Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Portland on nine, no sorry the second of September 1917. Lived on a dairy farm. Went to school in Portland for a few years. Me dad didn’t

ever trade, he worked on the wharves, he was a fisherman. He got a job in the railways somehow or other. And we moved to Melbourne when I was about four.

Being a man’s family I had three brothers. There were four boys in the family. All still alive. But when dad got a job in the railways he had to go where he was told. And we came up to West Richmond.

And I went to a real old school called Yarra Park State School. I was there for about two or three years and then he got moved to a place called Pakenham. So we packed up and went to Pakenham. And I went to school there until I was about ten. And then he got moved to a little place out in the Western Suburbs called Deer Park.

I finished school there when I was twelve. I had my, what they called the Merit in those days. I don’t know what the equivalent is these days. I had my Merit when I was twelve. That meant I was in the eighth grade. And we had to go to school until we were fourteen. So I went to Williamstown High School in Williamstown. And I went there for three years.

Got my Intermediate there. When I was fifteen I had my Intermediate. And of course it was the days of the Depression. So I had to go to work. And I went to work as a grocer. In the first self-service grocery chain in Victoria. In Footscray. Where I became an apprentice

for the princely sum of fourteen and sixpence a week for forty-eight hours. I did me apprenticeship and when I was about eighteen I left the grocery trade as what they called a Head Counter Hand. And I went into the wholesale grocery business for a firm called Tandaco in South Melbourne. Where I

was a storeman and became a driver, storeman driver. Unloading trucks and loading trucks and delivering round the city and the railways and the dock. Until 1939, great year when war was declared against Germany. And, can you switch it off for a minute.

Yes, was a Sunday night, I think it was eight thirty on September the third 1939 when Mr Menzies uttered the fateful words ‘Australia is now at war with Germany’. I was trying to give my girlfriend a goodnight kiss and she said to me, “You won’t go to the war will you?” I said “No I won’t go,” and I looked her straight in the eye and said “I won’t go.” I got me goodnight kiss and I went home. And nine o’clock next morning

I was down the Victoria Barracks trying to join the Army. They didn’t know what to do with us. They sent us all home so I went back to, I went to work. Then they called sometime in September. They called for volunteers. You had to be six foot seven and fifteen stone and be able to kick a bag of spuds over the grandstand in your bare feet. The big sun-bronzed Anzac. And while I was

driving around the city I decided to join the Army the first day. And enlisted at the Flinders Street Station. At one of the ticket windows. And they sent me home. And they, about a month later I got a piece of paper to tell me to report to some barracks in South Melbourne. Course then I had to tell me girlfriend. And me parents.

But I got over that hurdle and I went into the Army on, I knocked off work on Saturday at twelve o’clock and I went into the Army at eight o’clock on Monday the twenty-third of October 1939. From there we took an oath and were sworn in. They sort of rounded us all up some how or other. ‘Bout sixty of us.

Put us on some buses and took us to the showgrounds. The first thing they did, they gave us an Army number. Which mine was VX1906. It’s a thing you never forget because they hammer it into your head that much. But you knew your Army number. It was the only thing you ever really knew was your Army number. Out of the sixty chaps they split us into two squads of thirty men.

The squad I was in was Thirty Squad. The other squad was Thirty-one Squad. And then we went into I think it was the Board of Manufacturers in the showgrounds.

Put him in the bathroom or somewhere.

Yes at the showgrounds and of course the first thing,

they gave us was a great big bag, looked like a chaff bag. But they sent us down to a shed that was full of bales of straw. And that’s, we filled these bags up with straw and that, and that was known as a palliasse. And that was my bed for the next three weeks or whatever it was at the showgrounds. No blank...

I think we got one blanket, no pillow, no sheets. Just lay on the, slept on the

floor. Then we came across some sergeants from the Australian Instructional Corps, who were soldiers. They were given the job of trying to make us learn which was our left foot, which was our right foot. Turn left or turn right or stand at ease. How they survived this we’ll never know. Then we got some clothes, old giggle suits.

Oh that was a sort of a

pair of trousers and a jacket. Cause we were all in civilian clothes. And make us all sort of look uniform. Whatever it was they gave us what we called giggle suits.

Well we reckoned we were in the lunatic asylum.

Well we got these giggle suits, we got a pair of red boots and we got a hat. That was our uniform. No we reckon

we were all in the nuthouse. That just became the term, giggle suits. Used to see us, someone’d have a pair of giggle suits, giggle pants, another bloke’d have a giggle jacket. Nobody had a complete set. Some bloke’d have boots that were too big, some’d have em too small. Hats, come down over your ears. Anyhow we finally sorted ourselves out. There we were on what they call squad drill.

Marching up and down and turning left and always on parade. Then we got a rifle. Which naturally we had to clean because it’d been stored since the end of World War I. And we got a rifle. The...

No. This was still at the showgrounds.

Well it was the star turn

while we were at the showgrounds when we marched in the Melbourne Cup. In 1939.

Yeah, all right. Anyhow from there we went from the showgrounds to Broadmeadows. Where they formed us into the, into two companies there. The Petrol Company and the Ammunition Company. Thirty Squad we all went into Petrol Company. We were joined there by people from all over Victoria. Where what was known as the Sixth Division

Petrol Company was formed. We were there still learning how to drill. Trained by militia officers, people, officers out of the militia. Then we went to Puckapunyal about the first week in December 1939. The huts had just been finished. And of course by this time I decided I’d get married. So

I had to apply for a release to get married. I was granted four day’s leave to get married. And somehow or other I managed to get a uniform. I don’t know how I got it but I got a uniform. And on the ninth of December 1939 I married my girlfriend. And we had a four day honeymoon at a place called Olinda. I came back

to Pucka. Then Christmas time came and we got another, we got four days leave for Christmas. Then by the January we knew there was something on because about ninety of us had been set to one side out of our company. We knew there was something doing. The second weekend in January 1940 we got weekend leave. And we knew that

the move was on. On the eleventh of January 1940 they put us on a troop train at Puckapunyal and took us down to Port Melbourne and put us onto a ship called the Empress of Canada. No, I’m sorry, the Empress of Japan which later became the Empress of Canada.

So all that happened to me in I don’t know how many

about eight weeks. I joined the Army, got married and was on a troopship to goodness knows where.

We didn’t know whether the war was going to end tomorrow or how long the war was going to go on. Cause we, if the war had ended the next day we would have been kicked out of the Army and had to go and find a job.

Well when we got on the boat, we didn’t know but the Chinese crew knew where we were going.

They said

you’re going to the Middle East. So on the eleventh of January 1940 we set sail from Port Melbourne. We were the only ship to leave Melbourne. I think there was about eight hundred of us on board. All, mostly all, what they called advance parties. And we went out through the heads where I promptly got seasick. And never saw daylight for six days til we got to Fremantle.

If you’ve never been sea sick, I’ll tell you what, you’d sooner die first than suffer seasickness. But they tell me when we got outside the heads we joined up with a convoy from Sydney and a convoy from New Zealand. After about six or seven days we pulled into Fremantle. Where we had overnight leave. The ships went in one by one or then berthed.

We were there for about two days and then we set sail again. Didn’t know where we were going until somebody says oh there’s a sign up there that says welcome to Ceylon. So here we were at a place called Colombo. It’s not called Ceylon now. But we got a day’s leave there. Had to march up and down the streets like good soldiers and show the population what Australian soldiers look like. Back on

the boat and off we went again and next thing I know, one morning we woke up and there’s, well there’s dirt on both sides of us. I said “Where the devil are we, on a boat?” It’s been all this land on both sides of us. So then we found out we were in the Suez Canal. And we went up the Suez Canal and got off the boat, sat at

a place called Kantara. Which was a little village at the Suez Canal. And they bundled us into, there was a train there, just like old guard’s vans or old carriages or anything. The most, one of the most amusing things was that the first meal we had in the Middle East was spinach sausages. The story is that after World

War I there was an Australian bloke married a, well probably an Egyptian girl and he decided to go into the sausage business. So he started up spinach sausages. We don’t know what they were made out of, but we had a pretty good guess at what was inside. So our first meal was spinach sausages. They put us

on this train and away we went. And oh rough old trip. We were on it for about two days. And one night they said righto off you get. So we found out that we were in a place called Palestine. Not Palestine now of course but we called it Palestine. And we got off and got onto some trucks. The English people, English soldiers were there. And

we went to a camp which was called Castina. And we were in tents there, twelve man tents. We had two feet for a bed and six inches or a foot on each side of us. That was our little home.

We stayed there from February until Sep, til August. Where we were doing manoeuvres.

And we’d managed to get some trucks by this time. Where we were carting troops and supplies and that around for the troops.

Yeah, right. Then we, in August there was some of us picked out again. And we went to Egypt. A place called Helwan in Egypt, about I’d say fifteen miles out of Cairo. We were there in

tents again. Had a few days leave. Then we moved right up the, right up to the coast, to Alexandria. There we were camped out of Alexandria about oh six or seven mile. A place called Ikingi Mariut. Where we did more training and more driving and, then the rest of the company caught up with us and we went to a

place called Amiriya which was a little suburb over the road. And we sorted ourselves out there. And they just told us to pack up and then we went up to the desert. We left, oh I think we left Alexandria say in the middle of November, middle of December I suppose or early December. And we went up,

headed up the road or up to the desert. That’s where the New Zealanders were. The Italians were in the war by then. And we finished up at a place called Sidi Barrani. That was our first...

That was our first, sort of where we first saw what war was, had been all about. Because the British had taken Sidi Barrani. We were there for two or three days.

And then we moved on up to, along rough old roads and tracks up to a place called Sollum. Which was, I don’t know whether it was over the border into Libya or whether that was still in Egypt. Anyhow Sollum was a harbour, that was the base. The headquarters were at a place called Fort Capuzzo, which was an old Italian fort. And we were

down at Sollum just below what they called Hell Fire Pass. Hell Fire Pass was the pass that went from Sollum through to Bardia. It was just an old, rough old track. Which zig zagged up and down this great big hill or cliff up onto the plateau. We were there unloading boats and generally moving troops around. And

of course then just round Christmas time, somebody said oh the war’s started. Off we went up to Bardia. We didn’t see much of the action. We were shelled and bombed but there weren’t many bullets whizzing around us. After Bardia we moved then on up to Tobruk. And we were there after Tobruk was taken.

Then of course the Australian Sixth Division chased the Italians all the way back, what, up through Barke, Barce. Barce was the name of it. Various other little places until we finally got to Benghazi. And that’s was where the Italians had decided they’d had enough and surrendered.

That would have been oh probably the end of January I suppose. The, we came back to a little place called Barce B-A-R-C-E where we reassembled ourselves again. And were there a few days when some of us were put aside again. So we thought oh no, what’s on now? So next thing we know, we’re told to go and pick up some troops so we went and picked the troops up and we headed back the way we’d come.

Yeah we came back as far as Mersa Matruh. We were there for a couple of days. Then we came back and we finally got to Alex where we were issued with new trucks and new equipment. Had a couple of days in Alex [Alexandria]. We didn’t know, there again, we didn’t know where we were going but all the cafe owners they knew where we were going. And they were told one night just to get in your

trucks and drive em down to the wharf. So we drove the trucks down to the wharf. Took us about a day or so to load em onto a ship called the Hav H-A-V. I think it was a Norwegian or a Swedish ship. And away we went. We still didn’t know where we were going. But we soon found out we were going to Greece. We were on the boat for a couple of days and landed at Piraeus, that’s the harbour. We unloaded the trucks there and went out to

a place where we set up camp called Levadia. I think that’s where the new airfield is now. Levadia. We were there for another three or four weeks until the rest of the company caught up with us. Then we loaded up with troops again and away we went. Up the roads, well they weren’t roads they were just dirt roads, they were. And

Well it wasn’t, it was but it was sort of their ...

Yeah spring. It was nippy. But where we were, we finished up at Mount Olympus. Yeah Mount Olympus and we set up camp there and got kept busy doing odd bits and pieces. One day the lieut come to me, Stan Mays he says, “Oh well” he says, “The shot’s on tomorrow.” I said “Whaddya mean the shot’s on?” He said

“The war starts tomorrow.” I said “Oh thanks very much sir.” I’m a corporal by this time. What they called a section corporal in charge of five trucks and ten men. We, I said “Oh well, here we go.” So now we went and picked up some troops, I think it was the 2/8th Battalion we picked up. And we drove for about

two days and two nights. We had two chaps in a truck. One drove and the other slept. Yes, you didn’t pull up and knock off at five o’clock and go and have a sleep or anything. You just, we just kept driving all day and all night on these rough old tracks they were. Round the hills and up hills and over pass and down, across rivers and gullies. And then we got up into the mountains.

And we were told to stop. Infantry all got out. And we could see all this stuff laying around outside. So we get out of the truck. We didn’t know what it was actually. It was snow. First time we’d seen snow. It was snowing. And here we were just in our ordinary Army uniforms. Poor old infantry, they got out they had to go and dig holes in the ground. But we were in the truck, we weren’t too bad.

Yeah well that’s another bit of a story where we had a guide who was told to go forty kilometres and he was trying to, he had a map and was trying to read this, looking at the speedo and of course the map was in kilos, or whatever they call it. And the speedo was in miles.

So instead of doing forty kilometres, where we should have stopped because it was dangerous to go any further we went forty miles. Which wasn’t too pleasant. So it, but anyhow we came back and formed up and the next thing.

All we kept moving troops around. Mostly bringing them back of course by this time because we didn’t know that there was

an evacuation on. We weren’t told for about a fortnight later that the evacuation was on. Had some pretty sticky moments with dive bombers and low level bombers and the Messerschmitts. Wasn’t too pleasant but still we had to drive the trucks. Gradually we came back all the way, back, well back as far as Athens. We had about a day there and they sorted

things out. Then we loaded up the troops again and headed further south. We only drove by night by this time because it wasn’t safe to travel during the day. Trying to, it’s not a very pleasant job trying to drive on unmade roads and not knowing where the devil you were but. We’d smashed the windscreens out of the trucks by this time so we could see. So after about three days

from Athens we came to a place called Kalamata. That was where we unloaded the troops. I was a volunteer of course and I didn’t get off the night the troops got off because I was given the job of destroying the trucks. Because if they didn’t get off that first night they would have

had to go and move somewhere else so. I was a corporal, I had to pick out five men and we stayed until the next night. And where, before we got off, we destroyed fifteen trucks. Of all things, just drained the water out of em, oil out of em. Turned the key and let em run. Shocking thing to do. Still that’s what we had to do. Anyhow we got off on the second night. I think which was about the twenty-eighth of April.

We got onto a British destroyer called the Defender. Which took us to Crete. I wasn’t on...

Well I wasn’t really on Crete for the battle. I was, I did my job of guarding some Greek general or somebody or other. And I was only there for about a week at Suda Bay. When I was taken off and

brought back to Alexandria. Of course we were all stacked on trains again all the way back to Palestine from whence we came to a camp called Julis. Their blokes kept dribbling in. Days after, days and days of two or three blokes’d turn up, half a dozen. And we were at Julis. There for two or three months. Where we sort of got reinforced

And we had another couple of other camps. But by this time the Syrian campaign was on. And we didn’t have much to do with the Syrian campaign because the 7th Division did the Syrian campaign. But they were one brigade short so they took the 2/5th Battalion. Out of the 17th Brigade of which we took up to, we took them up to Syria. We didn’t see, it was nearly over by the time we

got up there. I think we went to Damascus before we caught up with them. We, Damascus, then we came back to Palestine. Joined the company and then we, the whole company moved to Syria. Another day in history, 7th of December. An old American saying, where were you on the 7th of December? Well little did the Americans

know that the Australians had been in one, two, three, four campaigns by the 7th of December 1941. And we thought oh beauty the war’s over. We’re all going home. The Yanks are in the war, the war’s over, we’re going home. Unfortunately it wasn’t true. So we moved to Syria, just the other side of between Damascus and Beirut where we were camped with the 17th Brigade. And we ferried them around

and supplied them and looked after them. And we were there for Christmas. What a Christmas, it snowed.

It snowed. We were in huts. In huts on the floor with two blankets. And we used to get dressed to go to bed. We’d put our uniforms on and our overcoats on and our boots on and our hats on and our balaclavas. You’d get dressed to go to bed cause we only had two blankets.

The huts, they were galvanised huts. They weren’t weather proof so the snow used to blow in and you’d have about three inches of snow on you in the morning when you woke up. You couldn’t, after a couple of days you couldn’t get outside the hut because there was fifteen feet of snow outside the door. Had to shovel snow out before we could get out. The cookhouse got blown down the first day. So for about

three days we lived on what we had in our packs. Bully Beef, tin of M & V [meat and vegetables] or something or other. Somebody had a Primus stove, make a cup of tea. Melt the snow down, make a cup of tea. After about three or four days we managed to get out. Then of course then we had to find our trucks. They were buried in the snow, we found them and sort of shovelled them out. Then we had to try and find where the road was because

they were all covered in snow. We went and had to go to Damascus to get some rations because the troops didn’t have any rations. So we finally got through there. Came back and they, snow gradually, stopped snowing. Snow gradually disappeared. And then we were ferrying

the locals about because they were, like the villagers nearby, they were formed into labour battalions. Or not labour battalions but they were,

by the Army. Like they wanted labour. So they, the villagers they had to supply so many men to build the roads and camps. And we had to get up at three o’clock in the morning and go and pick them up and bring them in and then take them home at night.

We heard about the 9th Division in Tobruk. Then the, oh this was about February, the whisper going around that the 7th Division had gone home. Been called back to Australia and we knew then it was our turn next. So end of January or beginning of February

we started to move back into Palestine. We’re in Palestine for a few days. Then we drove to back to the Suez Canal where we put our trucks onto boats. And headed off again down the Suez Canal. Didn’t know where we were going. Everybody knew we were going to somewhere that ended in an ‘a’. But there were plenty

of places that ended in an ‘a’. India, Malaya, Java, Sumatra and hopefully Australia. But unfortunately that wasn’t to be. About the end of February, we off loaded at, in Ceylon. At Colombo.

Yes, we were there for the first air raid

in the harbour. Then we were camped at a place caller Boosa about forty or fifty mile south of Ceylon on a racecourse. This time the whole of the 17th Brigade were there. And we started working for them again, looking after them. Carrying them around. We were only supposed to be there for a hundred days while the British brought more garrison troops in.

And but I forget now how long, we were there about, instead of three months, I think we were there about four months. By this time all the Japanese had overtaken all of Burma and Malaya. The West Ind, not the West Indies. The Indies, Java, Sumatra, they’d all gone to the Japanese. So we set sail, we reckon this time we’re

going home to Australia. And we were quite right because well we knew which way the boat was pointing anyhow, where the sharp end was pointing. We knew it was going, wasn’t going anywhere else but only one place it could be going and that was Australia. So after about a month on the ship we saw a bit of land and somebody reckoned they could smell the gum trees. Stories you hear, oh smell the

gum trees, we must be home. And then we found out that we were approaching Fremantle.

We reckoned we were home and hosed. So we pulled into Fremantle. We had us some Western Australians on board. They were taken off and given leave. And we were there about three days and then we headed off again and we knew which way we were

going. We hoped Melbourne was the next place and sure enough one day somebody says, “There’s the heads.” Port Phillip heads, I went “Oh you beauty.” Course I got seasick again. I was seasick all the way from Colombo to Fremantle about three weeks. I think it was only a couple of slices of bread that kept me alive. So then we got off at Port Melbourne.

Was I ever, get off that boat! They creak and they groan and they go up and they down and sideways all in the one motion. And don’t never ever get seasick. Cause you just wish you could fall out the boat, the bottom would fall out. So anyway, another one of our military secrets. Nobody was supposed to know we were coming home. And we get down to Port Melbourne and the pier’s full of people.

See in those days all our travelling, all our nights were always, when you’re on a ship, the ship was always blacked out. There was no lights. You were down the hull without any lights. You couldn’t go outside. In the Army in the dark we never had electricity. The old hurricane lamp was the only illumination we had. One hurricane lamp to a tent of twelve men.

Anyhow we, there were some trains there at Port Melbourne. We got on the train and we get up to Flinders Street. And of course the first thing we asked is Young & Jackson still here. Cause we’d heard rumours that they’d pulled down Young & Jackson. Which was a landmark for us. Us old timers was port, was Young & Jackson’s Hotel. They reassured us that port, that Young & Jackson’s was still there. So we thought oh well thank goodness for that.

Oh, you don’t know what it’s like to come home. Anyhow with the trains, carried on we finished up at Trawool out of Seymour. And it was cold. I think it was about July. Cold and muddy and wet. Anyhow they were gracious and they gave us, the married men we got fourteen days leave. And was it good to get home.

