap

he was in the A engine room and somehow or the other, he got blown out of the ship into the water. He died shortly after. But that was the worst thing I heard of on the ship.

Well, by the other people. Survivors. No,

he floated for a while. He must have had his lifebelt on. He was standing under a hatch and that went out and he followed it. But he died. He didn’t live.

How did the word get around?

Boy, you knew. When six thousand tons jumps up about three or four feet and pops back into the water, you know something’s got you.

Yes. “Abandon ship. Every man for himself.” And I can’t think of what it is. But “Abandon ship and every man for himself.” And clear the,

if you’re helping somebody, if the captain tells you to stand by yourself, that’s gospel. And that went all over the intercom system. Then the lights all went out, naturally, and then the abandon ship

is the clear as you some.

They had torches on your head like a hat.

Oh, pretty quick. We only had to go

up one, and I think for us to get through, the ones before us, I think they’d actually, the Perth had run out of ammunition, torpedoes never had a thing left.

Yeah, I suppose. I think most of the oil and fuel and that got blown out. We were just like little Aborigines, jet black covered in oil once we could see ourselves.

Jump in the water.

Yup.

No I hesitated. I was virtually a non-swimmer. Hence my Mae West. I never move her, wherever I went, Mae went.

Not a great length.

She was pretty well empty by the time we got out.

You know, four torpedoes, eight torpedoes I should say, that’s one heck of a big hole.

Yeah.

I did, as a matter of fact.

Our captain, he had done everything right. There is the currents in the water, we were sailing east, anyhow,

the Perth, the ship went away from us, and we followed. Because when I jumped over the surface, on the surface I sorted myself out a bit. We were going the opposite way.

We went the opposite way in the water to what the ship was going. You probably heard about the currents in, not Byron Bay,

Yeah. So we went that way and the current took us away from the boat.

I watched the boat go over. It sort of rolled over, upside down and then just straight down like that. I was close enough to see every little thing that went on.

Just people in the water, yelling and screaming, getting orders. You could

see the boat making this roll and then tilted and down it went. It went down stem forward first. I was right in the aft post on the upper deck. That’s where I jumped in from. If I remember correctly, the propeller was still turning, or some of them were.

Terrible current. In no time they seemed to be everywhere. Because there was Japanese in the water too. We weren’t the only ones.

Yeah, the current took us away in the opposite direction that the ship was going. The current took us west and the current was going east. Might have been the other way around.

Not to go up there, there’s a hole in the ship and not do this and not to do that.

Anybody around. Soon as I discovered I had left my North Sea trousers on,

I soon yelled out, and got an answer back. They were very lucky to…

Yeah, I called out that I was stupid enough to leave my trousers on, they’re dragging me down. And they were very lucky to get the carly float over, and I got into that.

you leave all clothing on, for protection. They said, “Keep your shoes on, and just open the vest,” I suppose.

About ten or fifteen minutes at a rough guess.

According to my records I could swim. I told you earlier on about the dam at Moorine Rock. Well there used to be a pumping station about six or eight feet away was a ladder. We used to jump in the water

and go across to that, pluck up my courage, jump in and go back again. That’s my ability to swim.

Yeah. I actually am one of those, it’s getting right away from me now,

that sailors, babies born in the sack. You’ve heard of babies born and they are still in the bag when they get out? Theory had it, if you’re born one of these and you jump in that water or something like that, you’ll

never die on water. So I never died.

Yeah. An English chap, a sailor, he was born with one. He was on a ship in the Mediterranean got sunk and he still wears it and it stinks.

He did. Although they don’t, the Dutch put out a book, it was an x-ray of one of the ships that were sunk in the earlier actions. They know that he

committed suicide. So it’s always very doubtful. Come to think of it, you know what’s happened, but you don’t know what’s gonna happen and very few, on the law of averages, more captains must

get out of these situations than actually the figures show. The last chap we know that was on the Perth, on the bridge I should say, Waller was still on the boat when he jumped off.

So there’s that doubt in the minds of most of them. Going back into history, a lot of sailors, if their ship was sunk, they used to commit suicide. Another thing is, they say that’s why you find such a great number of

ships

I can give you two. The Dutch ship, the [De] Ruyter, which was in the battle of the Java Sea, that’s a couple of hours from where we were sank. He was

talking to some men, and they got the crippling torpedo and he gave the order to abandon ship. He walked up the passage and they heard two shots go off. He never came out of the compartment he went into. Because the ship went down in a couple of minutes. Now the Dutch

Survivors Association of the [De] Ruyter have made a film on this, and this is mentioned in the book. I’ve still got my copy somewhere at home. I can lend you that one. That was the [De] Ruyter. I think I might have started on the Graf Speed. That was a

German pocket battleship. The English and Australians caged it up in South America, one of those little there. She was badly sinking. He took the ship into the harbour, almost unloaded it, later then he got it out to sea, ordered every man off the boat

and he was never seen again. So there’s another case. That’s also a recorded history case.

Evidently, the only one I’ve ever heard, is based on

cruelty towards you and everything else, and it’s better to shoot yourself than to go through the process of all they dish out to you. They prefer to die that way. But whether that actually happened, we know it happened with the [De] Ruyter, but we do know that after the German got every

person out and away from the boat, he was never seen again.

I wouldn’t say that. But he didn’t want to be taken prisoner. Sailors in some instances are not very kind people if you can believe everything you read. I reckon those two

cases would seem to me.

I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it in that light.

Yeah, I don’t know.

Yeah.

Lucky enough!. I don’t know.

All right. There were two battles. Actually there were three. The Battle of the Java Sea,

that was the first one. We sent out nine ships and they all were sunk. I think that was five Americans, four English, four

Dutch, I think that’s the lot. They all sunk and we know there’s not one skipper out of there that lived. Now we knew the Japanese were in the area and we were going up to join up with this strike force or

whatever they called it. We came into contact just before four o'clock, because we were due to change watch. But it started. I didn’t get out of the engine room and take my normal

watch, they were still in that four hour group. The three English destroyers, I think, were the first sunk, then after the skirmish had gone one, there was four ships left. That was the Perth, the [USS] Houston

and the [De] Ruyter and Java. We just continued in that action, the four of us. The next to go was the, you might have noticed there’s a photo of the Java and the [De] Ruyter

sinking. An artist’s impression of course. That left that was torpedoed. Then about four hours after that action, the [HMS] Exeter, it had been very bad, it had gone into action, it was

trapped there. It had to retire from the action and effect some sort of repair. Then anyhow it came out the next morning and it was sunk just off the coast of Java. That left the three of us.

A short while after it sank, the Java and the [De] Ruyter they were both sunk in a short period of time. That left the, I’m not sure when the Exeter sunk, but that little group, and that left the …

The Houston. It left us and the Houston. All the rest had been sunk.

The eleven, or whatever it was,

it started at four o'clock in the afternoon and we were, no they were sunk in darkness, round just after midnight. The [De] Ruyter and Java were sunk practically together. So

that was out the, only two, of the number that got out of that, now there’s only two of us left. That was the Houston and the Perth and Waller took command of the ship and we four out of that. Never struck any more. Next afternoon, we

got back to Java and there we were told that the. Anyhow we were told there were no other ships left except us and there was no enemy ships known to be in

the area. The orders were altered and we were told we were to go round to the south of Java and pick up survivors and people still getting out of Java. But we sailed

between twelve o'clock and one o'clock, no ten o'clock and one o'clock, and there was free of all enemy shipping and we would go around through Sunda Straits and go to a place called Chili Jet, or some similar

name, and pick up these escapees from Java, but we set sail and we got into at a place called Bantam Bay, and we ran smack bang into this hell of a big Japanese

convoy supposed to have had an escort of about twenty ships. We had two. We opened fire first and when the ship was sunk we had as good as completely out of fuel. We had no ammunition left. No

torpedoes left and we had very low on oil and we were going to go through the entrance of the Straits there’s a part of the ocean known as Bantam Bay, and that’s where the Perth still is today. Not where the

ship was sunk, but close by.

