Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Geelong yes, I was born in Geelong, I was born in 13 French Street, West Geelong as far as I remember, yeah.

No. We didn’t have – no, no phones, no, no phone. No actually

I come from a pretty poor family, born as you can imagine during the Depression. I am one of six brothers, and – five brothers, five brothers and two sisters, seven of us in the family. Actually one step-brother and the rest of us, four other yeah and two sisters.

Yeah.

No. The only person who was working was my father and he worked on the wharf. So he was the only one that brought money into the house until, say, early war years which are ’42 or whatever,

I was born in ’31, and then I went to work as an apprentice. I did a bit of work as a 14-year-old delivering telegrams, but that was short lived. Still, it was some money and it all had to go into the house.

Yes.

Well.

Naturally as you can imagine, they’re sealed. Right, they’re sealed. At that time they were sealed and only had the address and that on the front of the envelope so it was more or less… But you did not put them in the, we didn’t put them in the letter box and in them days you had to knock on the door and hand it to the people, and once they, yeah so. I did that for a little while. My school days,

I went to Ashby Primary School in Pakington Street, West Geelong, no I beg your pardon, in Lawton Ave I think it’s called now. Went to Ashby and then from Ashby we moved out of West Geelong down into Chilwell and lived in Marshall Street, 28 Marshall Street Chilwell where I attended Chilwell

State School. Then during the war years, during the war years being a poor family my mother and father found it difficult to be able to feed the whole lot of us so I, myself and my brother were sent up to relatives in Buangor and I attended school in Buangor for over 12 months and then came back down to Geelong and then stayed at,

went back to Chilwell for a while until I went to Geelong Technical School. And then I was there until this year that I, in them days I, it was intermediate or leaving standard and I got intermediate and then I, I didn’t go ahead because my family, as I stated we were, we had, we didn’t have much money so I went out to work. And I worked

doing an apprenticeship, moulding at a foundry and it was called Backwall’s Stove Foundry and we made parts for stoves, IXL stoves. And three years I was doing that and I was courting a young girl at the time and then she was only young, both young and

her mother thought well, this relationship was more or less getting too serious and it’d be better if we parted ways. So I naturally was the first love, young love and I joined the navy.

I joined the navy.

Yeah. Probably say I joined the navy with a broken heart. And of course going back in them days too, of course

my Dad had to give permission for me to go in. He had to sign to say yes that he gives his permission for me to go in. And I suppose, and that was in 1950 and of course that would, with me out of the house, that was one less to feed. So I joined. That’s when I went into the navy in 1950. I was 19 years of age at the time. And then I went down to Flinders Naval Depot,

Cerberus, HMAS Cerberus and did three months training there and then came home for a short while, as soon as I’d completed my first three months, and then I was home just a short time when, and then I went back and did some sea time. And I did three months on HMAS Australia doing my training because I wanted to go into the engine room. I don’t know why I selected the

engine room, but I did, I did do an engineering, a bit of a course down at Flinders Naval Depot, Cerberus, and in the engine room department, learning all about different things in the engine room. I had to have, to go into the navy you had to have a education exam which was, I think it was sixth or seventh grade standard, so that was not a problem. I’d completed that and then of course I joined up and everything.

And then I was on the Australia. I left the Australia after about three months, I think I was on the Australia, then, at the time there was ships in reserve in Geelong Harbour, there was eight war ships out there and they were all anchored and tied together. And they were supposedly to be used in if there was a conflict, another conflict they were.

So living in Geelong, that was my home depot. If you’d been away somewhere they always sent you to your closest home depot. Sydney people went to, say, to Sydney. Adelaide people and they all lived I forget now I think it was Harmon. Leeuwin was in Western Australia. Right. So they all went to the nearest depot of their home. So having the ships in reserve at Geelong, I was posted out there.

So I spent a few months there and it was there that I got the call to go to Korea. That I was being drafted, and not knowing at that time actually that I was just being drafted to HMAS Anzac, and then on board, that was when we were told that we were going to, we did some warm up trials, and that we were on our way to Korea.

No. No. It had only been going a couple of years really and that – no not much at all. More or less focussed on what I was doing and focussed on learning so I could pass my exams to increase my rating. So no I didn’t.

No at that stage.

No. Never, never ever entered my head. Actually I thought that at least if I joined the navy I’d be able to go overseas but it never dawning that I’d have to go into conflict. I just thought this’ll be nice going over there and be all over the world. Visit all over the world. Well I was fortunate enough actually to visit a few places naturally on our way to Korea.

And on our way home we stopped at a few places. But yeah, Hong Kong on our way up and Singapore and yeah, Rabaul, Moresby, Darwin and all that places. But not a great length of time but just to say, “Oh well, been to Singapore.” But I had no idea about what I was heading into that’s for sure.

Well when I joined the Anzac, we did our work up trials. I was in the engine room and a complement it could have been, I think it was about 300, I’ve got information there but I’d have to go over it to find out exactly how many people, I think it was about 300. It was a battle class destroyer and it’s, it was the third,

it was the third of the HMAS Anzacs. I beg your pardon, the second. It was the second of the Anzacs. There’s one out there now in the Gulf or just attended the Gulf. And my time on the Anzac, being in the engine room, in the mess down there, we bonded together, we were all very, very close. As you can understand, locker back, back to back locker and actually there was a chap in Geelong, his locker backed onto

mine and he lives down in Drysdale and yeah, no bunks, hammocks. Only hammocks when I was there and swaying and that and the ship was going, rolling backwards and forwards. Yeah so and then of course we travelled up and then we got to Japan and we were based in Sasebo and also Kure.

And then we did our, then we went to Korea and we would do our stint, we would relieve if it was an English destroyer or a Canadian or an American destroyer, we’d take her place while they came back and had R&R [rest and recreation] in Japan. So then we would go, we were up there and then the same thing, we’d come back for

R&R and back up we’d go and do another stint while we were up there.

I think it was about nine months that we were actually in Korea.

No, I don’t. Well I can’t remember.

I can’t remember. I suppose that you’d spend roughly about three months in Korea. I’d say that but I just can’t remember how long we were there.

When it was finished? I was very lucky to do the royal tour and there’s a photo there of Prince Phillip and the Queen and that royal tour I did, and of course wherever she went we went, and was an escort for her. And there were a lot of places where

that the Gothic and the Britannia, they couldn’t get into the wharf so we’d take her on board and then take her in to shore, go into the wharf and then she would embark and go into the town. And then we’d have to form a guard of honour for her when she came on and then a guard of honour when she left, after she’d been to the town, and when she came back, another guard of honour for her

when she came on board to take her back out to the royal yacht. And it was, some of the places you could understand, like Darwin or anywhere like that where she visited, very hot, steamy and all of a sudden a downpour of rain. So you’d be standing on the upper deck and your uniform would be white, all white. And

when the rain came and if you were standing there, there was no such thing as run for cover, you had to stand there and of course our navy hat was all done with white king, white, and of course the water would run onto the cap and next minute all the white would be running off the cap and down all over your face and of course naturally with white clothing, it became transparent just about

and just standing there and you’ve got all the crowd on the wharf looking at you. And they could more or less look right through you because of the rain and your wet uniform. So yeah, I did the royal tour. But we had some funny times while she was there and different little things. When she inspected the guys, we were instructed we had to call her, “Her majesty”

first, then after that, if she kept on talking to you we’d reply, “M’am.” But the first time it had to be, “Her majesty” then after that it was always, “M’am.” We had a line which she’d inspect and Phillip would walk behind her and then she might stop and say, “Good morning.” You’d say, “Good morning, your majesty.” “What’s your name?” and, “How long have you been

in the navy?” and, “Do you enjoy the navy?” and, “Are you married?”

No she just, they were the, just the normal questions because she’d just pass on a couple of them. But he’d come behind with his hands behind his back like he normally does, he’d walk behind and he would say after she’d just passed the person she’d been talking too, Phillip would just come past and say,

“You haven’t been trapped yet.” And away he’d go. He was very concerned about the guys on board the ship taking sneaky photos of her and Phillip while they were on board because he thought at least while she was on our ship, she deserved some privacy and all that with the both of them. And well I suppose from here to the curtain back there, ten yards I suppose,

I’d seen the both of them together and she had her sunglasses off and she was pointing the finger so I really... And they were just like two normal human beings and they were having their privacy and whatever it was that they were discussing when she took the glasses off and the finger was waving. But yeah, one of the guys did get caught taking photos of the Queen and Phillip. And his

camera was taken off him until the end of the royal tour. He was not allowed to have that camera again until he, because we were warned, we were told not to take any photos of the Queen because she was being harassed as you can imagine, by the press and everybody that she visited at the town halls and that that she went into and all the functions. I had a lot of photos of Phillip and the Queen and they just

got lost in transit but they were taken every time that she was at a ball or somewhere in Geelong or Melbourne and that, but they just got lost in transit. So I don’t know what happened. I do have a couple of photos of her just on board the ship with the whole ship’s company.

Well there’s a photo here of her at that time. I’ve got a photo of her here.

Most yeah, yeah, beautiful looking person. But unfortunately just unfortunately, that she’d be pushing coming up, she’d be 75 I think the Queen at this stage.

I was, I think I went to the HMAS Wagga for a little while. I was on the Warramunga for a little while. I think that I was, I think I might have been on the Warramunga or the Wagga, I just forget which one it was, I’ve got it there in paper but I was on that when we went to,

down to Launceston I think. I did a good will tour. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In 1954 I got married and I was still in the navy. Straight after the royal tour.

No. I met this

young girl, she was 16 years of age and going to Geelong High School. And I had, I’d joined the navy and I came home in 1951 I think it might have been, before I went to (UNCLEAR). And of course we used to go to a dance at the Palais Royal here at Geelong Thursday and Friday night and go up in uniform and that was the way to attract the young lady if you were

in uniform. Yeah so we met. Actually I had a girl, I had a girlfriend before her and I’d been going with her about six months, just taking her home from the dance and that and then one day, being a sailor and that, I had gone to the dance and I’d had a few too many drinks and the proprietor said to me, knew me well.

He said, “Milton, go home and sleep it off. You know. Come back and …” “Well can I take my girlfriend with me? Can I go and get her and take her home?” And he said, “All right.” And the girl that I took home, or the girl, actually she walked home, took me home to her house and then got me into a cab and got me home, wasn’t the girl that I’d been going with for six months. It was her girlfriend.

It was her girlfriend, and of course the one I’d been going with for six months was really upset about it.

I don’t know what I was. I chose her anyhow. I chose her. Probably because she was more pretty. So with that, yeah and she’d only just like as I said, she’d only gone to school, come home, changed out of her uniform, school uniform and gone to the dance. She was only 16. But we were married

when she was 18 and it lasted 40 odd years, 40 years.

Yeah, one in every port. And anyhow yeah so and of course we were married for 40-odd years before she died.

At the time, yeah very much so at the time. Naturally we got engaged before I went to Korea and I got married after I came back from Korea. And of course being away, that was pretty sad, not only for…

I was living at home like she was living in her home, but just being away was pretty heart wrenching because of, just communicating by letters that’s all, no phones, no, nothing like that.

Definitely. As I said, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress in 1998 and had to go into a clinic because

of that. But I would say I’ve had that from the very day that I came back from Korea. It changed my whole life. It really did. My family noticed the difference. My wife of today, Rosemary said to my family, “Was Milton like this?” “No, Milton was never like this. He was not like this.”

I drank a lot when I came back from Korea. I drank a lot. I smoked. And I drank a lot. And then I would, I can visualise, I can go back and see how I treated my two boys, the anger that was in me if they did wrong. And going back in them days, I’m not talking about a smack on the backside or anything like that,

I’d take a belt to them and I’d belt them if they’d done something wrong. And I think my eldest one, who’s 48, he still remembers. He still remembers the time that if he did something wrong that I would belt the daylights out of him. My wife then, she was terrified because of what I was doing and it was all brought about because, as I said I was a different person altogether.

And I had all this anger and that inside me. And I suffered anxiety attacks and had bad dreams and all. And I just thought, never thought, never heard of the word post-traumatic stress. And I always thought that people would say a lot of fellows come back from the war and they were shell shocked. That’s early like early 1942, ’39, but I never even heard of the word post-traumatic stress.

And apparently I carried that for 50-odd years. And then I can look back now and see that all my actions that I did was because of that. Doing the course I did of post-traumatic stress, it taught me the value of life and I still see a psychologist, I still see a psychiatrist. I’m on medication.

And the medication I’m on is helping me to be able to sit here today and talk to you. Until I went on this medication I couldn’t. I was crying my eyes out. Just crying my eyes out.

No they haven’t, they haven’t done it. My eldest son cares for me a lot, and he’s the one that I used to belt the daylights out of if he

did something wrong. And I can, today I can still see it, “Don’t hit me Dad.” And I’d put him in the bathroom and shut the door and say, “Don’t you come out, don’t you dare come out until I tell you to come out.” I could hear him crying. Even now I can still see that. And he remembers that, he’s 48 and this would be, say born in ’55,

1965 this would’ve been. He’d be ten years old, going to school. And he can still remember that. He says he remembers the time when I used to belt him. And yet he’s, we’re very close.

I know a lot of them

who are suffering post-traumatic stress but they won’t admit it. They will not admit it. Me going into the clinic, to them, I’m not mental. We’ve had people from the clinic come over as speakers, I’ve had a chap who cannot go to a church service. He cannot go to a funeral, he just breaks down if it’s a veteran that we know.

He can’t talk about it. And I told him about it, enquired about it and to this day, and there’s a lot of anger in him. And he’s older than me, he’s older than I am and he’s on a walking stick. And he’s very frail, very sick and yet to this day I know that if anybody challenged him in a car park, or if there was road rage, which he did, he took to them with a walking stick.

So there’s a lot of guys that I see, and the way that they, even amongst our meetings when we have meetings, just the way that they talk and that, I see that they’ve got it. They’ve been and had interviews, speakers there and they just won’t admit that they’ve got a problem. They won’t admit that if you listen to their wives, their wives will turn around and say, “I wish you could do something about it, he’s driving

me crazy.” And that I hear quite a lot. I do hear that quite a lot.

No. I didn’t lose any friends no. I gained some friends. I was one of eight that was in the clinic. Seven of them were Vietnam veterans.

And they were, two or three of them were far, far worse than I was. In my belief. To the extent that one of them was very suicidal and so, and of course they were all in there because of their problem. But if they were diagnosed that they couldn’t go out in the workforce,

they would then become TPIs, Totally Permanent Incapacitated to work in the community. And that they had to get before they turned 65. Now the year 2000 when I was in there, I wasn’t in there to gain any more advancement in my pension. I was in there wholly and solely because I had post-traumatic stress.

But they bonded together with me. They called me Pop. And they were in their early 50s and it was always Pop. And we do meet every now and again, catch up with each other and yeah, we still have a lot of fun together and they’re Vietnam veterans.

Yes I have. With my job as a volunteer at the hospital,

I like to, I know what I’ve been through, I know what they must have gone through in New Guinea and so forth. I lost my Uncle in New Guinea, he was beheaded at Ambon and I’ve got all the stuff in there on him.

Yeah. So he was, they never took him prisoner, they never took, there was 250 and they were on the beach and they just hit the beach and I think there was about 2000 against 200

Australian soldiers and everyone of those were beheaded. And he was 24 when it happened, 1942 February. So that was, and it’s funny how, oh well because I, I would’ve been 11 years old at the time, it didn’t register with me that he was missing, well they called it missing, killed in action at the time. But it didn’t really,

I didn’t feel the effect from what happened. Not knowing that he was beheaded until later on. But then again when I went to Korea, it didn’t even enter my head that I’d be captured or beheaded or whatever. So it never entered my head then.

I stayed, well when I got married in 1954, I got, I got a draft that I had to go to England, had to pick up the HMAS Melbourne at the Vengeance was going over there. But because I had a chap of the same rank as myself and I’d only just got married, I was, he took my place there.

And I took his place back here in Geelong where I could be with my wife at the time. And I think we went to, it was while, even though I was still married, we went into, we went to Launceston, good will visit and I arrived there, we pulled into port, the mail come on, it was a telegram for me that I had to go

straight back home again, my son, youngest son at the time was only a few months old and he had a blockage in the bowel, had a twisted bowel and so I had to get permission from the captain of the ship to go home. I wanted to go home. And naturally I never had the money for the plane or anything, so the guys on board took up a collection to allow me to fly home.

And I flew from Launceston to Melbourne where a Commonwealth car waited for me and took me straight to the hospital where I arrived at the hospital at half past nine at night, but they let me in to see him. So he was asleep. Then I went home to my wife and I was allowed to stay there until the weekend but I had to report back because the ship was leaving Launceston and going back to Melbourne, and I was to pick it up in Melbourne. But

because of the circ [circumstances], I went and saw the chaplain in Melbourne, and he granted me more time to stay here. So I was allowed to stay out at Geelong a little bit longer. And I never got back to the Warramunga actually, all my stuff was sent here, back here.

I was paid off in 1956 so that was in ’55. So I went to, I stayed here Burdekin in Barwon, HMAS Barwon and stayed

there until I went to HMAS Lonsdale where I was paid off in 1956. 26th or 27th September 1956.

I came out of the navy in 1956 and I got a job at the power station in North Geelong. I worked there for just on five years

and they decided to close it down. And I was the last one on the job, I was the plant operator and I was the last one on there and naturally I was offered work up at Yallourn, but it was just too far to travel to Yallourn and [Loy] Yang up there, so I left and went to International Harvester. Joined International Harvester in 1962 and they decided to close that down.

It would seem like it, wouldn’t it? And I left them in 1977 and then I went out to Blue Circle Cement Company, out at Waurn Ponds and I worked out there as a computer panel operator, and I worked there until 1987, took

long service pro rata after ten years. I think I might’ve been there 11 years, yeah it might’ve been ’76 I left International because I got long service pro rata. I took it because my wife was ill, so I took long service leave and I was only in to my long service leave two weeks when I went back out to work and told the company that I wouldn’t be coming back because of my wife’s illness. So then I became a carer to look after her and for seven years

I looked after her until she passed away. And in seven years she was on oxygen 24 hours a day. 24 hours a day. Could not even sleep without oxygen and she was in a wheelchair. I used to take her to town. She’d wear, she used to have a two cannulas, and the two cannulas would go up her nose an connect behind onto a bottle

of oxygen. And then there was a platform made at the bottom of the wheelchair where the little small bottle of oxygen would sit there, and of course I’d tie the oxygen bottle on to the wheelchair with an occy [octopus] straps, two occy straps to hold it steady and I’d push her through the shopping centre with the two cannulas. Now the small bottles, because of the excessive amount of oxygen she was using, the small bottles would only last about

four hours. So if we were going through the, the moment it got down to a quarter, that was the sign for me then to, don’t wait for it to get down until it’s empty, I would then go back to the car, leave her just propped there in the wheelchair with the oxygen, go back to the car with a spanner, bring back the full bottle, disconnect the other one and then put the full bottle back on and then take the empty one back to the car and then we’d continue on shopping until there was enough in there,

until I got her home. And I had to make sure there was enough there to drive her home. I had the house renovated, so I had a ramp that would go straight up into the bedroom and I’d…

She got chicken pox and instead of the spots coming out, they went in and landed on her lungs and destroyed both the lungs more or less. They had scar tissue and the scar tissue kept weeping and producing fluid the whole time. And actually her death was that she drowned in her own fluid.

I was trained to give her physio [physiotherapy], I used to give her physio twice a day and that and if she got an infection they would put her on antibiotics. And with the antibiotics, if that strain of infection changed, the antibiotics then wouldn’t work. And of course the infection would get worse. And it was dreadful.

Terrible. I had her in and out of hospital, in and out, in and out. On four occasions I was told by a specialist that she was dying. I would say, “When?” The first time I was told this, the specialist said – no, she went into hospital and they gave, I think it’s called bronchoscopy. They put a tube down into her lungs and they sucked all the phlegm out so that she, make it clear. She could breathe easier.

Even though she still had to have oxygen, right. So naturally as you can imagine, with her lungs full of fluid, it doesn’t matter how much oxygen that you put in there, there’s no room for the oxygen because it’s all full. So I was told by the specialist that she was dying and that I, I said, “When?” And he just said to me, “I can’t tell you when,” he said, “but I can tell you

that I wouldn’t make any plans for the future because,” he said, “you could go out the front door and be hit by a car.” So I just said, so naturally that brought me to tears saying that she was going to die. But she came good and then she was as good as gold and I thought. Next minute she’s back in hospital again and same thing again, specialist told me, it was during,

just coming up to Christmas and the specialist said, “Don’t make any plans for Easter, you won’t have her.” So naturally whenever I saw her having a downer, I would say to, I’d think to myself, “This is it, this is it, this is it. She’s got to go into hospital.”