Course my wife by this time was in the Air Force. She, when they started to form the Women’s Air Force she was one of the first to volunteer. Actually her serial number is twenty. She was at the first day, the first batch to go into the Air Force. Course she was in the Air Force by this time.

All right, yeah.

Course I was a sergeant by this time and she was a sergeant but I didn’t tell her I was only a lance sergeant. Which meant I was an unpaid sergeant and she was senior to me. But I never ever told her that. I was a big sun bronzed sergeant.

Married life.

When we got to Trawool naturally we were getting, I got leave. I got, we got seven day’s leave. And my wife was in the Air Force she was on shift work. And we’re trying to juggle going to the pictures and going here and going there. All in the seven days. Well goodness gracious me I get a reoccurrence of malaria, which I’d contracted in Ceylon. I’d had three weeks in hospital in Ceylon with malaria.

So I’m home on seven day’s leave and I find out I’ve got malaria and I finished in Heidelberg hospital for three weeks. Wasn’t a bad place except for the quinine that they used to pump into you. Anyhow I sort, got out of there. And by various means I should’ve actually, I should’ve gone to a training depot but by various means and pulling a bit of rank I found out where my unit was. They were up in

Queensland by this time. I managed to get on draft and got to Queensland where I met up with them outside Brisbane.

Oh sort of. Nobody knew, we didn’t know what, we used to go through a bit of a scrub and the bush and blokes’d be throwing crackers at us and all this sort of caper. We dyed all our shirts green. Which was

pretty old fashioned. We had a copper of boiling water. And somebody had some green dye. They put it in and stirred it up. We threw our shirts and trousers in. Dyed our trousers green. They emptied the copper and then made a stew in it. So we had green stew for a couple of days. That’s by the by. It’s all part and parcel of being in the Army. So we were outside Brisbane for about three weeks and then

we went up to Townsville and we got on a boat and we went to Milne Bay.

Pardon?

No. The main part of it was over when we got there. The 7th Division had done most of that. But we were there, we got there about the end of October when it was all over. There were just a few snipers about. And

of course the air raids were the thing the Japs gave us a bit of hurry up about cause we were down near the wharf. We were unloading, loading the trucks. Unloading the boats that came in and set, setting up dumps. There again we were working twenty-four hours a day. Trucks never stopped. We, you’d start at, one mob’d start at six in the morning and drive til until

six at night. Then another party would take over and drive the trucks from six o’clock at night til six o’clock in the morning.

Well there was only one road in Milne Bay. Well it wasn’t a road it was just a track. Mud and slush. We had, luckily we had four wheel drive vehicles. We never had, they’re always in four-wheel drive. Oh just round, round the airstrip.

Setting up ration dumps, ammunition dumps. We were there for a couple of months and had to pack up. And went and picked up the 2/6th Battalion. Went down to the wharf and we left our trucks there. And then the 2/6th Battalion and us we got on the Duntroon and went from Milne Bay down to Moresby.

There were other transport units in Moresby operating. Trucks were very scarce so we just camped about fifteen mile out of Moresby. And there we just did some training. And if they wanted people for odd jobs, we got the job of doing it. I was attached to a field bakery for a while in Moresby laying a pipeline.

I don’t know whether that’s got much to do with driving trucks but I had to take thirty blokes and go and dig this line to put a pipeline in. By this time the 17th Brigade had started the Wau Campaign. But we were different. We had nothing to do with the Kokoda Track. That was of course the 39th Battalion. And then the 7th Division they did that Kokoda Track. Whereas the 6th Division, the 17th Brigade

we did the Wau show.

No, there was no roads. Everything that went in and out of Wau had to be flown in. So there was no need for ASC [Army Service Corps] because there was no trucks. Some of us went up there for, a lot of them stayed there. I didn’t, I was only there about three days and I got called back by the company commander.

Because this time they found out that the only way to move things around was air. They had a sort of a hotch potch system of flying and unloading and loading. And kicking stuff out of aeroplanes. Wasn’t satisfactory so decided to form what they called an Air Maintenance Company. We formed,, our company formed the 1st Air Maintenance Company.

Well yeah we found out what it was. We thought flying. Well just how silly you can get. I thought crumbs now I’m insured. I’ve got an insurance policy. I don’t know whether I’m allowed to fly or not. So I was worried about this. I had to write to me mother to find out if I was covered. Anyhow I don’t know what happened. So you just did as you were told. So I became a sergeant

in the 1st Air Maintenance. I had oh say thirty men divided into threes. There was three in an air crew. And we used to go and load the aeroplanes down at the airstrips. If there was any flying to be done we would, the three of us would get in the old Bully Beef Bomber the DC-3 or the C-47.

All flown by Yanks. And they’d take the door off an aeroplane and we’d put two and a half ton of rations or whatever it was in the aeroplane. Then we were told to get in. So we’d get in the aeroplane and away we’d go. And then the air, the crew chief of the plane’d come on and say “You blokes’ve gotta throw all that stuff out the door.” And we thought “Oh crikey.”

Para, never heard of

parachutes.

Well what you used to do was stack some stuff up at the door. And then one bloke’d sit down on his backside with his feet like that up against the stack. And the planes used to fly round you know like in a little circle. Banking about forty-five degrees. So you looked out the door and you could see the ground. So the three blokes we’d carry the stuff down to the doorway, stack it up and when the

red light come in we’d kick it out with our feet.

No. Strapped in!

Oh yes I saw a few blokes hit the trees. But you know, just depends how silly you were. I was silly but I wasn’t that silly. So that’s what we used to go and do this air dropping. They might do, might take five or six turns

to get rid of the two and a half ton of stuff that we had to kick out the door. Then we’d come back empty and load up again and away we’d go again. We used to do four and five flights a day. Two and a half hour flights. Fly all day.

Well never, for somebody who’d never flown before. That went, we were getting paid, I was getting me two bob a day. I was happy, I was a sarg getting two bob a day.

Oh no we survived. I was there for, at Moresby for, oh about four months. Flying in these old DC-3s. Sometimes you’d only be a conductor. You’d go up and you’d land. And you had to make sure that all the rations or whatever it was got off all right. And somebody’s sort of signed for them, I don’t know who the hell they were that signed for them but we didn’t care.

You go back and get another load. Then the campaign started up on the north coast of New Guinea so they formed the 2nd Air Maintenance Company. At a place called Dobodura. And our company commander only knew two names. Dusting and Ramsay. We were both sergeants. Only knew the two, he didn’t know his officer’s names, only knew two sergeants’

names. So the sergeant major come down to me one day. He says what have you been doing, what have you and Ramsay been doing? I said oh nothing much, I said. He said you’ve been up to something haven’t you? I said yeah, I said we went to try and join the infantry. He said we’re sick of being mucked around here in Port Moresby, wanna join the infantry. We went to the 2/14th Battalion and they were ready to accept us. Apparently the news must have got back to our company commander and the sergeant major says, right he said I’m gonna

parade you two before him this afternoon. So down we went to the company commander. And he nearly had a stroke when we told him that we’d tried to join the infantry. Cause it wasn’t doing him any good. Because two of his senior sergeants didn’t like him. Wanted to get away from him. Wouldn’t have done his reputation much good. So he says alright pack your bag he says. Nine o’clock

in the morning be down the airstrip. So we packed our bag, our pack, we didn’t have any bags, just, we had nothing to carry anyhow. And we went down to the airstrip and got on an aeroplane. We finished up at a place called Dobodura. That’s where the 2nd Air Maintenance was being formed. So we formed the 2nd Air Maintenance there. Out of Dobodura up

towards Lae and various places round there. We were there for a couple of months and my mate Ramsay and I we were sitting on our bed, we say beds, we never had beds, just laid on the ground on bits of wood. Don’t need beds. So we’re sitting on our bed or laying down and I see a familiar face. And I said what are you doing here Scrooge? And Scrooge

was the name I called our quarter master. Last I seen him was in Moresby. Oh he said you and Ramsay gotta pack your bags. I says what he said. He said there’s a company being formed. He says you want to pack your bag, get in the jeep and get on a landing craft. Oh I don’t know where it was, Salamaua or somewhere. We had to go and get on a landing craft. So we get down there and lo’ and behold here’s our company commander.

Welcome aboard he says.

We said oh what? He said oh we’re going to form the 3rd Air Maintenance. I thought oh heck. So there we got on the landing craft and away we went. And we finished up at Lae. Lae had just fallen. We got off there. There was a transport platoon. They had trucks, we, we were the air crew platoon. We were the

air dropping blokes for Transport Companies, they had a platoon there. They come from another company. So we formed the 3rd Air Maintenance Company at a place called Nadzab. Which was in the Ramu Valley. There was a bit of a dirt airstrip there where the Yanks had made. So we spent the next twelve months, oh about the next twelve months at Nadzab. Where

we were flying up the Ramu Valley with the 7th Division when they went up the Ramu Valley up to Dumpu was the place. But the airstrip, the other airstrip and then they were doing, finished their Shaggy Ridge Campaign. So we set up camp at the Nadzab. We were there for about twelve months flying again. Goodness knows how many hours we had. We never kept count. The Air,

the pilots used to, they do so many, they’d have little things on their aeroplanes . How many missions they’ve done and didn’t worry us. They used to do fifty missions and they’d get flown home to Brisbane for a couple of weeks. No such luck for us blokes we just carried on seven days a week. Daylight to dark.

I don’t, only pot luck I suppose. But we

knew, like there used to be a red light come when the pilot, from the cabin, from the pilot I suppose. Like whenever he reckoned we were near the dropping zone. Bit of a clearing what they called a DZ and dropping zone. And he probably used to reckon he was near enough to it and he’d press the button and we’d kick the stuff out while the red light was on. He’d bank round three or four times or so. Might be half a dozen times before he got rid of the load. So we

were flying out of Nadzab there. The old Bully Beef Bombers. But then we got a little bit more adventurous. Well we didn’t get adventurous, we were told to be adventurous. Where we, they started making up parachute drops. Storepedoes or something or other they called them. We didn’t know much about them. We just went and picked them up from a depot. Put em on a truck and went and loaded them into

American bombers. They’d taken the bombs out of the racks and we had to push and shove these things into the bomb bays and with the bomb clips. And we’d be down the airstrip about midnight and soon as it was just on dawn, or before dawn. On these special drops, these bombers. Mitchells and Liberators.

They’d go on what they called an armed reconnaissance. Where they’d go up, fly up the coast of New Guinea and islands and shoot up anything they could see. Because they didn’t have any bombs because they were full of these Storepedo things.

Yeah. Rations, ammunition.

Yeah. Instead of bombs there were these packs with the parachute on them. And after they’d done their work they would take us to a map reference or whatever it was and,

and there we were dropped to the, what they called the , commando people. Where the, where it was too dangerous for the Bully Beef Bombers to get in. Because like the bombers, they would have had machine, they were armed. They had machine guns and canons and whatever. So anything that was a bit dicey the, we used to fly in these bombers. Wasn’t, we didn’t

fly them all the time but you know you’d get two or three flights a week out of em. Then we’d come back to drop it out of the old Bully Beef Bombers. We were there for about eighteen months I think. Air dropping. So goodness knows how many flying hours we had. We never kept count. You’d go and fly twelve hours a day. Might go and do seven missions, six missions a day.

Funnily enough,

no. We got a bit, you know it wasn’t very pleasant when you’re trying to pick something up off the floor, say that weighs fifty pound and the aeroplane banks and the thing comes up and hits you in the chest. Or you can’t pick it up off the floor because it’s going another way. You know, you’d give up. Poor old head, you’d get down, you’d get a bit, you know you’d get a bit wobbly. But might have been too scared to get airsick. Must admit when you look out and see that door.

Wasn’t a door, there was no door. When you look out and see no door. Oh crikey, keep away from there. Weren’t worried about getting airsick. Oh yeah we were there for about eighteen months. That part of the New Guinea campaign had more or less finished and we came home to Australia. That would have been what, 1940, ‘44 I suppose. We’d been in New Guinea for

nearly two years. I don’t like to boast but I was probably the first Australian except for a POW [Prisoner of War] to get five service stripes. Which was four years overseas service. Because I’d already had two and a half years in the Middle East. And two years in New Guinea. So I came home with the five chevrons on my arm and an African Star. The world

wasn’t big enough for me.

Well the wife thought so anyhow.

By this time she got out of the Air Force. Because, oh had family illnesses and that. She got out so. We came home to Melbourne I got twenty-eight days leave. I thought oh whacko the diddle-oh, twenty-eight days leave. Twenty-eight days. And I had twenty-eight days.

I tell you. And...

We’ll skip that part of it.

Well I became a father.

Well I wasn’t a real, well. I was told I was gonna be a father. And course our main worry was we didn’t want to go back to New Guinea.

When you’ve had twenty-eight days leave, it was up, my mate and I Ramsay, he lived in Yarram, well I was living in Footscray at the time with her parents. And we didn’t want to go back to the Army, go back again. We’d had enough. We thought somebody else can have a go. We’ve had four years of it, somebody else can have a go at it. So we thought oh we tried to tell them a hard luck story at what they call Royal Park.

That was the place near the Zoo. There was a big camp there where everybody reported to after leave. And told them a hard luck story. And you know, we’d sick of war we didn’t want to go back. It didn’t make a scrap of difference. We were on the train that night back to Sydney. Unit was in Sydney by this time. Oh this would have been September, October,

1944. Yeah ‘44. I didn’t go away again after that. But the unit was in Sydney from about October, oh September, October, ‘44 until the end of the war in August ‘45. While we were in Sydney our good old company commander.

We had no trucks, we were just sort of at a loose end. So he soon found something for us to do. He volunteers us and we finish up working down on the wharves.

Yeah we finished up on the wharves in Sydney.

We were at a loose end. We had no, all the transport was being done by the

Transport Companies. And we were at a loose end. So we got all these, go down the wharves unloading trucks and stacking it. Putting things in slings. We, of course we had the wharfies to tell us what to do. Didn’t go down too well with us. We were treated, well we weren’t treated as soldiers. Lunch time would come and we’d sit down

on the wharf and eat a tin of (UNCLEAR) meat or a tin of herrings and a slice of bread or something. We thought we expected better than that. Matter of fact we hit the headlines in Truth a couple of times in Sydney.

Well we had a few Sydney blokes and they must have known somebody in the newspapers. And you know Australian returned troops being used down on the wharves. Wharf Labourers. We were, did various

jobs round the, matter of fact I had to take thirty blokes down to relieve a Transport Company. They reckon they were overworked and over tired. Hadn’t left Sydney of course. They’d been in the Army a couple of years and they’d had enough. So I had to take thirty men and relieve thirty drivers in Sydney. That was the sort of jobs we got. Working in big

ration dumps.

More than ever. I tell you. We wished we’d, we should’ve been back in New Guinea. Sooner been back there. But two bob a day and on the side and do as I was told. Simple as that. Didn’t, some of the blokes didn’t mind because they were Sydney blokes. But

by this time I’d sort of well, wangled a few strings and my wife was in Sydney. Actually she was a Sydney girl. She was born in Sydney and I managed, well in the Army somebody knows somebody who knows somebody else. And matter of fact I got her over to Sydney. So she come over to Sydney and, oh she was there about Christmas.

That’s right. That’s, must be about Christmas ‘44. And she came over and we got what they called a flat. Talk about a flat. In Oxford Street, Paddington. It was a room above a grocer’s shop. It was only a room. And the kitchen was on a sort of a balcony. Must have been a sort of a sun porch or something. That was the kitchen. Open to the open, it was

outside. Hanging off the outside of the building. That was the kitchen. And the bathroom, there was a bath in it. I think there was about four other flats in this place. Cause naturally the civilians, they were all trying to make a quid. So like all their houses would be four what they called flats in them. Well servicemen, they didn’t care. You know if you wanted your wife with you, you had to put up with all these things. We were

there and that’s when I really knew I was gonna be a father. So she was there and when was it March, so, crikey a man’s forgetting his own daughter’s birthday. In March she went in hospital in Sydney and had our first daughter. I was away somewhere or other at the time I didn’t see her until she was about five days old.

Nobody. That’s how we lived. That’s how we lived. No she went into hospital on her own. I wasn’t even there to take her to hospital. I was fifteen miles in an Army camp. Somewhere out in Manly, other side of Manly. Up in the Kuringai Chase or wherever the devil it was.

I didn’t know. I think I might have seen her on the

Sunday and she said oh it won’t be long now. I said all right let’s know or something. Cause we didn’t have the telephone on in the Army. You daren’t make a telephone call to the Army. It was a great military secret. Oh use the telephone in an Army Camp it was like giving secrets away to the enemy. No we never had any telephones. I went in, I went on leave. Might have been the next weekend. And the landlady said oh your wife went into hospital

last Tuesday. Oh good, thanks very much, what one’s she in? They said oh King George the Fifth or something or other. So off I go, and there is, there’s me daughter in bed. That was the way we lived. So that, by that time, well it was just after that, that the War in Europe finished. Things you know sort of settled down a bit.

We were still doing odd jobs. Loading trucks, unloading trucks. Building stores, anything. Our good old Company Commander. That’s one thing about it. My mate Ramsay, my mate Ramsay he’s dead. I went to his funeral, cost me my driver’s licence. That’s on the side. What was I gonna say then about Ramsay...

Oh good old Company Commander, he was only a Captain. And he wanted promotion. And we reckon, my mate and I, Ramsay, we got him his promotion. He was promoted to Major. And he was awarded an MBE [Member of the British Empire]. Never saw him after that. He was happy. So

I couldn’t have cared less. Major DSS with no MBE or OBE [Order of the British Empire]. I’ve got his record there in that reference book. He was our, well he wasn’t our original company commander, he was only a reinforcement, come to us in the Middle East I think. Anyhow that’s another story is captain DS or major DSS for MBE or OBE or whatever he was.

Of course by this time the war was starting to scale down. It was over and things were going pretty well in New Guinea so we were sort of resigned to the fate that we weren’t going to leave Australia. Which we didn’t. We were in Australia at the end of the Japanese war. And by this time we were in a little more

civilised camp. We were in a, in an old, which had been an American camp. They just walked out and left everything. And we just walked in and took it all over. Beds, no mattresses of course. Yeah beds, no mattresses just an ordinary bed. No mattress. A cookhouse. Poor old cook when he saw the cookhouse. First thing he asked, where are the coppers?

Well the coppers were our, what we used to cook in. The copper. Like an old, the old coppers that they do the washing in. They used to, everything was cooked in a copper, stews, rice, anything. Everything was cooked in em. Poor old cook when he walked into this cookhouse and saw all these shining instruments and cookers and steamers. He said “Where’s the, where’s the,” he says “Where are the coppers. There’s no coppers, there it is.” He couldn’t,

he didn’t even know how to switch an electric stove on. So that was how we were treated. We were walking into this Yankee camp. And of course the beauty of it was, just over the road was a Royal Naval Hospital. And there happened to be some friends there.

“I see,” she says. So did we. I see.

I admit we became friends. We were, like we were so in the Sergeant’s mess we’d go over now and again. So we were there til the end of the war. The wife she decided to come home to her family. Cause they hadn’t seen their grandchild. So she came home. I think she was on her way home the day the war ended on the,

what was it, fifteenth of August. She was on a train to Melbourne. The first time I ever did a march through a city in Australia I thought when I joined the Army I’m gonna be marching up and down the street in a uniform with a rifle on me shoulder. I’m gonna be a big soldier. All the time I was in the Army in the fair dinkum part of the deal, I never ever marched up and down the main

street. So on this day, the day after the war ended, I had the job of trying to round up thirty blokes. Course everybody shot through when the war was over. Like we had Sydney blokes there. So they said the war’s over, we’re going home. And we had Victorians who probably had attachments in Sydney. So I was given the job of trying to round up thirty blokes. To take ‘em in and do a march on the day after VJ

Day [Victory over Japan]. So I finally got me thirty, thirty blokes together. Took ‘em, went in to Sydney and we marched. And a matter of fact I was coming back to Central Station I walked past my brother, one of my brothers and didn’t know him. He was in the Air Force. He was a pilot in the Air Force. I walked past him, didn’t know him cause he was in his uniform. We went about ten paces apart, and then we stopped, both looked

round. Said “Hey brother, what are you doing here?” That’s just a little side matter. How things affect you. So my wife, she came home to see the family with the eldest daughter. And I managed to get seven day’s leave. So I came back. Lo’ and behold I’m told I’m gonna be a father again.

Glad I come home on leave.