Quite interesting, we went to Singapore on a ship known as the SS Centaur. One of the chaps couldn’t keep his trap shut, he told the captain he was a Perth survivor, got invited up

to the bridge. He’s probably thinking of that. He said, “I just got my new chart and I can tell you where your ship is.” So we were in the water. Ever been to Singapore by sea?

Right,

well there’s a place there known as Sunda Straits, and the volcano Krakatoa? Well when we were in the water and he’s working out he’s got the bearing of his gauges and we’re in the water.

We could see Krakatoa, and there was another island, and floating in the water, we appeared to have just our body out of the water. That’s being what you call an island. He got his chart out and said, “You drifted twenty three miles

from the time we took to the water until we were picked up. So they have a hell of a big current.

Millpond, except the froth of the water going.

No, by the time we were so black there was

none left.

Yes. We heard all the stories about Japanese and all the rest of them, and all night long, we sunk around about midnight,

the destroyer’s cruising up and down. Eventually it took a load of us onboard. Evidently they don’t have a code of treatment and everything. They left us in that water about

from three o'clock in the afternoon, might have been a bit later, just floating on lifebelts and the one carly float, and the currents must have, because we’ve got survivors that actually got to Sumatra, they were prisoners of war there.

Just cruising up and down at the entrance to the Straits.

Not until late afternoon, then they took one load onboard. And they had a little area,

it wouldn’t have been much bigger than this room here, and picked us up and then just. He couldn’t take any more sailors on the boat with them, pick up more of them. They must have been the only good Japs in the war I think. They eventually got picked up, getting close to Chili Jet on the south coast.

That was, from there on we were brought onto a Japanese ship

Well according to, I’ll give you, if you like, to read a …

Yeah, there’s the captain of the Japanese ship said they lost nine ships, we had two.

That’s right. We only went down because we had no ammo [ammunition] left. It’s like

pouring petrol onto a fire.

We didn’t know until the ship was ‘Abandon ship’. We knew we were going to be almost out of everything, and once we were told to abandon ship, we knew the worst had arrived.

I get lost locked up in space.

Yeah.

I stayed on the gland steam all the time.

You don’t change, if it was a bit low, you don’t change or anything because you stay there until it’s complete, or you turn around like we did, and try and make it back to base.

I wouldn’t know about that, because that was between the captain and the [De] Ruyter. I believe contact

was made with the Japanese captain of the Sydney. Actually, yeah just a few days ago, I always thought we were given straight to Java,

south of Java I should say, [HMAS] Hobart was up there, but never actually joined us. We were to go through to, oh, little Island off the bottom of India,

Yeah. But they sent Exeter there

and we had to go around to. It would have made more sense for us, I think, to go to Ceylon.

Yeah.

I tried to get oil and all that kind of thing, but we didn’t get anything to speak of.

What facilities?

There’s the queerest thing, the Japanese blew up their own tanks two days before they would have been their own tanks.

That’s the only time I was ever in an air raid. They blew up the oil. That’s a rather stupid thing to do seeing as it’s as good as yours from the word go.

They were going to state action station. That’s on the keyboard flat.

Yes, always got some person or, make wisecracks and sort of make you laugh a bit and…

Yeah. I think it’s a good idea.

Like we had such a weird sense of humour. On the ship, during the air raid, no Java seas, you’d hear the rumble every now and again. They reckoned that was the shells exploding under the ships. Whether it was or not, I don’t know. But I know it did

happen.

Ah, yes, I think we were talking about what we’d do once we were through it and all the rest of it. Not realising of course we were going away for four years.

No, we

never knew anything about it until the, you’re talking about the Japanese ships, are you?

As they got sunk, we knew. That was another very bad, we had no battle line or order of duty or anything like that. Most of our signals were done by open signals.

So that if they fire it up, they could more or less get everything between our two signals.

In the long run, I didn’t think it had any effect at all.

We knew the more they got sunk, the less confidence, as the ships were sunk, the signals around, you knew right away. Say like, we were told that the Exeter had retired, actually the ship I can’t remember the

signals on its welfare was the American destroyers. Four of them. They were never mentioned in the communications of the battle and they never caught up with us when we were coming back to Java or anything like that. Then one of the theories was they had sort of their own field

or line of command. So perhaps they weren’t feeding any of our. We heard so much about the Exeter, not Exeter, the Houston, she was there from go to woe.

No, might have been tempted to go the other way. No there was tremendous odds. If it was twenty nine or whether they said it was.

Yeah, they didn’t

give us anything to eat.

No.

I suppose you’d call it the quarter deck. That was quite interesting. We’d had hardly any sleep for quite a long length of time and then come dusk and

they lay down flat, it was the same routine as we would have inflicted on them. Then we stayed like that. I can remember laying watching the sun go down. Dusk. Nothing seemed to happen or anything like that. I thought ‘what’s going on here?’

The sounds are going the wrong way. So what obviously happened, I laid down, I went to sleep with the sun setting. I woke up. Sun rising in the west, in the east. Never moved.

Absolute. That’s what sticks with me most

out of it.

Nude. Stripped.

Soon as you got onboard the Jap destroyer. They would have been made do the same if it had been our ship. But they would have been treated a little more civil than we were.

Well, it deteriorates rapidly from there on.

Amongst the Japs you always find at least a couple of them speak english. It didn’t take much to

realise that they were telling us to get all the greasy oil off and throw it back in the ocean. Those that never got covered in oil they never had to strip. The ship must have been a mess the next day with all these oily bodies and muck covering on them.

I don’t think anything about it. I think we were all too busy with our own individual thoughts.

I say we were all very close. Comfort in numbers. Closeness. Hard to describe in a way. Then

about ten o'clock next morning they brought one of their boats into us and we had guards on them, this is what they thought we were going to do. We went over on the Sangdo Maru. That’s the name, I’m trying to think of earlier. We were put onto that and down the hull.

Then we were given something to eat. It was one of those little tins of fish, not sardines, herrings I think they were. One tin between two men. And what else was there? They did give us water. We stayed on that boat

for seven weeks I think. No, we had something to eat and we were taken ashore. And by this time the numbers were about two hundred I think, that had been picked up. And then daylight came we got given the food. Then they put us onto the

boat and took us into a picture theatre in a place called Serang. We were on that for seven weeks. That’s where we had our first casualty. One chap he died on the boat. Another one, could have been an Indonesian, I think he died too because he had an arm that was just

burns. He could possibly have lived.

Oh, he was an Englishman. Actually, a steady thing, the Englishman, he had his arm three quarters blown off. It was just hanging by flesh. He was walking around holding it. Oh God,

it was a terrible sight. But I get a little mixed up on these things. Anyhow, I believe he also died.

Couple of aspros I think they got. I don’t think they carried medical goods.

Well, he was well looked after

by a couple of Englishmen had been picked up off a minesweeper by this stage, he stuck with them. You stayed mainly with people you knew.

Funny thing, the chap up until he died, I’d never known him until we met in the water. We stayed together practically right

the way through.

Bert Milo.

Yeah. Then a chap I used to go on leave when we were sailing at sea. He’s died. But he died in Burma.

When we were put on the first boat we were on was a small boat, off the boat in the water. We went about four o'clock in the afternoon to

probably mid-morning next day. Then we were taken over and put on the troop ship. We were on that for seven weeks.