Seven years. It was incredible. Incredible. And yet I was told so many times that I was going to lose her.

A wharf labourer, stevedore they call them now, wharf labourer, stevedore I think it’s on our marriage certificate. Loading ships and so forth.

I don’t remember too much about west, but down in Buangor I liked it. Used to walk to school, my uncle had a farm, about eight cows and sheep and horses and so forth. No tractors, horse driven ploughs and all that.

I loved it. I really did. And they would pay me. He lived, his brother lived, had another farm within walking distance. And I went to school. And my job at night was cutting kindling wood for the fire, a big open fire. I’d cut the kindling wood and fill up a box and do the same for that, and I was given a halfpenny for doing it. And then when I’d get enough they go into threepence and into sixpence and something like that.

It is between Ballarat and Ararat. It’s about half an hour between Ballarat and Ararat on the Adelaide line.

Oh no. It was only, what would it be, about a couple of hours’ drive I suppose.

Yeah my brother, both of us. My brother Max and myself.

No, didn’t have children it was only the two of us.

I can still see it that my aunty would go out. No such thing as like pasteurising. Go out to the, with a little stainless steel bucket, little tiny one or little aluminium. Go out there and ‘sh, sh, sh’, and then come straight in, the milk was still warm. The cows would be inside and ‘sh, sh, sh’, and then she’d come in and we’d have corn flakes whatever, the milk would go straight over. There was no cream or anything deducted off of it. It was always like that. And

we lived on, there of course they killed their own sheep and rabbit and hare whatever. But when I was down in Marshall Street, we were so poor that every weekend we would go and get, go out and get rabbits so we could have something to eat.

No. I can’t remember that.

My memory is of just being there. I can’t actually remember going up. Naturally Dad never had a car so I really can’t remember how I got up to Buangor in the first place but I was there 12 months.

No because, I think, I enjoyed the life there. I really enjoyed the life there.

I had a favourite horse. Clydesdales naturally, all Clydes. Dolly. And to go into the stable first thing in the morning. Fresh dewy morning and steam from the animals nostrils, and the smell, the smell in the air. I used to, I liked it I really did. And got on well at school. I had, yeah, I got on very well at school. I got a good report that come back to Geelong with me.

Yeah, a couple of times. To go down to the wharf. But I never got a chance down there like to see Dad working or anything like that. No.

It was. You were,

let me see. Three bedrooms, four of us in one double bed. Two boys up the top, two boys down below because we only had a three bedroom down there. It was only a little tiny weatherboard place as I said. Yeah. Being of Chinese descent, my great great grandfather or my great grandfather, was born in Canton.

Came out to Australia in the gold rush years. So I was a descendant of that and my father used to, we used to go into town and he would buy all chicken legs, necks, giblets, hearts, livers and he’d boil it all up, make stock.

And then he’d get some dough and he’d roll it, just flour and water and he’d flatten it just like you would if you were doing a pizza, then he’d roll it over and over, then he’d slice it. Right? And then he’d boil that in water, he’d boil that and put it in a bowl and it was just like if you were going into a Chinese Restaurant now and they have short soup, long soup. Short soup are little wantons and the long soup was, well that’s what we used to call long soup. And from the stock, he’d

pour that over the, right? And he’d cut up a few shallots and put it in. And then going back in them days there was a salt called, Gravox made it, it was called Gravy Salt. And it was salt and it was brown, and instead of having soya sauce, there was no soya sauce, instead of having soya sauce we used to just put a little half a teaspoon and of course it would turn the stock into brown. Like if you put soya sauce in. So we did that and to be honest we used to, we’d be

chewing on the necks of the chicken, eating the giblets, the hearts and the livers, we couldn’t eat the legs but eating the hearts and giblets and the liver. Another food was, my Dad would go and get forequarter chops and he’d cut up the fore quarter chops and he’d put them in a saucepan and he’d boil them. And then he’d slice potato right at the very end and put the potatoes on top until

they were just, without being mushy. And then that’s what we used to have, just potatoes and – chops and potatoes we called it. Chops and potatoes. And if my teeth had have been hard enough, I think I would’ve ate the bone and all because there wasn’t that much to go around. So that’s how, very, very poor at the time.

Yes, he did a lot of cooking. He did a lot of the cooking my

Dad, yeah. He made a lot of meals. He would go to Little Bourke Street in Melbourne, wholesalers and buy a lot of stuff and bring it home and he’d cook up a lot of stuff the Chinese way. What you would call probably, a stew, we used to call it – the word was Chop Suey – and it was just like steak and beans. That’s all it was,

just steak and beans. Sliced beans with steak and some celery and onion in it and served on rice. We always had the rice.

Yeah, well we were more or less raised on, or mostly raised on Chinese food. I mean what they call, the little shrimps of today, you see it in fried rice and that, well we got to

know the names and we’d call that Ha Mai. So Dad would make different dishes with pork, cut up pork and we’d have pork and those little Ha Mais and then Cha Qua, which we called, it was like seaweed, little pieces of black seaweed in it. And have that with, there is a noodles, they’re transparent

noodles, you can get them in there. They’re not egg noodles, they’re transparent ones, they’re like vermicelli type thing and he’d cook all that together and we’d call that Si Fun and we would have that with rice. So whatever that we had, was mostly Chinese. And of course lamb was very hard to get as you can imagine and we generally had mutton. Used to eat mutton, boiled mutton or have it boiled mutton and, it might be just

boiled mutton and potato and say peas. We wouldn’t have that much veggies at all. But that’s about as much as what we had.

No, none of us. My sister, my elder sister has it. My elder sister has it. And if you saw my photos of my aunties,

they were Chinese as Chinese as Chinese. And yet my Dad didn’t look Chinese.

No. We used to play, of a Sunday night we’d play gin rummy [card game] and play for threepence or something like that. And there’d be a crowd, half a dozen of us, just neighbours around, all boys.

And we’d sit there from eight o’clock at night and my father would make this long soup. He’d have it there and these guys would just eat it and think it was absolutely magic. So they used to like it. I could tell you, like pickled eggs. You can imagine eating pickled duck eggs, but we used to. Pickled duck eggs.

Yeah.

No, of course most of the people who were around us were naturally more wealthy than we were and no, they didn’t. We didn’t have any, we got on well with all our neighbours. Just a, might be one say, there was one chap right next door, we got on all right with him but I think he got peeved a few times because, we didn’t have a football, so we’d roll up newspaper and put it in a sock and that and we’d be kicking that around the yard and

next, up on the roof and over the fence, and he’d be working and he’d throw it back over and he used to say, “Youse boys, why don’t you go down to Kardinia Park and kick it around there. You’ve got all the space in the world.” Or we’d be kicking it out in the lane, up and down the lane. Never had a football. Just a sock rolled, with all newspapers rolled up into it and made like a football.

No. No I didn’t.

Yeah, of course. You see there was only Dad and Jean, my eldest sister, she’s only a couple of years older than me, we, she worked at the mill, there was woollen mills in Geelong, she worked at the mill and so did my step-brother Keith, he’s the eldest of the lot of us.

And he worked at the mill as well.

Well he is the son of – my father was married three times. And my mother is of his third marriage. Keith, my step-brother is his son to his second marriage. To his second marriage.

No, no I suppose. Well actually my mother, when my, when his second wife died, when his second wife died he took on a house keeper which happened to be my mother and he married her. In those days they got married. So yeah, so that was what happened. Of course he, he was much,

Naturally, he was much older than she was.

Yeah.

I think,

I can’t remember. I think the Shell would have been there. Fords was there naturally, Fords were there. Fords was there and of course you had all the mills, you had all the mills and you had foundries as you can imagine, and you had GC Taylors, which was a woodwork place. People worked there. And yeah well you know, you had the post office so you would have had a lot of people

there, you had a telephone exchange. But a lot worked on the wharf, a lot did work on the wharf.

Where Bay City Plaza is, on that corner, used to

be the SEC [State Electricity Commission] power station A and there was one out in North Geelong that I worked in, B. Right, there were two power stations. So quite a few worked in there at the power stations. Also, just around the corner, heading towards Melbourne around there, there’s an underground, where you can drive into Bay City Plaza in Brahms Street, well that used to be the tram depot. And the trams used to run, that’s where they were stored at night, the last tram went in there at night and the first thing

there was one run there and went right down to the beach. And one would run right up Moorabool Street right out here to Belmont, right up to the top of the post office and that was the end of the line there. One out East Geelong went out to the Gardens, and one around Newtown, one used to come right up and around Newtown. One went right down Pakington Street West Geelong, went right down to the bridge, practically to the bridge. Yeah, going back them days.

The only time, I went down to Queenscliff, and I was only about 12, 12–13, Sunday School picnic. And there was a trolley, there was a shed at the end of the wharf at Queenscliff and there were like train tracks on there and they had this trolley and the kids used to jump on it, and there’d be some on it and some pushing it. And you used to push it

right along the wharf to the shed. And apparently this particular day, it was the Sunday School picnic, and Milton was sitting on the trolley and they were pushing it and I decided to get off and give it a push. I got off while it was moving and the trolley ran over me and dislocated my neck. But when I was in hospital, the first thing I got was that I let them, I was told, naturally I was crying and crying, and that I had a broken neck and it was

in the paper that I, that there was an accident down at Queenscliff, that a young lad was run over by the trolley at Queenscliff. Yeah when I was only about 12, 13 and I was at a Sunday School picnic. And that was my Queenscliff.

No.

Yeah it was. But they thought it was broken, yeah, just dislocated. The trolley went over.

I think, I thought the navy changed me but I hope these stories that I’m telling you, which are true, I hope they haven’t given you a different version of what it was like. Maybe I was just prone to accidents and injury.

Only the victory in, VE Day, because naturally, and VI or VP Day, when it was Victory in the Pacific. You know, the town went crazy and I can remember, this is something I can really remember, that there was a crowd going up Moorabool Street and they were doing the conga and they had this big line of people hanging onto each other as they were doing the conga. And I’d only be 12 and how I got into Moorabool Street don’t ask me,

but I was in there and I was hanging on to these people’s waists and we were going around doing the conga, all up and down Moorabool Street and I was only about 12. Yeah that’s my recollection of the end of the war.

That was my mother’s brother.

No, because I think it was around about that time that I was up in Buangor. I was up in Buangor when that probably happened. Yeah I was. I was in Buangor.

My brothers?

No. My, I think my step-brother, he joined the army but he never went overseas.

My youngest brother Graham, my youngest brother, he’s 63. He spent, I think he spent six years I think it was, six years in the army, but never left Australia because this was outside war years as you can understand.

No it was during the war,

During the war. I was in Geelong, I was down in Marshall Street so it would’ve been about 1944, just towards the end of the war.

No, no, no there was, maybe, I’m not quite sure about that. Maybe I think that those type of telegrams for people who had sons or whatever in the war, I think they had to be delivered by somebody – they would get a telegram but it would be delivered by someone from the Department of Defence. Mostly ours were like congratulations or birthdays or whatever.

Or arriving on, ‘da da da!’

Yes. Had more or less happy news, yeah. But those that you said, they had to be more or less delivered by, they were delivered by – because as you can imagine the Department of Defence would know first off right, and then they’d have to have somebody like that to deliver the telegram. They’d have to come through the Defence Department.

I don’t know, I have no idea. It must have been

it become, it must have been advertised and I went down, had an interview and was given the job. It was hard work too.

Yes, PMG. And of course those bikes, those bikes were pretty heavy and it had like a heavy framed bike and of course you had your bag with your telegrams in it. You might have eight or nine telegrams and

you were, you’d always sit there and hope that you got through all these and you’d hope that a telegram didn’t come, say, at half past four at night because the post office would shut them nights at five o’clock. And if a telegram came at half past four, quarter to five or something like that, and it was out East Geelong and I lived in Chilwell. Well the time you delivered that and then brought your bike back and then went home, you know. Because you never took your bike home, you had to leave your bike at the post office.

No, go straight home.

Oh sometimes. Sometimes someone, sometimes you’d get a tip but very, very seldom you’d get a tip.

Never. No never got…

Oh yeah.

My word, because as you can imagine, like you’re only 13 or 14 and you can’t …Yeah, it was because as I said you weren’t old enough to go and get a job when you were – was still at school. This was like after school hours and probably Saturday morning.

Yeah.

Yeah, a uniform. Yeah the pants with a red stripe and the hat like a Salvation Army, the Salvation Army type of hat that they wear. Yeah. Oh yeah you had to have your uniform. (UNCLEAR) shirt and tie.

I can’t remember.

Yes, well I’ve always had this

fitness fanatic type of thing with me, from yea, from when I can remember. Like that would definitely, like riding the bike would help me. But even in, down in Marshall Street, we’d go running up and down. We’d run up to Terrace, like going up in them days, we’d run from Marshall Street, right up the top of Latrobe Terrace and then cut through a street and then come down Pako [Pakington Street] and back home again. And this, in the winter time, the same.

Not when it was raining but when it was cold and frosty and I can remember going in after we’d run down, run down the hill, we’ve gone into a milk bar and we’ve had a milk shake and it’s been that cold and we’ve had a, got a headache from the coldness of it. So I did, yeah I used to love running around and playing cricket out in the street. Whatever.

It was never spent on myself, it was always given in to the house.

It wasn’t a lot of money in them days. It was very little, we got paid very little.

Yeah very, very small wage. A very small wage. I think when I worked at the foundry I think I was only getting about seventeen and six a week or something going back in them days. A week.

It did. Tax free outside Australia and all that.

That was at the Backwall Stove Foundry, it is where the Mecure Hotel is in Geelong. I don’t know whether you know the Mecure? It is where the Geelong Post Office PMG clock is, you know where the Post Office Clock is, come up the hill

and as you come up the hill it’s at the next set of lights and it’s on your left hand side, the Mecure Hotel. It used to be called the Travel Lodge going back then, it’s there. Well that was where the Foundry was, on that corner. The foundry was there, stove foundry was there in the early ’50s or before the war.

A moulder. I was being trained, did an apprenticeship as a moulder because the man

who was there, was elderly and he was teaching me all the finer points of moulding because he said that being the youngest there, a lot of the guys had come back from the 2nd World War and were working there, there was navy guys, army guys and that. And I was naturally the youngest there, and so he was teaching me aluminium, brass, moulding, cast

and that but yeah, and that was very, very, very hard heavy work. You made the mould and then you had to get your ladle and fill up your ladle with hot molten metal and then carry it and pour it into all the different moulds. And then when they’d all, when you’d finished, before you left you’d have to lift up all the machinery and pull the cast out and then just stack your stuff away. Black. Black.

Black, I used to be so black. I’d have a shower there and as you can imagine being a young lad, 15, 16, 17 years of age, you were all having a shower there and these blokes they were just saying to me, they were carrying on something stupid like they would say, “Don’t drop the soap.” They used to rubbish me. But I’d go home and even if I went and had a wash at home and then went to a dance Saturday night or a Thursday

night, come home with a white shirt and it’d be still black. Still dark around the collar. It just went into your skin. Yeah it was black, sand and yeah.

In the foundry? Overalls. Overalls and, overalls with a cover around here for your boot, like the normal working boot something like Tanto’s got there, and that’s what we used to wear.

No. There was no such thing as ear muffs or anything.

No, no way. Actually I did get burnt. Some metal spilt and splashed down inside my boot and got me down in there and I’ve still got the scar today. Went down there and I, it didn’t worry me at the time,

it’s funny it didn’t worry me. It wasn’t – and I had to have a shower. And it still didn’t bother me having a shower with it but the next day, I was that sore and then I had to get some stuff put on it. And I think I was away four weeks, five weeks with it because it, stopping it, trying to stop it, keeping infection from it. And we used to put, Rawleighs had a – and this ointment I used to put on it was ‘for man and beast’. And I used to go

to put on it. It was a salve and it was, had on it ‘for man and beast’. But it was very good antiseptic. It was a very good antiseptic.

Oh yeah, they did yeah. They paid me yeah.

I don’t think that I,

I don’t think we, oh we must have had yeah. But I can’t remember ever being involved with it.

Yeah, I can remember that, I do remember that my father used to say to me that they’d go down to the wharf, and if there were no ships down there, they would get what they called appearance money.

That was more or less something just to keep the house going you know. But naturally if they did get a job and if there was no ships here, I’ve known my Dad to say, “Well, we’re going to Melbourne.” And he’s probably gone to Melbourne by bus, say in the morning, come home at night. Or in the afternoon and then come home at midnight or something like that. You know, loading the wharves in Melbourne if there was nothing here. But as you say,

if there was a wharf strike during the war years, then they used to just go down and get appearance money. And if there were no ships there or if they never got a job in Melbourne, because they had to go down and they had to look at the roster to see if they were rostered on to go to Melbourne. And if they weren’t rostered on to go to Melbourne, they had nothing to do, but again they would get what they called appearance money just for more or less turning up.

No.

Well, we, I used to go to the, when I was in Geelong I’d go, I was working at Backwall’s and we used to go to the theatre down in Geelong and I used to take her to the movies. Going back in them days,

if you got a bottle of Franklins lemonade or whatever, when it was empty, you took the bottle back to the shop and they gave you five cents refund on it. Well with that five cents, we’d take two or three bottles back and it’d get me enough money to take my girlfriend to the theatre. And the theatre – Monday night was horror night. I can always remember that, Monday night was horror night with Dracula, Frankenstein and The

Mummy and all that. And then Saturday night you had two movies as you can understand. Intermission, intermission well, at intermission I’d have to buy her a drink or some Jaffas or whatever, some lollies or Violet Crumble. Anyhow we were going together about 18 months I suppose. Yeah about 18 months we must’ve been going together.

And I used to go to her house for a meal and she would come to my house for a meal. And we’d go to the Palais together, go home together. And going back in them days you didn’t even have to lock your back door, there was no, you know. And I would walk. She lived in Newtown and I lived in Chilwell. And we’d go to the Palais and I would walk her through Kardinia Park at midnight after the Palais, never, ever, ever be

frightened. It never ever entered my head to be frightened. We’d never see anybody. You’d walk through there. I used to walk through there to the Palais, walk home from the Palais and never, never, ever in all the times I was there were you attacked or saw any fights or mugging or anything like that. So, but, when I was going, anyhow, I’d take her home and she had an elder sister,

and a boyfriend and they’d be gone somewhere, but when we come home, we would park out on the front verandah and of course they used to go inside. And we’d be parking out on the front verandah and, “Shh,” like be careful so we didn’t wake up the father or the mother or have her sister or intended brother-in-law come out. And I think I, I think her mother…

I think her mother might’ve thought that – she got the impression, I think, that my testosterone level was getting too high for her daughter, so she: that was it. I think that’s why we had a talk and thought that we, she said we were both very, very young and she was frightened that it was getting too serious and that it’d be better if we just remained friends and just saw each other every now and then.

That was ’49.

Before he got married?

Yes, I’d say so, yes. She might’ve heard the noise on the verandah, I have no idea. The wooden boards might have kept them awake, and she thought,

“That’s it,” you know. No, I’ve got no, she just thought it was becoming too serious.

It was just that I hardly saw her after that.

I would’ve. I would’ve got married, yes my word. I would’ve got married.

Yes of course. Yeah well, I was only 18, she would’ve been only 16 or 15.

No. No. I partnered with her at her eldest sister’s wedding in 1949. I partnered Esme, and no. And as I said,

Well, they had me up for lunch nearly, well one Sunday that I’d go to their place for lunch and the following Sunday, Esme would come to my place. But it was far better going up to her place because they were wealthy and we weren’t. So it was just making it hard for Mum and Dad, bringing someone home.

Navy.

No. We’d been apart for about six months before I made that decision to go and. Actually it was about six of us decided we’d all go in the navy. And out of the six I think only two of us went in. The others pulled the plug.

Probably travel. I’d say travel, to be able to travel around and naturally that you had a uniform. It, and it, you had, you got, naturally, you’d get three good meals a day and you’d, as I said you were paid, and if you left Australia, well naturally your money was pretty good outside Australia. A whole,

Fortnightly, as it is now, a pension, a fortnightly allotment. Yeah so, no, it was good. I totally enjoyed it. As I said, it wasn’t until 1998 that I knew that I had a problem from it.

And being a young navy, young

lad, you know. All I used to, always dress nice in uniform. Wouldn’t go without the uniform. Had to have the uniform to go to the dance or whatever. It was the most, it was just like attracting bees to honey it was.

Pulled the plug.

School. They were actually from school and just, they were neighbourhood, just around the streets where we lived, in the street where we lived.

More or less neighbours and that, they were the same age as us.