Well, yes well it seemed like the war was over and you could’ve got out. They had point systems and all this, did service and all this. But you know I really liked the Army life. And the blokes in it. You get used it. Like you become a sort of a

family. Like you live, so you live with ten blokes or you live with thirty blokes. And you get to know them. Know all about ‘em. And you sort of come a little family on your own. You might sit along, in the toilet alongside ‘em you know. Say, blokes say, “Why did you get out of the Army?” I was sick and tired of sitting in the same toilet as forty other blokes. That’s an old Army joke.

So anyhow we come back to, I came back to Sydney, picked up my unit. And well the Army was a good life to me. I was only getting two bob a day. But meeting you know, like we always knocked around. Playing football, say playing cricket, you’re always a team. And you miss that sort of thing. So I thought fancy going back to civvy life and being told

what to do. Wasn’t sort of, wasn’t my cup of tea. So I thought I like being a soldier. I’ll just, well I was, actually I was, at the end of the war I was only a Sergeant. When I elected to serve on. I didn’t want to be discharged, I elected to serve on in what they called the interim Army. This was changing from the war footing to the peace footing. They had to have an interim Army.

So I decided to, I’d stay in this interim Army while they were forming the permanent Army. You gotta realise that, I don’t know whether I should say this or not, but Australia really never had an Army. The Navy had a, the Navy were always on a war footing. The Air Force were nearly always on a war footing. But the Army, all their permanent soldiers were all artillery blokes in the

forts. Either artillery or engineers. I don’t think we had a regular infantryman. And of course the reg, the permanent Army they were not allowed to join the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]. Some of them did, they deserted from the permanent Army and joined the AIF. See you had to volunteer for the AIF. You, some of them did that, probably even joined the AIF under a bodgey name.

Which is another story I could tell you about. I knew a bloke for forty years and didn’t know what his name was, right name was until he was buried.

He was Sergeant Cooke. Didn’t know what his real name was until the day he was buried. So I’d know him over forty years. Another young chap, I’d know him forty years. I didn’t know what his name was.

Well what his real name was, I knew what his Army name was. I didn’t know what his real name was. You know little things with the Army, it’s all part of the family. That’s what, you know, you live with them day by day. And everybody had a nick name. All different names we, they were called by. Anyhow I thought I’ll stay in the Army. I’m a Sergeant. I’ll stick, I suppose I was getting about

fourteen shillings a day I suppose. It wasn’t bad money seven days a week. Although you didn’t work an eight hour day. Like you were, twenty-four hours was a day. You’d be on guard, you’d be on picket, you’d be here, you’d go there. You didn’t knock off at five o’clock and but the Army was a good life to me. I thought no well I’ll stay in. Anyhow by

round about the end of ‘45 I’d been transferred to another unit. And I became a Staff Sergeant. And I got another rise but I still only got me two bob a day. But I was on a pretty good wicket as a Sergeant. A Staff Sergeant. Be looked after, my wife was being looked after. Well we never had a house, we never had a car. All I had was

Army gear, I never had any trendy gear. All I had was me uniform. Didn’t worry me in a scrap. So I thought oh I’ll stay in the Army.

Yeah.

Yeah then we’ll go on to the Japan side of it. That’ll be the end. You see, life’s a joke.

Well you’re burying blokes and pulling ‘em out of trucks, you know make you burst out laughing. But I was getting two bob a day, seven days a week. Two, six feet, little bed, six feet by two feet, I wasn’t worried. Get a tin of Bully Beef and a packet of biscuits thrown at you now and again. If you had a cookhouse you’d go down and get a plate of stew and a plate of

creamed rice...

Well might have been four or five or six, I never kept count of the years.

Yeah, the railways.

Oh well it was Depression days. At least me dad got paid. Got paid every fortnight. We never ever saw any money. There was never any money in the house. But

cause me dad’d get paid every fortnight. And every fortnight mum’d go down and paid all the bills that she’d ticked up in the last fortnight. Pay all the bills and start off from scratch again. So there was never any money in the house. Although when we were living in Pakenham, Deer Park, Laverton and Spring Vale we always had a cow and a few WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s. So we mightn’t have had a spare pair of boots but we

always had a full tummy.

Pardon?

Oh that was our job. Like we all had our jobs. There’d be one night, one week you’d have to go and, of course the cow was always in a paddock somewhere. And it was your turn to go and bring the cow up to the house so dad could milk it. And it was your turn to take it and put it back in the paddock. And it was your turn to feed the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s.

And we used to have a separator in those days. Cause we used to make our own cream and our own butter. So we had an old sep, what they call a separator which you turned a handle. Did about seventy revolutions a minute. And out came the cream. And the skim milk. Sometimes we might have a pig for the skim milk. Well, like we did all right more or less for food. It was pretty rough old food but that’s what we

would always say, we mightn’t have had a pair of boots, we might have gone to school bare footed. Walk a mile to school bare footed but we always had a full, always had a full tummy. We had a gard, a vegetable garden. Dad was a good gardener. Didn’t have to worry too much about food.

Well, some well, the least favourable was working the separator cause the separator was in the house.

And you might be playing cricket out in the back yard and might be, there was three brothers, oh there was four brothers. One I never sort of knew because he wasn’t born until, I think I was eighteen before he was born, the youngest bloke. But there were three of us, albeit about five years. So we, we’d be playing cricket. Come home from school want to play cricket. And of course it might be your turn to bat and you’re be inside turning the

separator. You couldn’t get a bat out in the back yard or your turn to have a kick of the footy or something. So oh we didn’t mind. Like it was all part of the deal. Course we only had a what they call a wood stove. Had a stove fire, we used to burn wood in it. And be somebody’s job to cut the pinewood. That was the kindling that was used to light the fire in the morning.

Course mum was the master of the house. Or dad was but mum was the master of the house. Whatever mum wanted, dad made sure she got. And of course I was the eldest. So I got sort of the rough, well, anyhow.

Only cause I was the eldest. I was sort of made responsible for doing things. But everybody

took their turn. It was all part of the way we lived.

Oh crumbs it was. Yeah we’d have fights and arguments but no we, we loved it I suppose. I don’t know. We didn’t know anything different.

Oh yes.

Oh crumbs yes, like you had to work.

Because if you didn’t do the job you were given, you’d just get the sack on the spot. There’d be five blokes waiting to take your job. So you had to work. Hadn’t, like they were the days of the Depression and blokes on the dole. Food vouchers, blokes trying to get casual work. Like in the grocery trade you, like blokes were never

sort of permanent. They were only on a week to week basis. They’d ‘sacked em on the spot if you didn’t do your job. You’d get the sack.

Well I was an apprentice. I did five years of apprentice. Well they couldn’t break my apprenticeship. But when I was fifteen, sixteen. I was carrying a hundred weight and half sacks of flour. And ‘bout two hundred, a hundred weight or so, hundred weight boxes

of jam and pickles. Carrying ‘em flights of stairs, all this sort of thing so. It was a job, you had to work. You worked forty-eight hours a day. Forty-eight hours a week. Was just the way we lived.

No, no, no, no. Everybody was the same. Well you were lucky to have a job I guess. No it was just the way we,

just the way we worked.

Yes I’d come home and bring my wages home, yeah. I think I was eighteen before I got a pound. And oh I thought it was Christmas. Matter of fact the boss, he was a pretty hard old bloke I was working for. The branch manager of Footscray. He said, we’d get paid Thursday nights. And he said, I got paid, I got a pound.

Cause we used to pay tax even in those days. Going back in the thirties. We used to pay tax every week. I think it used to be two-pence. When we got our pay, they’d come round with a book, with your tax stamp in it. Two-penny stamp. And you had to initial it. And that was kept. And I never forget this night I got the pound. And I might have got a pound and something or other. The boss, we got paid just before knock off time.

And he said to me, oh he said you know sonny. He said you better watch yourself going home tonight. I says why’s that? He said there’s a bloke over the road been watching this shop all day. I bet he knows you’ve got over a pound when you go outside this door. You better watch yourself. Well he scared the living daylights out of me.

No. He was an old digger from the First World War. He just

part of learning the trade. Oh no, always took me wages home and I’d get me fare. We used to buy weekly tickets. Although later on I became prosperous enough and had a pushbike. I used to ride from say Deer Park, Laverton. I used to ride out to Collingwood to work. Or I might be working, they might send you somewhere else. You might be out at Camberwell or

Glen Ferry, Mooney Ponds. But oh no I took up a bit of bike riding. I managed to have a pushbike. Cause I used to ride from, from Deer Park to Collingwood, Laverton to Collingwood. And then later on when we moved to Spring Vale I used to, rode, used to ride from Spring Vale to South Melbourne to work.

And I was playing football, I was playing cricket. I wanted to be fit.

Then I wanted to be a sun bronzed Anzac. I wanted to be the best you know. That, you know, it sort of, in those days it was how much you could do. Not how little you could do. Because in the growing up stage, everybody was trying to beat one another. Like, oh I can do more than you. That was sort of competitive, especially being a storeman you know. How many bags of sugar can you carry. And all this sort of

business. I used to pick a bag of sugar up with me teeth. That’s Seventy pound. Seventy pound, what’s that thirty kilo. I’d bend down and pick up a bag of sugar with me teeth and pick it up and carry it. These, this is the way we lived.

Yeah, between work mates you know. And blokes from different stores. You’d hear say oh that bloke up at Crofts. You know, he’s a good worker. He unloaded a truck in thirty-five minutes. You know and the next truck that’d

come to you, you’d try and unload it in thirty minutes.

Well there was a Union of sorts, I don’t know. I don’t know, Unions and I are another subject. I, there was a Union I think. Bloke used to come round every month and ask, get two bob of you or something or other. We didn’t worry, it was just the way

we lived.

Can’t remember, can’t remember. No I brought me wages home to me mum and I’d get me train fare, the week’s train fare. And I might get two bob. It was only three-pence to get into the footy. And Sixpence to get into the, oh sixpence or something to get into the pictures of a Saturday afternoon.

Well I was seeing em when I went to school.

Oh no I used to ogle ‘em at the grocery shop. “Ooh, ooh she’s a good looking sort.” No it was all part of learning the trade. You know, course Friday night shopping is nothing new to us because in those days in the thirties, we open til nine o’clock Friday nights. And these young chicks’d come in with their mothers you know. We’d try and get around behind a stack or something or other. Their mother’s used to have to

keep an eye on ‘em. Oh no, you’d, girls going to school. I’d be out the front sweeping the footpath. There’d be nice looking birds going past.

Well actually I went to school with her. I didn’t really know at that stage. Cause I used to, I saw this girl there. At Williamstown High School. Then when we moved to Laverton and I was about oh nineteen I suppose.

One of my brothers got friendly with a chap there. Cause Laverton in those days was only paddocks. There was a general store. A milk bar and a Post Office in a house. That was all Laverton was in those days. No roads. Everything was just muddy tracks. And brother next to me

he got chummy with this bloke from one of the local blokes. Oh I don’t know they must have come to our place one night. Cause we lived at the railway station. And he come up, this young bloke, this mate of his, they come up anyhow. I happened to be home one night and this girl came. With me brother. So she wasn’t a bad looking sort. I thought “Oh whacko.”

Oh she like I knew her when I was playing football for Laverton. I didn’t see much of her. Used to see her at the dance, footy. We’d have a footballer’s dance once a month. Just some old bloke thumping on the piano. That was the only music we had. And met her there and I probably took her home a couple of times. Got me face smacked.

Oh we were young.

Well I was seventeen and eighteen. And well we were men and you know you try and do what men would do.

Oh come on lovey do you want to really know the facts of life?

Well more than that. Kissing was sort of the last resort.

Anyhow I was playing football.

I used to see her now and again. Anyhow she came up to our place a couple of times. I thought “Oh geeze, she’s not a bad looking sort this.” And oh there was one holiday. One Monday holiday. And me brother says “Oh me mate and I are going into the pictures in the city. And he’s bringing his sister.” So I thought “Oh whacko I’m in this.” So I went and

we got sitting in the pictures you know. Trying to hold hands and all this sort of caper. I was sort of doing all right so I thought “Oh well I’ll carry on here.” And anyhow she was, after about six months we were there, her father was in the Air Force at Laverton. And they’d moved to Footscray so I tagged along. I thought I’ll go down and see her and things developed there. I used to see her. Well I was

too busy training for football Tuesday and Thursday nights. I was playing football Saturday. Only used to see her Saturday nights take her to the pictures. I thought “Oh well I’ll tag along here so”. And we moved to Spring Vale I used to go and see her. Always had to depend on trains, how long I could stay, I had to catch a train to get there. And I’d be looking at the pictures, at the watch, “Oh will I be able to catch that last train so I can make a connection

with the last train. And will I get a kiss at the gate tonight or whatever.” So oh no we became friendly and I got you know sort of things clicked I suppose. And but her real father lived in Sydney. And actually the Christmas of 1939 I thought well you know I was sort of

thinking about getting married. And her father lived in, her real father lived in Sydney. So I was going to go to Sydney with her and ask her father you know if I could marry her. But of course along came the war and the bloke who looked in her eyes and said “Wouldn’t go,” was in the Army. I thought “Oh crumbs, I better do something here.” So I said to her “You know, what about getting married?” Well

I don’t know about, just a bit, the old corny joke is you say to your girlfriend, let’s get married or something. Let’s get married or nothing. So I got married. And I say all, I got married a month and I was on a troop ship going to, well fighting in the Middle East. After a four day honeymoon.

The bloke that was the boss?

Yes he was an old digger from World War I.

I had an uncle, Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim. He was a Gallipoli bloke. He lived down in Coleraine.

Oh Uncle Jim did. He was a bit of a character. He was my mother’s brother. And oh Uncle Jim he used to tell tales. Like the tales I tell,

you don’t know whether they’re true or not.

Oh bashing German’s heads in and getting shot at and shooting people. You know it was just a part and parcel. Cause well see, we were brought up on the Anzac tradition. You had to be a soldier. Because the Anzacs they were the greatest people that walked the earth. So that’s what we wanted

to be.

Well you know he used to say, say about the war. He’d say “Oh gee,” you know. “When’s it gonna come along so we could go.” Stories he used to tell. And right from, dad was, he was in the Navy in the First World War. But he never really went anywhere, he was too young. I think he was only eighteen, eighteen or nineteen when the,

towards the end of the War. I think he was only in the Navy about, he was in the Naval reserves, cause living in Portland, everybody was in the Naval reserves. He was in those. But then when he got to about eighteen or whatever it was, he joined the Navy. But I think he went overseas but not very far. He never spoke much about the war. So being brought up in the Anzac tradition,

they were heroes to us. Like you’d see, you’d go to school and an old bloke’d get up on Anzac Day and Armistice Day and talk about the war. And we thought “Oh crumbs you know that doesn’t sound a bad life. Better than what we’re used to.”

It was a game. It was a game. Course when we joined the Army

that was one of the reasons I got married. Was, we’d heard all these tales from the First World War. But none of the old original blokes ever come back. Or very few of the old original blokes that never came back. They’d say, or they’d go, there’d be a battle on and they’d go to win a battle. Like they’d kill

five thousand blokes before breakfast. That sort of caper. And that didn’t succeed they’d kill another five thousand before lunch. So we really didn’t expect to come home. That was one of the reasons I probably, I thought oh well this girl’s been, I’ve been hanging around her for three or four years I better do something I suppose to try and repay her.

Nup. None of us did.

Well lucky, some of the lucky ones I suppose. Cause that’s the way we were brought up on the Anzac tradition. And you know France, like none of the, you know very few of the old originals ever came back, survived.

Well he was gassed, he was pretty crook, he was gassed. He was, he wasn’t really, he was not an original Anzac.

But he was on Gallipoli. Like he wasn’t an original bloke. Well we all know as history tells of course. They’re all dead now. But there weren’t many of them came back from Gallipoli. The old originals, the ones that were in the landing. Not too many of them ever came back. If they didn’t kill them in Gallipoli they killed ‘em in France.

Oh I suppose he spoke about it. Cause like when we were kids, we were always playing goodies and baddies, you know cops and robbers. Just the way of life, the way we lived. Always digging holes in the ground and making out we were shooting somebody

Yes, yeah, you’d go overseas. Like I wouldn’t have had a chance to go overseas. As I say I was lucky enough that I had a push bike. I got married, I never had a house.

Well I was going home. It was that, I was going back to Springvale. I had to catch two trains to get to Springvale. But I had to go to work the next morning. So I was saying, about half past eight I was saying goodnight to me girlfriend

instead of half past two in the morning. It was half past eight at night I was going to go home. And I had tried to join the militia but oh I got mucked around and like one bloke I told him what he could do with his Army in no uncertain terms. And I never heard from him again. But we knew there was gonna be a war.

In the 1930’s oh we knew there was gonna be a war. There was no question about that. We knew there was going to be a war.

Pardon?

Oh yes, yeah, yeah. There was always jokes about Hitler. Unrepeatable of course. Oh no we’d heard, like it was all in the newspapers.

Oh no, no. Like we used to get the papers.

It was all in the papers there. You know Czechoslovakia and all these other countries he took until he, when he started the ball rolling when he took, when he invaded Poland. That was, cause that when Great Britain come into the war. They didn’t drag us in. But we were a member of the Commonwealth. The King, Commonwealth. The King and the Commonwealth they were

above everything. Oh yes we were always the King and the Commonwealth. Of course we were a Dominion of the Commonwealth. So that’s why Australia joined the, joined Great Britain in the war. There was only the next day, I don’t know we were playing, I was playing football for Spring Vale in, I think it was the second semi final. And

on the Saturday when somebody told us that the war had started. Then it was on the next night when Menzies said that Australia had declared war on ...

Oh, oh, Pig Iron Bob. No that shouldn’t be said about him.

Well he got his nickname Pig Iron Bob by selling all the old scrap metal to Japan. And of course they used to send it back to us in toys. You know.

Thing that’d cost a shilling made in Australia you’d buy it in Coles for two-pence. But you only used it once and you threw it away.

We read about it yeah but that wasn’t, we didn’t worry about that. Not only was Japan making little toy cars, those little toy, those little Indians, they were making bigger things than that.

That’s how we got the Pig Iron Bob. But he was in politics. He was a crafty old bloke old Menzies, don’t worry. He was never short of a word. Like the old saying he was at a meeting one night and some woman got up and says, “You’re drunk Mr Menzies.” And he said,

“You’re ugly madam.” And Bob says, “In the morning when I wake up I’ll be sober but you’ll still be ugly.” That was old Bob. Bob Menzies like as a politician. Want another one? Another meeting he was at, the woman said “If I was your wife Mr Menzies I’d give you a dose of poison, I’d give you a drink of poison.”

Bob says “Madam if I was your husband, I would drink it.” So old Bob was, like he was a crafty old Politician. But oh anyway.

Oh no, no, no. It’d been in the papers for, all this, the White Paper, you know Chamberlain, Peace in our time. All this sort of phoney stuff that they were talking about. Like we knew there was gonna be a

war. Australia was getting onto a war footing, they were you know. The Navy were tuning up, they were getting new ships. The Army were recruiting for what they called the militia. They were what we called the Saturday afternoon soldiers or the Broom Stick Warriors. They used to go to a parade one night a week or a Saturday afternoon. We didn’t get on too well of course when we joined the Army, because they didn’t join.

Very few of the militia joined the AIF. Well you had to volunteer of course. Shouldn’t say it but you know they were dancing, prancing around in their beautiful blue and white uniforms and red and blue uniforms. All red stripes and helmets on and you know, all this sort of. Us larrikins of a Friday night you know we wouldn’t step, we were walking down Bourke Street, we wouldn’t step aside for them.

Same with the Navy, Navy blokes. Well there was always a little bit of a dust up of a Saturday night in the city. Between the other rough old blokes like what we called Lairs. We were lairs. And Navy well when we were trying to catch, pick up sheilas, you know and they’d be trying to be competition, there was only so many girls. There was more girls than men and of course the Navy blokes in their uniform.

They’d come up and have a month’s pay in their pocket. You know and we’d be struggling whether we could scratch two bob out of our pocket in our civvy clothes. So you can just imagine who the girls went for. So oh there was always little tiffs in the city.

Oh well a little bit of a, you know, how do you do. Like I remember a bloke he’d be dead now. But he

used to say to me at the reunion. Course I had hair in those days. I got a tattoo there with blonde on it. Like I had these tattoos long before tattoos were thought of. I had these about 1937. Cause I was a big storeman, driver. Trying to beat everybody. What was I saying?

The Navy blokes yeah.

Oh something else. Oh about the Navy yeah.

Oh yeah he said, “If there’s one thing about a Blondie.” He says “I can always remember you coming into the Army on that twenty-third of October 1939.” I said “How would you know that?” “Well,” he said “I was sitting there,” he said “I saw this bloke walk in. You had a pair of blue and white shoes.