In Mandalay. That’s where we had a set menu of a tin of sardines between two men. It might have been a little bit of rice chucked in with it, that’s right.

Our first meal, they gave us nothing. The sardine had that twisted lid. Well first lot that got the can, the sapper [bomb disposal engineer] got the can. Eventually they got enough cups for us, that everyone to have time to get there. Otherwise they’d stick up hands like this and they’d throw us in there and

you know. That wasn’t too pleasant. No waters or toiletry requirements or anything like that. When they, to keep the story together, shifting us to Batavia, a Jap come down he said, “two birds tomorrow morning, you go to big camp in Batavia”. Sudden

relief, but having two trucks take us into the camp, but what they should have said they were sending over fifty trucks

to take them in, and there was only two boats capable of doing anything for yourself at all. We stank to high heaven.

No. Then another,

to take us into Java, I should say Batavia, they got us out at some army place, Navy place, they got some Javanese clothing. You should see what they gave big chaps of my build and that got.

Little Javanese chap.

That’s all.

I think I got one or two buttons on my fly and I managed to get some copper wire, God knows where I got that from, in there and wired it onto

myself. They made an effort, I suppose, there. That was a bit of a disaster. I never had a good pair of strides. You’d go around in your underwear to Java and on to Singapore. That’s where I got my first sort of clothing.

I must, I keep slipping forward.

Yeah. So that was it.

It’s a light aluminium, about twelve foot or so long, about ten [feet] wide and about that deep. You can’t sink it. And you all pile onto it.

Man by the name of Carly introduced it into the English Navy. At that time it was on just about every boat war boat.

I don’t know, but I do know this much; we only got one into the water. All the rest were blown to pieces. The problem with the navy

is survival.

Six hundred and eighty two I think it was. The death rate was about three hundred and fifty.

So slightly more killed than survived.

Well, in the fast moving current you didn’t see a great number of them. Come to think of it, I seen very few.

I suppose, ultimately, the drowning would have been a lot of course. We don’t know how many were murdered by the Javanese. We know some were.

By people escaping mainly. The Japanese had ten guilders

a head, our chaps, English, Dutch. So we know there were a lot of them were. And some escaped. We know that. We had one chap with a great big slash across his back from one of their big hunting knives or whatever they called it.

I’m not sure on that. But I would say drowning and the Javanese.

Yeah. That’s when we moved from Java to Singapore is it?

It was

a Japanese troop ship taking a bit of loot back. I had a year in Batavia.

Mmm.

Oh yeah.

Everything that shouldn’t have happened, brief description. I got my first belting and my last belting in Batavia.

In Batavia?

Bicycle Camp.

Yes, it was Dutch married quarters for Javanese troops. They were quite good. They stripped everything out of them. You slept on the floors and anything you could get your hands on.

Far as we were concerned they were rice bags and things like that. We got a bit, but not a great amount. I also had my first and only interrogation in Java.

Well, you’ve heard of Moorine Rock. So you’ve got one

advantage over the Japanese. The questions they used to ask the felons were incredible. They must have got a bit jack of me and Moorine Rock and came in one day and said “You’ve gotta go for interrogation at two o’clock tomorrow”. A couple of chaps said, “You’ve got quite a belting coming up.” I

wasn’t too keen on this. Tried to dress as best as I could, don’t try and be smart. Just yes, no as much as you can. I went up to the officer and as usual had to wait at his leisure. He was about fifteen minutes late. “Good afternoon Mr Harper” and all this sort of thing. Real palaver [formal conversation].

Yeah. He really turned it on. Then he changed just like that. They were all over there and the Japanese army was over there. He started, it won’t be word perfect, but it’ll be pretty close to “You are” or you say that you are…I think he called me Mr at this stage “Harper, you’re an Australian soldier”

and things like that. I said “No, I’m an Australian sailor.” So he altered that. Then…

They wanted word perfect. I think Japanese, when they take Australian, or get taken back to Australian and all the rest of it. “Your mother

and father, they must be worried about you.” “Oh, yes” A lot of drivel he was carrying on there. And then he ended on another back flip. Here comes an army man again. “You are this”

Latin number Three Five Four One. “Yes.” And he says, “You state you come from?” Oh, different story there.

Yeah, interrogation, “You come from state of Moorine Rock?” “Yes.” “And you don’t make a mistake?” “No, I come from Moorine Rock.” Then he went on about how brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, cousins and come back again “You are Mr Harper?” I said “Yes.” “And you state you

come from Moorine Rock in Western Australia?” “Yes.” Then he switches onto his palaver again. Two and a half hours this went and then he got really, you know, the big general. The tone of his voice was something not worth thinking about. And now he says “Moorine Rock, are you sure you’re telling the truth?

You’ll be punished if you aren’t and your parents, or mother, won’t like to hear that when we get to Moorine Rock and tell her this. Your parents are not gonna be too happy about it to think you didn’t tell the truth with us” and all this garbage. “Yes”

what else could I say? He said “You making it up? This paper’s got all the answers on it. When I go, when we get to Japan they’ll have these books and papers that you filled in and all the answers you’ve given us. And you say you come from Moorine Rock?” “Yes, that’s right

Moorine Rock.” And then went on a lot more of this drivel and drabble is getting out. He said, get this right,

he comes on pressing on how he’s gonna see my parents in what you call it. I had one thing, I was going to, Oh, yeah, before then, these forms you had to put down education. I was about the only one putting down the sixth standard

or something like that. The others were taking universities and leaving certificates. So I put down high school. What I’d done, I’d put down Moorine Rock High school.

If he picks that up, God what I’d get. But he just passed slightly over that.

Two and a half hours. Absolute dribble. He said “Well,” he had a map about twice the size of that picture there of Australia. And

the hand writing. He said “Can you see any of the places you know?” “Oh, yeah”. I never noticed it and once I used it a couple of times. Kean, now Kean is just out of Moorine Rock. It is a box about that big with name on it. Sat down on early days

for the settlements up there. That was a town. They changed it to Moorine Rock, because originally it was on the maps as Parkers Range. So, he said

“Show me where it is on the map.” “Oh yeah that’s easy” got a bit of confidence back. There was Kean, Whistle Shed, Garrot pegged down the middle. Set down little things most towns the train went straight through. No Moorine Rock.

“You’re not telling me much, not good”. I said, “Moorine Rock is definitely on it, and it definitely is there.” He went on. I was getting to the stage where I could easily have said something silly. So he gives up in the end. He said, “we’ll finish this, but I’ll have you back again. I’ll look into this

Moorine Rock. It could be a secret factory, you put it down by mistake.” All this dribble. So about a week later they said “Your troubles are over”. I said, “Well, if they’d ask somebody if they knew Moorine Rock” “No,” they said, “You’re going to Singapore.”

The things on it was Kean, and there was Noah, there was Turkey Hill and I think he had, it was a bloody old survey map. Most of these little places were survey points.

Turkey Hill and over to Kean. Named after early farmers in the area where they had their goods put off. But fate came in to. Then I went to Singapore.

Before we go on there, I hadn't been on a working party because I never had a pair of shoes big enough. The Javanese all had small shoes. My first day was a stinker of a day. Two of us had to sit down in the shade. We were cutting grass around petrol tanks and anyhow, we got caught.

He lined us up.

Around petrol tanks, petrol dump, fuel dump. And the message came to us quick that the guard was come. Of course three of us got copped. Went out, stood up, first day, first belting coming up.

Yeah, and…

I don’t know. So anyhow.