Yeah, we just, at the time we just thought this is the way to go. This is 1950 see, 194…

1950. No war. The war hadn’t started.

No, hadn’t kicked off by the time we were talking about this. And, or if it had, it was really early stages, I don’t think, they didn’t get involved, Australia until 1951, I think.

Yeah World War 11 had finished, I’m talking about thinking of going into the navy

in early stages of 1950.

No, never. Never even occurred to me that we’d be involved in the war. Never thought for one minute that we’d be involved in a war.

Well that’s just all, radio

and newspaper.

No.

In Melbourne.

Nowhere in Geelong, no had to go to Melbourne. Had to go to Lonsdale. HMAS Lonsdale which was down at Port Melbourne.

Went there and then from there, enlisted there and then went down to Cerberus to do our training.

No.

Yeah we were interviewed that you’d like to go in. Of course naturally they gave you papers that you had to sign and had to get Mum and Dad to sign it to say – then you had to have an entrance exam

to get in, and a physical exam. All that, you had to be physically tested and all that. So…

Actually I was a pretty good swimmer and yet they’ve got me down as a swimming fan. And yet I could swim underneath the Barwon River from one side to the other when I was a child without coming up. And swim the length of the Head of the River, up and down, up and down.

Well we’d discussed it. I said that all the guys were going into the navy, I’d like to go with them. So we signed up and did that and then I find out that out of the whole lot, there was one, two, three, four, four of them pulled the plug and there was only three of us went in. Actually only the three of us went in.

No. We went in at different times. I went in and then they – actually I caught up with a couple of them. Yeah, but no, only the three of us only the three of us went in.

I’m trying to remember.

I know they gave you like as I said an education test on spelling, also they a colour blindness test, right, you had to have that to see if you were colour blind. Education test, also had a physical thing, physical examination. And then you were given, given your shots.

The tetanus, typhoid in case, in case, this is at Flinders Naval Depot there, in Cerberus, in case you did happen to leave Australia they’d be covered by that. Small pox and all that. So yeah you had to have all that done. And then you also had to attend a sexual transmitted disease class.

I passed. Did you notice I had to think? But I did pass. I was trying to give you a percentage, whether I got 80% or 100%. Or just managed to get 60. No, no it was just that they, they taught you these things, and they had the photos and everything of what could happen if you contracted all these, so...

They were vivid. Vivid photographs. They had photographs, they had a slide with all the photos

of people who have suffered trans… sexually transmitted disease.

Oh I wouldn’t say looking shabby but I would say they looked pretty yucky. Sores or whatever. Yeah, but they’d say, “This is what could happen to youse guys so,

you know, you’ve got to be careful of what you do when you leave Australia.” Or even if you were around in the street, you’d get. During my early days like, off in the navy, we had a – there was a girl in Geelong and she used to ride a bike all around Geelong and her pet aversion was navy guys. And she’d ride up the street

and she was known as ‘two-bob Maisy’. That was her name. And of course, she’d be one of the people that you were taught not to get involved with. But she’d walk up, she’d ride up along side you, “Hello sailor,” and all this, and, “Where are you going?” “Would you like to come for a ride?” Or something like that. Lots of, lots, but these were the things that they taught you, plus be careful with, I’ll use the term now, gay guys.

Because there was a lot of them, a lot of them in Geelong, in Geelong, a lot of those guys in Geelong. And one of them accosted me. I was at the top of Moorabool Street, there was a church and I only had to cross the lights and I was in the Palais, this bloke wanted to drive me to the Palais, “Can I give you a lift?” And he said, “Where you going?” I said, “I’m only going to the Palais.” He said, “Hop in, I’ll give you a ride.” “Here, I’m only going across the lights.” And I was there, but he was that.

Both. But never ever. I only mentioned it yesterday, I had to go to Ballarat to a meeting and I only mentioned it to our president. In our day there was nothing, we never, ever had any bastardisation in the navy while I was there, never. Never, never heard of it. Never knew of anybody who was in, on the ship I was on the Anzac, or any of the ships I served on, even out here at, none of them have I ever known to be gay.

None of them, not that I know of.

Oh that was just something like that, “It’s your turn in the barrel,” or something like that. Yeah that was just, yeah it was only, it’s a myth.

No, that’s a myth, only part of the humour. Only, yeah, I only got told yesterday actually, the president said, “How many times did you have your turn in the barrel?” Or something like that. My president, he’s a World War 11 fellow he is, yeah. President of the

EDA [Extreme Disablement Adjustment Association].

Yeah, that was, no, because they were older than me. They’d been in the Second World War most of them. But they’ve come back. When they’ve come back we’re talking about they were in their 30s or something like that at the time. Yeah that was just a joke that they had. But there was nothing, I was never, ever, ever molested or touched or anything like that.

It was just like the, I’d say, the kids, I won’t say embarrassed, but more or less a chuckle type thing. “Yeah yeah we know all about that, yeah,” you know, “We know all about that type of thing.” Even though

we did take it seriously, but we acted probably lightly at the photos and that, like that.

Well apparently this person was pretty well known in Geelong. She was very well known in Geelong. And these guys apparently were well known, there was guys in Geelong.

Actually in 1952, ’53, I was away at the time. Some navy guys or a navy guy killed one of these guys out Eastern Gardens. Kicked his head in and he died. And he was a navy guy out there. But this happened in ’53 or ’52. I was away at the time but I had a letter saying that, my family saying that one of the navy guys from the ship

out here, had killed this gay guy out at Eastern Gardens.

Yeah. You could be – they would say to you when you went in, you had like, if you wanted to be a seaman, naturally you would learn all about

seamanship. If you wanted to be in the engine room, you wanted to be a stoker, they taught that you had to have, you’d go in a section and you’d have an officer teaching you all about boilers, turbines and whatever and so you spent that time in that class. I think my class was called E484. And you had a book and each book told you about engines and boilers and oil and so forth. And you

learnt all that before you went on. And that was done, when you learnt that down at Flinders Naval Depot, because you did three months, I think it was three months of what they called the bull ring, of – down there, and then you did a three months course if you wanted to be a sig [signalman], wanted to be a doctor, cook, whatever you chose, whatever, you wanted to be. I chose to be a stoker so I went into the engine room class. And my teacher is still alive and

I still see him. He taught me. And taught me. And he’s still got the list of all the names of all the guys that he taught. He said, “I must show you one day, your name’s on it.”

Six years. I had the choice of six, twelve, like that. The only reason probably that I didn’t do twelve years was because I got married and then I thought well, that was in ’54, and I was due out in ’56 and I thought well that’ll be

’62. And I thought, “That’s eight years and I could be away a fair bit.”

Yes. I understand.

No you couldn’t. You couldn’t. The only reason why that they would discharge you would be of a medical condition or if a, on very, very

good, say like if, at the time my wife was say terminally ill, well then they would definitely let me out then on compassionate grounds. But apart from that no, you signed on for six years, you did six years. And a lot of guys, I know a couple of guys that went AWOL [AWL – Absent Without Leave] and one of the guys was staying with his uncle, not his own house, but at his uncle’s house. And then there was a knock on the door and he’s gone to go out the back, they’ve gone from the front, there was a bloke,

he ran straight into the arms of the military police out the back. They caught him. Instead of going out the front he went out the back and they were there waiting for him. So yeah. So he was taken, well then you were taken back and you were given prison. I think it was Holsworthy in them days. Some went to Holsworthy, you spent time, and of course that went on your record. And each four years you got a good conduct badge, which was that. That shows you was four years good conduct.

If you’re there eight, well you’d have two. If you were there long enough. And so that was your good conduct badge and then if you’d done something, that was extra time that you’d have to spend to get that back again. So if you were, you’d say been there four years and three years and nine months and you’d committed a felony well, that would, then you’d have to go wait until then to come back again. You know, start again.

No. It never entered, I didn’t know nothing about it at the time. Didn’t know nothing about it at the time. It was like, as you can imagine, my mind was filled with what I’d lost with my girlfriend and then so, it was really, it was nothing really the navy and all that. All I was thinking at the time was travel. To be out of Geelong, to be away from everything, to get over everything.

To get away. And that was probably, and I knew there’d be travel in it naturally and so that was more or less why. But as far as what I would have to do, to get there, I had no idea. And where I was going, I had no idea.

No. I thought if I, a lot of guys did. They got, some of them got ‘Shirley’ or something. But that’s all right if you get ‘Shirley’ on and then all of a sudden she dumps you and you’re going out

with Jane, well that doesn’t look too good with ‘Shirley’. No I never, no.

No I never. Never ever dreamed. A lot of guys that I know that were in the navy with me did have them, you know, but I didn’t.

From the day you were down at Flinders. The day you were in Flinders. Yeah, you had to have different work attire. Each of them had a name, your ones, your twos, your sixes, your eights.

As far as I can try to remember, I know your eights were your working gear. Blue shirt, name on it, blue shirt with your name and blue trousers. That’s your working gear, they were eights. The sixes were pure white, all white and I’ve got photos of them here and your ones I think were, your twos were like something you would wear in the mess deck like of a night-time type of thing.

That might be just a jersey and a pair of, and your navy pants or something like that. And your ones would be your full regalia if you were, and of course you had a little dicky front we called it – white and blue. Well that was for summer time and you had your blue, little blue jersey that you’d wear underneath your collar and that would be like a winter type of gear. Yeah you had

a few things, but I know from – eights were your working gear, sixes were all white and I know that, then you had navy blue shorts, no white shorts, navy blue long socks, white shorts, navy long and white T-shirt with, not a – like square here with a blue band across here and the rest. And that was another dress with a name, with a number, but I just can’t remember.

No. I didn’t get a tiddly suit made. Did I get a tiddly suit made? Yeah, I might’ve. Yeah I think I did. Yes, that’s right. I remember, because it was a different material to the navy. Because your navy ones, the one, they didn’t actually fit you as tightly as the tiddly ones did. Yeah I did, yeah for sure. Yeah.

I went and had one made; I think it was in Melbourne, we had nothing in Geelong so it was in Melbourne that I had it done. It might’ve been a place called, I think it was Glendennings, I’m not sure. Yeah I had one done.

Your toiletries, just your toiletries, more or less, and you wore

something like this in there. And then the moment that you were there, they, you automatically changed into your working gear. Just took these back home and you never wore them again. Only if you went ashore, you didn’t have to wear your uniform ashore. You didn’t have to, you could wear civilian clothes. If I, when I went home, I could get out of these – out of my uniform and then

get into my civilian clothing because I was home on leave and that was allowed.

No.

All right. Tried every few tricks to get away from church of a Sunday.

No, it was just that, not so much the service, I felt the boring part was getting, having to get all dressed up, have your church service, come back and then get back into your working gear again. I thought, “That’s a pain.” And of course a lot of guys used to go way up into the – that time I was there, there was a lot of bush back of the Cerberus – and they’d go up and hide there. Of course, they’d send around petty officers around to every mess to see who was hiding, “Why aren’t you there?”

And ‘da da da!’ And they finished up they finally caught up to the guys that were hiding up in the bush and when the church service was over they’d come back in, so they used to send the petty officers and some others to go up through the grass and be checking on guys that was, that were hiding in the grass so they didn’t have to go to church service. And if you were caught, if you were caught, and then there goes your weekend leave. You weren’t allowed to go on – no more weekend leave.

All right. I don’t think the whole time that I was in the service, I don’t think that I had any problems at all with discipline. I made a few faux pas that I was really made aware of. Never, not disciplined or

because of it, just more or less told, aware of who I was and who I was talking to.

Good. I thought they were all right.

How many people. Yeah at the RSL [Returned & Services League]. He’s well into his 80s and I think he’s forgetting but.

I’d go over there and he reckoned he knows my face, “I know your face.” I said, “Milton Hoe, Class E484.” “1950.” I said, “Yeah that’s right.” So we chat and he said, “Well, you went through, what number?” And I said – oh ‘E’ was naturally standing for engineering, right, and the class was the 484th class – so, and he said, “Well if you were in E484, I would have a list.” Because we were all signed, when we

finished our book we signed it all and give it to him. “So,” he said, “I’d have your name at my house.” He said, “I think you should come over one day,” he lives in Bellbottom, “Come over one day and we’ll go through it.”

The Geelong guys?

Oh yeah. No we, those who did the class with me, more or less, I was lucky enough to, we travelled around a fair bit because a lot of them went shipped one way, da da da so, yeah, I and naturally, each class, in my class would have guys from Sydney, Adelaide or something like that. Or they would go home to wherever they were but yeah, or

some they came on the Australia were all together, right and then when the, then when we got drafted to different ships well you’d be lucky to see them. But I was fortunate enough to, there was about three or four who went through the class with me that were on the Anzac with me.

Well, you started off,

when I went in I was a recruit stoker. And then you went from a recruit stoker and you did your work in the boiler room, engine room, gear room, whatever, and each stage that you went to a level

where a petty officer or whoever would say that, “You’ve served your time,” da da da, and, “You’re now become a stoker.” And then from a stoker you would go to a stoker mechanic and then from a stoker mechanic you’d go to a leading stoker, which I finished up out of the navy as a leading stoker. But they changed the name a lot. I think when I left I was a, they changed it to engineer mechanic.

And it was a, I was LEM [Leading Engineer Mechanic] and a lot of, if a petty officer it was just a POEM, petty officer engineer mechanic. So they changed it to engineer mechanic and I think when I left the navy that was the terminology. It was never stoker or whatever. Then it was leading or engineer mechanic.

I have no idea. I have no idea. I can’t remember why I chose the engine room. It may have been, I just didn’t, it might have been I didn’t fancy myself being on the upper deck and watching all the waves and the ship rolling around, and you’re on duty up there and you have to do something and the waves you know. Maybe it was that, but no, I just can’t remember why I chose the engine room.

It was warmer.

To do my training.

Very, very big. My first day on board we left Cerberus in a little boat to go out to the Australia. And we got there around about

six a.m. or something in the morning. Six or seven a.m. in the morning. And your hammock with all your gear in it. So yeah we got on there and the first morning I’ll never forget it, they had eggs for breakfast and you could smell the eggs when you were, as soon as you hit the ship. And the smell of the eggs was very similar, I,

I, at this stage of my life, to unleaded petrol. It stinks like rotten eggs, but there was a young, there was a chap with me, his name was Wally Raison, and he was so ill when he went down below deck because it was hot down below and the smell of the eggs, made, and we went like left Westernport and we were going out and the waves

and that, started to roll, it was a bit rough and he had the smell of the eggs and next minute he goes up deck and he’s throwing up over the side, which he’d never had hardly anything inside him to throw up, but he was so bad that, and I can remember saying to him, “Come in or you’ll get washed over the side.” You know, I was very concerned, but he would not, he did not come back down below there. He was, well I’ll use the term, he was green. He was green from, but the strain

of him dry reaching, he must’ve done some damage inside because he started to bring up blood and I, as far as I know, last thing I heard, he come from Western Australia, the last thing I heard was that he was – he never joined another ship. He was shore based for the rest of his trip.

So that was, yeah, so he and after when we, actually our class must’ve been the last

class that Harry took, because he then joined the Australia. He then joined the Australia because he was on the Australia when I was on it there for a while.

Well at that time it was, we didn’t,

I didn’t realise that it had been involved in so much action and the damage from the kamikazes and all that. I didn’t realise that until later on that I knew all about it because I didn’t know much about it at all when I, or I don’t remember. It probably, I would’ve seen it in the paper that the Australia hit by kamikaze planes

and that. But no I can’t remember at that time. It was just to me at that time, it was just like a training ship for me. Just to get the feeling of an oil room and engine room type of thing, you know, what I would be doing when I went to another ship. This is what I would be doing.

Well it could’ve been. I don’t know. That could’ve been. It could’ve been, working in the

foundry. It could’ve been.

No I can’t. I can’t remember.

Oh yeah, well I can say that yeah, it’s loud and hot and you have two big wheels, two wheels: one big, one small. The big wheel, when you’re in the engine room, is you’ve got a Geiger counter up there that’s full ahead, slow ahead, whatever, right? And

it’s come from the bridge so they ring down, “Slow ahead,” you know, “Slow ahead 30 knots,” or whatever. And, or whatever, and then you’ve got this wheel and you’ve got this rev counter and you keep turning the wheel and the wheel and the wheel and what that’s doing is that’s supplying steam to the turbine that drives the propeller that pushes the ship forward, fast. Until you get to that level of,

Say, 30 knots or 20 knots or 10 knots or whatever. Once you get that level then you just hold it on that and you just keep the wheel on that. Then if you get a situation where you want to go into reverse, well then you spin this big wheel shut and then open the little wheel. And then all of a sudden that supplies steam to the – and the propellers will turn the other way. And of course they turn the other way and of course it,

that means that then you will remain, say, going forward until they take over, then there’ll be like, stop, and you’ll go backwards. Then you go back into reverse. The little wheel was mostly the small one because, naturally, very, very seldom you’d use the reverse propellers unless you were backing out from a wharf. But once you got out into the ocean, you’re more or less on cruise control or

whatever. You know, very seldom you’d have to use it, and that’s what the little wheel, that’s what and you’d use it just more or less, I was just told what that would be used for and that. At that stage we were only told, we never operated it, we weren’t to operate we were just told. We’d stand there and we’d watch the person doing it and then take it all in that what they’re doing is what they’re doing, same down in the boiler room. You were told, you go down there and that and – and in the gear room that they had,

steam generators and so forth like that, evaporators and that made, evaporated the salt water into fresh water. So in all that, it was part and parcel of your training.

Petty officer.

Nice bloke.

He just explained, and naturally as you can understand that you weren’t down there all the time because you would have someone else that, you might be down there four hours and another shift would come on. You might be down there eight till four, eight till midday or I mean you don’t get time off and you might have to come back at eight at night till midnight or something like that. But huge ship

and a lot of people on it, crammed in.

Yeah. I never, ever did like the big ships. Aircraft carriers or whatever because I knew a couple of fellows who were on the air craft carrier on the Vengeance and that and when they, went to England to bring the Vengeance back and you could be on there for about

six months and you wouldn’t see anybody. You wouldn’t know. There could be a bloke from Geelong on it and you mightn’t even know, you mightn’t see him. Whereas with the destroyer, you more or less got to know everyone because you’re so close knit, so close knit you were. I’ve got friends who were seaman that were on the Anzac with me from Geelong and I’ve still got friends as I said, still alive, still with me that were in the engine room with me and in the mess deck with me.

Yeah. Like when you come off or whatever, we used to play mahjong and cards and or write a letter home and yeah, yeah. There was lots of things to do.

Oh yeah, yeah. Talk. Yeah. If there was,

like if the ship was cruising and you’re not going to do any activities, well you’ve got everything more or less set. But the plates in the boiler room were aluminium and you’d have a wire scrubber and you’d have to scrub them or you’d be wiping, mopping up any oil or whatever. So it was always spotlessly clean. Always spotlessly clean. You never took over from anybody that

that the floor was dirty. Everybody, especially the recruits or the stoker you never, petty officer, there was always a petty officer in charge in the boiler room. Petty officer in charge in the engine room probably an ERA [engine room artificer] or you might have a chief stoker down in the boiler room if you were doing manoeuvres or anything. So you were there more or less as a recruit

or as a stoker or whatever. But if you were a leading hand, well you had a, you didn’t have to probably worry about it, you had other guys doing it for you. Same with a petty officer, you know, he’d just give the orders and you’d obey the orders. Engine room, boiler room, gear room, whatever.

Back to Geelong.

Yes.

Yeah, I felt yeah pretty confident. Came back out here to the ships in reserve and it was a home away from home for me. Home every night, very seldom that I kept a duty weekend. The only duty weekend I kept was a disaster. I was a leading stoker at the time and I was acting petty officer. And I was acting PO [Petty Officer] for the day, out on here,

and we had a lot of drunks out here and they mixed a whole, it was a Saturday night, they mixed up a whole box of grapes. We were given grapes, fresh fruit, right, and they got the grapes and they munched them all up into a kettle with a sieve on the top of it and they were going like to get all the juice from the grapes. Then they mixed it with pure alcohol that they stole

out of the sick bay. And mixed the alcohol in with the grape juice and they drank it. And one bloke was sent to hospital. He was paralysed. Had to get the ambulance out to Kings Wharf out to North Geelong to put him in hospital. And the officer of the watch come down and said to me, he told me in no uncertain terms that I was supposed to be in charge of things and this is going on, “What happened?”