You had thirty-two inch Oxford Bags, he had what they called a polo shirt which is like a sort a of something like a tee shirt. Had a blue tee shirt with a white lace.” And he said “And a little bum freezer coat. A pork pie hat stuck on the back of his head with red, green, yellow and blue feathers in it. And carrying a Gladstone bag.” He said “If there was ever a Lair

Blondie,” he said “It was you.”

Well that’s another story. See I got this tattoo. I got that for me girlfriend’s twenty-first birthday. See I was rough and tough. I got that Blonde, kid. See I used to call her kid. And the two hearts entwined 1937. And I’ve got this

one here. It used to say mother. Well she didn’t take too kindly to tattoos. I thought oh I’ve gotta get covered in tattoos. Why not? So I thought well I better get one. Where she can’t see it. See. So I got it in here.

And I got that. So she couldn’t see it.

So I don’t know where I was, I was somewhere or other. Might have been down the beach or something. Cause we used to go down to Williamstown. Down to the Beach. And I spent, and whenever I used to go and that, I used to put a piece of cloth over it with a bit of sticky tape on it. So she couldn’t see it. And I must have been down at Williamstown. One day.

And I had a swim. And I think it must have got wet and sort of fell off a bit. And I must have stretched you see and she saw it. Oh she says, another tattoo. I said yes, I’m gonna get a lot of em. She said if you get any more tattoos I’ll never speak to you again. So I’ve never had another tattoo since. Isn’t love grand?

“You won’t go,” she said you know, in passing. “You won’t go will you?” I said “No I won’t go,” looked her straight in the eye like that. “I won’t go.”

Because I knew I was gonna be down there the next morning. I didn’t want to tell her, I was in love with her I suppose.

Well I tried to get a kiss too before I went home. After about half an hour. Trying to get her into a corner where she couldn’t escape me. But she was too quick. So I said “No I won’t go.” But I knew I was going. I don’t want to tell lies, I knew I was going. But anything to get a kiss.

Anzac tradition. Probably see the world. But I reckoned I was pretty good. I was a lair.

Course, big sun bronzed Anzac. I’ll go over and kill a few and if I got, go out and win meself half a dozen sheilas and

if I got any time, spare time I’d go and kill a couple of Germans. I don’t know. What worried, who worried about things? It felt like who worried. Like if you ride push bikes and you ride motor bikes, you’re not afraid of anything. I tell ya. If you play football against men, blokes nearly twice your age, you’re not scared of anything.

Pardon?

Course I was, look at ‘em up there. Best and Fairest for Spring Vale. That was the Best and Fairest for Rose Bud. Premiership thingos.

Ooh was I ever, you wanna see me photos there when I was in me three pound ten suit. Phwoar.

Oh I was a good catch. I reckon I was.

Yeah well it was, the Commonwealth yeah.

Oh no I was Australian, always an Australian although we did lean to Britain. Because that was the Mother country as they called it. The, but I was an Australian. I was an Anzac.

I was an Anzac. Well …

I didn’t join, I didn’t go in the infantry. When I went, I say, when they did call for volunteers I was working. I was driving a, I was a storeman driver. And every Monday morning I used to do

a trip round the city, delivering to the pubs. The firm I worked for, they had great cheese. What they called Tandaco cheese. A matured cheese. And it went into all the top hotels. Scots Hotel, Menzies Hotel, the Windsor Hotel. It went into Coles, it went into Myer. And it went into the Masonic Club. It went to the Bookmakers Club. It went to, cheese was, this cheese was extra special.

And the Monday morning that was my round was to go round to all these. And of course I might be a bit seedy of a Monday. And I always happened to know the bloke who was running, you know the cook he was always had a something or other. So that you know if I wanted a little bit of a drink of a Monday morning I was able to get one, when I, in the bosses time. So during this trip on this Monday the first Monday they asked for volunteers at Flinders Street, right down near Princess Bridge.

There used to be ticket windows down there. That’s where they had the recruiting. So I thought oh while I’m on the run this morning I’ll go and join the Army first up. I’ll join. Oh it was about eleven o’clock or something or other. I pull up outside, driving me truck. I pull up outside Flinders Street Station. Double parked I suppose. Didn’t worry us. That was the way we played the game. And I went into this office at the window.

The bloke said “Oh yeah what do you want?” I said “I want to join the Army.” “Oh good on you,” he says. “What’s your name, what’s your this, that and the other.” And then he says “What do you want to be in?” “I want to be in the Army. That’s why I’m here, I want to be in the Army.” And he must have rattled something off. I don’t know what he, he might’ve said “Do you want to be in the infantry or the artillery or the engineers?” He might have said. I don’t know what he said. He gabbled away in some

foreign language to me. I said “Look, not interested pal. I’m here to join the Army.” “Right.” he says. And he says, “What do you do?” I said “I drive a, I said I drive a truck and there’s a bloody copper putting a parking sticker on it. A parking sticker on it, look there. I said I drive a truck.” So he must have said “Oh well you’re in the ASC.” That’s the only reason I can think of how I got into the ASC. Because I could drive a truck.

That’s the way the Army works. In mysterious ways.

Well as the old saying, these old soldiers used to say to you, never transfer. Never volunteer. Just stick to what you’re given. Then you’ll come back alive. Not a bad philosophy is it?

Yep, yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A sort of superstition I suppose. Brought up, brought from the First World War. The old diggers you know they probably, mates transferred out of one unit into another, they got killed. So you never transferred and you never volunteered. Well you did but it was supposed to be bad luck if you volunteered for anything. Well you take the consequences. Don’t you?

As I did for eight years, I took the consequences. For eight years, for volunteering.

Yeah.

I didn’t tell them.

Well I thought they might go crook and they might try and stop me. See, you know it’s a funny thing this. When we enlisted and for the first six months or three months til we went overseas, we were frightened that we couldn’t get in the Army.

The blokes who were five foot six suddenly grew another three inches overnight. Blokes who were a bit blind in one eye they learned the, the eye chart. All these little, we were frightened we couldn’t get in. And yet, you know, things that turned out they’re bloody frightened that they do get in the Army. We were frightened that we couldn’t get in.

No I didn’t tell them

until the twentieth of October. Because, they, like all they did was took our names and addresses, we’ll let you know. So about the middle of October I got a slip of paper. I’ve still got it somewhere. A slip of paper, official Army form. You will report to say Sturt Street Barracks, South Melbourne at nine o’clock on Monday the

twenty-third of October. Actually that notice when I first got it had the twenty-first of October. I forget what day that. So I went down to this Army place. There was some Army bloke there. I said “Here have a look at this.” And the bloke said “Oh yeah you’ve gotta report here on whatever date it’s on.” I said “I can’t.” He says “Why can’t you?” I says “I’m working.” I said “I just can’t

knock off work. I’ve gotta give my boss a fortnight’s notice. So he can find somebody to take me place.” He says “What rot.” I says “I’m in, I’m working.” I thought I just can’t knock off work tomorrow and go into the Army. So I noticed when I got the form it’d been over stamped with the twenty-third of October. So when it come to the weekend. I thought “Oh crumbs, I better tell me girlfriend. Phew.”

So I plucked up enough courage to tell her on Saturday night. She went a bit crook. But I thought “Oh well. Monday’s a different day.” Oh she took it all right I suppose. Parents, old man didn’t, my dad didn’t say anything. He said “Good on ya son it’ll make a man of ya.” That was his remarks when I told him I’d joined the Army.

Well she never said anything. Never said anything mum.

Well her brother had been in World War I so, I don’t know she might have been used to it. I don’t know but no but mum never said anything but. That’s the way it went.

1939. You never forget things.

I’m in the Army. The biggest Lair in the drill hall.

No, no, no, no.

We went into the, oh we were about in the Army about a fortnight before we even got giggle suits. I think we were in the Army a week and we got red boots. And blokes were hobbling around in them. Because like you could always tell how a bloke was going by his footwear. There used to be what they called dancing pumps. They were about ten and sixpence or something. They were sort of patent leather thing you wore when you went to a dance.

Whereas shoes probably cost a pound. These dancing pumps’d cost ten and six. Like if you didn’t have any money you’d buy a pair of dancing pumps. If a bloke come to work, a new bloke come to work the first thing you did was looked at his feet. To see if he was any good or not. And the boots didn’t worry me because when I was driving the truck as a storeman I could wear what they called blucher boots. They were slaughterman’s boots, which were the same as

Army boots. Big, black lace up boots with a horse shoe on the heel. I used to wear them. So the boots didn’t worry me. When I was working, I had an old black shirt with the sleeves cut out and a big black leather apron. And I was the big, big man. No we course when we got this notice to attend it had bring your knife, fork,

plate and spoon and a mug and something or other. A cut lunch. And the little notes says oh when you’re given a uniform your clothes will be sent home. Be parcelled up and sent home. You don’t believe everything you read. So, we were in the same clothes we went to join the Army. We were in ‘em for about three weeks before we got something.

Didn’t worry us a scrap.

We were in the Army. Some blokes’d have a pair of giggle pants and other blokes’d have a giggle suit, somebody’d have a hat. Somebody’d be wearing their little pork pie hat with a feather in it. Like me. What a rag tag mob we must have looked.

The thirty of us, we were happy as Larry. All sorts of blokes. And as I say it took

us oh about three weeks before we got what they called giggle suits. These giggle suits, these sort of khaki jackets and khaki pants. No badges, no buttons. Oh you had buttons but you had no badges. And no buttons with Australia on ‘em, they were just old brass buttons you’d find on an ordinary shirt. Cause I remember going to say, on Melbourne Cup Day 1939, they probably wanted to show us off. So we all had

giggle suits. We marched from the showgrounds to the Flemington Races for the Melbourne Cup. Like I can remember Revett won the Cup, it won the double that year. And while I was at the Cup, we’re just sort of wandering around. I never had any money to bet I was just sort of wandering, wandering around. I met a bloke from Spring Vale that I’d played footy with. And he said to me “What are you doing Blondie?” I said “I’m in the Army.”

“Whoa!” he said,” I’m not gonna join the bloody Army if that’s the uniform they give you.” Well believe it or not six months later I saw him in the Middle East. He went to the 2/7th Battalion and the poor cow got Prisoner of War for four years. Still he’s still alive Johnny. I thought oh no, giggle suits.

Well we looked like gigolos, like gigs out of the lunatic asylum.

They were funny, just an ordinary sort of jacket thing with a bow there and a pair of khaki pants. They were just, they weren’t like this. I don’t know what they were made out of, just chaff bags I suppose. Something like that. They’re something they’d give you anyhow at the lunatic asylum.

We were in, well we were lucky, we were in a hall. I think we were in the Hall of Manufacturers.

Some of the blokes who came in later they finished up down in the cattle pavilions. Sleeping in the cattle sheds and the sheep pens and that sort of thing. We were in there, we went in, I think we were about the third draft to go. So we were, we got into a hall. And the other blokes they, as they come in they filled up all the halls. They all finished up you know down in the cattle pavilions.

No it wasn’t there we were just

what they call a squad. We were 30 Squad. We were just doing ordinary basic training. As I say we didn’t know our left foot from, a lot of them didn’t know their left foot from their right.

Well learn how to stand to attention. And understand what the hell the blokes were talking about. See how they say fall in well you didn’t fall in, you didn’t fall over. You had three ranks on the mark of fall in. See we had to learn all this, we didn’t know. Like a lot of the blokes didn’t know what end of the gun

a bullet come out of. You know some of the fellas there that hadn’t knocked around. So they had to teach us all, teach us how to march. You know left, right, left. A hundred and thirty paces to the minute. Right dress and left dress and all this sort of business. Had to, like we just came in off the street. As I say, I knocked off work Saturday and I was in the Army Monday. We had to be told what to do, what the Army, told what to do. Cause you don’t,

when you move around, you don’t just drag it around in the mob. You march everywhere. Even if you went to mess parade, you marched. You didn’t just wander up there at half past twelve. You marched up at half past twelve. So they had to teach us all this sort of thing. We must have driven ‘em mad because they were, these were the top class Australian soldiers. They were what they called the Australian Instructional Corp. They

were the men who used to train the Officers. A lot of them were at places like at Duntroon. They were permanent and they were soldiers. Smart, snappy, little cane under the arm. Little toothbrush moustache, had a cap pulled down over their eyes. They were soldiers.

Well that was, somebody had to do it. Matter of fact like when I come home from Japan, I was supposed to go into the AIC. But

I’d had enough soldiering. And anyhow went to the show, went to the showgrounds for three weeks. And they just called us out one day. Lined us up and three or four trucks came. We hopped in ‘em and there was an Officer there. A militia Officer. Little snappy little chap he was. All dressed up in his uniform with blue pants and white stripe around it and some boots and all this. And you know little toothbrush moustache. So he

somebody had to tell us how to get into a truck. Well had to be taught. And how to sit, you know sit back to back or whatever it was. So I often said to this Officer after the war. His name was Perry. Cap, I think he was Captain Perry. I don’t know but he got the nickname of Wick, Wick Perry. I think his, I don’t know it might have been, I forget what his name was. Anyhow there must have been something

of Wick in his Christian name. Then he got the name Wick, Wick Perry. I used to see him at the reunions and I used to say to him. “What did you think the first time you saw us blokes at the showgrounds?” Well I sort of put it a little nicely. He said “I thought to meself how the bloody hell am I gonna make soldiers out of this crew?” We were

stranded all over the place. Chiacking one another.

Who worried? We didn’t care. And anyhow I say we were just a conglomeration at the showground. But they took us to Broadmeadows where they formed the Sixth Division ASC. And there they formed the two Companies, Petrol Company and Ammunition Company.

I think like

when you’re in the Army they don’t pick out you, you, you, you and you. They pick out all the good blokes and finish up with a rabble. So what they do they just take little blocks of people then move ‘em around. So I think that what happened was I was Thirty Squad and I’m pretty sure we all went into Petrol Company. The other Comp, other Squad that went in with us were Thirty-one Squad. And they went into the Ammunition Company.

And so on. Like different squads came in and they put them into, that’s how they formed the Companies. Like they had these blokes together for about three weeks. They sort of got to know each other so they would be splitting them up. So they would just put the whole thirty all in one place.

Well, more or less yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Like you’d get reinforced and you had blokes transferred out. Bloke’d get promoted and

moved to other units. Matter of fact when I was at the showgrounds on one side of me chap finished up a Major with the Military Cross. And the bloke on the other side of me, he finished up a Major with an OBE and a mention in despatches.

But they were, they weren’t ordinary blokes like me. They had probably been to Public Schools. One worked for Patterson, Lang & Bruces, traveller, and the other bloke worked for Vacuum Oil. But that’s how they kept us all together. Because we knew one another. We’d been together for about three. When the Army moves you, they’ll say it gets down to thirty men. And you’re given a job to do. When you’re a platoon sergeant

you don’t pick out the men because you pick out fifteen. If you’ve got a job for fifteen men, you pick out fifteen good men. Those other blokes left are fifteen no hopers. So you go in little sections. Sections of ten or whatever, a platoon’s a thirty. It’s all, everybody’s got their place in the Army. You just know where you stand. That’s where, that’s where we were formed. That’s where we were formed up.

In Broady.

Not really cause we didn’t have any trucks. Oh we used to go to lectures and they’d try and tell us things. We had blokes come there and talk about things they knew nothing about. Well we had an officer. You shouldn’t speak of the officers but we had an officer he was in the militia. But he was a real pucka sahib bloke, you know.

He used to make out he’d been in the, he was an English officer in the British Army. And he had this toothbrush moustache and walked funny and all dressed up. And he had a little fly swat thingo. You know, used to flick around. I thought caw who’s this bloke, you know, he must know something. Anyhow we found out he knew nothing. We finished up calling him The Doodle Dasher.

That was his nickname. The Doodle Dasher.

Well they give you a job to do and you go and do it. Oh no never lost confidence in em. No, no, no. We knew what they were but they were told what to do. They just handed the orders down to us. See a section corporal for me, a section corporal is the most important man in the Army. See that’s the last

little group. That’s a group of say ten men, eleven men and a corporal. You all lived together in one tent. We only lived in tents, you lived in one tent. And there was the section corporal. Now that section corporal he had ten men. Now decisions might be made in Parliament in the government. Might be made in the War Office, and it comes down through Army headquarters and it comes down

to corps headquarters. It comes down to divisional headquarters, comes down to brigade headquarters, and it comes down to the battalion headquarters. Then it comes down to the company headquarters. Then it comes down to the platoon commanders, then it comes down to the platoon sergeant. But the blokes who do the job, this order, is ten, a corporal and ten men. Now if they don’t do the job you can lose the war. If they didn’t

do their job. So a section corporal to me is the most important man in the Army. Because he was the last man on the chain of command. He was the last man that was given the order to do the job. Then he had the ten men to do it.

Yeah. I was in the Middle East. And I became

We didn’t get issued with a rifle until we got to Puckapunyal.

It was yes, yes. 8-1-5-3-7. You never forget these things. They hammered it into your head.

That was it, yeah, 8-1-5-3-7.

We were given these rifles, they’d been in storage since the end of World War I. And they were packed full of grease and Vaseline. In great big boxes. And did we have a job trying to clean em. Luckily it was summer time. And a lot of it melted. Of course you know where it all melted to, on the shoulders of our clothes. On the sides

of our pants.

Oh yeah they worked alright. Yeah they’d been in storage. Oh no they still worked. Fired bullets.

Oh I’d had an old pea rifle, I knew how to fire a rifle. Of course the old diggers used to say “Ooh you wanna be careful when you get these .303s. Hold em tight to your shoulder or they’ll break your shoulder. Or they’ll fly out of your hand and shoot the bloke behind you.” All these stories we used to hear,

we used to you know listen to em. But oh you know the old 3-0, they had a bit of a kick. You felt it in your shoulder but you got used to it. Well you lived with a rifle. You know the old saying, a rifle’s a soldier’s best friend. And of course then you get asked the question how do you know it is? The Corporal? How do you know it is? Well then you gotta go through all the rifle drill.

You know when you’ve done it. But you know especially when you’re on parade and they wanna inspect your rifles. There’s a certain. You don’t just pick up the rifle and say here have a look at it mate. There’s a certain procedure you go through to. You know for inspection port arms, examine arms, there’s always, it’s all done, all done by numbers.

Oh yeah we fired a few shots at Puckapunyal at what they called a

thirty yard range. Which is only thirty yards instead of being two hundred yards. It was only a thirty-yard range. But the targets were reduced in size to correspond to, if you’re on the thirty yard one, the target would correspond to what you would see of an ordinary target at two hundred yards. So, oh no we fired a few shots at Puckapunyal. Course the old story you

know blokes used to try and smuggle a round, put one round in their pocket. But no they made sure that all the rounds, you know there’s a certain drill when you were finished firing. Had to turn your rifle up like that. Then they’d come along the line and check the empty cartridge cases. There used to be clips of five, you’d put five in. They’d come around and they’d make sure all the cartridges, all the empty shells were there. See they played the game safe.

Of course it’s when we had, we had a chap he managed to smuggle one. And course we had a Sergeant who wasn’t too popular. And the word got around that old Merv Gilbert’s got a bullet. “Oh you want to look out, you want to look out Jack, you know. Gilbert’s got a bullet you know.”

Well they didn’t

exactly say that. But you know, all part of the game. We had nothing else to do. It was for, different story, when we got to Palestine. When we got to Palestine we were issued with five rounds of ammunition. Live ammunition. And we’d been there for a while and they decided to call em in.

Call all their ammunition in. Everybody had on parade and you all had to return your five rounds. But not my company but another company it was funny the names that were scribbled on some of these cartridges. Captain so and so, major so and so.

Oh no, just a boss and a worker that’s all. See, like a lot of these

officers they hadn’t knocked around the militia. They hadn’t knocked around like we had. And like we had cluey blokes. We had a bloke, he was our, one of our platoons was a workshops platoon. All they did was maintenance on the vehicles. Well we had a captain there. Old Typhoon. That was his nickname. Name was

Tinkham, Captain Tinkham. He got a, he got his nickname was Typhoon.

Well when he was on parade, when he’s on parade, one cheek of his backside’d twitch and then the other one would. And old Typhoon he reckoned

he was a mechanic. And we had some cluey blokes. And they would you know the old story, they’d give a lecture for an hour, bore us to death, someone’d go to sleep. All this sort of caper, make out you’re a genuine. And then it got, be any questions. And we had some cluey blokes they’d shoot answers at this Typhoon. He couldn’t answer em. Same with old Doodle

Dasher. He was blowing hard about how you’d make maps and all this sort of business. He’d been never out of St Kilda or somewhere or other. Tell us field craft. You know bloke’s a nasty, but that’s not right. Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Always trying to bluff his way out of. No it should be this way. And he’d have to admit that he was wrong. Just the same in any job and a boss isn’t it?