I laugh every time I think of it. He, what were we…

Yeah. So he lines us up and I was

the tallest, and he should have known there was some come along here. Didn’t like tall men, or tallish men. So lined up and gave the chap number two, number one, and he just took his belting. Of course I’m next and I just swayed back, and he took this ungodly swipe

and over he went about four times. Everybody roared with laughter. Then he jumped up and down. He yelled and carried on. He shot through like a Bondi tram. And the next thing I know I’m being tended to by medical staff. What had happened, I swayed back, he missed, tipped over his own feet and just around from where he

was, was a dirty great lump of wood about that long and about so big, and he clouted me right across the head. Put me off for the count. I ended up with meningitis.

I was laid out, yeah.

I sat down for the rest of the day and

didn’t work. Didn’t get treatment. Headaches, I couldn’t get rid of these headaches. Right back into Australia had God knows what operations on my face, aneurisms and all the rest that they…no x-rays took hours of work one day and this

is just a little sideline this. We had a doctor at Holroyd Hospital. He said, “You look like a pregnant cow. You’d better go and see Adrian Farmer” He was the ENT [Ear Nose Throat] specialist. I went up and he said “God, you shouldn’t be working”. I said “(UNCLEAR)”.

Dr Farmer, he was doing this. So he said, “You’d better go up and see them” “he’s not going to see to it.” He said, “I’ll ring him”. He’s given me nasal operations.. “God,” he said, “You look like a pregnant cow.”

No. He said, “You’d better go and have an x-ray.” So the nurse took us around to the x-ray and it came back. Called for a wheelchair to go back to him. He said “it doesn’t look too good. You’re pretty bad in there.” Yellow, I think he said.

He said, “You shouldn’t be at work”. I said, “No, I shouldn’t be.” So the next thing, I’m up for another operation on my nose.

That’s what they termed it, meningitis. All the x-ray after x-ray, they got evidence of a cracked skull

on the x-ray. All the x-rays I’ve had and they claim it never showed up on one of the x-rays at Holroyd Hospital. So that was…

It was.

Oh, well it was just infection.

Yeah.

That’s down on the paper. But how so many x-rays could show clear, I’ll never know.

Sick leave of eighteen weeks I think it was.

I had them for years before.

That was around about 1960, 1950 something like that. It must have been 1960 because it was the football season.

I don’t know. Must have been a fair while. Strange thing about it, I never felt

any pain from the blow. I don’t know if you normally get pain or you get instant anaesthetic.

No, I had that in Singapore. Retrobulbar neuritis. They reckon that is not so.

That’s when they actually confirmed meningitis.

Yeah. No, the x-rays that found that was back at Holroyd Hospital, as I said it was a sideline.

Well, if they’d have had a human being as

a captain, in stead of an absolute animal, it would have been a good camp. But he was a lunatic.

Yeah. One of his funny little tricks, he’d hated people were fair. That’s all I can put it down to. One of his favourite tricks was to sound the general alarm, boost everybody out on the parade ground.

Then you went passed him in single file. If he could pull your hair, belting. If he couldn’t pull your hair, sleep on the bit of metal for the rest of the night. All those types of silly little things.

The Japanese Army was one of the queerest armies in the world. They work on a star system. If he’s got ten stars you don’t even look at him, he’s a God. We were number one, ten belted nine, nine belted eight, eight belted seven until you got to the POWs on the end.

Stupid thing, really.

Well, the one appears to be a real God among them was a sergeant. But they worked on this system. One star belted the POW, two stars belted the one star,

three belted two star. The lower the number, the more people could belt you up. Didn’t make sense of anything.

I worked mainly on the aerodrome. Sorry, we’re still in Java aren’t we?

Mainly keeping, building camps and if you’d had a bad blow overnight.

Hurricanes, storms, you just got them trimming the scales. Heavy wind.

Just rebuild it

as you go. You had nothing to lose. Some of us would get cover in there. That would be probably the white part of it. Christmas Day 1942,

that’s right, so one of the worst case of cruelty I did see. He said we could have Christmas Day off and, that’s right, in the morning he sounded a working party. Said we could have the day off

and he put us in the barracks alongside the female internees and we had to work along the fence line where the women were. Of course what happened, the women started passing over a few little cakes and it being Christmas Day and such and did he belt into those girls.

God. No respect or anything at all. Unfortunately our chaps wouldn’t keep away from it. Disregard his order of working alongside them and everything else. Another thing he did do, was make all the women strip off and march them up and down the street and all that type of thing. He was a cruel man. I think his name

was, we all have our own home today, they were radio people. Can’t think of that now.

Japanese radios.

Yes. The first one, he’s supposed to be one of them, but whether he was or not, I don’t know, but he had the same name.

Another one, it wasn’t very often. I don’t know what he did to upset them. But he made him kneel down and then he had his legs back and they had to walk over him. Go one and come back again, treading on the muscles in the legs.

That was in Java.

Just being Japanese, that’s all it was. Lunatics.

We were right up against them. Of course he separated, his quarters were between them. I think he,

he was executed pretty promptly after the war.

Java. Batavia. They couldn’t get out. They believed in themselves, and there was a lot caught there. Mainly English, Dutch girls.

I only seen it through the fence. It looked all right.

I’ll say some of them couldn’t have got it worse. There was a reasonable amount of rape went on. No, I don’t think

they gave them much preference at all. Not speaking to any of them not being real close to them.

Java?

I’d say it was good.

If you’d eat plain rice you’d probably get plenty.

Just rice is pretty hard to eat.

Yeah.

It was Dutch quarters. They, the Japs had to keep their own.

They had big rice cookers, all burnt cooking gas.

They always had gas on Java.

No, we cooked it. They weren’t cooks. I was never lucky enough to be a cook.

No, I was never lucky enough to be a cook. Might even consider baking at times.

Well, the bulk of it was rice. Little bit of fish, little bit of meat, not a great amount.

No, the only tinned fish we ever got was on the ship. For a while we got some Dutch

Army rations in Java. That never lasted very long.

About one thousand of them.

It is. Considering the little room you have to seven or eight men living in it.

Terrible lot of them were made in the camp by our own troops. Mugs and, see you take all the Perth survivors that never had a thing. All had to be crudely made and manufactured the best they could.

Tins, sort of ordinary sheet

metal. They had knocked up some sort of electric boilers and all that type of thing to make them. They made razors, they made a hell of a lot of mugs. Just imagine drinking black pea out of a black mug. Black metal before you.

You get this black same of wrought iron. Spoons, knives.

They got the tradesmen. You got some primitive tools and I had a razor made up there. I’ve brought it home as a matter of fact.

Among all the bad there was little bits of good.

Not really. None come to mind. Certainly not good by our standards.

You felt like bursting many times. The hardest thing, just skipping back to Java for a certain time. I forgot what I was gonna say.

Yes. It was remarkable how you made friends in those places. When the

big mob went up to the railway line, I stayed in Java.

Yeah.

There’s literally thousands of men. They had a funny was, for instance, there was four of us and they

wouldn’t have known anything about who you were or anything, what you did in civil life. But they must have known what people really clung together and they’d just take one out of that type of group. Split them up. They’re silly enough to do anything. That’s what I was gonna say, there was four of us and they took two and left two.

Sent them up north, yeah. Two of us stayed back in Java.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Stugs, he died in Burma. Minard died in Australia. I’m still here. Can’t think of the other chap’s name.

I think I’m the only one alive out of the... That’s now. But Minard and myself got out of the…

Do I think I was lucky?

Oh, I should think, I think.

Well, I think I was sleeping. They had to leave camp at two o'clock in the morning. They didn’t want them hanging about so they kept them at the camp with you, then they were away.