I said, “I didn’t see anything sir.” This is what the guys used to get up to. When I was out here, as I said, a home away from home, they, I’ve known guys, the ship used to, the launch would take the guys in and then drop them off at four o’clock and those that were left on board for duty, some of them smuggled girls on board. And they’d come back on the launch and they’d stay on the launch until the chap that was in charge of the launch saluted the officer and

he’d just say, “okay put the launch away.” Until, say, whatever, and then the girls would be smuggled on board and if it was a Saturday night, the launch would have to go back into Geelong to pick up the guys who didn’t live in Geelong that’d gone to the Palais, at midnight, and the launch had left, the girls would be dropped off again.

One of them was a navy man that’s still alive. He’s back in hospital now, I know him very well. He used to say that what they had to put up with and their stories about

their time in the navy in the war. Once again, I don’t know whether I maybe was too young to sink it all in to realise that what they went through. And there wasn’t, they never discussed it at great length and they never discussed it amongst themselves at great length while we

were there. And it’s just that I never probably took it in if they were talking about it because it may be that I was just too young to realise at this time that they, I was there what 16, 17 years of age, 18 years of age, so possibly I didn’t realise the depth of what they went through in New Guinea or wherever they served.

So it didn’t hit me and now I realise it must have been very, very traumatic for them the same with the Vietnam veterans, how traumatic it must’ve been for them as well. Because doing a post traumatic stress course you find out why you have been like you have towards family and other people.

Why, and because of what happened and what you saw and what caused us to be this traumatised, for you to have this trauma. Now, going back in those times that I worked in the foundry I suppose that what I had, post traumatic stress would’ve been called shell shock.

In these guys?

Only probably maybe just anger. Anger, but apart from that no anxiety. I can’t remember any of them having panic attacks or anything like that, but there were times when there were angry words were said amongst a pair of them or those that worked there. So

yeah possibly, maybe if anything just your anger probably.

It was very, very hard work. See, I have no idea how hard these men found it to get a job when they came back from the war. I have no idea. But I can

assure you that the job that was done, that had to be done in the foundry, was very, very hard. Was, especially for me as well because another thing too is that in the foundry, very very little did you get a chance to stand up straight. You were bent over most of the time shovelling the sand in the mould and then mixing it up and then lifting it off and then, the only time really you had a chance to

to stand up straight and to have some time standing up, was when you’d completed your whole row that you had to have and then that you were waiting for the metal to be hot enough to be poured. That would be the only time. From then on obviously you’ve got your ladle and you were bent over again going like, you could never stand up because it was that heavy, you’ve got your gloves on. So yeah it was pretty heavy work.

Well in the foundry every one of them, I think, were returned servicemen.

All of them were returned servicemen.

No.

All returned servicemen, every one of them. One navy guy I think, all the rest were army.

No, no, they all were nice blokes.

No.

Yeah, probably posters. ‘Uncle Sam Needs You’, I remember seeing a poster

like that with a photo of the American flag and Uncle Sam like pointing, ‘Uncle Sam Needs You’ or something.

Yeah.

Yeah. Poster, there would be posters like I’ve seen them joined, there was a photo like

they might have an army, navy, air force, join the WAAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force] or join the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] or whatever and there’d be like three women or nurses with their uniform or something like that. But I did see a poster of, with ‘Uncle Sam Needs You’, you know.

No I can’t remember.

No not at all.

The only thing I can remember about that would be when they came home, the jubilation type thing. I can remember that, but I can’t remember what they actually were talking about. All I knew was that the war was over and the adulation that went with it. Everybody was jubilant, jumping up and down and ticker tape

going everywhere, but apart from that no, I haven’t got much recollection of it.

No. I can tell you a story. When my father worked on the wharf and I remember him saying to me, this story, told me this story.

When they were loading the ship with iron, and of course Bob Menzies was the Prime Minister, they, I remember them saying, my Dad saying to me that the Chinese crew on that, or Asia crew on that ship or the shipping company, I can remember him saying to me that they were saying, “One day, we take Australia.” That’s true. My Dad said that.

That, “One day, we come back, we take Australia.” And that would have been, so they must have known then that Japan was going to come into the war. They must’ve known Japan was going to come into the war.

Nothing. No. I didn’t even, no I never thought for one

minute that Japan would take like Australia or Germany would take England. Didn’t even think of it, didn’t even think of it at the time. Probably so young, 12, 13, 14 year old, 15 year old, it never ever went into the depth of my brain. As I said, being from

a poor family you’re more concerned about what you’re going to eat the next day than what’s happening around you. That was the problem with us. Especially at that time. Having friends and so forth. It was more or less what was happening around me at that time that probably I didn’t worry about.

No, no. Well that’s true. I can tell you how poor we were, was that I’d see a guy at school, I’d see a guy that’d be at school and he’d have an apple, I’d ask him for a bite or would he leave me the core. And that’s how bad that we, I was looking for some fruit or anything. And the only fruit we used to get was when we used to go around

the street at night and if it was hanging over the fence we used to go and pinch some fruit. That’s about, yeah, those that were hanging, we’d be climbing up the fence or something like that to get some peaches or apples or whatever. As I said, most of the money, and we were only renting the house we didn’t own the house, Dad didn’t own the house we were only renting it. Of course the chap used to come around every once a week to pick up or once a fortnight or something to get the rent. So you can imagine if Dad didn’t have the job at the wharf and he only got appearance

money, well that had to go, it’s got to go into the rent. And even the, everything that we had, furniture or whatever, it was always on time payment. It was never paid off straight away, never had the money to pay it off straight away. It was always paid off so you’d have the people coming around and also the insurance, your life insurance and all that that they were involved with, you had to have the money for that.

No, I didn’t notice it, I believe that they were stationed here, there were some stationed here at the Geelong Showgrounds but no.

The only thing that I can recollect, say, of the Americans being in Australia, an American navy guy, an American sailor murdered a girl at St Kilda beach. I remember, I just forget the name, I’ve always thought of the name of the, the guy’s name, but no, I can’t now bring it to thought. But it did happen.

Yeah, Leonski. That’s the bloke, that’s it. So I remembered that

happening during the war, I think it was at St Kilda down there. Yes I remember that. Gee you’ve got a good memory.

Very hard to remember the reactions of it. But I know it made a lot of publicity, got a lot of publicity so there would have been a lot of apprehension there, say, mostly say like from women, I’d say. But I can’t remember.

No.

All right, it was;

I enjoyed it. I can’t say at any time that I ever, ever felt like I didn’t like to go back down the boiler room or down the engine room or anything like that. Not in the early stages of my term in the navy. Naturally after our

episode in Korea, it made me a lit bit apprehensive; but then again, I was lucky enough to do the royal tour which more or less took my mind off a lot of things.

No, not at that time because at that time, when I was doing my training,

the war in Korea, our involvement hadn’t even been involved in it at that time.

No. It would probably now, if they went in now they’d have to be. But at that time no, because, different now because you’ve got a different situation where you’ve got so much terrorism and that going on.

As my training we didn’t have nothing like that. We weren’t told, have anything like that.

After I’d done my training and I came back to Geelong, I did my training

at Cerberus, the first bit of it was in the bull ring and the next lot of it was with the engine room department learning about that, going on the Australia to doing my sea time on the Australia and then after that I was sent home. I was sent to your nearest depot, which was at Geelong. It was out at Geelong that I got the, that I was being drafted to the HMAS Anzac.

At that time it was in Williamstown and I had to go to Williamstown to join.

The skipper and that they, or the engineer would just come and say, “You’ve been drafted, you’re going up to, you’re going to join the HMAS Anzac.”

On board yeah, that these chaps, these are listed to go to the Anzac, they’re going somewhere else, they’re going somewhere else.

What they do at your early stages, you go to, like as I said on the Australia and then they, during that time that you spent on the Australia, I’ve got it there somewhere, the amount of time

that I was on it. Three months or whatever. In that time you spend your time learning about, because what you’ve had at Flinders Naval Depot, Cerberus, was theory. So when you go to sea, it’s practical. What you’ve learnt from doing the engineer’s course, for a stoker as a recruit, what you learnt there in theory, you carried that on board the

on the HMAS Australia, and then you do practical. And then what you’ve been taught, you just stand down on there and you can see it being done practically.

No. It was more or less exactly the same because what you had learnt in the school, is what happened down in the boiler room, engine room, whatever.

Just around to

Jervis Bay and around to here in say Westernport Bay. Never went out, never went overseas or never left Australia. Just around here, just around the bay outside.

They would have done gunnery training and all that, yeah that’s for sure. Those who had become seamen, those who had become, that wanted to join like gunnery or signalmen. See if a guy, if I had gone in as a signalman,

well then, what I’d been taught at the sig school at Flinders, then I would be on there and they’re probably have another ship out there so that they learnt how to – with the flags, you know. Or the – so they’d learn all that so the radar was the same thing. Whatever division of the service that you went in to, that was where they took you to get the practical side of it.

No, well I wouldn’t know. No I don’t remember. If it had happened I’d probably be down in the engine room, or be in the mess deck.

No, I can’t remember. I know that there were, I know that definitely there

was three stokers that were in the course with me at Flinders, that went to the Australia that finished up on the Anzac.

No. Actually when I did join the Anzac, I was lucky that there were leading stokers on there who had been in service before me naturally, because they were leading hands and I was only just

a stoker, but they were from Geelong. It give you that little bit of comfort to know that you’re not on this ship and you don’t know, but it didn’t take long before everybody got to know you. You all had nicknames and so forth. There was a chap, he

passed away, but he was a leading stoker from Geelong, and he was on board and his name was Bill Tyler and he passed away, but he was always called Tim, Tim Tyler, there was a comic named Tim Tyler, Tim. Hall, anybody, Frank Hall was called Nobby Hall, Nobby Clarke, Lee – Dixie Lee as from Dixie Lee, you know. These were all

guys, and they’re still, different names, where they come from like mine, believe it or not was ‘Sister’ and a lot of guys still call me ‘Sis’. “Hi Sis.” I get on the phone and I’m talking to different guys and they say, “Hi Sis.” And Roche was always Cocky for cockroach. Cocky Roche.

I don’t know, I can’t remember. I have no idea but I’m still known to the guys that I talk to,

they’ll talk to me on the phone, the first thing they’ll say is, “Hi Sis.” Still here it, still called it. A mate of mine down in Drysdale, he still calls me Sis.

Well definitely a lot different because it’s a lot smaller. The crew’s a lot different because you’ve only got about 300. The crew’s a lot different.

And you’re down in a mess deck and your all stokers, leading stokers, no petty officers because they had their own mess, so you’re more or less leading hands, stokers, stoker mechanics, so you’re all in the one mess, and even though the leading stokers are above you in rating, and they more or less some of them can be like in charge of you.

They’ll always have some leading stoker and you still have your own job in the engine room, boiler room whatever, but when you come off, some time, you’ve got to have like a leading stoker in charge of the mess deck because you would have around about seven at night they called it rounds. And the officer would come down and inspect the mess deck and so your table had to be clean, everything had to be stowed away

and everything had to be all neat and that. Everything had to be spick and span for him to you know. And then the leading hand of the mess deck, the leading stoker, he, you could hear the bosun’s mate coming behind the officer of the day, which you knew stand by for rounds. And of course he’d come down the ladder, he’d go around all the different, come down the ladder and the leading hand who was in charge of the mess deck there at the time,

would salute him at the, salute the officer of the watch we called it, the officer of the watch, salute him and then the officer would go around and he’d have his offsider behind him taking down notes, “Mark that down,” something like that, “Towels being left around,” or, yeah, “That hasn’t been, hammocks only one up,” or, “Not together,” or, “Not stowed away.” He’d write that down. So then the leading stoker would have to

remind that chap that next time that they do it, better not be like that again because the mess deck would have been in trouble for it. But we did, I got to know everybody, as I said, I was on it over, I was on it two years and a lot of the crew left after Korea but I stayed on it and then did the royal tour on it.

Always.

Even when I was a lad going to school, when I was going to Geelong Technical School when I was 14 years of age, how poor we were was I only had one pair of shorts, grey, one pair of long pants, grey, and one blue shirt and one tie and a hat. Every night I’d come home from school,

I would get out of my school clothes and I would wash the collar of my shirt with velvet soap in an enamel dish with hot water, I’d wash it because you can imagine how dirty with, I’d wash that and then I’d hang that in the kitchen, I’d wring it out as tight as that and wrap it in a towel to get all the moisture, and then I’d get up the next day before I went to school and I would iron that collar to make sure that it looked nice and fresh for me to go to…

and about the rest of it, I wouldn’t do it, but I used to have to do that because I never had another shirt to change. I had to do that. So I learnt how really cleanliness, right from before I even joined the navy. And even when I went to, I used to go to dances and anything like that, I always would have the Californian poppy on the hair that’d keep, my hair used to be all greasy

and slick with all that stuff on, and whatever deodorant you could get on to yourself. And a white silk scarf I used to wear, a white silk scarf with a black overcoat or something like that. But I always took pride in how I looked even before I joined the navy, even before that. And so the navy did more or less, like I can remember giving my young sister

and my niece five shillings, just to iron the seven creases in my pants. And I used to go to the Palais or if I used to go to the dance, so that they were like razor sharp. Of course naturally when on board the ship you had to do that yourself. Washing, you had to do, we called dhobi-ing and naturally you had to do it all yourself. But we had four gallon

tins, square tins, with a handle on it and the same, we used to do with our overalls or whatever, but we only had, you only had soap, you never had any Persil or Rinso or whatever, so we used to take it down to the engine room and they used to have a steam valve with and a steam pipe and you’d fill up with water and put your say, all the whites in first, and

just scrape off some velvet soap, put it in there and then turn the steam on and she’d bubble away and boil away and then it was, when you were finished with it after a while, take it out and then go and fill that up with say cold water till you could get your hands in, wring it out and then fill it up again with cold water to make sure they were rinsed and then hang them around. Because it wasn’t hard to dry anything because of the heat of the engine room.

Boiler room was different. But head of the engine room or gearing which were cleaner, you’d hang them up there and they’d be dry by morning. And then you’d just have to iron them the next day or whatever. But you never, you never really had to use those, only if you were at shore because nine times out of ten when you were on ship or when you were in the engine room you had boiler suits or you had what we called eights, which was blue pants and blue trousers. That was more or less like if you’ve been down in the

boiler room and you finished your watch, well then you would go and have a shower and then you’d get into these blue shirt and blue pants and that and you could go around on the upper deck until or do whatever you wanted to do until it was your time to go back down to the boiler room. And we used to do the overalls the same, just put them in the bucket and then turn the steam on, put some soap in and… a lot of times, another time I used to, what the guys used to do was do that, boil it up and

then take them out and lay them in the shower recess and with a scrubbing brush, get the soap and scrub them with the scrubbing brush. Used to scrub them with the scrubbing brush to get oil or grease or dirt out of it. And then, or do that before you put it in the bucket and then come out all right, because naturally we didn’t have to worry about ironing overalls, but that’s what we used to do, how we used to.

Yeah. Oh for sure yeah.

See a lot of guys might have something like that hanging in the mess deck and they’d come down and had to be taken down. It was not to be on show for when they did inspection. But in the engine room, nine times out of ten you wouldn’t have an officer down there, you’d only have a petty officer or a engine room artificer – ERA.

You’d have him down there, or you might have the chief ERA come down at one time. Normally if you were in a battle station type of area, you would have the chief stoker in the boiler room, he’d have to be, and normally the chief ERA would be down in the engine room, but even though the chief stoker would be there you’d also have the petty officer in charge. He’d already be also in charge. So it was,

and unless you had an officer, and it was very very rarely that they’d come down the engine room, it was only more or less the POs and that and of course they had their own washing they had to do. I mean they didn’t have anybody doing their washing.

Than the Australia.

Down the boiler, well we had two, so there’d be one, two, petty officer, leading stoker,

One, two, three, four, about four or five people. Engine room about, roughly about the same, oh no, engine room would be smaller because you’d have one guy on one turbine and the other guy on the other one. And the person who was, so you’d only have the two guys more or less doing, getting, port, starboard. I mean, if you’d, if it rang down,

“Hard to starboard,” well you’ve got the bloke on your right hand side that, he’s got to more or less full speed starboard or hard to starboard, so they turn it up in the bridge right, and if he said, “More speed starboard,” he has to do that. And then if you’re in a hurry then you would more or less lock yours and then he’d open up his so you were going that way. Just like as if you were turning the steering wheel of the car.

Working, well you mixed it. Like you had different times you might be, you could be in the boiler room and then you could, the next shift you might be either in the engine room, you might be on, we have what we call a watch keeper who would look after the evaporator. And then, or

we had a chap doing in the gear room, or looking after steam generator or something like that, or the gearing department. So, I mean I might go down forward or twelve and be in the engine room and then maybe the next shift I might be in the boiler room.

Oil.

No. Thank heavens.

No, it was oil and of course we used to have, the fuel would be delivered from the lighter, say from the fuel lighter, the fuel would come in and they’d connect it up and it would go down in the, into the tank, same with the fresh water tank. Because I mean, when we were away, when you went away and you had no fresh food, all your meat would be frozen,

it would have to come out and be – I’d seen the cook with a big butcher’s table and he’s cutting the meat that you’re going to have by, say, your tea, he’d be cutting it in the morning and it’s frozen. And he’s cutting it with an axe, like a tomahawk, cutting the meat up.

Yeah. You’ve got a,

it’s driven by like oil as you can understand, like a car, it’s petrol and air. So you undo a valve, it lets the oil go through, now that oil will not ignite unless it’s got like say air to go, mixed with it. So you undo the valve and then there was two little handles that went ‘pfff pfff’, like that and ‘pfff’, away she’d go. And then, so…

That gives, that would more or less start it and then you’d just keep on opening up whatever you want. Keep, just like you put your foot on the pedal on the car to get more petrol through.

Yeah, type thing.

Well you could get a back flash, which, ‘phhh’, could come back at you.

In the boiler room, that was probably I’d say the main worry would be like a back flash from the boiler. Engine room, same as the boiler, maybe engine room steam valve going, which happened when I was on the Anzac to one of the ratings. And from his elbow to his fingers, all his skin was off because it was super heated steam.

It wasn’t just normal steam that you see. That’s reheated again, it’s called super heated steam. And he, all the skin had come off, and all this skin here off his fingers was just down like sausage skins, just down like sausage skins. And he was, yeah, what happened was, he went to undo a valve and of course you have, if it’s too tight, you have a spanner that will fit around inside that valve and it’ll open it for you.

Just give it a hit and it’ll open it. Well what’s happened, he’s undone the valve and its broke off in there and the steam’s come out and it’s got him on the, because his arm was there undoing the valve. And he lost all the skin off his hand.

His arm, well you’re supposed to wear your overalls like down there, if you’re down there it’s very, very, very hot. A lot of blokes had overalls on but used to roll the sleeves up. No, you didn’t wear gloves, didn’t have to wear gloves, just rolled

your sleeves up and that’s how it happened. It happened on the Anzac, actually.

Yeah, I was there. I saw it.

Yeah everything. Temperature gauge, see you more or less, well you say, “Do you watch the temperature gauge?” That is done more or less by the petty officer or the leading hand. He’s got to, he does that and he watches all that

while and you just more or less do the control, you acting, give it more fuel, watching the temperature, he does all that. He’s there to assist you. And whatever they want, whatever happens in the boiler room, it’s got to come from the bridge. They want more, and of course, if you don’t have the correct amount of like air, and you’re burning

oil, you’ll throw black smoke up through the funnel. Next minute it’ll come down the voice, “Stop making smoke.” So you’ve got to have that mixture dead right so that when you’re going along, it’s only a wisp coming out the funnel. Too much air and you’ll have white smoke coming out the funnel. And of course, it’s incredible, it’s true what they say, that can be seen for miles and miles and miles away. The smoke

coming out from the stack, smoke blowing around. So it’s always that you made that mixture so that it was correct, so you didn’t make smoke. A lot of times that happened where it’s come down, “Stop making smoke.”

As I said, it comes from the engine room, comes from the bridge I beg your pardon and each, the

engine room, the boiler room, have both got these levers, the hand, and it’s got full ahead, half ahead, reverse, full reverse, port, starboard, more revs. And that’s got to go up. And then the petty officer or the leading hand he might he reads that and says, “Oh yeah,” so he might say, “Up two” or, “Up three” which more, give it more.

Yes, from the Palais, yeah.

Well when I got engaged it was very serious, to me at that time, when I got to know her properly. It was more, I’ve got photos, she was a very, very attractive lady, young lady.