You’ve got a boss. And you don’t tell him if you don’t like him. So we,

That’s right they didn’t. Or they were learning the same as us. On all the afternoon parades. None of them had been to a war. Same as us. We were all learning together. Well we got

em round, we used to get em round to our way of thinking. Put it that way.

But oh no we had a couple of good officers. One bloke, where a lot of blokes didn’t get promoted, this bloke he was a lieutenant one day and two days later he was a major with an MBE. He knew how to handle men and he was given all the crook jobs.

Because he knew he could do it. Well he knew he didn’t do it, we did it. Like he was our platoon commander. Section commander or platoon commander. But he was a good fella, old Stanley. I think he might have been in the permanent Army before the war. But he used to baffle all the other officers with science. Like out on parade, company parade, he knew every move to make. Where these blokes been in the militia they didn’t, like us they didn’t know their left foot from their right.

They didn’t know where to stand, to take post. Stanley, ooh he was a soldier. Little swag and cane. You know trotting around. Little beady eyes on him. He, well he got all the advance jobs. You know. Like he was only a platoon commander or whatever you call em. He was only a lieut. And he was always given

the jobs. Like he took us away. We had a captain, old Jaffrey Jack. He was a militia bloke. I think he worked in a, think his father had a grocery shop up at Ferntree Gully or somewhere or other. He had no idea of handling men. And he took us away and Stan Major was a lieut. Well poor old Stanley he did all the work. We respected Stan very much.

Yes he was a good soldier. Well so were we.

Well actually, not my, not in my unit. But I have a cousin, had a cousin, I think he would have been the first casualty. In the AIF at Puckapunyal. I think

he was in the 2/7th Battalion. I think he was drowned. Well they were fiddling around trying to cross the Galvin River or something and he drowned. No we didn’t have any casualties but we had a lot of blokes fall by the wayside I tell you. When things got a little bit tough. And some blokes couldn’t handle it. Well in their thirties, mob of thirty blokes we had a bloke who reckoned he’d been in the Navy for thirty years. Hadn’t

been in it for thirty minutes. But and he reckoned he knew all the drills and all this. He’d been in the Army three weeks, we never saw him again.

Well they probably what they call shot through. Deserted call it what you like. They might have transferred to another, we don’t know, we never asked questions. Oh we had, we had three or four blokes that,

cause they were a bit older than us. Some of them were in their thirties. Well they couldn’t take it. You know it got a bit rugged. Sleeping out in the open on the ground and marching and you know going twenty-four hours without soup. You know, they just, you know a bloke would just disappear and you’d never see them again. As far as actual casualties, no, no we never, we never had any. We were good soldiers.

Well we didn’t know who we were gonna fight. Because at that stage, well I say the war could’ve ended the next day. We didn’t know. It was all political in those days. There was no fighting or anything.

Yeah, yeah. There was no fighting, it was

all political. That’s feeding you all this nonsense like old Tom. Yeah, old Tom. When, uniforms, he said. “Oh,” he said “They might, the uniforms might look a bit funny on these men.” Because of course some of them were from World War I. But he said “With good training and good food they will soon fill them out. And make men out of them.”

Bloody General.

We all laughed. Old Tom. Haven’t you heard of Tom Blamey?

See I read stories about him. Old Tom was a scallywag don’t worry.

Yes he was. He...

No we didn’t have the faintest idea. Because we thought we were probably gonna

go to England. See you shouldn’t speak about different countrymen. But we had, oh I suppose we had two blokes. They were taxi drivers before the war. And we had three Englishmen. And I reckoned they only joined the Army to get a free trip to England. Well they wouldn’t have got there otherwise. They couldn’t afford it.

So they talk about, you know don’t know how true it is, but at Anzac Day there are a lot of Englishmen in the Australian Army. They reckoned they were going to England. That’s why there’s a lot of English people joined the second AIF because they reckoned they’d get a free trip to England. Because when they didn’t get to England, they got to Palestine, they didn’t want to be in it.

We had a bloke, well I don’t whether he was an Englishmen or not. He used to make out, he had a little toothbrush moustache. He used to bung on a bit of side,, talk about the Army. And he reckoned he was a corporal. Not only was he a corporal but he was a king’s corporal. By jolly word he was. But he was only a bloody private like me. But he reckoned he was a king’s corporal. So whenever a guard was called for or any

crook jobs, he used to refuse them because he was a corporal. Never had any stripes. Had nothing. But he said, he had em all bluffed. They didn’t know. And apparently he got into strife one day. And they said “Oh you gotta do it, you gotta do it, we’ll take your stripes off ya.” He said “Nobody could take my stripes off me, I’m a king’s corporal. I was promoted by the King in World War I,” he says. “And the only person that could take my stripes off me are

the King.” Bloody lot of bullshit. We called him Bludger Barwick. He was a bludger. But he just, like blokes like that just disappeared. Never heard of em again.

Well he got promoted or demoted later on during the war. Well I suppose he might’ve got, probably got, well he got promoted.

But that’s another story which I don’t want to mention.

He, oh no we had three, thirty blokes. Nothing to worry about. Worries. As I say the war could’ve ended tomorrow and we would’ve all got the sack. Would’ve had to go and find a job. Cause you know when we,

when we left work, somebody took our places. Well he wasn’t gonna give it up. So you would’ve been trying to battle to try and get another job. You know, it was like we were frightened we couldn’t get in it. Because we were all mates. That’s how we thought, that’s how we lived. Just a heap of rag tag blokes.

We weren’t told but the old rumours get around you know. Somebody knows somebody else in another battalion and his cousin’s a brother of some other bloke. These are all what we used to call shithouse rumours. You know out in the latrine. Blokes sit there and think up all these things.

Or they used to call them furphies. Because in World War I a furphy was a water tank. And blokes would congregate round the water tank to get a mug of water. But of course you’re all standing around talking. And that’s where the word furphy came from. Just these blokes standing around the furphy. Telling stories and making up things. Nobody told us anything. We didn’t know.

As I say we could’ve been out of a job the next day.

Well you get given a like, there was two hundred of us in the company. And on parade one day, there were ninety of us told to go and stand over there. Well we, not because we were any better than anyone. We were new. And we were getting a little bit of extra training, little bit more say,

not technical training. But we were getting more specialised training, making soldiers out of us. Cause there was only ninety blokes instead of two hundred. There was ninety. So we got more specialised training. We knew we were going to go overseas I suppose. We were going to go to be Anzacs. We didn’t know what was going on but we, you get the feeling. You know. We probably got tin hats and the others didn’t get tin hats. We got bayonets and the others didn’t get bayonets. And all...

Oh it was yeah, yeah. Not like we reckoned we were going to, always reckoned we were going to England. But the powers that be they decided otherwise. Course I say in Palestine there was trouble. You see the Arabs they owned, or they were

sort of, well it goes back to biblical times. And the Jews and the Arabs. And the Arabs reckoned that they owned Palestine cause they were farmers and they were doing this and doing that. But of course the Jews gradually migrated from Europe so they were getting kicked out. And it didn’t take em long to form a community. And then they set up their own business. It wasn’t divided, it was all what we call

Palestine. But the Arabs were the labourers and the Jews were the moneyed people. So there was always, always trouble. And see Palestine was a British protectorate. It was given to them I think after World War I. Where the British looked after, they protected, like the Governor was a British soldier. It was guaranteed, it was garrisoned by a British soldier.

The Black Watch, the Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards. Like there was always British troops there to try and keep the peace. So that’s why we, I think we were sent there first. Like for training. To you know knock a bit of sense into us, I guess.

Alright. Yep.

So you can see how,

the way we lived. It’s a joke.

Hello ladies.

‘39 alright, yeah.

Well,

more or less yes.

Well in those we always ran a double as well. What we call run a double.

Well you had a steady girlfriend and you had one, just you know sort of see when it was convenient for her.

What we called ran a double.

Yeah. Yeah, yes.

How did I feel? Well I was just waiting to see what was gonna happen. Wake up in the morning and see what’s gonna happen to us all that day. I don’t know, we were all, thirty of us were all happy as Larry. Nothing worried us.

Yep. Well not so much going to war but going overseas. That was,

seeing the other side of the world I suppose.

No. No, no, no. Never worried about being nervous. Little bit apprehensive I suppose.

Well if you believed what all the old diggers from World War I told you, you didn’t

expect to come back. As I say, she’d sort of wasted four years of the best years of her life. Sort of waiting for me to take her to the pictures or something or other. I thought well perhaps I better reward her in some way. So that she’d get a war widow’s pension.

Not a worry in the world. Never worried or frightened.

Yep, I was ready to go anytime. Put me on I was ready to go. I had a gun and a hat and a uniform. “Bring on the war.” we used to say.

Well we knew that weekend. The rumours fly around. We knew that weekend that they gave us weekend leave.

That was our last leave in Australia. We knew that. Just get the feeling that the way they were equipping us and little things that the officers would drop. Course they didn’t know as much as probably what we did. There were other troops sort of getting ready and well you knew that you know we were off. We knew that. Just get the feeling that’s all.

Well at the weekend I more or less said “Well you know see ya.” And off I, headed off up to the Footscray and caught the train. Didn’t even look back. Just walked up to the station and caught the train into the Melbourne and caught the train back to Puckapunyal. Went back in me own little bed on the floor with all me mates.

Yes I saw them on the,

I saw them on the Sunday morning. I don’t know whether I had lunch with them or not but I went and saw them. Saw them Sunday morning and, you know, more or less said me goodbyes.

Well I don’t know. The Dustings they’re not noted for showing their expressions outwardly. They keep it to themselves. They don’t go round

as I say sort of you know showing our feelings to anybody. We that’s, we just keep it to ourselves. Being a pretty tight knit family. Of course we were boys. We were men. And, you know let’s go.

Oh well you had, it was laid down,

like just our uniform we stood up in. And of course we didn’t have any flash gear in those days. We had old singlets and flannel, blue flannel shirts. No collar and ties in those days in the Army. We just, all the gear they’d given us, we just put in our kit bag and in our packs and, pack up in five minutes for all the gear we had.

Just what was given to us.

Come on, just bring on the war.

Yeah, I took my wedding photo. Not that one up there of course. But one that, you know we had two or three wedding photos. Well I suppose that was the first thing that was stuck in me pack was me wedding photo. They used to be the old saying don’t take a lock of your

girlfriend’s hair away with you because it’s bad luck. All these little superstitions that we were led to believe.

I took me football boots. And me football shorts. No, no. Don’t ask me why, going off to war. With a pair of footy boots and footy nicks in your kit bag. Just, I think it’s the way things were.

I suppose so.

I didn’t believe in lucky charms. Just take it as it comes. As I say, like nothing worried us.

And footy nicks.

I was ready for anything. Yes. Tobacco and matches.

I don’t know, water bottle full of water or something. We didn’t worry.

At Port Melbourne. Station Pier.

Well it was a military secret. See in those days, everything was military secret. Not like today when everybody knows when troops are going over overseas. Everybody knows when they’re coming home. But all our movements, cause there was a war on, all our movements were kept secret.

You weren’t, you weren’t allowed to tell anybody where you were going or what you were doing. So although it was another worst kept secret of the war that nobody was supposed to know. But rumours fly around. People know people who know somebody who works down the wharf. And when we got to Flinders Street

Station from Seymour, there was about a thousand people on Flinders Street Station. That was supposed to be a big military secret. And when we got down to Port Melbourne, there was about another thousand people on the pier. So, so much for military secrecy.

Oh, I suppose so. I

had nobody there to see me off. Some people, some blokes had their family there. But oh we had bits of streamers and all that sort of thing. And band, bit of a band playing.

Oh blowed if I know. Army bands couldn’t play any tunes anyhow. They weren’t musicians. Well our Army bands weren’t. They were blokes who got sick and tired of doing squad drill and rifle drill.

And they were asked, anybody play a musical instrument. They put their hands up and they went into the band. They couldn’t blow a trumpet or anything but it was a change from being, a change from rifle drill. Anyway, we didn’t worry. We weren’t interested in that.

We were soldiers.

Well they’re not good at, they’re not supposed to be crying either.

Or feeling sorry for themselves.

Well I suppose not.

You don’t show any of your emotions. We were soldiers. Big sun bronzed Anzacs. That was the way we felt. We were the first.

Ninety odd of us. We were the first.

Soon as the bottom, back of the boat started to go up and down outside the rip. So did my stomach. And that was the end of me for a week.

Pardon?

Could have been I suppose. It was, I don’t know I just lay on the floor,

for a week. No, didn’t eat. All I used to get from off the floor, was get up onto the hand basin and I think I brought up everything but my boots.

No that went all the way to Fremantle. Because it was pretty rough going round the Australian Bight. Well the Australian Bight is renowned for being pretty rough.

Course the ship was all closed up. Like I say we were at night time there was no lights. All the doors were locked. So sort of claustrophobia I suppose. And you were down in a hull, sometimes below the water line. We’d say “Gee what happens if a torpedo strikes here? How we gonna swim out.” No it was part of the deal, I was still getting paid two bob a day.

I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t getting fed because I couldn’t eat. And they reckoned they had beautiful food on board because it was a cruise ship. And this was the first lot of troops that had taken overseas. And some of the blokes were lucky enough to get into cabins. But most of us we finished up down in the hulls. That’s try to get us to get into

hammocks. But we had no idea how to get into a bloomin hammock. So we just lay on the steel floor and went to sleep.

Well it used to rock and roll too you know. I couldn’t get into one I was crook. Just lay on the floor. With one blanket under me, one blanket over me and me kit bag for a pillow. That’s how I spent a week.

I wouldn’t have cared if the ship

had sunk. If it had sunk I would have felt alright cause I wouldn’t have been sea sick.

Well probably at times I suppose. But me mates looked after me. I don’t know whether there was a doctor or a hospital on board the ship or not. But nobody came to see me to see how I was, if I was still alive or not. So I just lay on that floor for a week.

No, no. No only your mates worried about you. Probably half the officers were sea sick, I don’t know, I never saw daylight for a week. Only the hand basin. That was all, the hand basin and the bed. That was all I saw.

Oh of course when we, in Colombo you don’t pull into a pier. You anchor out in the harbour and you go ashore on lighters. But of course we saw all these funny lookin, well I don’t know whether there’d be a race there, we saw all these funny lookin black people running around. With just little loin cloths on and curly hair and chewing beetle nut. We thought “What the hell are these people?” So,

anyhow we went ashore and they give us I don't know eight hours leave. But then they marched us up to some barracks and we had to march up the main street. Like sun bronzed Anzacs. We were in our uniforms. It was about a hundred degrees in the shade. The sweat was pouring off us. And we had eight, about eight hours leave. We just sort of wandered around aimlessly looking at all the local natives. Some blokes had a few quid, they bought a few souvenirs.

Couple of mates and I we found a shop that sold beer. So we had a nice couple of hours in there. Beer wasn’t very cold but it was beer.

Pardon?

No, we, you know, bloody black fellas.

Strange, you know. A bit of a novelty.

We were big sun bronzed Anzacs.

I suppose we were.

Oh they all had a look at us, sort of thing. No we just went around our own little quiet way. Just looking here, looking there. Just filling in time. Funny, not goats, cows and

bullocks wandering up the main street. And blokes with rickshaws pulling, getting into a rickshaw and a bloke pulling rickshaws around. And of course the British, the real pucka sahibs with their pith helmets and starched shirts and shorts, you know giving us the once over. We just ignored them.

Well like,

like you would, well you’d see pictures, you’d go to the pictures they’d have some British films on, the war films. Or in the papers, like what they call the pucka sahibs. All the British people who were overseas flying the Empire Flag. But we didn’t, we used to treat them worse probably than the natives.

We didn’t have much time for them. Well they were Oxford, upper crust sort of people that sort of looked down their noses at the silly looking Australians. But anyhow we had a day there. Got back to the ship and away we went.

Well we went past a, we pulled up at a place and somebody said “Oh that’s Aden.” We didn’t go ashore there. I don’t know what, see there was a convoy of about

twelve ships. And I don’t know what happened, we were there for about a day just anchored out in the bay. But, you know, a couple of days later we just sort of looked out and there was land on both sides of us. Thought where the devil are we? And somebody, bright spark says, “Oh we must be at the Suez Canal.” So we found out that’s where we were. At the Suez Canal. So we knew then where we were going.

Well in the back of our mind, that’s where we thought we were going. But well rumours circulate. You know, some bloke knows the captain’s steward or some bloke knows the bloke in the kitchen. You get all these stories about where you’re, where we’re going. Nobody told us officially we never lined up on parade and told where we were going. But somebody always managed to find out from somewhere,

where we were going.

Well we got to this place called Kantara. And pulled up and they said, “Alright everybody off.” Well more or less. So we got off. So we reckoned this is what we would, that’s where we were going to be in Palestine. Still well we always thought we’d,

we would be, we’d be going to England. Because at that time Italy wasn’t in the War. That wouldn’t, well of course neither was Japan. It was only, Germany was the enemy. And if you wanted to find the Germans you had to go to England. So things got complicated in the Middle East. Everybody wanted Suez Canal, everyone wanted the oil. And

that’s why we were in Palestine. We were sort of garrison, but we were preparing. You know for whatever we had to do in the future.

Oh crumbs yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Squad drill, rifle drill, route marches, bivouacs. Oh manoeuvres, map reading. All this sort of, anything to make life miserable for us soldiers.

Fighting. Well we used to fight when we went on leave.

Well the first people we wanted to fight with were the military police. Pommie red caps.

Yeah, they were the British military police.

Oh they call em red caps cause they used to wear a red cap. Of course they’d be, the British would garrison the place for

twenty, thirty years I suppose after World War II. There was battalions of the guards, Grenadier Guards the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards, the Irish Guards. There was British, oh I suppose there was ten thousand British troops in Palestine when we got there. So of course the Pommies were crook on us. Because they had the

game sewn up. They were all the places soldiers wanted to go. The English had it all figured out for themselves. And of course they were only on a shilling a day or two shillings a day. Course when the Australians come they’re on five bob a day and all the prices went up. So the poor old Pommies, they were,

well the Tommies, I suppose you call it the Tommies, the British soldiers, they were crook on us. Because they couldn’t afford what they were getting for two bob. They had to pay five bob for.

Oh no we, we’d, well not trying, me in particular but blokes’d go on leave looking for a fight. We had a few boxers and

they didn’t ever train they’d go on leave for a couple of days. And that’s how they got all their sparring practise in. Of course they finished up in jail. But the Red Caps they were the first priority. We didn’t take any notice of it then the, of course they had what they called the Palestine Police. They were sort of Irish. English, Irish descent they were.

They were the policemen there. Well they were bad men too. So they were high up on our unpopularity list. Some of the British soldiers, we didn’t like them, they didn’t like us. Course the demon drink plays a great part in all this. In cafes and of course there are no hotels in those places. All the cafes are where you go.

And course they, the English, they had all their favourite cafes all to themselves. Of course these rough old Australian soldiers come in and upset the apple cart. They’d say then, cause blokes couldn’t fight them, they’d look for the New Zealanders.

Who?

Well

they sort of kept out of our range. Like we didn’t take any sides, either the Arab side or the Jewish side. Because we didn’t want to become involved, politically involved with these people. They were fighting their own war and we were to fight our war. If they ever tried to take us down that was a different story. But the poor old Arab,

the husband would ride on a donkey or a camel and his wife and about six kids they’d troop on behind him carrying all their possessions. And of course we used to pull the bloke off the donkey and put his wife on.

Oh I suppose, made us laugh anyhow. And oh no we got on alright with the Arabs because like they used to sell oranges and

watermelons, soft drinks, little bottles of soft drink. Oh you could be out on manoeuvres in the middle of nowhere. And you might stop to have a smoko, and up from behind a sand hill would spring about half a dozen Arabs. “Eggs a cook Aussie, eggs a cook.” And they were hard boiled eggs. And bottles of soft drink. How the devil they knew we were there I’ll never know.

They were sort of, they were selling the stuff. Of course they did all the work round the camp. But the Jews, they were into the business side of it. They ran the canteen, they ran the cinema, they ran the laundry. They didn’t do any work, they just there to make money. So we just kept away from them. We didn’t want any part of their war.

We had our own little private war with the British and the New Zealanders at that stage. If we couldn’t find anybody to fight, we’d fight amongst ourselves.

We’d come home happy as Larry, had a good day.

At a price, yes.

Yep, that was a day’s wages. But that was the going price. Some of them did get involved. We had one chap he was a Western Australian and the chap by the name of Maxie Manolas. I think he was of Greek descent. He looked like a, we used to call him Pancho because he looked like a Mexican the way he used to wear his hat. With his toothbrush moustache. Anyhow I believe he got involved with oh the daughter of some Jewish businessman.