Only before you dropped off to go to sleep. Not at the actual point. One chap there, Cecil, he was, I think he was an only son, and there was only one person on earth and that was his mother and, he gave me his ring

his mother had given him. He wanted me to bring it back to Australia. I said “You don’t think you’re gonna die or anything do you? Not everybody’s gonna die.” But anyhow, he died in Burma.

Yes.

He got some type of an allergy and could have been just the candlelights or dirt or grease. He died too.

No, I wouldn’t take it. I talked it over with the other two and they said “No, that’s his excuse to die.” I didn’t think it

was that bad, but I did think along those lines. But I did think that while he’s got it he’d got something to hang on to. But it wasn’t quite that way as it turned out. He was from Queensland.

Yes.

We can talk about that on Singapore.

Yeah, I arrived in Singapore on the 3rd of January ‘43.

We were taken out to Changi [Prison]. Just skulled around, and that is when. Well, in those days they

called it retrobulbar neuritis. Now they reckon that’s not so, but they still call it retrobulbar neuritis. Which was my complaint.

First eye trouble, yeah.

Well, shortly after I got to Changi.

It was rather strange. You’d be

walking along. Bright, sunny day then the next thing you know you’re walking straight into somebody. Just had no distance in sight. Everything was bright and shiny. No they reckon it’s caused by a blow to the head or some type of accident, which ties in with the other disability when I had the hit across the head.

Yeah. So whether it is that or not, they don’t worry much about it now because it’s all said and done. We’ve had fifty odd years. So.

Truck.

When we were loading on the truck in Java, there were troops, twenty or thirty of them all practising bayonet charges. Didn’t think that was a very good omen.

Yeah. They were on the wharf when we were loaded onto it.

Nothing really, I don’t think. There was no panic or anything. We didn’t know that the railway was going through either, so cheer ourselves up. Nothing happened.

Yeah. Changi in Singapore covered the one place. It was all Changi to us up there. Whether there were any in the other

suburbs and that, I don’t know.

No, I think they always referred to Singapore.

Nothing. They said we were going there. They didn’t tell you it was only a mark and dime place going up north.

No. No more. Just going up there.

For Japanese they weren’t bad.

They were not so hot by our standards. Their food was a bit rough. The toilet on the troop ship was sort of a cradle stuck out over the side of the ship. That was a bit on the funny side.

Yeah. Somebody could always crack a joke

about something.

No, that was quiet. Nothing happened there. Not a thing. When we got there it was just coming on dark.

Yeah, early evening or late evening.

No incidents. Just help you get on the trucks. Then straight out there.

No. Just told, our own chaps that were already there took us to where we were going to sleep and all the rest of it.

I don’t know who the sergeant was on Changi area. That’s the Russians you mean? No.

I’m jumping about a bit, aren’t I? Japanese.

That was a Pom.

I wouldn’t have a clue.

Oh, yes, it’s gone. There was Australian and there was the English and there’s a small lot of Dutch there all going.

They were living on the pretty well. Actually, Singapore itself was by far the best camp I was ever in as a POW.

Well, for instance, in Java it was packed to capacity and they used to have jokers walking up and down the gate.

Made for a couple of hundred men, they had over a thousand in it. Every time you see the Japanese guards walk passed had to stand to attention and yell out, the Japanese word for stand to attention and salute “kyoski” or something like that. This would go on all the ruddy day. Sometimes they’d just wander through the huts or camp places to

see if anybody was sleeping, because every time they walked passed you had to yell out “kyoski” and stand up saluting as he went by. You never knew when he was going to come in. But in Singapore there was none of that.

Well, I never tried that one, but I know a few who did and they weren’t too happy after it.

You got a bashing, yeah.

Basically if you had a reasonable go at just carrying out routine. That didn’t do you any harm, but some of them were a bit hard to take. Most of them weren’t that bad.

No, usually it’s best not to look at it.

I have heard that some of them did, but myself, no.

I should imagine the temptation would have been pretty great. See if you could spit on them or blow them over or something like that. But they did it to men, females and children. They just all got

the same belting.

Oh, Singapore must have been the best camp they had of the ones I was in. By far.

Overall I’d say yes. But only just.

Once I arrived in Singapore I did not see any prisoners struck, myself or anybody else. Never seen one bashing. Yet plenty went on. I was very lucky in Singapore.

Perhaps I’m just a coward.

I never went looking for trouble.

I think there

was. They may not think so, but they were damn stupid things that some of them would come at.

I think I told you about getting your hair pulled. They’d come at about two o'clock in the morning and go up past the camp commandant and bow to him. When you bowed down, if he could pull your hair, you went and got a belting. If he didn’t,

you went out and slept on the bitumen. Those sort of things.

Definitely. But most fools wake up to it in the end.

In some occasions I

suppose they did. Fortunately the Japs never caught on to it. The concerts they had. You see the Australian Army concerts and the English had one and some of them, they would definitely really having a go at the Japanese. The very last one we went to they had all the chaps getting

onto the ship and everything and waving goodbye to the Japanese and coming back to Australia. That was the last concert I saw in Singapore. They wouldn’t allow any of them. They soon woke up that we had quite a few concerts and all had another meaning behind them. You pass a bit of messages around just by

like the one loading on a boat all waving goodbye to Singapore, and pleasant and pretty what they were going on.

Yeah. Well, yes. Actually in the concert party, they had some real good talent in it. You’d never have one night, never had a concert without having some sort of a go at them.

Like we all knew in Singapore that there was as good as over a week before it actually finished.

One fellow in electronics had built a radio. They had to be very careful with it, because really create trouble.

Ah, yes. We knew for almost certain, on the 7th of August the war was as good as over. We were told something had happened. We weren’t to talk about it or pass any remarks or anything like that that they just might crack otherwise

they might get into the people. I don’t know whether you’ve heard this or not before, but the Japanese Emperor had decreed on what you call it that no ex-service prisoners would be returned to their homeland. They were all to be executed.

No doubt in my mind, on the, only think of it, on the 14th of August that the war was over because I passed out. I couldn’t walk or do anything, we came on, on this night and this officer came out and spoke to us and said “Really good.” He said

“It is almost for certain. We’ll know what is happening within seven days.” The seventh day turned out we were gonna have a day off. So there was strength in the fact that there was.. But on the sixth or the seventh day we were to have a day off. They said, “No, you can’t

do that. We’ve got a couple of parties to go out of a hundred men.” And of course we went, enjoying our day off, but they came out and said that four bundles of one hundred needed to go out for an urgent job to be done. So that went over and I don’t know if you’ve heard about the

mass graves and that that were dug all over the place. I might have to jump from the week before to the actual happening. Get a bit mixed up. Anyhow, this particular day, this would have been the 15th. I am almost certain it would have been. They came in and we had to go out on this party. Seven men

and other camps and sections had the same thing. When we marched out there we did, there was no Japanese in sight, there was no tools or anything like that to work with. No Jap was in on the thing except one drop of rain per ten square meters. Their excuse was “it was too wet to work”.

So they took us around this, I think it was the East Changi Road, which we passed. There was no traffic out there, which was most unusual, and they wouldn’t let us, then we had to go into this hut, which was being built. I never even saw anybody go near it under normal circumstances. Nobody ever went there.

When we got inside we were all made to sit down. Not allowed to go out to the toilet or anything like that. They’d scream and yell at you to sit down. Then of course this was the last sort of day, and you couldn’t move. It was very tense. Of course

what news we did have, I had no confidence in them being kind-hearted. Anyhow, after we’d been at work four, five, six hours, something like that, we heard a motorbike coming. At the same time they all heard a bike in the Changi guard. It came up to the camp and it went around behind where we were.