So it was pretty serious when I got engaged, even though I was so young. And I’d had a relationship as I said, I had a girlfriend before this, but no. It gave you, I know like I had Mum and Dad and the family to write home. Dad often wrote. A lot of times we had trouble with the mail. I can remember being on the Anzac and

we’d just come back from patrolling the Korean coast and when we got back there to Japan, there was no mail. Well you’d be disappointed. So it wasn’t and then, till we were on our way back to Korea again, to do another patrol, that the Americans were coming back and they’d had our mail on board and they’d brought it up but we’d crossed and it wasn’t delivered. And so when I actually when I did get back,

when I did get back to Japan, I’d go out and get on the booze and do, being depressed and so forth and that, and then I went to the mailbox and there was 13 letters all piled up. And at the time that I saw it I was too drunk to even read them.

Well I, I don’t think that, I can’t recall that any of our letters, although we never ever would disclose where we were or anything like that. It was just what’s happening at home? And just, I’m still here, we’re cruising around. But going back in them days of course there was not so much there was the mail being censored and that,

but apart from the mail, I had no contact with my family or anything. And of course you, I can imagine how they must have felt when that piece of paper shows the Anzac under attack. And of course that’s out of the paper, that’s out of the paper so you can imagine how they must’ve been going. I’ve got more literature there, “HMAS Anzac Comes Under Attack.” So not being able

to contact, or find out or anything, only from what the radio has said. So they would have no idea.

No. No I didn’t know it at the time. No I didn’t know.

After I was engaged but still in Geelong. And when I left to go to Korea, the funny story was that the man who owned the Palais, the dance hall, gave me a send off. And I can remember big streamers

across the hall: Good Luck, Milton. God Speed. And there was a song, the last song of the night always at the dance hall was, “Good Night Sweetheart.” Always played that. Good night sweetheart. Always played that, but this particular time, when it was my last night,

at the Palais, that I’d be going, we’d be going after that, I’d be going away, was: Forever and ever, my heart will be true. And that was, yeah. And of course the spotlight. They used to have lucky spots at the Palais and the guy would be up top and he’s beaming the camera around and wherever it stopped at the end of the dance, that person would probably get, get a block, a box of chocolates for the girl or something for the guy. And I’ll never forget that, that

spun around and right at the very end of it the spotlight was on me. And when I got married they sent me a telegram congratulating me. When I come home from Korea: welcome home. Straight across the, yeah. Yeah that was something.

All right, it wasn’t so much about, I never had any fear so much as I had depression,

of being engaged and being depressed, like having to leave my wife here knowing I’m, fiancée here, knowing I’m going to be away for 12 months. A lot of things go through your mind at the time.

Well I’m on one side of the world and I’m going to Korea and she’s here and worried about whether how faithful, and you’ve got to have to trust him for 12 months type thing I suppose. Yeah there was a lot of that.

And of course you don’t get any mail for a long time. But even when I, I was lucky enough that when I was in Japan, I became very friendly with a Japanese family and they had two girls. And actually one of the girls that I used to be with, her name was Misako, which in Australia is Margaret but, so

they used to, the parents had a gift shop sold cheongsams, all-satin pyjamas for ladies, or whatever, and coffee sets, tea sets, and it was like on the street and all they had was like a roller door that come down and locked. And every morning the roller door would go up and it was just like you’d walk into it. But up at the back, upstairs, they lived on the property upstairs. They lived upstairs.

And they trusted me so much that they would go and get, they would cook me, they would go and buy meat, get some steak and they would cook me steak, or they’d go down to the navy club and get me apple pie and cream, and bring it back. The only thing was, if I took Misako to a movie, she was still going to school, if I took her to a movie, I couldn’t walk

with her in the street, I’d have to walk behind her. I couldn’t walk into the movie while the lights were on. So we’d wait until the lights were out and then we’d sit and of course it was all captioned type of thing. It was mostly in Japanese.

Because see if somebody from her college, she was going to college, if somebody from her college or school saw her with me, she was more or less classed as like

well they termed it over there, like a good time girl. We’d say like a prostitute. And then she’d be expelled from the college. So the light’s would be off when we went in there and then the lights, and when it had ‘the end’ title, she would get up and she would go out. Because, in case the lights came on while I was with… and then I’d just come out, walk out. Walk out in the dark, but just behind her until we got back there.

Then once we got back to where they were we’d go upstairs and we’d, she’d make me a cup of tea or cup of coffee and all that you know, and she was a lovely girl. And that’s all she really was. And I had photos taken and I showed my wife, showed, sent them home. There’s this friend that had befriended me in Japan.

Yes exactly.

Oh yeah. Actually her sister whose name was, her name was Jenny and an English soldier was so besotted by her, he wanted to marry her. He bought a ring and everything and he wanted to marry her. The family said, “No,” straight away, “No.” But her husband had already been picked out for her. At that time in the early ’50s the culture was very, very strong.

Went in there to,

actually, I went in there to get some, I bought a coffee set and of course it would’ve been, I think it was a weekend where the girls used to help their parents in the shop. And then I bought this coffee set and they packed it up for me and give me a smile. And she spoke very good English, the girls spoke very good, and she just said to me you know. I said, “What’s your name?” She said, “Misako.” And I said, “Oh yeah.” And she said, “What’s your name?” And it was

also, I said, “My name’s Milton.” “Aha, you Milton-san.” And it was always the ‘s.a.n.’ put on to it. Milton-san. And the mother used to say, “Milton-san.” Yeah, number one boy. Number ten, bad news. Number one boy. Milton-san, yeah. And I had my photo taken with her and her parents and so forth in the shop and outside on the footpath. I had a run-in with the military police, especially

the English police, the English Red Caps they were. And they used to patrol naturally around the streets, to see if you were in uniform or if you were drunk or anything. Anyhow, they saw me in the shop without my hat on. And what I, I’d gone into the shop and I wasn’t buying, I was just talking to Misako in the shop and I had my hat off. And they came in and said, “You’re out of dress.

Put your hat on or we’ll take you back.” And I said, “No, I’m not out of dress.” He said, “Yes you are. Put your hat on. This is your last warning or you’ll be in the jeep and back on board.” And I said, “My manners, from where I come from in Australia is, a man takes his hat off when he goes into a person’s house.” And I said, “Into a shop here, is where these people are.” I said, “If I step out onto that street into the open, I’ll have my hat on, but inside, I won’t

wear it.” “In the jeep, back on to the ship.” They told the officer of the watch, I had to front him, I told him the story of what had happened and he said, “No.” He said, that’s right, ordered our jeep to take me straight back in. Took me straight back in. And of course when these guys come past and they saw me, they stopped and they wanted to know how I come to get back again, did I jump ship? I said, “No.”

I said, “The officer of the watch let me off, understood my reasoning for doing it and agreed with me. If you’ve got a problem by all means you can call the officer of the watch and he’ll verify my statement.” Yeah, that’s the only time I had a run-in with them.

Very heavy handed, very. I’d say that the English, they call them the English Red Caps, I’d say the English and probably the, most Americans

the military police were Negro, most of them were Negroes. The English were definitely the worst. Of course if you had, if you got a jeep with the Aussie guys in it, they’d just give you a wave and away they went, but yeah, they were very, very abrupt the English military police.

I’m only speaking like, with behalf of being an Australian, I know that they were very hard with me.

Well we left Williamstown and did our, what they called ‘work up trials’ all the way up. And I said, as it’s got it there, we left there, went to Sydney. From Williamstown to Sydney, Sydney to Brisbane, Brisbane to Darwin, Darwin to

Moresby, Moresby to Singapore, Singapore to Hong Kong, and then Hong Kong on to Japan.

Yeah. Singapore unfortunately no. I got, come off the ship, got a bus into town and stepped outside a hotel in Singapore called Raffles and outside the front, at that time there was a storm water drain. I stepped off the step into this

like high gutter, storm water drain, and twisted my ankle. Couldn’t move. So I had to go back. So I never saw Singapore. But I was okay in Hong Kong. I was all right in Hong Kong.

Saw Raffles yeah, and it was the hotel at that time, in the ’50s.

All right. We did have,

we were always told, doesn’t matter where you went, “Never, ever go on your own.” Had to be in twos or threes. I found Hong Kong okay. Naturally being berthed in Hong Kong you could go wherever you wanted to go in the day time, buy whatever you want in the day time and then come back on board at night. Bring your presents back.

The reason why I laughed was I bought a suit in Hong Kong. This tailor measured me up and said he’d have it ready for me the next day and so anyhow, I got the suit and I’ll never forget it. It was a grey striped suit and when I put it on, and then it was all right and then I was wearing it ashore and then

when the inside lining it more or less was sticking out and I went to I tucked it back, went to pull the sleeve like that, to get the lining up there in the sleeve. When I done that all the cotton come away and the sleeve just. He took me to the cleaners. He must have had this weakest cotton that he sewed it with and the thing fell apart. And yeah, that’s what I was laughing at, that I’d bought this suit that was cotton and you could go like that, and if you went like that

the sleeves would come off. So I just thought that’s the end of that, I didn’t even worry about it. Didn’t get a chance to get back there to say, “Hey, hey look at this.” And he would’ve said, “All right I fix it, next time you come in it’ll all be ready.” No. Just one off the chores of going there and buying something that yeah, “I’ll make you this suit cheap.” Very cheap.

I never had a, I never drank a drop until I joined the navy.

Never smoked until I joined. I was always a fitness fanatic before I joined the navy. I did boxing before I joined the navy. I had a lot of amateur fights and then I turned professional, had three fights, lost three of them, that was it. But I did a lot of amateur boxing and it was with the, here in Geelong it was with the Geelong Western District Police Boys Club where I was I think number seven member of it.

Our shirts were, our singlets were green with gold lettering on here, GWDPBC, Geelong Western District Police Boys’ Club. And I had a lot of fights here, a place called Kooweerup, at Dandenong Town Hall, in Warrnambool Western District. VRI in

Melbourne, the Victorian Railway Institute Hall in Melbourne. Of course, naturally, professionals were done at Festival Hall in Dudley Street.

Yeah, it helped me a couple of times, but – I might be jumping ahead here but when we were in Japan, we were challenged to a boxing tournament in Sasebo by the

Americans. They challenged us. We were part of the United Nations and they were challenging. They were based there, they never left, they were based there, and I’ve got somewhere here in the photos, I’ll show you, “Through this damn port.” No, “Through this port passed the best damned fighting men in the world.” And it’s on this great big placard. I’ll show it to you. Anyhow our gunnery officer, who had done boxing before the war, he was a Second World War man, he was…

huge man. Twenty stone and he, when we got there he wanted to know if anybody had any boxing experience. And being a gunnery officer because their mess deck was higher, and he yells out down below, “Has anybody had any boxing experience?” And I just said, “I’ve had amateur.” “You’ll do.” So up we go. So we get out, a pair of shorts on, and we get out onto the wharf

where they’ve put a great big tarpaulin, square tarpaulin on the wharf. And he said, “Right-oh, put a pair of gloves on.” Both of us. And he said, “Show me what you’ve got.” And so we’re sparring around like that, next minute bang, I’m flat on my back. He’s knocked me out. And would you believe it, I shook my head, when I got up, he said, “You’ll do.” He said to me, “You’ll do.” So here I am and so off we go that

night to the, in Sasebo, this great big hall. It was a massive big, like auditorium and actually the cameras were flashing and everything like they do, you know. And the first, I was the, there was five Aussies off this ship, five of us and I was the fifth bout on. The last

one. I was lucky in one way that, actually when the guy, when we weighed in we had to be the same. Naturally, the same weight. One bloke couldn’t be 12 stone and you seven or something. So when we jumped on the scales with just our jocks on, this guy, I was looking like that at him. And his nose was flat and his ears, and as soon as I saw him I thought, “This is it; what have I got myself into?” Anyhow, that was at the weigh in.

We weighed ten stone seven at that time. So the first four guys all had Negro, but we had a guy that we reckoned was a certainty because he fought a draw as an amateur with Jimmy Carruthers. Well he’s got to win. Would you believe it, he was knocked down. And I thought, “Well if he can be knocked out, where am I going?” So the fourth one that came back to the dressing room, and we had

the Aussie colours, the green and the gold and that, the green and the gold, and anyhow, when he came back, he’s coming back on a stretcher and they got a doctor with a pen like, he’s looking into his eyes, looking into his eyes and he’s… the bloke that was looking after him was saying, “What’s your name?” And I thought... so as I’m coming towards the ropes, I said to my, the man that was looking after me petty officer Nick Carter, I said to Nick, “The first time this guy

hits me, I’m going down and I’m not coming up.” And I told him that. And I said, “There’s no way that you’re going to have me on a stretcher. The first time he hits me I’m going down below.” And I said, “I’m not going to get up, I’m not going to.” “You’ll be right, you’ll be right.” And I fought a guy by the name of Al Afanito, he came from Bronx, New York. And as I said flat nose. He’d had 150 fights, he’d had, 150 fights! And I thought, “Goodness gracious me!” And he was, he was an

Italian American, like say Dean Martin type of thing. And anyhow I was lucky he beat me, but he only beat me on points. And it was four rounds, four three minute rounds and it was, apparently I’d won the first, halved the second, halved the third and he completely beat me in the fourth.

But he beat me on points. So the winner got ten American dollars which was a lot of money. The loser got five American, the best fight of the night, the winner got an extra five and the best loser of the night got an extra five. So I’d lost, got five and got the best loser of the night, another five gave me ten dollars. So yeah, that was my boxing experience in the navy. That was my last boxing experience actually.

And the guy was a real, we sat together after the fight, we had a meal, because we had to stay that same weight, couldn’t eat much. So we sat together and actually I didn’t realise, I didn’t realise that I’d broke his nose and I didn’t know. Of course he had it plugged, he had his two nose, you know. Apart from that and of course, he did deck me, but it was just like I’d run into, ‘pppt,’ and he sat me back on my pants. But I can remember to this day the camera

catching me, ‘pllcc,’ like the flashlight going as I’m going backwards. Now that was a video, like they videoed that in them days. They took a what’s-a-name shot and it went to Pearl Harbour, right, and it was to be developed there and brought back. But, and I was to get a copy but I missed out. I didn’t end up getting one. But would you believe that this year, this year, about two months ago, that man that was in

my corner, I’d rung him up because I had a list of all the, I’ve got a list of all the guys that were on the Anzac and I saw his name, I rung him up and I said, “This is Sister Hoe. Milton Hoe.” “Goodness gracious me,” he said, “My boxing friend.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “How lovely it is to talk to you.” He said, I said, “I see your name down as being a member of the Anzac Association.” I said, “Why don’t you come to

the meeting with me.” “Oh,” he said, “I’m too old to get about now.” I said, “Gee,” I said, “I’d love to see you, Nick.” He said, “I know, I know.” He said, “No.” So I was talking to him for a while and then I was away somewhere and then I got our magazine and it had ‘vale, Arthur Carter’, Nick Carter. And he died. He died earlier this year, only about a couple of months ago but what a pity I never got a chance to catch up with him, but he remembered.

He remembered. A lot of Geelong guys still remember, that were on the ship. They still remember me having that fight.

I felt elated. I never had anybody shining a torch in my eyes asking me my name, anyhow. Yeah, when I got back on board I was congratulated by the skipper and everybody. “Yeah well done… you do your country proud.”

Sent it home to my parents, just converted it and sent it back home. Got it here in Japan and then had it exchanged and sent it back home.

Yes.

Yes, actually what was wrong, I don’t know what happened, the truth of the matter but

apparently my fiancée at the time, I was sending it all home to Mum and Dad but, she wanted some money and I said all right, she wrote me and I said just go and tell Mum and Dad, and apparently they just said, “No, this is for Milton when he comes back.” And a bit of a blue started sort of thing and so I just then transferred it and sent it back to her. And then by that time, naturally the others, some of the

brothers and that were working anyhow. But it was more or less for me for when I came back but Dad and that, they had to use a lot of it. As I said going back then, they were, some of the others were working and had to contribute to the house. Everything that I, whatever I had, I saved enough money to vacuum my parents’ house, not vacuum,

carpet my parents’ house, the lounge room and the hallway and it was only from money that I’d saved and I had that done. Lovely pattern.

No, I didn’t, I didn’t know. I did not know. Or when we were going, doing the work up towards, when we were heading towards Korea. Or actually when I joined the Anzac in Williamstown,

I didn’t know I was going to Korea. It wasn’t until we were doing these work up trials outside Jervis Bay and then on our way up there that the skipper said we were going into, we were going up to relieve such and such, Murchison I think it might have been, we were going up to relieve a ship in Korea. Might have been the Maitland, I think it might have been. Might have been up there with us.

No. We were

at the time, when you were then drilled what to do. We had a lot of dummy runs, action stations and what have you, where you would be at that time. And if you weren’t in the engine room or boiler room, gear room or whatever, your job would be to close all the port holes then put the cover over that, and then tie all the towels up in case they were floating around and blocking. So everything, that your job, say you might be in the mess deck,

you had to make everything so that it wouldn’t cause any blockage or anything. Everything had to be all put away, stowed away and everything. The portholes had to be closed and the covers put over them. But I didn’t have to worry about that because I was in the engine room when we were under attack.

Well in the boiler room, engine room, no escape. You’re locked in.

You’re locked in. You’re sealed off. It’s better, which has happened since then on the Westralia, there was an explosion down in the Westralia just recently, a couple of year ago or something, this poor girl joined the navy, her first day in the engine room, in the boiler room. First day in the boiler room there was a diesel fire and they filled the compartment full of carbon monoxide which killed everybody down there.

But they would’ve, they said that they would’ve been engulfed in flames before even they had a chance to get out anyhow. But they couldn’t because they were locked in. So, what they did, they engulfed that with carbon monoxide and killed everyone, and that girl was killed. First day in the engine room. But if we had have been hit, which we were very, very lucky we didn’t, if we had’ve been hit, it’s better to

lose those in the engine room, sacrifice their lives for the safety of the ship. Because if you’re not locked in, once you’re locked in, I mean the water can flood the engine room but that’s where it will stay because you’re locked in. It’s sealed, it can’t get out and then flood the upper deck and then sink the ship, go down. So it’s better to sacrifice those that are in there than those that are, the rest of the ship. So it’s, that’s

normal even up to this very day. If you can close off one compartment, doesn’t matter who’s in there, better to sacrifice their lives and to save the ship than, five lives or ten lives is better than losing 300.

It is.

When I was on,

we were drilled before we even left to go into Korea. The possibility of the Koreans coming down in sampans and could put mines on the ship. And as you can imagine the sampans are pretty quiet.

Not motor driven. And we were told that that is a possibility. We were told that there’s going to be a spring invasion and that the, and of course it was touch and go at this time how the war was going to go. And we were told that there was a possibility that they’d come down and put the mines on. And so also that during the time that I was up there, it was the worst winter in ten years.

And as Stella’s [interviewer] writing there, that clothing that you got wasn’t sufficient for the cold.

Well in the engine room you only had your boiler suit. When you were, if you were off watch you were, if you were off watch you were down in the mess room, you still were all right because you had a generator generating power, heat whatever.

But if you were out on the upper deck, ‘bbbbbrrrr’. I mean, icicles hanging off the guardrails. And they had what they called safety ropes which was a peg type of thing in rope, a rope handle and it would run right along this safety rope. So if you were coming out from below deck onto the upper deck and you, the waves were pounding over, you’d hang on to that and

you’d hang on to that till you got to the engine room and then try to get yourself down to the engine room to get on watch. So yeah, the weather was atrocious. Worst, my wife and I had been to the Korean embassy and we met the ambassador, I’ve got photos of the ambassador and my wife and the defence attaché in Canberra to this day. And the ambassador was telling my wife that he said to me, “When were you in Korea, Milton?” I said, “1952.” And he said,

“I was a refugee, ten years of age, North Korean refugee, we escaped to South Korea.” And he said that it was the coldest winter that he’d ever, ever, ever experienced. He escaped from North Korea to South Korea, he is now the ambassador of Korea in Canberra.

Oh they had,

like, I think the guys, the seamen had like a duffle coat, something like that, balaclava.

Yeah.

No most of it was done on our way up. They would have like say the air force, would have a tow-a-drogue. And a drogue is like a tail, wire from the back of it and on the end of that wire would be something like a target. And of course it was always a lot of fun, the guys would be shooting like live ammunition at this and ‘bang, bang, bang, bang!’ The plane was still

going. And of course if you were down in the mess deck, stoker’s mess that was directly below the 4.5” gun bay. And where, the gun bay was out by the deck and the noise was, the din and the noise of the gun, ‘boom, boom, boom!’ And the shells being loaded into the breach and shot up. And then the empty ones, ‘pppt,’ coming back into this cage and I think I’ve got a story on it. They were that hot they were firing that quickly,

anyhow, we just used to laugh and say if you were upper deck you just stood there watching it, and you’d be saying, “Who are the cowboys on the guns, they can’t even shoot straight.” We used to say, “Which one’s Wyatt Earp?” and trying to blow this drogue out behind the plane. We did a lot of it going up there because once we got up into Japan we didn’t do any more work up there.