Never ever saw him again. Dunno what happened to Maxie. Might still be there.

Yeah.

No, no, no. We were there to fight a war. Nothing serious. We all had little girlfriends when we went on leave in a cafe. We, helped pass the time of day with them. Til our money run out then they’d kick us out. But

oh we did a bit of sight seeing especially in Jerusalem. Because we weren’t religious people but we’d heard all these you know the stories about the bible. Bethlehem and all the churches. Course the Jews ran the tours. And you would you know go on a tour for half a day. You know cost you so

much money. But they would take you, guide you around all these various historical places. No we did a bit of you know sight seeing while we were there.

Yeah well I suppose it was.

Well, yeah, well we didn’t know because you, like Italy didn’t, it wasn’t til we were about three or four months in

Palestine before the Italians come into the war. They were occupied by what was known as Libya. Which was on the other side of Egypt. Well of course their job was to take the Suez Canal. So they came through Libya and into Egypt. To take the Suez Canal. And that’s when, but until that happened Italy wasn’t in the war.

But once Italy came into the war, well we knew that you know something would have to happen. Cause the British were trying to stop them and the Egyptian Army were harassing them and well we reckon we knew that was our job then.

Oh yeah somebody always had a radio. Well old wireless as we called it.

On no in the YMCA [Young Mens Christian Association] or whatever it was they would have a radio. Or the seven o’clock news, the BBC news that’s where we got all our information from. So line up at the YMCA to hear the seven o’clock news. That was our news. Course there was what they called the Palestine Post. That was the local, that was the local newspaper. The

Arab kids’d come through the tents or what we call the lines. They were the tent lines. Come in selling the paper of a morning, “Palestine Post, read all about it, the Palestine Post.” Course it didn’t take us long to give the bloke say a shilling. “Did you see our Palestine Post, Palestine Post, read all about it. Major Wilson’s a so and so, so and so.” No, no, like we did have,

did have a paper. Course we couldn’t, lot of it was only all local news. There’d be a little bit of British news and Australian news. We had a rough idea what was going on.

Oh yes. We knew that, yes.

Yeah.

Well it was about the end of August, there was ninety of us put aside again. And

we only had enough trucks for one platoon. Like we were trained like infantry. And you know we were getting a bit sick of it. Blokes were going AWL [Absent Without Leave]. And blokes were getting jobs in the cookhouse. I were, mate Darkie, he volunteered, they called for blokes to go to a cooking school. And Darkie said oh I’m sick and tired of being on guard and all this marching up and down. So he put his name down to go to a cooking school.

So he went to a British cooking school for about a month. He had the time of his life.

A cooking school.

You know where they taught you how to cook. So Darkie said “Oh this is a good job. I’m going to put in for this.” But we only had enough trucks, for out of the three platoons, we only had enough trucks for one. So you’d do one week on the trucks and you’d do two weeks marching up and down the parade ground.

Doing rifle drill, squad drill. As I say route marches, bivouacs, they’d drive you mad. Boredom. And but when there was about another ninety of us put aside or sixty of us put aside. You know, it was on again. So anyhow we were told to go and, one day we were told to go and pick up the trucks, throw our gear

in it and be ready to move at 0800 hours in the morning. So that’s what we did. We got in the trucks and off we went. We didn’t know where we were going. We knew we were pointed towards the Suez Canal. Cause there was only one road and it went, there was only two ways to go. Either to Egypt or up towards, up towards Syria. And we headed towards the Suez Canal. So we thought “Oh well we’re going somewhere now.”

Yes I was a lance corporal. One stripe.

Well.

Well I was a good soldier and well somebody had to have it.

Well like I was, I knew how to, well I was popular with the men and

you know I was a bit of a leader. You know help em out and they said “Oh well he looks like he’s got some leadership qualities about this bloke. We’ll make him, give him one stripe.” Cause we already had the full corporals. Corporals, section corporals. But I got this one stripe. Oh I was happy as Larry, one hook. Took me a while to realise that just instead of I wasn’t getting paid for it, I was still out on me two bob

a day. A private’s but I got a lance corporal I thought “Oh this is good. I’ve got one stripe after about three days,” next thing I know I’m corporal of the guard. Instead of a corporal, full corporal doing the guard, a lance corporal did the guard. Yeah got all these jobs shoved on ya. Cause I was the last in the line. If the corporal didn’t want it, he told the lance corporal to do it. Thought he had, all he could tell to do it was his ten mates.

So I became a lance corporal. I used to still speak to me mates. I wrote home to me wife and say don’t change address, still keep talking to the neighbours. But address my mail Lance Corporal R.M. Dusting. So that’s how I became a lance corporal. Cause I used to ride a motorbike as well. On the convoys, I used to go up and down the convoys. Directing the

traffic, all this sort of thing, keeping in touch with them. So that’s how I went to Egypt as a Lance Corporal.

Yeah we went, well we went to Egypt, and we were in Cairo. Camped outside Cairo. A place they call Helwan. There was about ninety men from the other two companies and we all formed

into one. One Company. We were at this camp with all the rest of, the one of brigade, what they call a brigade. That was three infantry battalions, a field regiment of field company, the engineers, the field ambulance and an ASC company. So we were training there. The rest of us, the rest of the company caught up with us while we were there.

We went into Cairo a few times and saw the sights and sampled the local hospitality. Course Cairo was famous to us because that’s where the old diggers, the old Anzacs used to pass their time away. Was in Cairo.

Oh that’s right. Yeah, oh we’re here you know.

That’s right we’re the Anzacs and we’re here.

Course there are certain places in Cairo that were out of bounds to the troops. Well naturally what was the first thing you wanted to do when you saw a place was out of bounds. Find out why it was out of bounds. And like all the stories from the world, you know the old Anzacs blokes. “Oh you want to go to Cairo. Oh you want to see this and see that. Ooh yeah, ooh yeah.”

So we thought we’d find out and see if it was true. And it was. But you know we saw the pyramids and the Nile. We saw oh museums and all this sort of thing. Course we didn’t have much money. Probably never had any money. Probably into the first boozer and stopped there for the day if there was a good looking chick behind the bar. That used to do us for the day. We knew

that, you know, things were getting pretty close. So the rest of the company just caught up with us. And these ninety blokes headed off again. Up the road. Up towards the Mediterranean. So we thought oh well, here we go again. So we got to Alexandria. Up on the Mediterranean. And we were in a camp there.

No.

Only when we were on manoeuvres. You know the goodies would fight the baddies.

All this sort of, likes cowboys and indians. But it was all part of our training I suppose.

Oh yeah you know. We were getting, the training was getting fair dinkum. They were firing live ammunition at you. It was all, you know, training.

Oh it got a bit juicy I suppose. You, you know, didn’t let anybody know. No, we were,

like by the time we got to Alex we did more manoeuvres there. We were ready for anything. So we were there and the rest of the company caught up with again. By this time we were fully equipped with vehicles.

Oh yeah, we were supposed to be driving. We did more marching than what the infantry did. Did more guards and more parades than what the infantry did. They had to give us something to do. And the officers, they were,

give them something to do. We oh we were just there. We went to bed one night and chap I knew, joined the same day. But he was in the orderly, what they call the orderly room. “This is the office, where all your paperwork’s kept and where all the, that’s where the cap, company commander and the adjutant and all the clerks were in what they called the orderly room.” Where they did all the paper work. Anyhow Jimmy,

he managed to get a job in the orderly room as a clerk. They must have asked him if he was a clerk. He said “Yes I’m a clerk.” So he got a job in the orderly room. And he came down oh about five o’clock. He said “Well be ready to move.” He said “I’m not supposed to tell you this.” “But” he said “I was in the orderly room when signals came through that we were on the move.” So we sort of started to get our gear together and anyhow that,

lunch time, pack up, hop on the trucks and away we go. So off we headed up into the western desert.

Yeah, yeah. The British were fighting the Italians. And the Italians had crossed the border and they were into Egypt. Well the Egyptian Army, the only thing they were , their main forte was getting around in nice uniforms. But the British

and the Indian troops they were fighting the Italians. And they were getting forced back gradually. So we went in.

So off we went from Alexandria and we were heading up to the desert.

Well the first battle casualty was not, well not caused by the enemy, caused by the silly looking bloke himself and his mates. First, I think it was about the first or second night, we were heading up towards the

desert and somehow or other, somebody had knocked off a jar of rum. And as I say we used to sleep in the back of the trucks. And anyhow on this night they’d knocked off the jar of rum and a half a dozen blokes they all gathered in one fella’s truck. And this bloke reckoned he was the greatest rum drinker of all time because he was a Queenslander. And he could out-drink anybody drinking rum. But

unfortunately it brought him undone because when they woke up in the morning, this poor bloke’s dead. Though he was our first battle casualty. We, he was, he had a family so it was reported. Like it was, well say reported, that, I forget what it was, died on active service or, he wasn’t killed but he was, so his family wouldn’t

know what really happened. So if there was anything about pensions later on. He died, I forget, they had all these technical terms for things, wounded in action, KIA which is killed in action, GSWs - gun shot wound, SIW was self inflicted wounds. All these technical jargons the Army has. And I forget what he was classed as. But anyhow it

was recognised that he was well killed, killed in action. But they didn’t, they had some other term for people who died whilst, you know it wasn’t died while on active service. It was, cause once we left Australia we were on what they called active service. But there was some technical term they called it what this bloke, how he died. So that like later

on his family they would never know how he died. And if there was any pension benefits available.

Well as far as we know. Well of course the Army would have to notify his family, what family he had. And they would have to tell the family how he died. So yeah there was this technical term, I forget what it was.

He wasn’t killed in action cause we hadn’t been in action. Anyhow that’s how his death was reported officially.

Oh no, everybody laughed. Silly old so and so.

Well it was the way we lived. Yeah.

Like we were a bit crook on his mates. Because they, you know, they should have looked after him. But of course you know he just, they were all, they were all just sort of all laying down in the back of a truck. Sort of probably what they called in bed, laying on the floor with a blanket over you. They were all there and I suppose this bloke was quiet for a while and they thought “Oh he’s gone to sleep.”

He went for a long sleep, he’d gone for a sleep alright. Anyhow we continued on and we came to a place called Sidi Barrani. Which the British had just taken. I think that’s, I think we were still in Egypt by this stage. See we hadn’t crossed into Libya yet. And that’s when we first saw what

what war was all about.

Well a few Itie [Italian] bodies laying around. And bomb holes and shell holes and little doovers, whatever they call them, holes in the ground. Machine gun mess and all the places where they used to live and you know where they used to fight. You know wrecked trucks and gear laying everywhere. So that was the first time we saw anything about, about a war. We thought

oh well, this is it, you know. We’re in the war.

No, didn’t make any difference. Oh no, you know, here’s the war.

We just saw that, we thought, oh well this is what war was about now. We probably got a bit more serious. But no it didn’t break our hearts. We thought oh well we’ll go and see what it’s all about I suppose. You know, we’ll soon find out.

By that time the British were at a place called Sollum. I don’t know whether that’s in Libya or whether it’s in Egypt but it’s pretty close to the border. It was a little port. The British had taken that. Well they’d just taken it when we got there. We were carrying petrol and ammunition and we were setting up dumps. For our own

troops that were coming up behind. We used to, everything was done at night. Pretty risky sort of business travelling through the bush anywhere you didn’t know on rough old tracks.

Yeah, yes, that was to surprise the enemy. Like all our movements were at night time. Most of

them. Like if we were advancing, and it was, you’d advance during the night. And lay up during the day. The artillery, they were in a fixed position. Well at night time they’d go three or four mile further up. Well this is at Bardia. Cause at the Battle of Bardia, the artillery they were probably twenty-five miles

from Bardia. And at night time they’d go forward say four or five miles. And dig a gun pit, camouflage it and we’d take them up there and we’d take up ammunition and drop it there and come back. And when they advanced, there was their gun pit all ready for them. You know blundering around in the dark was a way of life with us. Anyhow we

got to Sollum and that’s where we really tasted the Italian Air Force. When we were at Alexandria we used to get raids nearly every night because the fleet was in Alexandria harbour. They’d come and bomb the harbour but we were only about five miles from the harbour. So they weren’t very accurate so all the ones that were left over they fell in amongst us. We had a little slit trenches dug and huddled

up there with a tin hat on. You could hear the stuff whistling in the dark. Bits of shrapnel. Some silly bloke’d get with a machine gun and try and shoot em down. They were about twenty miles away up in the air, try and shoot em down. Put that thing away you idiot. So that was when we first tasted the Italian Air Force. Because everyday they would come over and bomb this little harbour cause that was

the only harbour along the coast that could take shipping. They had a couple of gunboats in there, British gunboats, the old Ladybird.

Pardon?

Oh not really, they were too high up. They weren’t very accurate so they just sort of sprayed the things everywhere.

No, no,

no, no, no. Lost a few trucks I suppose. But we were in little holes in the ground. We were sticking our heads up looking at them, ah ya mugs.

Yep.

Course it was cold. We got a rum issue. Christmas Day. We were there Christmas Day. And we got a rum issue. Ooh we were real sun bronzed Anzacs now getting a rum

issue. Ooh how long’s this gonna last? But they, the British Navy had a gun boat and oh a monitor. That’s right they had a monitor. And two gun boats. They were just like gun platforms. They had great big guns on ‘em which they were firing at Bardia. And course the Itie’s were trying to sink them and damage the port. So we were just, we were sort of at the end of the bomb run

as they come into the harbour. So we were about three miles away so if they missed the harbour the bombs landed in amongst us. Anyhow we were all little holes in the ground. We used to cheer em. And of course the British, they had some old planes, used to try and shoot em down. But didn’t have any luck. So then we crossed we come up what they called Hell Fire [Halfaya] Pass. Which was a

pass that used to go up this ridge or mountains or whatever it was up into Libya. Cause there was like a I don't know how many elbow bends on it, there was about twenty bends on it. The Italians had built it. Just like they didn’t just go straight up and over it, they used to go like this. You know this was named Hell Fire Pass because that’s where they had their artillery zeroed in on.

And old Bardia Bill. The Ities had a big gun, a big sixteen-inch gun or something or other that we christened Bardia Bill. Used to put it in the fortress of Bardia and used to lob say sixteen inch shells which weigh about a ton. It used to try and hit Hell Fire Pass and also the harbour in Sollum. And the other stuff was

twenty-five pounders. That’s a shell that weighs twenty-five pound. Which is fired from a four point five gun. So they had this Hell Fire Pass zeroed in. Oh it didn’t make any difference to us, we just went up and down there as we liked. Course by this time...

Well outside of Bardia. Before the attack. And of course by this

time you know the Army they sent us into the desert with thirty hundred weight trucks. Into the desert with mud tyres on. That’s tyres with great big lugs on em. Of course, as soon as we got off the bit of the road, we got bogged. In the sand. And the British they were more equipped, they had their vehicles, had what they called mud flat tyres. They were a softer tyre and wider

and the pressure wasn’t, was only about ten pound or something or other. So they became the target. Of our blokes. Instead of us getting bogged and digging ourselves out. We thought oh we could take those wheels, they were alright those wheels. So the poor old British they weren’t game to leave their trucks to go to, well there was no toilet. But to get out of their trucks to go and relieve themselves, they come back their truck was jacked up and their wheels were missing.

Which was frowned upon by the authorities. But we didn’t care, we were sick and tired of getting bogged in the sand. And then we’d taken, we’d be...

Mmm?

That’s right. But digging yourselves out, getting blokes to tow you out. But then we scrounged around. We got

some captured Italian vehicles. Which were more suited for the desert. And of course instead of being thirty hundred weight like we had. We had thirty hundred weight which is a ton and a half, well we used to put three ton on em. You know petrol and ammunition and rations. Putting, only putting a ton and a half on we could put three ton on. But we got these Italian vehicles, were diesels, and, ooh they were ten tonners.

Made life a little bit easier for us. And some of our blokes, you know we had cluey blokes, they knew how to drive diesels. And how to get em going. Course the batteries were all flat or smashed. But you know scrounge around and you get bits here and bits there. Anyhow we had these great big ten ton diesel things. Which they went very fast but at least they were adapted to

the desert. And they could carry three times as much as what one of our trucks could carry.

Course we did.

Yeah we, you know you scrounge around and like, well for food too. When we went into the, we never saw a cookhouse for three months. Never saw a slice of bread for three months.

We used to, at the back of the truck we’d have a little Primus. And we’d heat up a tin of what they’d call M&V, of meat and vegetables, which we’d probably well we call it scrounged, we’d scrounged around. We’d probably gone into a ration dump and pinched a case of bully beef of rations. So we used to scrounge around and get our own rations even. Every now and again a truck’d pull up and throw you half a dozen tins of

bully beef and some herrings. A couple of packets of biscuits or you know. The fresh bread, never saw fresh bread for three months. Except from the Arabs. They’d be along the road selling hot bread rolls.

Yeah. Well the natives, I don’t know whether they were Arabs or Bedouins or Libyans. But they were always bobbing up somewhere along the road. With hot bread

rolls and little bottles of soft drink.

Well I didn’t get into Bardia until oh about four days after it had fallen. There were a few bodies around but we didn’t stop because we had to go into Bardia to pick up some petrol. Because the Italians, they had all their petrol in

forty-four gallon drums. Where we, our petrol was carried in two four-gallon tins in a wooden box. So, so that, instead of trying to, and they used to leak, you’d stink of petrol. So anyhow we used to get these Italian fuel dumps and we used to load up with these forty-four gallon

drums. We’d put on you know three ton. So many forty-four gallon drums of petrol on board. We’d provide, got a couple of planks and made a little bit of a ramp and we got a rope and we used to pull them up into the back of the truck. And one bloke’d push it and the other bloke’d be pulling the rope. That’s how we got the things. You know just a little bit of good old Aussie know how, how to handle things.

And of course we, what we used to like to get for ourselves was the aviation fuel, which was a higher octane rating. And it’d make you go faster. Didn’t do the engines a great deal of good but that didn’t worry us so long as we could drive faster. But we’re lucky we had these Italian vehicles and some of the blokes had, you know managed to get going.

So we were there at the Battle of Bardia. Then once that had fallen they kept the Itie’s on the run and we went then onto Tobruk. That was where the war stopped for one day. Outside Tobruk, there was such a sand storm it was impossible to move. That, terrific sand storm, like the war just stopped for a day. Because you just couldn’t do anything.

Oh no it was just a sand storm. We used to get little sand storms. But this was one that blew for a day.

No, couldn’t see. We used to, we had gas masks and we used to take out the gas glasses and wear them so we could see. But it was almost impossible to move because you couldn’t see where you were going.

We just sat around, waiting for it to stop.

Yeah, yeah. Probably had a sleep. One thing about that, like sand storms and vehicles, you get what you call static electricity. You know you put your finger on something metal and ooh, ooh, ooh.

Yeah, you’d go to open the door of the truck you know and ooh, ooh, ooh. And you could hear a click.

And you put your finger near it you could see a little spark jump. It was like the force of the wind and the sand on the metal sort of generated a type of electricity. Well that was just sort of one of the bi-products. As I say the war just sort of stopped for one day. Just couldn’t, impossible to move. So anyhow went onto Tobruk, we were carrying...

Oh yes oh there was prisoners everywhere.

Oh we saw them walking around being herded back into the prison camps. You could hear em coming for miles. “Moia, moia, moia.” That was, moia, moia, I think that was the Arabic word for water. They didn’t have any water. They were always singing out.

“Cigarettes, cigarettes.”

Oh throw something over.

Poor fellas, we did, you know, they no, well they really, well I suppose they fought to the best of their ability. I didn’t, see I wasn’t ever in the front line. At that, you know at that point in

time. The blokes, you’d go up to a battalion with rations and that. And you’re talking to fellas there. They’d say “Oh you know have a look at that rifle. Fancy fighting with that sort of rifle.” They were, they weren’t properly, they weren’t equipped as well as what the British were. They were, some of them were stubborn but a lot of them gave up pretty easy.

No there were some sticky patches there, once the poor old Sixth [2/6th] Battalion got knocked around. What post, dunno what post it was. They more or less fought to the end. But in the main they sort of you know they gave up you know when they knew they were finished and they just sort of gave up. Same as what the Australians

did, don’t worry. Look at Malaya. They just knew that it was useless, like they gave up. Australian battalions some of them surrendered because it was just useless. They were just left, just left there. But still that’s all part of the game. Oh no they, like they

fought, the best they could. Of course their artillery and their aeroplanes were our main worries. They used to bomb and strafe us on the roads. That’s why most of them moved at night time. You’d go and sort of hide some, try and somewhere to hide in the day time and then you’d move at night. But after Tobruk we went further on and we got bogged alright, we got bogged in the mud.