(UNCLEAR) went through all the paraphernalia speaking to, carried on like mad ducks. Screamed and yelled and jumped and done everything and then into the tent “Every man out. Get back to the camp”. Most unusual for the Japanese. They liked everybody close together. You got

about half the group I was in moving, left us there standing wondering what the hell was going on. So we just tagged along. The officer representing the privates and such like came out and said, “the Japanese are giving you a day off work. They said you’ve worked so well and were so loyal.” And all the rest that we were gonna get this week off. Of course we

all just straggled into camp. No Japanese about. Not a thing in sight. The English officer came out and said “You know what this means? We haven’t been told officially, but we know it has been

surrendered unconditionally.” We all got a bag of coffee grounds and told to have a cup of tea and all the rest of it. Course I flagged out at this stage. I don’t know when I came to. But that was the last day of prisoners. When I was going

around to get on the hospital ship to come home, here’s the Japanese out doing what we had been doing for four years. Never said a word. They just took it.

I think they were more please than what we were. Mind you the Japanese were as hungry as we were. The last place in the world that anybody would want to be in.

By us the prisoners?

I passed out and never came to, to any great extent until I got on the troop ship to come home. Then I got the

part that hurts. I was put in a cell on the hospital ship. I call it a cell because it was those locks and all the rest of it. You could get in, but you can’t get out. I was kept in there all the way back to Perth. Melbourne, I should say, came by air I should say from

Singapore to getting on the hospital ship.

I think they might…the way I understand it, when the Japanese came in they surrendered that quickly that our side never got (UNCLEAR) all the prisoners of war wanted to get back to Australia. And the head American who was taking over everything by this time,

it doesn’t matter, the head Japanese he took over and organised the place until the troops came in. About a week, under Japanese control. It was good to see the Japanese doing a bit of work and carting rubbish around and all the rest of it.

I was beyond worrying about much at that stage. But I would say that they were just outright glad it was all over.

Here or in the camp?

Very little. I managed to get outside the…

we always got something. But it was hunger and there’s only one cure for that and that’s food.

Yeah. I know this much, I couldn’t be weighed. Less than eight stone or something I was.

Yeah. Well, according to the telegrams

they got at home, they’d at least didn’t expect me to make it. But I did.

Right up until the…anyhow about

May I think it was, we were on the drome. Then they, that’s May ‘45, as good as the end. I worked on the drome. My job doing that was one of the most important and we weren’t troubled by the guard. But we were Billie-boys. We got two twelve-gallon drums

full of water and two men. They’d go out and get your water in the container, go take it back to base and all water had to be boiled and then when it was boiled we laid it up on this Chinese bar across it, and anybody that wanted water we had to give them water

to drink. We drudged many miles with twenty four gallons of water. Two twelve-gallon drums. They were very strict on that, because even their own chaps, occasionally we’d get a drink.

As far as I know there was a medical

section. They looked after he really ill and dying. There was the aerodrome and another section of not so fit, they all worked on the garden. They had a shorter distance to work and easier job looking after the veggies and such likes.

Us. The prisoners.

Yeah.

Quite a big one too.

Let’s see. I suppose you can put 90% of it down as greens, spinach and all that sort of stuff. And rice, and. They had a funny way of working it too. Once they got sick and down they’d just starve them to death. They,

if they were reasonably fit, first thing they do is to chop his rations in half. Then if you got worse it came down to nothing. They tried to do that on a lot of occasions to us. But our community spirit, one man got the same as the other. There was no principle of cutting down rations.

That was out. Which reminds me of another little incident I was involved in not quite some cheerful as some of them. I was out at work on the drome, two miles away from where we were sleeping. Somebody stole my full kit. Pair of shorts and a shirt, was a shirt

while I was out at work, he stole it. This was one of the little rules, you had to have a shirt on for night count. Of course I had no shirt so I went on without it, the old Nip [Japanese] jumped up and down again as usual and the next day I had a face up for two hours, and I don’t know who the (UNCLEAR)

whether it was army or English or something. But anyhow I ended up, they arrested me.

Charged with negligence to look after my clothing. I appeared before this Jap. I’m pretty sure this chap was an Englishman, and

so then I went up the charge, under escort. That was funny being a sailor. They couldn’t hurt no other sailor there. A private in the army was junior so we couldn’t have equal or senior in rank, which

turned out to be one New Zealander and one I think was a Malay volunteer. He reckoned I was negligent, and you’re two mile away from where it was stolen. I went out, I had it last night, I went out to work, came home back to camp and my shirt’s gone. This joker had me arrested then

charged with negligent, failing to look after my gear, which comprised of two rice bags and a half come rug type of thing and a pair of shorts and, I did have a pair of boots, full rig. So it ends up they arrested me, take me up to this

joker and he said “I’ll be handing you over type of thing he Japanese.” He said “Have you heard what they do to you if you go in the, selling gear or food?” I passed out on the ruddy spot. How could you, two mile away from where your clothes are being charged with negligence? Anyhow he was gonna pass me over to the Japs, but he thought better of it.

Some of them did need some, comradeship was very light on with some of them. So they gave me another shirt and go on parade at nighttime. That is one occasion where I did get really upset. Inside anyhow. We had, this is

right at the very end, the last few weeks. Something had happened out in the tent out in the arena or the camp or whatever you’d like call it. If it had happened today, as a man in routine orders next day, Japanese routine orders. I’ve often wondered, would like to know how in the hell did they find these things out? In my case he was dead wrong.

It was the job of the higher commands he had to back down on. That was the worst thing that happened to me.

Oh, what gets me, the chap who slept next to me,

I think he was the culprit. There was another chap on the other side, he played it dumb, he was in camp all day long and said he didn’t notice anybody going down there within a metre of floor space. I got a little upset about that.

Yeah. Well most of this stuff that happened, if it had been their troops they would have had the same rules apply to them. Just slipping back to Java for a few seconds. In the real early days, within the first year, a Japanese guard took some food and the

commander got onto him and belted him up with the thing they put the sword in. Laid him out. In front of everybody. So, you know it didn’t mean much to them.

We were

taking the jobs away from, oh crikey, I can’t think, there’s a place for horses on Java, better suited to the work. They build roads with the machinery.

Yeah, but…

Yeah tractors, front-end loaders and they were carting that in motors. We were carting out in wheelbarrows and such-like, shovels. They just believed in getting the last ounce of blood out of things.

They never had them. That’s the main reason.

Another grader. It was a type of grader.

Bulldozer! They had bulldozers. And another thing, I reckon the Jap showed a bit of sympathy towards who’s coming in to landing us on the drome and you could see him drop and pick up, drop and pick up and when he made is last plunge he crashed

about a hundred and fifty metres at the most from us. All they took out a jeep as their ambulance.

A bomber. It was quite a big one.

Yeah. Coming back from a raid.

No, we never court much trouble.

Very close. One day, it must have been a young chap, he was what they call them, suicide pilot anyhow.

Yeah, kamikaze [Japanese suicide pilot]. They were practising strife and low and one of them came in and he dropped it down too quickly and he rolled along the ground. He never walked away.

90%. One section of it they had Indians. They loaded sort of a train and then came out to where we were. We unloaded it and spread it and levelled it all by hand.

A lot of chunkles. You know what a chunkle is?

It’s like a hoe, or a shovel if you like, the handle comes down and the blade goes straight down. About that long a type of hoe. The shovels, put your foot on it press it into the sand, and pull it back up around up at you. The material was absolutely appalling.

Oh very much so. Some of the chunkles, you shift

half a dozen things of sand and the damned head would break off it.

They’d swear and curse at you, but eventually they’d come back they’d spot welded it back on.

Yeah. Well they wanted the work done. You can’t do it without it.