Yes, on our work up trials. On our work up trials you could be up on deck watching that. We had a lot of funny things happen. We used to, and of course when we were in Korea, we used to see a lot of dog fights up. And after seeing the way that these guys were shooting at the drogue that the plane was towing, you could see the vapour trails

of the Russian Korean jets which were Russian MiGs, see them up there. And we could just see vapour trails of the fights going on up there, and we used to always say, “Well if one of them decides to do a kamikaze we’re gone, because these cowboys on the guns couldn’t shoot the eye out of a needle.” We used to say that to them. And it was just a joke that we had between us, these blokes can’t, couldn’t hit.

No, we were always confident that everybody had a job to do and that – no we were pretty confident. We had a good skipper, a very, very good skipper, Captain Gaddigo, and he was very, very good. He would make sure that that drogue was hit before we got into Japan because it could be off Queensland anywhere, anywhere on our way up.

He was not a, I’d say that he was a very careful man. He looked after the crew. His crew was more or less like his family and he would not take them in anywhere he thought was going to be detrimental to their life. He was an easy going guy.

And under his leadership I think that he was the one, and a bit of good luck, that got us back. A lot of good luck was with it, it was really just that we were lucky, terribly lucky. But he was such a nice guy, you could talk to him, there was nothing abrupt about the man and we

actually, we missed him when he left the ship and he went to America as an Australian attaché in America at the time, around about, I think he left at the time of the coronation, round about in ’53. Left to go to America. And then we got another skipper after that. We had a different skipper then for the royal tour.

As I said we were going, I went up with my fiancée to see my mother off who was going across to Western Australia to see my sister on the Westralia,

which was a liner. We were all standing on the wharf and people were throwing streamers backwards and forwards to the ship, and we were just waving to my mother who was against the rail looking over. While this was all going on, there was a girl, I suppose 20s, late 20s, 30s and she was throwing streamers and she was with a party.

And she got too close to the edge and she hit the edge of the wharf, there was a step, and she plummeted straight down as the ship was reversing out. It was going out stern first, naturally the propellers were all spinning around and the water was all churned up and it was all swirling around and I was in navy uniform and I just flicked my cap

off, I had slip on shoes, slipped them off, out of my coat and was left in just my uniform and socks on and in the water I went. And of course they were yelling out, “There’s a sailor, he’ll be able to swim.” And in the water I went. When I got to her, I felt for her for a while because I couldn’t see for the foam in the water, when I did reach her, she started to pull me down and still hanging on to her handbag with one hand,

and flapping around in the water, and as I said, all the money was floating out and she was trying to grab hold of the money and everything. So they finally, they threw, they stopped the engines then and people, they’d realised something had happened, the guys on the ship. And then of course that stopped the motors, the propellers from turning and that stopped, like, more or less from being cut in half anyhow. Anyhow, they threw a life

buoy down for her and I was still with her and I said to her, “Stop struggling otherwise you’re going,” because she was dragging me down I said, “We’ll both go down.” I said, “Stop struggling.” So when I grabbed hold of the life buoy, I was able to get hold of her to hang on to that and then they slipped it over her and then they pulled her out, because she had her arms like that. Pulled her out and then I’m still in the water and then they pulled her out and then while they were taking her out

they threw a rope fender, that’s like a buoy that’s put against a ship’s side to stop the ship from hitting the wharf. And then I was pulled out with that. And then when I got up on to the wharf, she was not to be seen. I couldn’t see her. None were, not a, none were her party, neither were any of her party, I believe that she was just whisked, taken in the car and whisked away. I wasn’t told

or given any thanks or anything and then I left there and I went to Russell Street Police station and I met a policeman, I still remember his name, was John Watts. When I got to the desk, the reception, the chap there said, “You been in swimming?” And I said, “I had to go in and save a lady from drowning.” He said, “Oh yeah,” and he said, “Well what can I do for you?” And I said,

“I was hoping that maybe I could get like a change of clothing or something?” He said, “I’ve got plenty of hats but no pants.” That was his story. At the same time this John Watts was going off duty and I told him exactly what had happened. He said, “Come with me.” I went with him and he gave me a pair of his cricket pants, he gave me some socks to put on and I slipped out of, when I went and took off my uniform, he

gave me a shirt, his pants and a pair of socks and a pair of shoes at the same time, a pair of shoes to slip on. And then he gave me a drink of sherry, it could’ve been port, port or sherry, he gave me a drink, anyhow it was wine because he said, “This’ll warm you up.” Then, because the reception chap said, “What’s the matter with going home in your car with just your jocks on?” I said, “Well I have my fiancée with me.” I had my girlfriend, she wasn’t my fiancée then.

“I have my girlfriend with me.” And he said, “That should be all right.” And it was one of those cars with the dicky seat in the back and we were sitting in the back. So they gave, he gave me that and then I came home with that and when I was, when they’d gone I couldn’t, when I looked, no sign of my mother and I believe that she fainted when she saw me in the water, saw all the foam, she fainted. Didn’t even realise that I got out.

So anyhow, my family then had to let my sister know that when my mother got there that everything was all right. That I was okay. Actually I’d been so busy, because this made the news. Sorry, this made the news and it was in our local paper and it was in the Melbourne Herald Sun but I know,

I know it was in January, I’m not quite sure of the day but it is in the archives of our historical society here. And I was trying to get hold of it so I could show it to you. I did have a copy, I’ve looked everywhere but I can’t find it of the story, and I can’t find it anywhere. So I wanted Rosemary to go in yesterday but she went into the library and the library was closed.

No, not that I know of. As far as I know

that I remember of that time, I know that we had a guard rail that you had to hang on to that. The weather was atrocious, not only was it the ice and the snow that was about, but the wind that went with it and there’s no doubt in my mind that I thought at one stage that we were going to go down and not come up. The waves were coming up and I’d say they were practically coming over the front one third of the ship.

They’d be over the guns and the guns were on the fo’c’sle and the wind and the rain and of course we had all the snow. And the, it was abs… even though we were in the engine room it was still, you weren’t hot, you were comfortable, but when you went down to the deck, when you came out off your ship and you had to go along the gangway and down in to the mess deck, where you lived,

you were freezing, you were absolutely freezing. And of course all we had was, a lot of the times that I would come out of the engine room, I’d go and have a hot shower, I would get into, say, a clean boiler suit and then do it up and then get into bed, into the hammock and you only had a sheet and a blanket. That’s all we had, we never had any like there was no such thing as doonas, had a blanket and

like a sheet covering you in the hammock. And you laid on the mattress in the hammock and that’s all we had. That’s all I had. So it took you a long time really to get warm in bed even. And the winter as I said was absolutely terrible while we were there, absolutely shocking. The worst as I was telling Tanto, the ambassador of South Korea now, as I said, he was a refugee and he said

to us at the Korean embassy, it was the coldest winter that he’d ever experienced.

Well, I mean we’re navy. I mean the army guys too. Army guys and that, I’ve got a photo somewhere here of the HMAS Sydney aircraft carrier, planes couldn’t even take off, they were covered,

absolutely covered with ice and snow.

It just stays there until probably it thaws out. Naturally the water hitting a lot of the front of it, takes a lot of the ice and that off. But there was ice all around. And in your hammock at night you’d be lying there and you’d hear this shocking grating

noise and it was the ship ploughing through the ice. You’d hear it and it’d wake you up. The noise was that loud it would wake you up.

Like a grate, well it’s just like a grating sound.

If you saw the movie, The Titanic?

And then you heard that going against the ice, the ’bergs, right, the iceberg.

Yes.

Yeah exactly.

And it was of course they called it as it, I think it’s one of the officers, he wrote it in his diary that the ice was big, and then by the time it was all crushed down again, you could put it in for a drink. But after that it came back like you were going through there was a lot of big stuff there. And pancake ice, that area where we were too, Stella, there was a lot of reef. You had to be very careful where you went.

Not only the ice but also the reef. If you went up on a reef, well you were stuck, you were stuck on a reef. There was no way you could get off a reef, there’s no one to pull you off. There’s no other ship available. And actually we were very lucky because when we were attacked, when we got attacked, we weren’t actually on a reef, but they were all around us so we had to be guided, like I’m in the engine room at this particular time. I’m in the engine room

so, we were given orders, like they were giving orders that they had to back out. Because they had our range, there’s no doubt in the world, it was remarkable as you will find, the skipper’s story, other people’s stories. They fired 70 rounds of shells, went over the bough, over the stern, straddled either side of the ship within ten yards or something of the ship without even hitting us. And they had our range, we were within their range.

And the ice and everything was all packed around us. And of course you couldn’t see the reef underneath the ice.

I don’t know, well it didn’t for us, and as I said, we were in the coldest winter that they’d ever had. You saw the photos of it.

I can’t remember that. I can’t remember. Because you’ve got, as I said there was 300, could be a signalman, it could’ve been a cook and not knowing. I wouldn’t know.

No actually, the,

I knew what the area around us was like because I had to come out of the mess deck and go down the engine room. And then I had to go down to the engine room and I knew what the area around me was like. Well you imagine the shock when I first got down there, all of a sudden that the ship starts shuddering, and you can hear the noise down there, the din of the noise, you could hear it in the engine room, the noise. Even though you’re down there and you’ve got the noise of

the of the turbines and that. But the din and everything. And shuddering and you wonder because you know you’re under attack. See you’ve got a voice from the bridge, giving orders to the engine room and so you can, with that open, orders are being relayed down and you can hear the noise from up in the bridge, in the engine room.

No.

No.

Yeah.

The only thing that I can remember about Tokyo, well naturally we had to be there. The ship would’ve put in, we would’ve been given leave I think. Is that, while

we were there in Tokyo we went by train to Hiroshima or Hiroshima I think they call it. We stayed in a hotel down there and we were there a week in the hotel and you never had a bed, you slept on the floor like on a big doona type of thing, and a big bolster at the back, not pillow slips or pillows, just a big bolster and you had a doona. You were warm. Anyhow I, in the

in our room, they had a little gas heater and it wouldn’t be, probably only as big as that little grate at the bottom there, a little gas heater. So I decided that I’d turn that on, give us a bit of heat and light it up. And when it came on I didn’t realise at the time that the hose was wrapped around the, of course the hose caught fire, it melted and caught fire, and with the

gas coming out this was, the hose was, ‘shhshhshh,’ this rubbery hose. And of course our towels were absolutely beautiful. White, white, white, white towels. So I had to grab this beautiful towel, white towel and throw it over the hose to stop the flame coming out. And here I’ve got all this red rubber and everything. We could turn it off at the tap, turned it off at the tap but had to report what had happened and everything. Trying to understand when they were talking.

And of course we went and saw the Peace Park and so forth in Hiroshima.

A lot of it had been, naturally when we got there a lot of it had been rebuilt as you can understand. Occupation forces more or less rebuilt a lot of Japan. What I saw,

there, didn’t worry me because I just though well, me at the time I thought well you’ve got your dues for what you did to my uncle. You beheaded him and this is what, now you’re going to pay for that. This is your payment, that’s what I thought. So I showed no remorse because of that because I lost my uncle, because he was beheaded.

So I thought well this is your repayment.

Well where we stayed at was like a new hotel. A new hotel where we stayed at in Hiroshima.

Oh yeah, there was still a lot of ruin and that, you could tell, there was a lot of ruin.

Leaflets were running around everywhere that told you what exactly happened. Like a man sitting in his office upstairs and he’d gone to work, sitting in his office and all this great big purple flash that he saw, shattered glass everywhere from the building, and everywhere that he went he was finding dead bodies, bleeding bodies and everything and he was lucky that it never got him. But the time he got out and got

down, he probably would’ve died later anyhow of radiation. He couldn’t even find the street where he lived. Couldn’t even find it, didn’t even know, everything had gone.

I didn’t, it didn’t faze me that much because

being in Korea like at the time that we come under attack, I thought, well to me I thought if my time was coming up that was going to be it. That would’ve been it that particular day, that God was looking after me otherwise, if one of those shells as I said, had’ve struck the engine room, I wouldn’t be sitting here today.

There’s no doubt in the world I wouldn’t be sitting here today. And in their reports, the skipper and that, they hit the anchor. One of the shells hit the anchor, now the anchor, we were anchored at the time, so and we had a buoy on the anchor, where the anchor actually was. And the shell hit the buoy, hit the anchor and of course naturally when it hit the anchor we just slipped the anchor away from the ship and let it run into the water and so we could get away.

Oh for sure, yeah, no, no. Well I just feel that since that, since I was there and I saw all that, the devastation that it did cause and

then the napalm bombs in Vietnam where that child’s running down the road and lived to tell the story of it, and I just think that all right, the Japanese did, say, behead, at that time I wasn’t actually worried about it. When I look back now and you realise that wars, a lot of innocent people

are being killed and will be killed because of wars. And with the nuclear stuff that they’ve got now, just how horrific that’s going to be on the nation or the nations that it lands on. And once again it’s going to kill a lot of innocent people. But with, and I suppose

when you look at it, if a bomb, when the Germans bombed England, when a bomb would land in a house or whatever in England, those people in there are probably just, they’re blown apart. And that, what happened in Bali with the terrorist bomb, and it’s that quick that they don’t know nothing about it.

We were there as part of United Nations.

They had the opportunity to kill us. And they, as I said, they had our range; it’s just that their poor accuracy stopped us, or stopped me from being here today. Just their poor accuracy. I mean, they were firing at us so we had to more or less – we were there as part of the United Nations to assist

South Korea with their, to get their country back, that North Korea had overrun. So, and we were there as part of that United Nation treaty that was there to help the South Koreans, and that’s why we were there. We were there to help the South Koreans, that’s what we were there for. Now…

No. All I knew was that we were there to do a job, to represent Australia, to do a job that we had to do as part of United Nations to defend South Korea. And if it meant that we had to engage in warfare,

that people were going to be killed and there was a likelihood that we would be killed, so be it. That was the chances that we had to take. As I said, we had a very good skipper, he would not put the lives of us on the line, it was just unfortunate at the time that we were in the range of the shore batteries that fired at us and just that we were so lucky that the 70

shells that they fired at us, 70 shells that they, not one of them hit us. Only they hit the anchor. So we lost the anchor.

Only probably, not so much in, probably just on leave in a bar or something like that.

We probably did because there was a lot of BCOF guys, like air force guys that I know of who were, we could have a drink with because they were stationing at a place called Iwakuni out at Japan, that was the air force base there. And you’d probably meet up with some of those during that time.

No.

Yes.

Yes. But you couldn’t see nothing, you could not see a thing. As I said,

all you could see were vapour trails, they were so high up in the air there were vapour trails. And they weren’t, I don’t think that they were any danger to us because they were so, and they were engaged already in the battle up in the sky. And well, I might’ve at one stage during the interview I might’ve said that we thought our gunnery guys were like cowboys, they couldn’t hit nothing.

But I’m sure that if that had’ve happened, I think that, well there wasn’t enough of the planes that I saw, only saw maybe two or three vapour trails, we knew that they were over.

I didn’t see a pilot.

No.

Run of the mill day.

No I couldn’t remember that. No I can’t remember, all I know were that it happened, well as you can

imagine, it doesn’t take long to fire 70 shells, and it doesn’t take long to fire, we fired I think 150. It doesn’t take very long, but all I knew that I was down in the engine room at the time of it. In the engine, not the boiler room, in the engine room at the time of the attack.

“Action stations, action stations,” coming from the bridge. And the wanting of rapid response, like you went astern, go forward and we probably would have run, run up, I think we went astern. And just the rapid response of full astern, full ahead, full astern.

Yes, yes alarm. If you were down in the mess deck playing cards and that, it comes.

Everybody’s got a job to do and everybody’s got a place to go to. You’re drilled into this before you even get to Korea, you were told this is what you’ll do. If you’re in the mess deck this is your job, if you’re in the engine room, boiler room, you’re then under the officialdom of a petty officer or

chief petty officer or whatever. He’s there to supervise, you’re under the supervision of them. So you only do what they tell you. Even, they get the orders from the bridge and they just say, “Full ahead” or, “Full astern,” whatever, and you know what they’ve said, what you’ve got to do. You know what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to put the ship into reverse and then if it’s full astern,

which means that you’ve got to go astern, forwards is like full power so you know what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to shut one, shut the forward control off and spin the, or get it open as far as you can, the astern throttle. So you shut the forward throttle, open up the astern and of course automatically the propellers will stop and go whizzing backwards and then the ship will start going backwards. And the faster the ship will go backwards, depends

on, a, the boiler room giving you more power, more steam for the turbines to go faster for you to open up the turbine with your throttle, open it up to allow the propellers to go faster. So that’s exactly what happens. But we are supervised even, because when I was down there I was still only a stoker mechanic, I hadn’t reached that stage of a leader stoker, so I was still under the supervision of those who were down there.

Exactly. And those guys who were down the mess deck, if they’ve got a job up top to man the guns, so you imagine, we’re down in the engine room, okay, but those guys up there, they’ve got to come up from the mess deck, out of the mess deck up onto the upper deck and get behind the gun and start firing back. So they would already see the blotches and the, ‘ssss,’ the shells flying around. They’d

already see that, but they would have, they would see that where I don’t see that. But I know from, I know because in action stations that you’re locked in the engine room, I know that if one of them hits us, well I’m gone. But if one of them hits them up there and they get the gun bay or someone or if they hit the ammunition, bang, they’re gone and probably the ship would go.

No. As I said, like I had never been in any time of situation like that. I had never, I’d never seen death before, which I did see.

Something that big. Just what I, what we saw, which is what happened but.

Well actually that particular day, what we did was, I was in the engine room as I said and I had no idea what

had happened until you hear the silence and you know the guns haven’t gone, they’ve stopped firing, and we were out to sea, out of their range. You know that, and the ship is still going and that you can hear them up in the bridge. You know that there’s been no hit anywhere, you get a report like they might ring down to the

engine room and say, “Is everything all right down there? Everyone in the boiler room?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And you know that, because you don’t know what happened, you know straight away down below in the engine room where I am, you know that whatever went on, it’s over and that you’re still in one piece. It’s, at the time, it’s, I didn’t feel

I didn’t feel that the fear that, because I didn’t know, I had no idea what was attacking us, being down there. I had no idea, I didn’t know if it was a plane flying over dropping bombs and missiles, I had no idea. There wasn’t, I thought, “Oh well.” and I couldn’t hear, I could only hear our guns going off. I didn’t hear any ‘pop pop pop pop.’ I could only hear that and then, and the

shudder when one of the shells would land so close and the ship would you know, because it creates such a, they create such a…

Yeah.

No one’s going to come down and say, “Right, out, everybody out,” or something like that.

You’re there and that’s it. You’re there until whatever happens has finished. And it is, if it’s your time well, a shell’s landed in the engine room, blown a hole in the side, the water would be rushing in, it’d fill the engine room but it won’t travel around the ship because you’re in down.

Yes. Now that I look back on it. When I look back.

And being so young, coming into a situation where you’ve never had anything like that in your life before. As I said, that, when I saved that lady from drowning, that was spur of the moment, probably never even stopped to think, never give it a thought that we could both be drowned, could be sucked under the propeller, be churned – never ever entered my head. Was just a spur of the moment thing, the woman’s there,

I’ve got to get her out. You imagine there was a lot of people on the wharf seeing their loved ones and everybody off. A lot of people there and I was the first one in the water.

Yes. Of course.

No, my mind was actually

concentrated on the orders that I was getting at the time. I knew that something was wrong, I had no idea what was going on. I know that the ship was shuddering and I had no idea what was going on except that I knew that I had a job to do and I was told what to do and it was just like that the petty officer or the leading hand

or, say, the chief petty officer were to look after me type of thing, you know, and they’re giving the orders, they know what’s got to be done and I’m just obeying their orders. So it’s like their decision what’s going to happen, and not knowing if one’s going to hit the engine room and I won’t be here.

They were very good. And as you can imagine, I’m only a mechanic, stoker mechanic at the time and it’s the upper crew that got all the commemorations and I think our skipper got a DSC [Distinguished Service Cross] because of his actions in there. But there was a lot of guys Mentioned in Despatches, not so much us because we were just down there, you were doing what you were told. But if you were given the order for

somebody to do that, well then you get the accolades.

No I don’t remember that.

All I can remember the skipper was saying, “Well done, well done.”

Yes.

No.

No that didn’t happen. That didn’t happen I can assure you. No, that’s Americanised stuff.

Shore mainly. Shore, planes

We were protecting the islands, that was our job, protecting the islands and the enemy had trains and the trains would go like around the island. The ammunition trains, could be troop trains going around. And they used to go in a tunnel and then out of the tunnel and along there, and sometimes at night the only way that you had like you might have, you might see a spark or something from the engine, well then we’d

Go, ‘bang, bang, bang,’ and try to destroy the train or the tunnel or whatever that it was going into, because a lot of them used to go in.