For Australians. This is when we were coming into the fertile part of Libya, where the Italian settlers were. Where they were growing crops and vineyards and that. I think it was, Derna, that’s right, Derna. There was a big, there was another port there at Derna. No there was a big airfield there. And the Australians captured Derna.

And that’s when we were getting into the fertile part of the country where, where the Italian settlers were.

It wasn’t first rate.

Oh their trucks, their equipment was better. Like but their infantry were not equipped

Oh yes they had better equipment than what we did as far as that, mechanically, that way. Their artillery, that was their sort of their forte, was their Italian artillery. They were pretty good.

No, that’s all we had. Lot of blokes,

some blokes were using Italian machine guns cause we were pretty light on for machine guns. So they used to use Italian machine guns. And Italian ammunition. Anything to help out I suppose. No, we just, we were at what they called an establishment, that’s so many to a section, so many to a

platoon. So many machine guns. And like we were fully equipped. But you know perhaps it was a bit outdated but still it was better than the Italians.

Went on to Derna. That was the next big port.

We lost, had a few chaps killed. Mostly

by air raids. Bombs, you know you were being bombed.

Well they weren’t in my section so I had nothing to do with them. We had a couple of blokes missing, don’t know what ever happened to them. Probably got lost, might have run onto a mine

field. Couple of trucks, never heard of them again, don’t know what happened to them.

Oh you know it’s got fair dinkum I suppose. But you know I used to try and treat it like a footy match you know. Like we were behind the lines and we’d go up to the infantry and say, are we winning

or losing? We must be winning cause we’re still going. That was the way we just carried on.

Yes, I suppose so, well you were busy and you didn’t have time. And no, while you were going you were going. Just did as you were, officer come along and tell you what to do and you just went and did it.

No you just drove like hell. Zig zagging and hoping they wouldn’t hit you. And we knew we were pretty right. Because the Italians they like they used to bomb from oh I don't know about three or four miles up. They weren’t very accurate. You know you were sort of unlucky if you got hit.

But still they were a nuisance. Yeah you knew you just might be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. And so we just carried on.

And that was what was going on, like the other sections you wouldn’t see them for a month, a week. So you’re only interested

in your own section.

No, no.

Yeah, it was good. This is the war, big sun bronzed Anzacs. You know we reckoned we were the best. Are we on again? Yeah, no.

Well he might’ve well he had to volunteer. Some of his mates probably volunteered and he thought well I’d better be in it too.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not so much with the you know first blokes. But later on you know one bloke in the town’d join up and then half a dozen of his mates would. I was the first bloke to enlist from Spring Vale. And I just went in on my own. As I say, knocked off work Saturday and went into the Army Monday. Just all on my own. I was the first, only

bloke I think did that. Except for this Johnny O’Brien. That I met at the race on Cup Day. He wasn’t gonna join the Army. If that’s the uniform they give you, not getting a giggle suit. So the next thing I know I meet him outside Cairo. Blokes change their minds.

Oh yeah. Have a bit of a chit chat. “What are you doing here? What have you been doing?”

Well we’d been shooting at a few other trucks and having a bit of fun trying to shoot down aeroplanes. But not at a human being. Hadn’t fired any shots at a human being.

Well like yes. Like you’d be sent out to

a certain position. You’d be given a map reference. You’d have a map and a map reference and you’d go there and of course the Ities would be there. So we’d have a little bit of a skirmish and fire off a couple of magazines of Bren guns and off they’d go. We shot a, well, we shot a few of them. Not a very pleasant feeling to pull a hot body out of a truck. Still, that’s what we were there for.

I got, matter of fact, one bloke, oh I’ve got some photos. He must have been reading some letters or something or other, some photos from home. And when I pulled him out of the truck these fell out of his hands. I’ve still got the photos of Italians, of soldiers in Libya. That’s all part of the game. So the war was over then and we came back...

Left them there.

Well they had what they called graves units. Who came and well there’d be burial parties from, be half a dozen blokes. They were going you know what they call burial party to go and bury people. Oh they’d just get half a dozen blokes and

you know dig graves and bury them. So I wasn’t gonna bury em. Didn’t have time. Couldn’t be bothered either. So.

Oh well hard to tell, well, my age in their twenties I suppose. Still but that was the game.

Well sort of. You know I thought oh perhaps they’ve got a mother and a father. Might even

have a wife. But we didn’t have time. You didn’t let the little things like that worry you. There was a war going on, and you had a job to do.

Well it could have been I suppose. We were impervious. We were big sun bronzed Anzacs. We’d never forget that. I keep repeating it. But we were big sun

bronzed Anzacs.

Well it is. Comes, surfaces every now and again I suppose. Just dismiss it, just part of life. That’s the way life goes. Things, you know I was still getting two bob a day. And I was a corporal. Ripper.

But our poor old corporal, well there was tales told about him after the war. But he was my section corporal. But of course when we got to, started to go up the desert, there was a bit of stuff flying around, poor Wally. He thought well this is not for me. So I don’t know he went sick or something or other. And so I was made a corporal.

Never saw him again.

He, well he might have got transferred to another, course the story with this chap was like he come from Western Australia. And I had mates in the West. And this chap walked into the AIF and he had a uniform with two stripes on it. Well nobody knew whether it was his uniform or whether he’d borrowed it from somebody or other. So he was immediately made a corporal. Somebody had to be made a corporal.

So he was made a corporal. And they reckon that’s how he became a corporal. When he enlisted he had an Army jacket on with two stripes on it.

Well that’s the sort of blokes we were. When sort of a bit of stuff was flying around, Wally thought well this is not for me. So I was a corporal, section corporal. The most important man in the Army I always say. Me and my ten

men. My happy band of warriors.

Yes we were all, like we lived together, slept together, ate together. Like I say the Army was sort of like a family. Like a company was say two hundred men. Well that would be like a little country town we’ll say. Two hundred people. And then you’re all in

your little sections. Which’d probably be like a street. Ten people like neighbours and you’re all slept together. Slept in a tent, ate together, went on leave together, got drunk together. Pinch, you know piking your mates for a cigarette or a quid to go on leave. Like we were just like a little family. Ten blokes all a family. With their corporal who looked after them.

Yeah, we were, well you had to look after them. They trusted you, that’s why you were a corporal. So that, I had five trucks and ten men. We were a happy little band, happy as Larry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well they all had nicknames of course.

Well my mate driver, he was Curly cause he had curly hair. We had a Queenslander, he was called Black Hall. Because he came from, he lived in the back blocks of Queensland. A little town called Black Hall. That was all he knew was Black Hall. He’d get talking and he used to say oh this wouldn’t have happened in Black Hall.

So he got the nickname of Black Hall. Then I had Billy Bourke. Big tall bloke. Billy and Don Archer. Old Don Archer got the name of Porker Nose because he had a nose like a Jew. I don’t know what the connection is, pork and Jews I suppose. And Billy Bourke, his name was Ambrose. So he got the nickname of Brosie.

Then another bloke, like he was my machine gunner. He was on the Bren, was called Darkie. Because Darkie was, well he wasn’t a mystery man but we sort of knew. Well Darkie came out of the militia. And we knew that Darkie, you know, there was something in his past. And you know you talk to one another. And you know I got the impression that he was

an orphan. And he had a little bit of colour in him. Probably a bit of Aboriginal. And of course he got the nickname of Darkie. Or Pelaco. There used to be the big sign for Pelaco with the black fella with a white shirt. “Mine tinkum they fit.” He got Darkie. Then I had Diamond Jim. Bloke, he was the bloke with the

diamonds in his teeth. He was a Canadian. Well by birth. Diamond Jim because he had these diamonds in his teeth. Or sometimes we used to call him Soapie because he used to be a great spruiker. He reckoned he should have been on a soap box down the Arab banks. He got the nickname of Soapbox, Soapie. Like everybody had their nicknames.

Oh politics or yakking away. Like if he wanted to tell you something, instead of saying it in one sentence it’d take him forty sentences to say it. You wondered what he was trying to tell ya.

Oh Ramsay. Doug Ramsay. Well he was in a different platoon to me at this stage.

I didn’t meet up with him til after Greece and Crete. Then we had Sniper. Sniper Bryant. Bowie Bryant. Bowie.

He was a Post Master. And he got the nickname Sniper because one day we were at the rifle range learning how to shoot. Anyhow I don't know what mound we’re on and we come back from what they call where the targets were. “Is anybody shooting on target number five?” So we went down and it was Bowie Bryant.

And he said “Yes he fired off his ten shots.” They said “Well he hasn’t hit the target.” So he, when they fired the next, we had the next shoot, when they sang out, things on that number five mound. So well instead of ten shots there’s about thirty holes in the target. Cause everybody shot

at Bowie’s target. So seeing as he didn’t hit the target he got the name of Sniper. The Sniper was supposed to be a crack shot. Just the opposite.

Yeah. Instead of ten holes in the target there were about thirty. He was a mate, trying to help him out. So, oh.

Well they found out that I was mad.

Things I used to get up to. Like Ned Kelly. Mad.

Uh?

Oh I could do anything better than anybody else that anybody had to take a risk. I did it.

No, oh no. I was sort of leader of the gang. I was like you know the leader. And if anything had to be done that wasn’t you know sort of according to Hoyle, I would do it.

That’s why I got the nickname Ned. Mad.

Yes, yes, you’d get, oh you might get mail probably oh once, in the desert we got one lot of mail then it was all over. You know I had about four or five letters from my wife and one from me mother.

Pardon?

Well I suppose so. We were big sun bronzed Anzacs.

No.

Oh yes a lotta blokes, I suppose so. Like you, everyone just looked after them. You never showed these things to your mates. You, whether your mates knew that, you know you were that way inclined, they wouldn’t trust you. Because you trusted one another. You know your life depended on your mate.

So that oh you never showed your emotions or let that get the better of you. So you just put on the front and got on with the job.

Oh yeah we knew everybody’s girlfriend’s names and all the things we’d got up to in the past. All this, like we were just like a fam...

No, no, you don’t. Like Curly was my driver.

You know we never discussed anything about how we felt. Let’s you know get on with the business. That’s what we’re here for. No we were like a little family. Little, Ned and his ten men.

Well I suppose so. That was her worries. What she was doing. Well she was working.

Well that was her business wasn’t it? Course this is a year or so after. Which was, that was their worries.

Oh not really. No, no I wouldn’t say so. Well I didn’t, you didn’t know. They wouldn’t tell you.

A couple of blokes when they come home sort of went a bit berserk and got into a bit of trouble. And they, you know, blokes they never rejoined us to go to New Guinea. So we thought you know they must, you know, have been in a bit of trouble somewhere. But that was their business. We were still our little happy band of warriors.

Like we were finished in the desert and we came back and we got re-equipped again and there was about ten of us picked out. And our lieut, of course he was the bloke we swore by. And course he looked after us. And he picked ten of us out. Just because I guess the lucky num, like the only reason I got there he wanted one corporal out of about six. And I don’t know whether I

picked the right number or not. Or whether he wanted me and he says “That’s the number, number seven.” Like he just, about six of us corporals there and he just said “Oh” he said, “I want one of you chaps to come with me.” He said “So choose a number between one and twenty.” So we were all saying numbers and I happened to say seven. That’s it. Now whether it was the number or not. Only Stan Mays knew. That’s how I got, that’s how I went to Greece.

Simple as that.

No we went here again, we were always in the advance party. So oh it was probably about, out of the company, I suppose it was about thirty of us. We went and picked up a load of infantry. And took us about three days to get back to Alexandria. We were all sort of

re-equipped you know, clean uniforms and we got new trucks. Well instead of thirteen hundred weight trucks we got three ton trucks. Which we promptly put five ton on. But we got you know all our equipment. Webbing, belt, you know, webbing and all that. It was all sort of worn out. All new clothes and boots and all that. So we were at Alexandria for about a week.

We used to shoot through and go into Alex. Every day. Cause we had nothing to do. Just all lined up ready to go somewhere when somebody told us. About midday we knew there’d be nothing happening so we used to, I don’t know, somebody, a bloke had a utility or a truck and we’d all pile into it and all go into Alexandria. Course we had a few quid in our wallets. We’d have pay. Like we never had money, we had it in our pay books. Was like a bank book. Your wages,

they’d pay you every fortnight and it went into your pay book. And if you wanted money well you went on pay parade and drew the money out. So we all had a few quid in our pay book. And thought oh we’ll go and spend it. So that’s when we found out, that’s when the cafe bloke told us “Oh you’re going to Greece.” I said “Oh thanks very much.” Then we were there for about three days. Until one night

somebody come down and said “Alright, follow me.” And away we went. About fifteen, thirty blokes and fifteen trucks. Just followed the bloke in the utility and went down to the wharf at Alex.

Well, they, they, we drove down to the wharf where we had to drain all the petrol out and they hoisted it up and loaded em onto these

ships. I think we took em about two days to load all out trucks on.

No it was a, that was a Norwegian or a Swedish but it was a blue flag with a white cross. Called the Hav, H-A-V, an old tramp steamer. They just loaded it all up with all the vehicles. Not only ours but all the vehicles. There again we had no cookhouse, no cooks.

We just slipped into the backs of our trucks and lit our little primus and made our little bully beef stews and a cup of tea. So that’s how we lived for three days just on whatever we had in our trucks.

See, when we got there, Greece

and Germany weren’t at war. This is sort of how crazy things are. Greece was at war with Italy but Greece wasn’t at war with Germany. Because Germany hadn’t even taken Yugoslavia at that stage. But like we knew, well they, we had a rough idea that Greece was sort of next on the list. Cause it was towards the Suez Canal.

So when we got to Piraeus, Greece wasn’t at war with Germany yet there were German planes flying overhead, taking photographs. The German Embassy staff were down at the wharf taking numbers of trucks and you know, colour patches and all this sort of thing. As I say it wasn’t til we got up to about Mount

Olympus where we’d you know picked up an infantry battalion. I forget which battalion it was. We’d taken em up there and our lieut, Stanley Mays came along to me one night. And he said “Alright it’s on tomorrow corporal. There’s balloons going up tonight.” I said “What are you talking about balloons?” “Oh” he said, “The war’s gonna start tomorrow.” I said “Oh is it?” “Yeah” he said. “Oh well, good, fair enough.” So that night we went and picked up

the 2/8th. And drove them oh for about two days and two nights on these muddy rough old tracks up into, through the villages and up through the hills until we finished up near the Yugoslav border. At a pass I think it was the Veria Pass they called it. One of the passes from Yugoslavia. Well by this time Germany had taken over

Yugoslavia. And so we took the 2/8th Battalion up. Got up in the mountains where we looked out and saw all this stuff around and said what’s that? And it was snow. First time we’d ever seen snow. No wonder it was cold. And it was cold. We had overcoats on.

Oh no we just had our uniforms and you know you put two pairs of socks on and

overcoat. Course the old balaclava, everybody had a bala, mum always knitted your son a balaclava. You know pull it over your head and over your ears and just your mouth as if you’re gonna rob a bank. The old balaclava, they kept you warm. You know the ...

Pardon?

Well I suppose they were. They were happy to take our money.

We were heading up towards you know to go to fight against the Germans. And all the Greek people are out on the little villages. And they were saying “Goodbye, goodbye.” And we thought “Oh crumbs you know, what’s this all? Goodbye.” Instead of saying g’day or whatever it was, all they knew was goodbye. Which wasn’t a very good introduction. Little things you know,

silly old sense of humour we have. Oh they were throwing flowers at us. They didn’t throw themselves in front of our trucks or anything like that. But we just, you know, we kept our distance. We always kept our distance from the local people. See we didn’t want to get involved with the local politics or take sides. That was their business. We were there to fight a war.

Well,

you know, perhaps one of the things we should blame Churchill for. Course you know well your history you know I’m not a great reader of history but well you hear all these things about Churchill and the battle at the Dardanelles, at Gallipoli. Churchill, that was Churchill’s idea to take Gallipoli.

And there was sort of prob, you know we reckoned there was always a thorn in his mind that you know he was gonna avenge Gallipoli. And of course there’s all the politics of treaties and all this. And which is way beyond our level of a section corporal and his little ten men. All this politics was way beyond us. We left the politicians to fight their own little battles. But it was a political war I

suppose. Britain had pledged to help Greece. And of course the rough old Australians and some New Zealanders they just sent us over there probably as a token. But we had no hope. No hope at all. Well of course air power was the thing by this stage. Control of the air. And the British,

I mean let’s face it, they didn’t have much of an Air Force. Well it was all concentrated in England. Of course the Battle of Britain was looming. So all their air craft were based in Britain more or less. We got, you know Middle East got what was left over. What could, they could spare. So we had no, well we did have an Air Force but it only lasted a day. The Germans just bombed

em out of existence in one day. Cause they were all on one airstrip, they just wiped out the Air Force in one day.

Well you didn’t worry whose aeroplanes they were up in the sky. Didn’t have to worry. They weren’t ours, we knew that. See that was our worry, like driving trucks, was the air craft. Because they’d have bombers at say, twenty thousand

feet. They would drop heavy stuff. Then you’d have the medium bombers say at ten thousand feet, they would drop sort of you know not big stuff. I don’t know what the bombs weighed. So you’d say bomb at say fifteen thousand feet. Then you’d have the low level bombers they used to bomb say at a couple of thousand feet. Which they only had small bombs. And of course then we had our friends,

Hermann’s Circus which was Hermann Goering’s private air force. His private squadron. Like his Hermann’s Circus we called em. They all had their spinners on their aeroplanes all had a yellow nose. And they were crackerjack boys don’t worry about that. They used to give us a hard time.

They used to buzz up and down the roads at about twenty feet and blast away at us with eight machine guns.

Oh well we had rifles. We had machine, we had Bren machine guns. Weren’t worth two bob. We had some British Bofors guns which were sort of a light anti aircraft gun. Like we weren’t fully equipped at

all. We had no armour. Well they had a bit of armour but compared to the Germans. The Germans they had twenty ton tanks and our tanks were about five ton. So they had double the armour so our armour didn’t last very long. And it was just left to the men on the ground to fight their way, you know to fight the retreat. But the 2/8th

they did a good job. They were supposed to hold for I don't know two days, the whole German Army they were, you know, mountain troops. You know troops trained for mountain fighting. Here was us blokes just come out of the desert. They were fighting an enemy who’d been trained to fight in mountains. They were supposed to hold for two days, I think they held for about four days until they just had to give up. They

had no hope.

Well they retreated back, they left all their equipment behind. And after about three days or so we got a call to go and pick em up. So we went and picked em up and brought them back. But like we were carting troops here, there and everywhere. Like we drove twenty-four hours a day. There was two men on a truck, one drove and one slept. You didn’t roll out your blankets and have a sleep. I think we went

twelve nights without having a sleep. Well a lay down sleep except in the truck. Course when I say one bloke drove, one bloke slept.

We were but we just kept on battling along. And slept ...

Yes, oh yeah, some of

them, they just couldn’t take it. They, well, a lot of blokes would say, not a lot but there would be some blokes would say “Our truck’s broken down we can’t drive today. We’re gonna do some maintenance on it.” You know like little things like that. Like some blokes really, really did do it because they just couldn’t carry on. They were just worn out. But we just

carried, battled along as best we could. Just do as we were told.

Oh no, no we weren’t that bad no. Nobody what we called a jib. What they called a jib. Like a bloke, like a horse, at a jib at a jump. No, no bloke jibbed.

No like some blokes would find a legitimate excuse

you know for a day. Cause they just worn out they couldn’t do it. But we battled along just doing as we were told. “Go here, go there, here’s a map reference.” Fortunately I was a good map reader.

And not like the Pommie we had who was told to go forty kilometres and he’s looking at the map and looking at the speedo and as I say the map was in kilometres and the speedo was in miles.

So instead of doing forty kilometres we did forty miles. Until I called a halt to proceedings and I got out and had a bit of a prowl around and found out we were in Yugoslavia. We’d crossed the border. Because there was a railway line, we’d crossed a railway line. After we’d dropped the 2/8th off we were told to go up and they were evacuating a petrol or going to get some petrol. They had a petrol dump,

I don't know must have been so many kilometres up the road where this petrol dump was and you know we had to go and pick a load of petrol. And we’re this British guide bloke I say he got instead of, I don't know if it was forty say or twenty kilometres, we did twenty miles. And this bloke’s waving at us you know. “Oi, oi.” I said “Oh good on ya mate good on ya.” Of course these were blokes who were blowing up bridges and destroying guns you know.