I never broke one, but I guess you got a bit of abuse and probably a few slaps across the face.

But I’m not certain of what they would do.

Actually I believe the Jap in charge of it, they used to call him the ice cream-man. He was all dressed in white, a white hat and everything. Evidently some engineering degree he had he was given respect. He was executed at the end of the war

for his treatment, so I guess that answers that.

Not a great number I don’t think. Some of the older chaps, a lot of the older chaps did. Considering the conditions I suppose the survival rate was good. But in reality it was a very bad

figure. Used to go out as the sun was coming up and you’d get back to camp just after the sun had gone down. So you worked pretty long hours and they used to, as well as bringing you out a plate of rice at midday, and water, I think they were the only amenities we got.

Temperature?

Very muggy. Actually, I liked the climate at Singapore. Particularly when they got severed and good buildings and they’re almost up to our standard of living and everything. But it was pretty grim in the early days.

Oh yes,

very bad.

Oh, let’s see there’s about four or five bundles of chaps, did nothing else but carting water. Other wise they’d never have got through it. I was, I think there was six

in mine. Even the old ice cream-man came to us for a glass of water. He had his own mug with him. All water had to be boiled because the dysentery was pretty rife.

Probably not as crook or sick as some of the others. It

was one of the lighter jobs.

What would stop them? People watching it. I don’t know how they got ahead of it at nighttime. But we were very good at pinching stuff off the Japanese. Tie the leg of the trousers up and poke it down

anywhere. That’s the Japanese stuff. I nearly got caught on one occasion. We had a chap who was a machine gunner. We used to call him the Ghost. You would neither see him come or would you see him go. He was either not there or he was there. He was known to everybody as the Ghost. He saved me from getting caught one day.

Well, I wasn’t experienced, I suppose. But I got the tap on the shoulder, “fifty metres up there there’s Japanese”. They were patrolling the yard from the thieving prisoners.

Food. If there’s any stuff you really thieved it was food.

Off the Japanese. Out of their garden and out of their

stores. That’s if you’re lucky enough to get into it. Used to get a lot of tapioca root. That you’d fix that around your legs and I’m sure the guards sometimes must have known what was going on.

That was rations. Illegal.

Beri-beri would be the most common. Dermatitis, skin disease.

Well, poor hygiene in some ways, like no soap of anything like that. Just

let cold water run all over yourself, no soap and, you know, quite a few ways. Occasionally you got a banana, but very rare. Tapioca root, I think I’ve said that. Sweet potato. They were in good supply, grew well up there.

Some of the real daredevils got a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK off the Chinese, but that was sort of frowned on. Because they were doing it pretty tough too.

Yeah, I’m just trying to figure when the

first took, not Shanghai, Changi, they executed somewhere about two thousand men for food. They made a memorial park for them after the war too. I assume it’s still there.

Did I see any?

No.

No. I only know of one that actually got, he escaped and he was picked up straight away. He was eighteen years old and a Jap was a party to it, he was put in prison all the time

and another chap chopped up an Indian with a shovel. He again had a lucky escape because every time they were going to execute him something trumped up. He eventually got home and of course the army wiped all charges against him. Be hard to say without knowing the full facts. He actually was the real guilty one in it.

He was a Victorian chap.

No, I never altered much at all. I stuck pretty well, that’s another point. I was mainly by myself as a sailor. There’s Onley Moore, he was a real old chap,

he got through. Died shortly after the war. Where was I up to?

Yes, mainly. I got separated. I was the only sailor in Singapore for a while. Then a chap by the name of Peter Grey he came back into gaol. Onley Moore he shouldn’t have been up there. He was sort of an old age job. Brought his age down.

Yeah. Most of. Although when I got home and married, the best man was a 2/4th machine gunner. There were quite a lot of friendships made on that. Started off mates and in the gaol and then

met the sister and married. Lots of family groups grew out of that type of thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, he went away.

He went up on the railway.

Yes. Although there would be more than three excluding, they got taken, I knew they were sailors, I was with them.

No, two went to Burma, not Burma, Borneo.

We were low in numbers and there were only ones and twos. Onley Moore, he was the oldest sailor, he never went passed Singapore. Who else was there? Another thing,

this is sailors only. In one torpedoing of a Japanese troop ship we lost three hundred men. No sorry, thirty men. Three hundred would have killed everybody. Got torpedoed and killed.

At that particular stage there?

I was getting around to the subs [submarines]. One of their ships was sunk, it had a lot of POWs on it by the American submarine because they didn’t know. There were two of our chaps on that. They’re still going.

They were lucky, yeah.

Seven days I think in water.

They were lucky. They rigged up a method of catching water. There was survival gear or something on the boat that the Japs left it. They did evidently quite a lot, when the ships got sunk, leave the…

I just can’t think. The rowboats. The lifeboats. Them floating in the water. And the two that got back to Australia, they were picked up by American submarine. They’re

both still going.

Yeah.

No, but there was some in Borneo.

They had a little, did you go and see that Borneo film was on show recently?

That’s right, well that little…

Yeah. You wouldn’t have been able to lay down straight or do anything but stand up. That must have been terrible, because down there you do a fair length of time.

On Singapore?

Yeah. That Japanese blew up all the oil tanks

air raid.

That’s Java. But there was also the very big oil tanks in Singapore and in Java. They blew them up that they’d own in a day or two themselves.

No. Just

straight out bomber. It wasn’t a fighter plane.

You had two ways of getting out. A rope got dropped and the other was

ladders, straight up and down ladders. And boy, you can go up them quite quickly. There’s one thing I did learn in training, that was to climb a rope. You had the two venues. The ladder and the rope.

Only in training.

Actually, just as a point of interest, I did not see an allied plane until I was bombed out in a bombing raid on Singapore towards the end of the war. The Americans were coming over in their big planes. I suppose the biggest fire I did see was on Blakang Mati in Singapore. The burned through and how long? That was when and bombed

it at midnight, around about midnight in the night raid. Have you ever been to Singapore?

Well, on Blakang Mati, Sentosa they call it now.

Yes. Rope and, no, not the big zoo. That’s at nighttime.

Oh. But it was a great place evidently. We walked through some of that when we were up there. Last year or the year before.

Singapore is a wonderful place, really. You can’t blame the place for

contact of the people. There are gardens, and every day there’s something different to see and you got the little train running all over the place.

Yes, I’ve been laid wreaths and at Java laying wreaths and, I suppose if I do

get the opportunity I’ll go again. Just one of those places that because of course we can always get good deals too.

Mostly yeah.

Yeah. We had a free passage. Only a few years ago something came on. That’s when they had the interview in the

museum in Singapore. He was quite a good little chap. He sent me a copy. They wanted it back again. It was all verbal. Most of theirs they all had notes to work from too. I’ve only ever sort of given it out.

I’m not a good speaker.

Right, oh, there’s the big cemetery.

We termed it as Changi. It’s a beautiful, as I say, as they go, cemetery.

Well, that’s never worried me. It was the pleasure and the privilege of being able to lay one

more than anything. The other good thing up there is I think it’s five different languages all separate and given the proper drill. And the services, when they hold one of the military ones it’s been just about every English speaking chaps in it.

They even Japanese was the last one, speaking Japanese one of them. Which I thought was rather strange. They were nice, controlled themselves. Singapore’s got no option really, because it’s very multiracial.

Well, I’ve played golf with them.

That never worried me. We had a tour of Japan. I thoroughly enjoyed that. What else have we had? I’ve probably been to one of their dinners. But definitely good. Even not that long ago they had, getting g a bit off the prisoners,

Muslims at one of them. They had a church, I can’t quite get it out out.

Not Iraq.