Yes. That was a possibility.

Well it, it actually, it taught, about warfare, I found out and probably learnt that if there is a war, like these things, these are the things that you’re going to encounter type of thing.

If you are in a conflict. If you’re going to be in a conflict then you’re going to be engaging in warfare, well this is what you have experienced.

Yeah. Of course. You never ever and of course you never ever got a proper sleep. Always on edge.

Always on edge and from that day I would say, from that very day that that happened and the next day after it happened, from the next day after it happened, I was – my sleeping pattern had changed and I’d say I was already at that stage, suffering from

post traumatic stress, even from that particular time.

Edgy, anxiety, I’ll use the word anxiety, so anxiety, edgy, sleeping patterns, thinking that and then if you, we had, if you could going through,

say, like even at the time, going through like pack ice or anything like that, you could, you heard the noise but sometimes if there was only small little, the skipper said it was only small, you wouldn’t know if that was something hit the ship. You’d be, if you were in bed and you could hear it and it woke you up you’d… was that a sampan putting something on. So I, you thought, I thought, I don’t know about others, I did, I used to think a lot.

A couple of them that I know of. A couple of them. We, I met a, met up with a chap and he was there with me at the time, he was in Korea with me at the time and yeah he was stating,

he just said that was a nightmare for him and he was seeing, at the time, he just said, you know, and when we found out too, when we found out how close and we were to being hit, to me it more or less made it worse than I thought it was because I, so close and yet like so near and yet so far.

And to me the affect of it was more because I thought, “Hey, gee they were closer than I really thought.” And I just thought how lucky I was, how lucky we were, the whole crew.

No, I’ve had that for 48 years and didn’t realise what was wrong with me.

Yes, there was a chaplain, well the skipper was qualified to be able to deal with all that, you know, so, but we’d have a church parade on board the ship on the Sunday, but as far as a chaplain, we’d just have the skipper, he would do it himself. But we had no counselling.

Oh no, no. Like I never let on to anybody

the way I felt. Never, never said a word to anybody about the way I felt except that some of my, I might have said something like, “Gee, that was hairy.” But apart from that I didn’t open up to anybody. I never opened up until 1998. I had no idea what was wrong with me, why I was crying, and from that day on from when I was assessed I have never ever, and I won’t watch war movies. Never saw Pearl Harbor, won’t watch it at all.

But I, I don’t like, like Saving Private Ryan. I can’t see, I can’t sit there and watch that. I’ve become what I would say – I love comedy and that’s what I like to watch. I won’t watch drama, I don’t like drama.

Yeah I get a laugh out of MASH because I know MASH is an

American show and, da da da, but yeah so I get a laugh from watching that because I know it doesn’t…

No, because I understand like as with MASH, they were army and I have no idea. I have got no idea what those army guys went through in Korea.

The climate, that’s exactly right, the climate.

I mean, they suffered a lot worse in the climate than say what we did.

Only when I spoke to an American and I think I was in Japan at the time. I said to him, “How do you tell who’s North and who’s South?” And he said, “You tell me,

how do you tell an Englishman and an Irishman?” Something like that you know. Their appearance is identical, there’s no doubt. Like just recently, I saw a show where President Bush is hunting for Saddam Hussein who he believes,

George Bush believes, could be anybody of different characters because he takes that appearance of 18 different people. And the chap said, “How in the hell, if we get in a war with North Korea, is he going to be able to look, find out of the 17 million or something like that, who’s who and who’s not.” And that’s exactly, you put a North Korean and a South Korean, the ambassador was a

North Korean, he was only a young lad and he was the ambassador for South Korea. The only identification if they were like in uniform was because of the communist badge on the top, the red badge on the top, the communist badge.

They were real people. Actually,

we had a lot of trouble when I was in R&R in Japan as well. Because there were a lot of Japanese in Japan, Kure or Sasebo, a lot of those there who served in the Second World War, I had an occasion where I said to the guys, we were going to meet at this particular beer hall, and they said, “Okay,” and where it was. And I went into the wrong one.

And I was the only United Nations serviceman in that place. And they had a batwing door to go in and then you went into the – and I was jostled. I was lucky to get out of there. Not so much, the university students, the young ones and all that were good. But you had that group there who were that age and who had served in that time, they were very nasty towards us.

I was wearing a, like my navy uniform, my winter uniform actually, my winter uniform.

Yes, they all are.

And then looked around for my mates and they’re not there. Turned around to go out and then the next minute you’re jostled.

Well they get up and they walk towards me and

then having that fear that you’re not going to get out. But you know, once I got out and, once I got out on the street, I did see like other servicemen walking up and down, but at that time I, no. I, so yeah, they, there was a lot of them. Actually one of our guys was taking presents back to the ship, his name was, I forget his Christian name, we called him Flash, Flash Marshall.

He was taking presents back, right, and he got into an argument with our guys on the ship, got drunk, got into an argument and the guys just said, “Don’t be stupid.” Because we were told you don’t go, you don’t walk around, you had to be in twos and threes. You don’t go walking around on your own. And I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought I was just going straight in and there was going to be all the guys there. I didn’t realise until I got in that there was no, that I’d walked into the wrong place, anyhow, this Flash got drunk and he was arguing with the guys that he was drinking with, and he decided to

pick up his presents and go back to the ship. And we were saying, “No, no, no,” and he became very angry and said, “I’m going.” So he walked out, picked up a rickshaw, said to the guy, “Take me back to the ship, I want to go back to the ship.” This chap said, “I take you very fast way, quick way.” He said, “That’ll be good.” Run, drop the shafts, he got catapulted out, he got belted up, all his face was broken, jaws and all that, stripped, taken all the presents.

Then the police were involved, captain and everybody was involved. Then line up all the rickshaw drivers, and it would be like setting up rickshaw drivers from Swanson Street all along St Kilda Rd nearly to the shrine. And you had to pick out the bloke that did it. He had no luck. So you know.

He was on board the ship yeah, he was a friend. Yeah, really made a mess of him.

We still kept patrolling. We went back for R&R, Japan and then we went back up the coast again. And then, we were down, I was down below deck, I was watching a movie called The Robe, it was a…

Charlton Heston. And it was a beautiful calm day, I think it was a Sunday. A beautiful calm Sunday afternoon and we were watching The Robe. And the next minute, we were all sitting there, and the ship turns and we’re all falling each other, over each other and we’re saying, “Who the hell are the cowboys on the wheel, can’t they…?” Next minute, “Action stations!” And of course when we got up there, when we got up onto the deck,

there was bodies in the water. And apparently the, I think the Americans had become trigger happy and – we all had codes, right. All had a code. A call sign. If you left the ship like, ‘Michael loves Uncle George,’ and next day it’d be changed so that no-one could infiltrate it. And could be, ‘Polly loves a cracker.’

Anyhow, this particular day that apparently the Americans give the wrong call sign, they all come back to the ship, come back and they all got blown out of the water. And the bodies were in the water. We picked up a guy, and I was up on deck when this happened, picked up a guy and they got a noose around his neck, he was dead, got a noose around his neck,

another bloke got a gaff underneath his leg and as they were lifting him up his leg fell off in the water. Brought him up on deck and we had to use the fire hoses on the deck to hose the flesh. Put him in a bag, picked him up and put him in a bag, American landing craft came along and boarded the ship, American Negro in the landing craft said, “Throw him over, guy, he won’t feel nothing.” He won’t feel nothing and that was exactly what happened.

I didn’t like that at all and of course that was the first time that I’d ever seen anything of death, it was dreadful. And actually one of the guys that was with me, he lives in Geelong, he’s still about, he was talking about it, not so long ago, he said, “A lot of mistakes were made in Korea while I was there, a lot of mistakes. American, Canadian, a lot of mistakes were made.”

Ships being off course and so forth, shouldn’t be in that area. They, Americans at that time had a battleship called Missouri, it was nicknamed ‘the Mighty Mo’ I’ve got a photo of it here somewhere. And she was engaged in, she was up there doing patrols, supposed to have been the only United Nations ship in the area and I think the Canadian destroyer, the Aftobaskin [?] was in the area but so many miles off course.

The Missouri could fire, then in imperial, she could fire 23 miles and score a direct hit. So she could be at Werribee and hit Geelong. Stationed at Werribee say, as an example, her firepower, 16” guns, four 16” guns. We had 4.5. The Aftobaskin would only have 4.5,

and here you’ve got a battleship engaged in, a United Nations ship the Aftobaskin in wharf. So it was just a mistake, and apparently the navigator on the Aftobaskin was at fault.

Aftobaskin I think it is, I forget how you spell it.

You had a

a flag officer who was in charge of the 7th Fleet, and that was what we were called. And some days, I think it was in our captain’s report, he was in charge of United Nations ships in that area at a certain time, depending on who was there but he became, like you’d said flotilla leader. He was in charge of the flotilla there. But the ship itself,

comes under the jurisdiction of the skipper and the navigator or whatever, whoever’s on watch at that particular time. But the whole 7th Fleet which we were part of, we were in charge, the Americans were in charge of us. The, an admiral was, I forget his name, I’ve got a photo of it here.

Well it would be related, our skipper would be made aware of it naturally, he’d be made aware of it and then he’d, he’d like, he, as I was saying, he’d turn around and say, “Well it won’t happen to us.”

A landing craft.

A landing craft, yeah you know the bows, you know they have them those that drop down at the beach and they all fall in.

Like one of those

Yeah, LSTs.

I can tell you this much, the chap had a watch like this and it stopped at, we had a look and it was a quarter to three.

On the watch. That’s when the watch stopped.

Yeah.

Yeah, Morse. Morse.

Yeah. Yeah. But there was a lot of cover up. A terrible lot. I mean there’s been a lot of cover ups in all wars.

I believe so. I believe it was covered up. Yeah, I believe it was covered up.

I wish Wally was here, a mate of mine, he was a seaman, he’d be able to…

No, no I’m just trying to remember. All we knew as I said, we were watching The Robe when we got ‘action stations’ sign. And then the ship doing a like a hard right or

hard left because the lookout spotted the body, naturally, and then said just, “Look out,” you know, and come along and picked it up in the water. But, and at the time I think that, at the time I think that even the temperature of the water, at that particular time, even though it was clear, light green water, it was freezing cold and he was probably, if he had have survived he would’ve only been like allowed in, about three minutes in the water,

hypertension and that would set in, you know.

No, well when we got action stations that particular time, we were watching The Robe, no, everybody had their, like a different area as I said. Now

my position at that time could’ve been like, you go down in the gear room, pull the hatch down or something like that. Naturally, when you get up on the deck you don’t see nothing and you realise.

Oh yes, yes, yes, everybody had different tasks. Everybody. It just wasn’t, if I was like, as I said, if I wasn’t in the engine room and we were under attack well, you had different positions. Could be mess deck making sure it was all, there was no (UNCLEAR) the blockage. Could be in the gearing room.

You may even have had to go down into the boiler room to help down there. You had different positions, you had about, could’ve had about 30 stokers in your mess. Leading stokers and stokers, could’ve had about 30 guys so everybody, you can only have say five in the boiler room or three in the boiler room and so many in the engine room, and then you’ve got the others that were off watch. And you could only have so many in the mess deck and if you do come under attack they’ve got these jobs to do,

everybody else has got to go. Everybody had their own position to go to.

He was just a Negro, American Negro.

Yeah, you see, they’d only send, you’ve got a guy that more or less like steers the thing,

and you’ve got another, but the guy that said, “Throw him back overboard,” was just an ordinary –

An ordinary seaman, like an American, just like an American Negro seaman, he was Negro, American Negro seaman.

Just in his hat and his uniform.

Yeah, “He won’t feel nothing,” yeah and so was my mate Wally.

Well he wasn’t there at the time, he was up at the bridge, see he had to, he was still

in charge up on the bridge. It wasn’t until they brought him up on deck and hosed him off, you know, that we zipped him up and…

No he’d lost all the blood but the flesh, he was blown apart from here down to here. And I’ve often described it, if you get a fillet, get fillets of rabbit, fillets of chicken, get a chicken fillet

and cut it up, his flesh was the same, it was pink. Just pink like that and it was just, when they were picking him up the leg fell off and everything and they just hosed the deck down with the fire hose.

Yeah. First time in your life that you see something like that. Yeah and yet it’s, it happened and

I just think now, I look at it this way, my, as I said my uncle was beheaded, well the chaps who were there or someone that knew it and saw it, those who were in New Guinea in the Second World War saw their mates getting blown apart. Those that were in Vietnam saw their mates getting killed as well. And since I’ve, like since the war’s been over and then I

can reflect back to those things, I can reflect back to Vietnam as an example, those examples that, yeah I mean, those guys over there were conscripted and into the Vietnam war and they saw some terrible, terrible things, as I say.

Well we had to put him over yeah, he had to go in there, we couldn’t keep him on board.

No

No. Not for, no, no there was no ceremony, no. None at all.

No, they were all in the, they were all zipped up, he was zipped up. That went with them, they were, they had to go with him. They were there. We just put him in a bag and gave it to them.

I don’t know, I can’t remember.

Yeah, it would’ve been. No I think actually that would’ve been stopped. I think we just went back to our mess deck. It’s a pity that Wally Wilson, who was my friend, he was a seaman, he was on deck. Like I had no involvement in washing the deck down, because I was a

stoker. I was more or less an onlooker type, I was an onlooker, but it was Wally Wilson, being a seaman, his job’s a, duty jobs are on deck or whatever and I remember that he was there at the time you know, and we both come from Geelong. And he was actually with me, I think he was at the ring when I had my fight, Wally. Wally was at the ring, he was at the when I had that fight in Sasebo.

No again, I often thought later on, look if I hadn’t have been married, if I wasn’t getting married, if I wasn’t going to be married, I would’ve still stayed in. I would’ve signed on for another six years. I would.

Because it was just a bunch of guys that I’d been with, even though you get drafted to different ships, it’s funny how you can bond together. More so with destroyers and frigates and corvettes than what you or patrol boats, than what you can, as I say, you’re more a family, you’re more of a family. Especially like even with the, those patrol boats that are up north chasing around fishing boats and poachers and all that.

You only have, you might only have 25 or 30 guys on one of them, you’re all a family, you’re all together. When I was out here, you know came out here for R&R on the HMAS Burdekin out there, we were just a family, everybody knew each other and that. So no, I, if I had have stayed in I’d have been drafted to an aircraft carrier which is the biggest we’ve got.

I don’t think I would’ve liked it, I don’t think I would’ve liked it.

Yes.

No, I didn’t witness it. I would’ve been, say I was below deck at the time that they fired at the trains.

Yeah I didn’t see that but I know that’s what we did because the skipper said that what was happening, there’s a train going around and we’re after it, type of thing. So he just let us know and that’s what happened.

Yes, see another thing too, was air force

would come over and do a – we were told this, our skipper got information on this. air force would come over, be American or whatever, come over and bomb the island, and then straight after the attack, right they’d fly away and then apparently the North Koreans would then all come up or something, and

like they’d line up to see who’d been killed or whatever and the moment after that attack then the ship that was in that area would automatically open fire straight away. Because it was given to us that they’d be standing there or they’d be counted to see what you know. The ship was there and it’d be, ‘bom, bom, bom.’ And they would then fire salvos at those that were on the island. That was another thing that they did do. Some of the things they had to do of

barrages. But we weren’t engaged in anything except shore batteries or trains or whatever, as I said I think at one stage they did a raid on an island, air force and we fired I think, some word got back we only killed a cow. But these were just. That’s what, that’s what was our job, patrolling,

looking out for, say, sampans, North Korean sampans and protecting the islands that were on their and doing shore patrols. We went up as far as, I think I can remember our skipper saying, “We are now in Russia.” Because we had gone up that far we were up in Vladivostok in near Siberia there.

Went up to the border naturally, went in cruised around and came out and he said, “We’ve just been into Russia and we’re out again.”

No. The truce talks, the truce talks happened on the 23rd or 27th of July. 27th of July 1953. We were already back home.

I think I arrived on the 25th of June, or 25th of July I think, it’s in the paper where my photo was taken arriving back in Melbourne.

Well you can imagine it had to be, I can remember bread.

You wouldn’t get, we’d get fresh bread if we went into Japan and we’d load up with it. After that run out they used to make their own bread. And we used to think it was like raisin bread and it wasn’t until you picked, you soon found out when you picked all the weevils out. They were in the bread, yeah there was, my word, there was a lot of weevils

in the flour and it must’ve got in there somehow so you know, the bread. Good protein probably anyhow. And the meat was the same, as I said, I’ve seen the chap cutting up the meat outside on the upper deck, even in the summer time, the flies. Chopping, it was frozen, chopping it up and saying we were going to make a stew out of it. You never got either, they might have a mixed grill which you got a kidney, a chop,

a sausage and a piece of steak. You could not even eat the steak, it was that tough. And you got your soups and you had a tray and each little compartment, so you had one compartment where you had your main course in it. And you had your little part where you had your custard and prunes or whatever.

A lot of the times the seas would be that rough that you’d go to the galley and get your meal and then by the time you walked along the gangway and then down the ladder to the mess deck, your custard and prunes had got mixed up with your main meal. It was always like that. And at some time, I did time as a, what they call a petty officer’s mess man,

because petty officers never went to the galley, they had plates. They didn’t have tin trays, they had plates and so you brought their meals back to them and they sat down at the table. You would go down there first thing in the morning and put the lights on and say, “Come on, time for breakfast.” And you’d have to set the table, you’d set the table for them and then you’d go and get their breakfast and put it down in front of them and then you’d have to wash up the dishes after that.

Then after that you were free until lunch time. And then lunch time you’d do the same. Well I can remember when I had a stint of that, I was coming back from the galley and I had two plates in my hand and one was with food and of course the other plate was with the sweets. And I’m coming along, and I’m going like that. Then I had to go down the, a set of, the ladder, steel ladder and I’m leaning back like this. Couldn’t hang on because

I’ve got the two plates in my hand and I’ve just got to the second rung and the next minute, ‘bang!’ The two plates have landed at my feet and I’ve had to clean it all up and go back and get some stuff. I hated the job, I hated the job as a mess man because we were in a lot of rough weather, terrible lot of rough weather and these are the things that happened. I have to say this that, the whole time that I was on the Anzac, or the whole time I was in the navy, the whole time I was in the navy and we’d been

through some shocking weather, I never ever got seasick to the state where I’d through up. I’d been very nauseous a lot of times and when you’re down in the mess deck and the smell of food and no fresh air, a lot of people will get sick. See them go white and that. But I have, I’ve got to the stage where

I’ve been nauseous but I’ve never ever, was never seasick enough to throw up.

Of course. As I was saying to Tanto, we had a chap on, we only boarded the Australia doing our training and as soon as we left Flinders Naval Depot to go out and pick up the Australia to do our sea time, it was rough weather and eggs were on for breakfast.

Well you stood up in case you got… We I suppose it was hygienic because you got, after you used your bowels you got a wash at the same time. No we never had any blockage, no.

With generators, we had a generator for producing fresh air into the what’s-a-name, into the mess decks. Go along the tube and into the mess deck. But it’s just that you’ve got everybody down there, everybody’s down there and even in the hottest of

hot, it’s still hellish and hot down there. Even though when you’ve got that air coming in you’re still hot. You know as in a plane, you know how you can turn like that, well exactly the same thing as we had in our deck, you could turn the fan on. It’d go around.

In the mess deck?

No. No you were allowed to smoke.

In the mess deck.

Oh no, you were issued with cigarettes.

Yes. You smoked down in the mess deck. Yeah and of course you’re not allowed to smoke on, as I say, on duty down in the engine room or boiler room, no. But you were allowed to smoke down in the mess deck. Gosh yes. See ashtrays everywhere.

No, no, no.

Well see we have a lot of people now who are suffering from emphysema because of it. Smoking.

You were given cigarettes to smoke. You were given them. That was your ration the cigarettes, going back in them days I think Craven As and – the only cigarettes that we had to buy if we wanted to buy cigarettes, were American cigarettes.

Powdered milk.

That’s what you’d have to have, you’d have no other white milk. Had no other way to have milk, had to be powdered milk.

No, we had, the eggs that we had were fresh, they probably put them in the freezer, but the eggs were, ‘ppppph’.

Yeah.

About the same. Roughly the same. I think that we’ve got a, I think that the skipper said that we did a stint every two or three weeks or something, a patrol. It’s not very far from Japan to Korea as you can understand.

I can’t remember now. Couldn’t remember. Wouldn’t take long, not that long.

Yeah. Something like that. It wouldn’t take long.

No, only leave. Only leave in Japan.

As I said, we went to Hiroshima, or Hiroshima for four days, something like that. Just going ashore. Tokyo and

going to Kure, we were in Kure for a fair bit and Sasebo. That was a port. Kure was a lot of our, Kure was mostly where we spent a lot of our R&R. Tokyo, if you wanted to go to Tokyo, go to Ginza and all that in Tokyo, well you just got a train and that but you had to have somewhere to stay or be prepared to stay somewhere

because of the curfew on servicemen at night. So otherwise you had to come back on board.

Well you had to be back on board by midnight. And if you weren’t back by midnight, the patrols used to go round and round and round. But the bars used to open all hours and the guys used to be stuck in the bars or something like that. A lot of them were being picked up for their own good, taken back on a jeep by the police, just for their own good because wandering around

Japan on their own wasn’t the best thing to do.

Yeah, of course. Well, in your initial training you were told about VD and sexually transmitted disease, so you,

you were told not to go into those areas but a lot of blokes did, went into the areas. And of course, naturally they had to pay for it. I had at the time, I had a fiancée and I also had a poor family and I couldn’t be spending money and going out. I had a lovely girl, she was a lovely person, I spent most of my time with her in Japan.

And I, I never had any sexual contact with her but she was tremendous company, a lovely, lovely person, beautiful person. And her parents just, they just idolised me. But then again, they had the culture that their daughters were going to marry Japanese and that was just it. As the English soldier found out, he bought the ring and everything. He was going to marry her but no, it didn’t happen.

All right, it didn’t bother me one little bit because as I stated, in our mess deck alone I know that there were two guys from, or three guys from Geelong, so we had a lot t talk about and the only radio that we would get would be Radio Australia, the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation], we’d get Radio Australia.

So we’d get the news and whatever on Radio Australia but that’s the only radio station that we’d pick up. Apart from that all the rest was Japanese and yeah. Yeah and of course they’d be playing Japanese music.

Well it was a lot of songs that the American country and western singer, Teresa Brewer, that she would sing, and then you’d have the Japanese singing it in their

own lingo. One song that I do remember, ‘Till I Waltz Again With You.’ I don’t know whether you’ve heard of it.

‘Till I waltz again with you. Let no other da da da. I will keep my promise true, for you are my guiding star.’ Have you ever heard it, Stella?

You know, and they’d be sung in Japanese and back into Australian. Often still hear it. There was another one I just can’t think of it.

Just the vocals.

Japanese. Yeah, Japanese girl singing it. Yeah.

No. It was just like even though that we still did patrols after that, that wasn’t the end of our, we still did patrols and still relieved and all that but no it was, to me it was like

something was going to happen, it’s happened and then we haven’t been affected by it, so like we’ve been there and done that so now it’s like all free go, steam type thing. That’s what I just thought, that we were going to go back there and go do our patrols but whatever was going to happen to us, has happened, we’ve avoided it, bah bah bah, we’ve come out on top so now…

And it gives you that confidence, too, I suppose, to know that we’ve got a ship, we’ve got a crew that’s going to take on anything, type of thing, and be there at the finish. So there was a little bit of confidence there with that respect. So yeah, it didn’t bother me later on, we just, as I said the last time, I think the only times that I can remember was when we were

blowing up trains or doing blowing up the islands that the planes had been over and they’d bombed it, that they’d come out and do a count and then we’d open fire straight away after that type thing. There was a time we was attached, we were told by the pilots, you know the pilots would say, this is what they do, and then that information was relayed back to us, and then that we knew what to do. So straight away afterwards. Of course the pilots would do that, and they’d still buzz around and round and round.

Watch the guys being counted or watch them coming up out of their caves or whatever and so they’d pinpoint where it was and so we’d just more or less just move in, ‘bang, bang, bang,’ type thing. So that was the lot.

We used to do, I think it was four on and eight off.

Four on eight off. So if you went to, went into the engine room at four AM in the morning and you did a four hour stint, come out at eight o’clock and then you were back in at four in the afternoon. And then you go from four till midnight and then midnight, you’d be back in at eight AM in the morning. So you did your four hours on and eight hours off.

Well you might go down the engine room, do four hours in the engine room, come up have eight hours off and then do eight hours in the boiler room.

Yeah, you’d go back and forth.

Yeah.

Play cards, write letters, sometimes movies would come on. Listen to the radio.

Play mah jong.

No, no I never. No I didn’t, didn’t learn it, didn’t know anything about it, really, until I joined the navy. But I used to watch them when Dad would go to the wholesalers in Little Bourke Street I’d watch them adding up the stuff on the abacus. Bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, back that way, back that way.

I could never use it but it used to fascinate me they could work out how much it was and add it up on the abacus.

Yeah, my word, we played a lot of mahjong and they were all bone, they were all bone, all the pieces were bone. The pieces were bone, because you could get them in Japan. You’d buy them in Japan and then you’d, that was your own set and you had them. We used to play there, one, two, three, four.

Hey?

Yeah, I used to gamble a bit. It might be two shillings or five shillings going back in them days because there was no metric then. Yeah they’d be playing for money. There was a lot of gambling going on. They’d be gambling, I think we had, we had a I think it was a leading stoker who was in the mess deck who they’d, they were taking bets on race horses and that, and they wouldn’t even hear a race but we had Radio Australia on

at that time, oh no, Radio Australia would broadcast the races at that time, Radio Australia, like, was channelled through, which was the ABC, the ABC used to broadcast the races and then they’d hear it and they had this bloke on board taking bets.

No, just after the race, the broadcaster would probably announce the prices and you’d write them down, and those who’d want would back one and you’d have to pay them.

I think it had a problem, there’s a lot of, there was a lot of theft on board. Yeah there was a lot of theft. As I said, you could do some washing, go and hang it up to dry. But we learnt later on, I did, to have your, put your name M. Hoe or something on

the little white shirt that you had, couldn’t put it on your whites because it would come up, but we’d mark our clothing because if you didn’t, you hung it up there and there was no name on it, it was gone. It was gone. And if you were dead to the world, in bed say twelve till four or twelve till eight, you’d gone to bed and of course if you got up the next day

at eight o’clock and you’d finished at midnight and had your eight hours off, time you had your shower and you got into your hammock and went to sleep and you had to get up and have your breakfast and be back down in the engine room or boiler room or whatever at eight o’clock, and you wouldn’t probably have time to go searching in your locker for, da da da, whatever, because nine times out of ten, if it was winter, you’d only throw a shirt on or something like that or a jumper on underneath your overalls

to keep warm. But like in the summer time you’d probably just have your jocks and your overalls on. And your boots for down there. So you mightn’t go to a certain drawer in your locker from, for two or three days. And if you’ve got money there, that’s where you put your money, you’d go there about three or four days later and it could be gone. And you knew it was someone in the mess deck, had to be someone in the mess deck and yet you had no way to prove it. You’d just mention it

you’d bring it to the attention of the person or, of the mess deck, that somebody’s took money out, da da da, where then there would be some nice guys who would turn around and say, “Well how much was taken?” And the bloke might say, “I had two pound taken.” That’s a lot of money. And they might say, “We can put five shillings in each and help him out that way.” Because he could’ve been using that, as I say, to go ashore,

his next time in Japan. It did go on, and that was in our mess deck. So I should imagine it went on in the other decks. But I know that did happen in our mess deck.

That’s quite possible.

Yeah I suppose that

if you, if you did see. You could always tell, say, if someone was sitting there and he was with this guy and he was having bets all day or something like that. Later on you saw him in the afternoon or that night or something like that, you’re still at sea and if your going to be in, it’d be a Saturday say and you know that you’re going to be in Kure on the Monday or the Tuesday,

just say you see him later on and he’s melancholy, that kind of thing, and I wouldn’t know, no one would ask, but you’d just say, “Bluey looks down today.” And you’d probably think he’s lost his money. But never ever could we ever pin point who was doing it. Once it happened to you, that was it. If you win a, the moment you had a chance after that, because once your money was stolen, taken away, there was nothing there for the bloke to come back.

Or he’d realise that you were going to be watching, type of thing. So when you went to shore you bought yourself a lock. You had to lock your locker as soon as you come off. Well I’d have a shower, go to my locker get my key, unlock my, get my toiletries out have a shower and then go and lock it up again.

Say like an episode say like that. It happened, and within two or three days it’s blown over and then everybody got on with their life again. But it more or less, all it did was make you alert it could happen to you. It is possible it could have anything to you.

Yes I had clothing stolen.

I used to have my jocks tailor made, would you believe it? I did.

They were boxer shorts, just boxer shorts with press studs up here. I haven’t seen them. Satin boxer shorts with press studs up here. No floral, just the red, white, blue, just plain colours

with, and green, pale green just with the names-a-names up here. I had them made in Hong Kong. Got them made in Hong Kong and luckily the cotton didn’t break on these or the press studs didn’t break. But I’d washed a couple of pair and then hung them down in the gearing room, just on like a piece of rope, a cord or something like that, a bit of electricians wire going across and go down to get them and their gone.

No name on them or anything like that so I used to mark everything after that. I marked all my clothes.

Well how am I going to find – am I going to get everybody undressed in front of me? Who’s got my jocks?

See we were down, our mess deck was down practically the lowest part of the ship up forward. Couldn’t go any lower than where we were.

So then, just above, when you went up our ladder there was another gangway and there was another mess deck. And there were seamen there. And they would have to have somewhere also to dry their washing and of course it didn’t matter, seamen, signalmen whatever, they always looked for somewhere where it was warm: gear room, boiler room or whatever. So I had no idea. It could’ve been a signalman, it could’ve been a seaman. It could’ve been a radar guy that took it.

You just say, “Oh well, that’s it.” But then again I could say all right I’ll put my name on it, M. Hoe and all that, so that goes on it. But then I’m not going to see if bloke with M. Hoe walking around with jocks on because you’ve got 300 guys there. It’s just, it’s put down as a loss and naturally it upsets you but then you’ve got to go and buy when you get to Hong Kong

and you call into Hong Kong and get a couple of more pair or something like that. But it did go on.

No. Because you always have that in your head that, “Aha it’s going on,” you’re going to be the unlucky one that gets caught type of thing. It’ll be you that gets caught. No, never entered my head.

No, not one.

Never heard of anyone getting caught at all. Not one.

It happened, but it wasn’t a regular thing because you became alert of it. With clothing, like money, money did happen but that wasn’t as often as the clothes were. The clothes would disappear for sure.

When I joined, I didn’t know I was going to Korea. Then we went to Korea and I didn’t know how long we were going to be there for but the normal thing was, say you’re gone out of Australia for twelve months and then another ship would take over. Because we had, like the Murchison, the Warramunga, see there was another two.

The Bataan, there’s another ship, the Tobruk another ship who all did, and the Sydney, HMAS Sydney, all did stints in Korea and all in that space of three years.

Yes.

No. Didn’t worry me.

When I was coming home, naturally.

On my way home. But then again, on our way home, you didn’t more or less come straight back from Korea to Australia, you also came back and stopped at places like New Caledonia, Rabaul, you still came back and stopped at these places coming home. We stopped at Hong Kong, you have to fuel any how and take on fresh

food and water. And food and meat and that so you stopped at a lot of places on the way back, to take on fresh supplies for the ship.

Yeah I went ashore, but as I said, because you never had anywhere to stay, you could only just have a look around, have a few drinks and then go back on board. And I haven’t been back since I was what,

50 years ago so I have no idea what it would be like now, whether it was different or what.

Yes. It’s funny, stokers went with stokers and seamen went with seamen. I only knew a couple of guys because they were from Geelong who were seamen.

No, we all stuck together, and it’s funny, in the ships in reserve at Geelong which was my home depot, seamen lived on one ship, stokers lived on the other and they were tied up together and the only thing that stopped, we had a plank and you could go across. But normally all stokers all stayed together and the seamen stayed on the other side. Seamen on one lot, stokers on the other, tied up together. And there wasn’t that many out there, we didn’t have that many out there. There might have been about 100 all up.

But then again if we got ashore, we’d all just probably mingle together, something like that but I can remember we used to go to a hotel called the Victoria which was in Mallet Street at the time, and we would go in there and we’d have a few drinks. I’d go home and the guys would go back, sometimes I’d take some guys home with me to might place. They’d stay the night.

No it was all right, it was all okay. As I said, we did stick to our own section, but there was never any conflict between stokers and seamen. We bonded all together. I’ve had a lot of guys,

I’ve had a signalman that I knew very well and of course he’s passed on now, he died of cancer. But no he, I spoke to him before he died, he still remembered me and I forget his Christian name but we called him Tubby Coverdale, he was from Western Australia. But I did ring went, we’ve got an association, HMAS Anzac Association,

and we’ve formed an association and there’s only about six Korean veterans who are on it with me, the rest all joined the Anzac after I left it. But we do have an association and I am at the moment, I’m a committee and welfare officer of that. And we’ve got a meeting on Friday in Melbourne and we meet at a place called Duckboard House in Flinders Lane. We go up there and have our meeting there. One month it might be a meeting and the next month

it’s a social gathering. Again, we’ve bonded and these guys were on the Anzac after I was on. There’s only about, there wouldn’t be, there’d be about six of us who were Korean veterans on the Anzac in ’52. And not one of them I knew until I joined the association. They were all on the same time as me and they were different seamen, they were sigs and whatever. And there’s a lot

of guys that are in it now, we have reunions, they just went on a reunion, I didn’t go, they just came back last week from Lake Macquarie, but we had a reunion in Hobart which was absolutely magnificent. And the reason why I didn’t go to Lake Macquarie was I just thought, “Well they won’t top this, nothing will top this one we had in Hobart.” We combined our reunion in Hobart with the Navy Ball

that was over there. It was absolutely magnificent.

Provide?

Well you’re from all over Australia. Not just Victoria, all over Australia. And I went to a reunion in

Albury. And when I went to this reunion in Albury, which was three year ago, not last year, the year before and I was there, as I said we come from all over Australia, and I came across my

best man, who was my best man at the wedding. And I had not seen this guy since the wedding. Because naturally after the wedding I went on my honeymoon. When I came back, we were both stationed in Geelong, we’d been on the Anzac, when I came back he’d gone and I hadn’t seen him since that day. Here I am, I run into him and since then I’ve been over to Adelaide, he lives there, been over to Adelaide

went and had, Rosemary and I went and had lunch with him. He took us home to his place and had a meal. Then he drove us back to where we were staying.

Yeah, he still had photos of the wedding that he showed. Isn’t it incredible? A lot of things have happened to me that I just think there are things that happen out there that are what I call miracles.

Now I’ve got this job of welfare officer as well. Anyhow, I was given the name of a person to go and visit to see if I can help with their entitlements and I went to the house and I had a look at him. I said, “I know your face.” He read my name tag he said, “Come inside.” He called his wife and he said to his wife,

“You don’t know this chap do you?” She said, “Should I know him?” “Have a look at his name.” She had a look, true story, she was the elder sister of my first girlfriend. And it’s only this year, this year that I went and seen him. And I hadn’t seen him since nineteen forty-… I actually partnered the younger sister, his wife’s younger sister at their wedding, I’d partnered and I hadn’t seen them since 19 – when they got married in 1949

and here I was, I ran into them this year. And I was talking about Esme, my first girlfriend, I was talking about her and he said, “Yeah, she’s still about. She’s in Geelong. She’s not well.” She’d had a triple bypass about three months ago, she still wasn’t, she was struggling to get over that because they were going to bring her to the house and let me see her, but she wasn’t well at that time. But he just said, “Keep in touch and one day you’ll be able to catch up with her.”

In Japan. Yeah I was in Japan at the time. We came back and I think we got told in Japan that we wouldn’t be going back up there again, but I think it was either the Bataan or something else, the Tobruk was taking our place and we wouldn’t be going back. We were going home.

I thought it was wonderful because now we’re going home I’m going to see my fiancée, I’m going to see all my friends. As I stated I was given a, first we came back and the first night I went to the dance hall, the Palais, was, “Welcome Home, Milton,” right across the, all ribbons and everything. And the owner of it got up and made a speech and said, “It’s lovely to have you back.” And I just thanked them and then when I got married they sent me a telegram to wish me all the best.

They didn’t know nothing. No one, we came back to Australia and we just drifted into the workforce. No recognition, no nothing. Not a thing and it’s only the year 2000 that

we’ve been recognised with a memorial in Canberra. It took 50 years for them to put up a memorial for us, 50 years. And now a, I was nominated to go back to Korea, paid by the government to revisit Korea. I was nominated and it was out of two of us in Geelong and because the other chap was on the committee

of the Veterans Association, I don’t know, but he went instead of I. I didn’t go back. That was a couple of months, three months ago.

Yes I would’ve liked to have gone. Especially this year because it’s the anniversary of the ceasefire, of the truce, in July. And they were there in Korea for that. So it was a tremendous big service, five star

treatment all paid by the government. If Rosemary wanted to go all I had to do was pay her fare and the government paid the rest.

Still on the Anzac, doing the royal tour then.

Yes, because I just thought, “Well, at least we’ve done something.”

At least now that a truce has been signed, a truce has been signed and we’ve served a purpose. We’ve been there, you’ve put your life on the line for your country and now there’s a truce, something good’s come from it. And that truce remains until today. Hopefully it keeps on going.

I didn’t think anything about it at the time because of my elation at being home and being happy and everybody’s around me and I’m still in one piece and family and everything, fiancée. No it didn’t bother me at the time and it wasn’t until later on that when

I realised the poor devils of the Vietnam War, what they came home to and well, we were always known as the forgotten war. So not until later, but at the time my elation of coming home from Korea all in one piece, I was, “Hell, who cares about a ticker tape parade or anything like that. I’m home,” that type of thing.

Who did I see first? My fiancée, she was waiting at the wharf for me and the Women’s Weekly took a photo of us and I’ve got it over there. Women’s Weekly took a photo of us and also the Geelong Advertiser were waiting for me at the Geelong Railway Station when I came back. So it as in the Women’s Weekly and also in that. Just photographed me and this other chap who was on the ship with me from

Geelong, who passed on, Bill Tyler. Timmy was there with his wife and his newborn baby and I was there with my fiancée. So yeah, she was the first person I seen.

Yeah the media were there for us when we came back. But yeah, that was a – something like – there was no, the Ad, like the Woman’s Weekly was down there just like they are with these

ships that are going to Iraq and all that. You know how they’re on board when they came back. It’s the same thing, but then after that, we just mingled into society, got a job and, da da da. And you know, it was more or less never heard of after that.

Yes.

Just like, “Glad to be home?” “Yeah, good to be home,” I said, “Yeah.”

“What was the weather like over there?” Da da da. Just like, how, “Are you happy to be home?” “Very.” “Glad.” “My fiancée.” “When you plan to get married?” And all that. But apart from that – that’s just mostly what they said. Never got into any of the details of what you did in Korea or what happened in Korea. Or got the papers out that says HMAS Anzac in action in Korea.

Wonderful. I lost my Mum about eight years later, she died of a brain tumour and my Dad lived on for another four years and he passed on. So I got married and I had two sons.

When I came home I didn’t have much leave. I did the royal tour in 1953 and then after ’53, I got married in ’54. I did the royal tour as soon as I – I just had leave to come home like and then rejoin the Anzac and away I went to do the royal tour.

All around Australia, yeah wherever she went we went. And we used to say, we had a saying on board the ship that when she was on, that like she’d be on say she was on one side and for instance when she went to the toilet we used to say that, they called it the ‘hush flush.’ Because, so you couldn’t hear it flushing. The hush flush. As I was saying she was very, very, and she still is, she’s a well groomed lady. And she was a

beautiful looking person in them days. I’ve got a photo of her in them days.

Yeah he came up when he was on board he came along and he wanted, he called it bingo, we called it tombola in them days. Then after that here it was called housey housey, now it’s called bingo.

He wanted to know could he sit it. We said, “You got any money?” He said, “Yes,” he’d been given his allowance so he was allowed to sit and play. We can’t go lending him any money and we don’t take cheques. But he was a man’s man. He was a man’s man. He was a nice guy. He, I liked the guy at the time, he was very respectful of the Queen.

And he would not have, as I said, guys sneaking around taking shots of, he was very respectful of the Queen. But then he had his jokes and so forth, you know, “Are you married?” “No.” “Oh you haven’t been trapped yet.” So he did have his little jokes. He was quite good. But it was just all the pomp that went with it, you had to be dressed to the nines and everything had to be spick and span and neat.

And as I say, a lot of places that they visited it was pouring rain. The rain would be running all the white cream off your hat and down your face and you’re more or less transparent standing there with all your whites on if you were up in the tropics.