Well, I was trying to think of the country. I can’t. See there’s Indians. That make up just about the figures. Then there’s Singaporeans. Actually up there now

Singaporean is the main language and the second language is English in Singapore.

Barbara and I have been with two that I can think of just us, but have been in an escorted group. Some of them might have had about thirty people in them.

That would be quite good if you wanted to do about it. Spent most of the time looking at orchids and that.

The orchids?

Yes that was a big group there. We took the wreath from, the wreath was made in

Western Australia and we took it over there and the day of the service took it over there. And put it in its pozzie [place] at the cemetery.

In total about twenty, I think.

No, all of them I’ve met since the war ended. Our house is a war service group home. They were all built and occupied by ex-POWs. It would be the majority. But that would be the case of any ex-servicemen.

Yup. All wrapped in cottonwool. Unbelievable the treatment I got. We were at sea once with the Oranje,, that’s the Dutch ship that was the hospital ship.

What was the question?

On the boat?

As I said earlier I got locked up in that little ward they had. You could get in but you couldn’t get out. All the way from Singapore, I was in that. But one thing I did have, I was the only sailor welcomed back into Australia by a commodore.

When the nurse or the sister in charge come, I was the only one locked up too incidentally, came in and told me that, she said “You’d better behave good, because if you don’t pass, the commodore’s gonna stop the leave on all sailors.” He came down and I was quite pleased actually.

I just forget now. “Good to see you,” all the usual

greeting. I can’t remember word for word. Something about, I can’t remember, on how much I’d improved from his reports he’d seen at the end of the war to what it was going home. I was evidently going to be confined on the way home. He said I wasn’t to drink beer and

after he went or just before he said “You can have one glass of beer and one glass only. I’ll get the master of arms to see that it’s carried out.” So I had two nurses as escorts and the other couple of sailors they had two serving the lot. Mostly I had,

damn it, a nurse on both sides. He upgraded it to two glasses or two beers. Two glasses and it was really great when we went from boat to ship and I had a nurse on each side. First time I felt honoured in my life.

Then we got to Darwin, which I started on this. From there on out, we went to the Straits, we came around the top of, pulled in there and the nurse came out, the

doctor came out and sent back a report “progressing well”. Then to Queensland, examined by another doctor. Sydney, checked over by a doctor. Melbourne, get off the boat, met by an doctor and an officer to take me to the

navy office. Then a nurse on the way home from a New Guinea posting gave up her seat on the plane so as I could be flown back to Western Australia. Then two days later I went back to, flew to Adelaide. Examined by a doctor then Forrest

in the desert, they didn’t have a doctor, they only had a nursing unit. Then to cap it off was Darwin. He gets his report on how well I was travelling. He sends, “by the time you get this notice I’ll be back.”

Why I got all the, is something I’ve never been able to find out.

Well, seen a lot of country. They were really good.

I had to get out of it and come back to town. It was that good, my story was that good. I was nine tenths mad I think. I came down to Perth.

Yeah. I had to report to the navy and told them things were anything but good. So anyhow round about lunchtime and

latish [late] afternoon the, I think it’s the, no it was a navy officer dug me up and said “You’re not doing so well, are you? How would you like to go back to Melbourne?” That night I was on a plane. Early morning I landed in Melbourne and stayed there until Christmas time. That’s what I thought of Moorine Rock.

The silence was like being hit with a sledgehammer. At Moorine it was terrible.

Another thing, it was exactly the opposite to what I’d like to have had. Once I got away again from home, horrible thing to say, went back to Melbourne, got back

to ... (TAPE BLACKED OUT FOR 9 SECONDS) ... hospital again and then I came back and got in just before Christmas. I didn’t get leave over Christmas. So they read between the lines.

Yes. Similar to what we’re having now. The stories would be more even and more correct than what they are now. Some of the things now seem incredible couldn’t really ever have happened, but they did. We’re still going?

Yes, I don’t know why. I’m damned if I do. One of the good little bits. This was where I arrived back in Fremantle and I was supposed to have had a bed in the hospital. Never had one. Thought I was Western Australian and going home. Home was a heck of a long way away. So I was put in sort of a

hospital for the English. They were waiting for a ship. So I got a hammock and all kitted up with his gear and pulled up at this hut for the English. They had to be up and dressed by eight o'clock going somewhere. I said to, I can’t think of his name, “I’ll have to get some money out of the bank before we go and do anything.” He said “You can’t want money, you’ve just

drawn twelve pound. And you haven’t spent a penny.” It’s not as simple as all that. I hung my money belt on the end of the hammock. Somebody had more right to it than me. So the chap looking after the Australian POWs, he wasn’t very happy about it. I thought “What the heck, I’ve got two or three hundred pound in the bank.” So he went and dug up the

head of the English. He said “We know who did this. We’ll get him. Here’s a collection we’ve taken,” and I got fourteen pounds. Made a two pound profit.

(UNCLEAR) all the time I was navy.

Thirty seven and a half years.

The first job I got was army postman. Because repat [repatriation], I was still army at that stage.

Yeah. Because when they came over

I carried on. Then I was dishing up mail and messenger and all those sots of things. Then I went into the admission room. That was one of the better parts of it. Then I got out on the hygiene. Then at that stage I got the meningitis. After that cleared up

I came, other small jobs came up. Messing around, the admission room, had a lot of time in the admission room. As I say the thirty seven and a half years as an employee. That’s right, ended up retired as Senior

Sole Supervisor Grade 2. Impressive title, but no work.

Thirty seven and a half.

Up and downs. Terribly monotonous and such likes. I think looking back I could have done a lot better.

Yes. It was very cliquey. For a long time I was the only sailor on the staff. Mainly all army chaps. This is not medical staff.

It wasn’t a happy place in the end. I got out at fifty nine.

No, I had my full retirement and still left over a year’s sick leave behind. I only had one bad illness and that was the meningitis. So that was.

Must be something more interesting in Hollywood than what I’ve just said.

Only two chaps march now. They’re all getting beyond it.

While I was working I did a lot of shift work. So I didn’t do much over that years. But this last ten or fifteen years, say twenty years I’ve been retired, I march all the time. But only two of us marched for the last two years. I look like being the only one this year. So I might toss it in.

1st of March means a hell of a lot. That’s the day, or night, we were sunk actually. We have only so few men we don’t hold one.

I go to the ex POW. I do stick pretty close around ex service units. Particularly the 2/4th machine gunners. There were only two regular goers now for the Anzac Day. One having a leg operation today or tomorrow, he’s an ex-POW too, oh what’s his name.

Bancroft, Arthur Bancroft. He only marched this year because I was going to be the only one. He reckons he can’t see him giving it out. If there’s anything about navy, he’s there.

Luck I suppose more than anything. I never suffered any great illness while I was there. We always, we never stopped still. We travelled a lot and we’ve been round the world twice

more or less. Only place, I’ve never been to America and I’ve no intention of going. We got two weddings. One in Holland, they might both be in Holland. Two grand kids getting married over there. No, three of them. Three grand kids.

Well,

what do you gain by sitting home doing nothing?

Yeah, we’ve been to England twice. And we’ve been to Holland once. Twice actually because we went there on a tour all over Europe and we went there. If I go again for these two weddings coming up,

I reckon I’m not going to, but too many cranks running around.

Yeah but, I don’t know. Crikey. There’s bashings going on all around the place now and we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.

Yes, I’d hate to be waking up to it myself. It’s hard to say.

It all boils down to religion and food and nothing really important to the world other than those two subjects. You take Iraq and that place. I don’t know. Take it as it comes, I think.

I enjoyed it actually. I don’t talk very much as a rule.

My mates wouldn’t believe it.

Yeah.

END