You know telling us to come back, we thought they were waving us on. We were “Oh hiya pal.” We didn’t know. He was our guide, he was telling us where to go. Until we got to, we came to a railway line. And I thought this is strange. So I had a sort of a bit of a squint at the map. And I couldn’t see you know where we were going you know, across a railway line. So I called a halt, we come to a bit of a bend on the, in the road. There’s sort of

going around a bit of a mountain. And I called a halt. And this bend, I thought oh I’ll go and have a bit of a look. So I sort of snuck round the side there peering in. And I got round and had a bit of a look and I could see a oh sort of a roadside cafe or something or other. And there’s about three or four motorbikes and about half a dozen blokes there. And I thought gee they don’t look to be on our side. And

you know you sort of looked at their uniforms and their helmets and I thought gee they’re not British. So I immediately went back and about turn and got out. So they were, like we were in Yugoslavia. That was the German advance, they were the German advance. They’d pulled up at a cafe and having a smoko or something or other. All these blokes on motorbikes. So we skittled out of their quick and smart. So I took over then and read the map.

And then we found the petrol dump as well. I don’t know what happened to the Pommie bloke. We didn’t take him back, we left him there. Don’t know what ever happened to him.

Yeah. Well there was a British, there was a British petrol dump. There was still, well of course as soon as we left I think they blew it up. Or set fire to it so. No I’d had enough of this Pommie bloke. So I didn’t bother to bring him back. Leave

him with his mates. But we were just doing this and carting troops and ammunition and supplies, petrol, anything we would...

Oh yes, we, well our worst day was well the lieutenant he had a utility.

And of course the Messerschmitts, well they shot at anything but especially cars, like staff, what they call staff cars, utilities. Cause they knew they had officers in them. So they were their prime target. And of course our lieut he had a little utility which we used to carry the Bren gun in. And he had a Batman. Batman driver. Anyhow we had this bit of an air raid. And we all

pulled up, and we, like we used to jump out and go and hide along the road. So we came back and Stanley’s sort of leaning on the ute. I said “What’s wrong sir.” “Oh” he said, “Poor Griffo,” he said, “He decided to stay in the vehicle.” So he’d been machine gunned. So we had to take him out and dig a hole on the side of the road and bury him. Take a map, took his dead meat tickets off him, his pay-book.

And just bury him, and made a, took the map, you know took the map reference you know. So that later on I had to take all this back to headquarters. That was the first one. We had a couple of chaps were wounded. Bits of shrapnel. But our worst one was I think it was a place called Pharsala. Where we

had all these this ammunition on. So this is where...

Pardon?

This the whatta?

This is the pizza story yeah. And we loaded up with this ammunition. We had a map reference to pull off the road and stop.

And we wondered why during the night the Germans were having a go at us, the bombers. But in the morning we they really give us a bit of hurry up. And I say poor old, the truck with the engineers stores, they just got wiped out of existence.

But we found out later that we were, where our, where we were, our rendezvous was just immediately behind a battery of British six-inch guns. And of course they were going for the artillery. But of course we were only about a couple of hundred yards. We didn’t know because we arrived in the dark. And in the morning when, you know, we saw we got up and wondered

why the hell we were getting all this attention, as I say we found out we were only a couple of hundred yards from a battery or regiment of British six-inch guns. That was their target. But of course we got the left overs. Then there was the bad day I suppose. We went up I think it was about this time, a place called I think it was Pharsala. It was a

bit of a pass and the troops were holding the pass. They were the rear guard letting all the other troops come through. And like Darkie and I we had, Darkie like had the Bren gun. And Darkie and two other blokes they were in, they were the Bren gunners. We went up

to pick up some troops and of course the Germans didn’t want us to get out of it. So they came and Hermann’s Circus came over and did us over, give us a good old rough old time. And anyhow, the Bren gun, we’re firing away as best we could at these, all these aeroplanes flying around. But we, I

thought well you know it’s not much good where we were out in the open. I said “Let’s go and find somewhere to hide.” So I said “Alright we’ll pack up and we’ll get out of here.” And we so I’m sort of picking stuff up and that. And Darkie’s there and the two Bren gunners. And all of a sudden the Bren gun stopped. And I thought oh they must be changing magazines.

Run out of amm, put the new magazine in. And I went over and looked over and two Bren gunners were dead. So that we had to you know put them in the back of a truck and take em back to where we’d come from and, but the, one of the Bren gunners was a chap who’d joined up with me. Only a good young bloke. You know public school boy I think.

Never drank, never smoked, never swore. But he I could hear him, I could hear people yelling out and that but Felix was saying save the trucks or something or other. It’s recorded in our ASC in the Par Honour A. The ASC book which I’ve got a copy of. Of this action. And mentioned the chap by name. Who was saying you know “Save the truck,

save the truck. We’ll stay here while you get the trucks out.” But you know being brave doesn’t sort of pay off sometimes. Felix and the other bloke, I didn’t know the other bloke, he must have been reinforcement. They were both killed. So we had to throw them in the back of the truck and take them back and bury them. So not a pleasant experience I suppose to bury your mates, but still.

That’s what we were there for. Had to take their dog tags off and their pay-books and went and made a little bit of a cross out of a couple of bits of wood we had. Stuck their helmets on em.

Well I suppose, somebody did. Probably might have had a pencil or that. But we took a map reference of where it was and I, you know another

time, I had to go back to headquarters with these dead meat tickets and the pay-books which is not a very pleasant experience. To go back and report that two of your mates have been killed. Still I wasn’t the only one.

Oh yeah, yes we, other sections and platoons they had men killed but of course I didn’t know, because I’d never you know, we were just our little section. A corporal and ten

men. Doing as we were told by our platoon commander.

Well I don’t know it’s all part of the deal I suppose. We had a job to do.

Oh I don't know, like there was none of this sort of all this new fangled ideas like, we were just a bunch of men. That’s all. And we just looked after one another. You didn’t have sort of well we had feeling sorry. But I thought oh well it’s him and not me I suppose. Just the way we looked at life. Let’s get on with the war.

Yeah, you used to you know think about it now and again but you’d probably have another cigarette. It’s the way we went. All these new fangled terms they get for things like all this post-traumatic stress whatever they call it. We had it but it was a sort of a crime. Because they reckoned you were bomb happy.

No, no we never went on sick parades. We never had a doctor anyhow. You know you never went on sick parade because if you went on sick parade that meant your mate, somebody had to do your job. So you didn’t want to what they called bludge on your mates. That was our training. So that’s how all this training we were getting bored to tears with you know come to light at stages

and helped us carry on. But we were what they called bomb happy. Mad as, mad.

You’d go out and you’d do stupid silly things. Well I suppose you’d get drunk. Fight. Well you know when we got back to Egypt there were poor blokes, they’d wake up in the middle of the night screaming and shouting and jumping under their

bits of beds they had or whatever. They you know like some blokes really cracked up. Sort of getting ahead I, a mate of mine. He came from Dandenong. Little bit of a funny story about he and his girlfriend and me. So that’s another story, which I just keep to myself.

But Jackie Ford he went a bit bomb happy. When we got back he sort of, he was twitchy and all that. But you know after the war he was going to Heidelberg for oh going to see a psychiatrist and this. Come home one day from Heidelberg,

picked up a rifle and shot himself. See, bomb happy, as we called it. Oh no we had, after the war we reckoned blokes committed suicide. Two blokes, two different blokes we knew. Weren’t in my little section or platoon. They were in another lot. You know this is

after the war. Twenty years after the war. They reckoned that they were deliberately walking down the road and walked into a car. They were, nobody knows whether that’s the truth or not. Whether they deliberately walked in front of them. Or whether it was just an accident. But we reckoned that’s what happened, they just, cause they were bomb happy. Just couldn’t take it.

A bloke in Western Australia was a lift driver. One day he climbed up to the top of the lift well and jumped down the lift well. And nobody knows but we reckoned that what happened. He committed suicide. Just bomb happy. And it just got to him that much that... Another bloke jumped off at Camberwell, I think it was Camberwell or Hawthorn or

somewhere or other. Jumped off the railway bridge into the front of an electric train.

That’s how it affected a lot of us after the war. That on the spur of the moment like it wasn’t only that, probably other things that they couldn’t handle. But we reckon it was you know well they call it war neurosis and all this hypertension. We were all bomb happy.

As they call it.

Well at least there was grass and trees and water. Things we never saw in the Middle East.

That’s right, yeah, yeah.

Well as soon as you got off the boat

in New Guinea like the first thing you noticed was the heat. It was hot and it was steamy and if you scratched your nose and you’d break out into a sweat. And so like it was humid, clammy and it’d rain. It wouldn’t just rain, it’d just fell down like a wall. A wall of water. Not a shower but just wall of water fell down on you from the sky on you.

No. We were living in tents,

near the airstrips. And they weren’t very waterproof. See all the time I was in the Army I never slept, oh except for a couple of times, months, I never slept under a roof. We always slept in tents. The old corny joke, what’s the difference between the AIF and Worth’s Circus? Nothing, only we’ve got more tents and more clowns.

No, well a lot of them had,

the unit had sort of, when we got back to Australia, they were in different platoons to me. Because when we were in the Middle East there was what we called a jack-up. Another platoon, they’d had a bad time in Greece and their officer had been killed. They got a reinforcement officer. They reckoned their sergeant should have been promoted to an officer.

They got this officer straight from Australia. Who had a rep, according to all accounts paid fifty quid and bought himself a commission. Now he come into the unit and tried to tell these blokes, been in the desert and Greece, how to run the war. Tried to tell em that but they just jacked up. I didn’t know this at the time. I was sitting in me tent and

the orderly sergeant come down, he said “Oh you gotta pack your gear.” I says “Why?” “Oh” he said, “The sergeant major’s going to take you over to another platoon.” I said “Oh yeah he’s gonna take me over there.” So I go over there, in a tent with twelve blokes, ten blokes. Anyhow the long and short of it was that they refused, I went in there on the Sunday night. Monday morning was a parade. I called em out for roll call. They

answered the roll call. They went for breakfast, they were all shaved and polished for parade. The sergeant come down who had joined up with me. Dagwood. We called him Dagwood because they call him Dagwood in the movie scripts. I said “What are you doing here Dagwood?” “Oh” he said, “I’m the sergeant.” He says “What are you doing?” I said “I don’t know I’ve been told to come here.” So the lieut come down and he called em out on parade. On parade. Nobody moved. There, right, all on

parade. Nobody, they were all regimentally dressed. All ready to go but they wouldn’t go on parade for us. So this is why I found out later, that this is why we’d been sent there. You know. Get these blokes, not pull em into gear, we couldn’t cause they were sort of our mates. But like we sort of knew the ropes and we knew that. Anyhow they, I got put into this other platoon then and that’s where I met Doug Ramsay. Because he was, out of the three corporals,

he was the only original that stayed. The other two corporals were shunted off somewhere else. Because well they couldn’t handle the men I suppose. But I got taken from my old original platoon and put into another. So I had to strike up new friendships. I was still a corporal. So I had to sort of start all over again and get to know these, I knew some of them by sight. So I had to start up with this new mob. So I lost all my other mates, they

you know coming and going. In Ceylon we were away somewhere else, they were away somewhere else.

Well far as I know. I don't know, because I never ever saw them again. Perhaps they did, I don’t know. Never ever saw them again because then you know I got shuffled around that many times. And they got shuffled around. Our good old company commander. The old captain, the old go

getter, he shuffled us around.

No, no. No, no, no. He was sort of a good man but if twenty men were wanted to do a crook job. He’d put his hand up. “I’ll give ya twenty men.” You know just to make a big fella of himself. So,

That’s right. So we’d get, oh that captain so and so he’s a good fella. You know we’ll put him down. He was sort of all for himself that was. No, no we got on alright with him. Funny thing, after the war we were at Anzac, like he came from Sydney. And he was a bit of a golfer and he worked for Rheems Drums. He was a managing director of Rheem.

Anyhow one Anzac Day we were standing in Elizabeth Street all sort of getting ready to march. And anyhow there was a figure appeared on the footpath and sort of looking at us and waving at us. And said you know who are you waving at? And this figure says “Oh g’day Cullen? And Snowy.” Well Snowy was by this time a painter and docker. And Snowy didn’t sort of stand for any nonsense.

So he said “Oh g’day Esford.” And this bloke said “Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, the war’s over isn’t it?” And Snowy said “My bloody oath it is Don.” So that’s the bloke he... But no, no, no, like he meant well. But you know he got on our nerves. Though I say I got, when I got split up, I got into all these other places. And sort of the old blokes,

you know, I lost track of a lot of em. You’d bump into em now and again. But, never...

Well by the time we got to New Guinea we knew that they were pretty good. Because all this other stuff, well they’d proved it in Singapore. Malaya, Singapore. That they weren’t cross eyed and short bandy legged and all this. And what we’d heard from New Guinea and seen on bits of news reels

we knew that the, you know, they weren’t much of what we would call made in Japan. Made in Japan toy, you know, you look at em and they fall apart. So we knew that they were pretty good. At their type of fighting. And as I say, I was never sort of involved in much fighting. As I say as you know, as soon as New Guinea, after Milne

Bay, it, the fighting was all over except for a few blokes wandering around in the scrub and taking pot shots at you.

Oh yes, because we were at Milne Bay. After the battle there. The war graves people came in to set up the cemetery. And it was their job

to find the bodies, from the battle field, and pick the remains up and put em in the cemetery. Lo’ and behold I see this sergeant come down when we were at Milne Bay, come through our lines and that. And I thought oh gee I know you. And you know, I got, here again, good old company commander he called me up. Could have sent

the runner down. I was a sergeant. And he said “Oh I want to introduce you to,” oh I forget what his name was. He’s the sergeant from the War Graves Unit. And I said “I know you.” “Yeah.” And he said “Oh I know you too.” He said “You come from Springvale?” He said “Yes.” I said “Did you come from Prince Street?” He said “Yes.” Well he lived about four or five houses up from me. In civilian

life. I never ever knew him. But just shows you how you meet people. He was the sergeant in charge of the war graves. And of course. they wanted three or four trucks. Just to go out on the, you know, to go around the battlefield and when they dug up the bodies to put em into the trucks. So I got, here again I got lumbered with the job of supplying I don't know about four trucks and the drivers to be attached to this war graves commission.

And, you know, with this War Graves, and they were digging up the bodies and wrapping them up in blankets or shrouds or whatever they were. And throw em in the backs of the trucks and take ‘em to the cemetery. But we did see like blokes there with legs chopped off and arms chopped of. So they were, and of course we heard about a lot of things. You know, I don’t know whether they were true or not, I never saw it. I did see bodies with heads cut off and

arms cut off.

Ah that was their way of fighting the war I suppose. Way they were trained, because they were, I mean they were cracker jack soldiers the Japs. The first lot of Japs. Like they were the cream of their Army that came to New Guinea. They weren’t like rough, you know, you probably could say we were all just civilians in uniforms. Well like, we weren’t professional soldiers. We just volunteered. But like

the Japanese they were professionals. That was their job, all they did all their lives was to be a soldier. By this time we couldn’t care if the war ended tomorrow so we’d go and get a job. No they were like, they were professional soldiers. And they were pretty good. But we knew, that they were, you know, they were pretty good. Although we were better than em. Which was proved later. We were better than em.

And we proved it.

Didn’t affect em in the slightest. Not that I was aware of...

Well you just hated them, that was all. So, we, like I saw a few Japanese. Because the Japanese never surrendered. But I did see a few Japanese prisoners. And I looked at em

and shook me head and that was it. They were soldiers I suppose. Didn’t feel any real animosity towards em. Cause they were prisoners. They’d done their job as a soldier. That was it. Bad luck, they were prisoners.

Well,

I’d got a bit hardened, more hardened by that time. I thought I’ll go over there and see how they live and teach em who’s, teach em that the Australians are the best. Pay back a few scores. From what I’d heard. You know I kept that to myself. But I had a little bit of a personal thing against em. It didn’t make me volunteer to go. It might have in some ways but here I was,

I wanted to be a soldier. And as I say I was doing pretty well, I was a staff sergeant.

Oh yes. I saw them.

Oh just a flat piece of earth with bits of rubble sticking out of it. You know for a square mile or whatever it was. That atomic bomb, it really went off. It just went

bang. Course like the Japanese houses weren’t like these houses. A lot of em were only sort of bamboo and probably some sort of light plaster. They never, well of course, we were in the peasant area. Around Kure, that was the big dockyard there and Hiroshima that was a sort of a dockyard. And of course they were sort of a, all paddy, rice fields around em.

And of course we were sort of in the poor area of Japan. And their housing was well just sort of very light stuff. It didn’t take must to blow em down. But oh no Hiroshima, we really flattened it, don’t worry about that.

Well I suppose it wasn’t. Like I didn’t go into politics. I was

fighting, I was just a soldier. And I was there to do a job. Let the politics work out for themselves. We were never interested in politics.

Well as I say, this time I was a staff sergeant. And I was in a, what they called a supply depot platoon. And we were thirty blokes who, who handling rations. When I first got there

I was, first night, first day I got there one day and the next day we were all, the new blokes got called on parade. And the colonel addressed us and said “Oh you’re here to do this and you’re here to do that.” And of course the colonel, he’d been my company commander at one stage. Old, what we called Jesus Jones, that was his nickname.

He was a colonel, his name was Cliff Jones but he was a little bit of a psalm singer as we used to call em. And of course he got the nick name Jesus. Jesus Jones. No disrespect to him. Good soldier. That was his nickname, Jesus Jones. And he was the colonel. And we were all called up on parade. And he, you know, this is what we’re here for and that. And he said “Oh you’ll all be allotted jobs.” So the first job I got was I was to take over the

freezing works. It already existed, it was all being run. But by the people who were running it, they had no idea of supplies. They were the refrigeration people. They were all refrigeration mechanics and they were there to run the freezing works. And the chillers and all this. But they got landed with the job to handle all this fresh rations. So when we

got there, about ten of us and myself we went over there and took over the freezer. Where all the frozen meats and butter and all the fresh vegetables and eggs. And all the fresh rations came to. Cause everything came by boat. And this, there was this big freezing works. Well I took over that when...

No fraternisation was the order

of the day.

Uh?

Certainly not. You know, marvellous what a tin of bully beef, what wonders a tin of bully beef worked. Or a packet of cigarettes or a tin or peaches. That was the end of the fraternisation. No we kept our distance from them so we didn’t, we never wanted to get involved with the local people. Some

blokes did and there was cause a bit of a trouble. But

Some blokes did oh yes, yes. Don’t worry they were beautiful. My little house girl, pardon me. That’s another story. And no we kept our distance and we treated them pretty rough. Let em know who was boss. While we were there we let em know.

Like they did all the labouring. And they’d be down the wharf and you know they did all the manual work the Nips. And you know a bloke could be in charge of fifty Nips. And you showed em no mercy.

We had heard of em yes. Oh we’d heard of em before,

before we went. That was, see the war ended in August, we didn’t leave til February.

Well it made us a little bit harder to teach these blokes a lesson. We’d never line em up against the wall and bashed em or shot em or anything. But we just made life difficult for em. And let em know who was boss. And if they didn’t do as they were told, whack-o the diddle-oh. They got

repaid. In very harsh fashion some of them. Because they would stand up to us. A lot of the blokes were ex-servicemen from the islands. And you know they, they reckoned they were still fighting the war. So you know we had a little bit of a private war with some of those fellas. But we soon taught em who was boss.

Ah well I’d say not deliberately at em. No, no, no. I wont tell you what I used to do when they disobeyed me but.

Well I was at the freezer. Course there was a lot of tension there between the Indians. There was Indian troops there. And at that time India was trying to get its independence I suppose. That’s what we hear. They were trying to get their independence, Pakistan and India and all this. And

there was animosity between the Indians and the British. And so they think they sort of the Indians they were running a lot of these supply places. And they decided to sort of get rid of em. So we came in and we took over. Well after I got the freezer working, everything under control, our captain come down, another captain. Another bit of a go-getter.

He came down and said “Alright take your men down to the end of the wharf.” And we walked down to what they called the transit shed. Take over from the Indians. So we went down there and we took over. And of course all the stuff came off the boat in truckloads. Then of course it came into the transit shed. And we had to sort of stack it into bully beef, biscuits, fruit. We had to sort it all out and stack it. Into their, whatever commodities they were. And of course

we had Nips working for us. About sixty. We were working, we went, I thought I was going there for a holiday. But we were working twelve hour shifts. Twelve hours on and twelve hours off. So if that’s sort of going to Japan for a holiday. I was very sadly mistaken.

Well you’d give em the back of the hand you know just sort of

make em work twice as hard. A couple of times I had a bit of trouble. And of course I had what was called a Sten gun. A submachine gun. That was my weapon. And they soon got to know me because we were on a little bit of a jetty. And if there was any mumblings and murmurings of discontent I’d line em up and I’d say right run. I used to run em up this jetty

and just as they got near the end I’d fire a burst over their heads. And of course they’d all jump in the sea. Now I didn’t bother to count whether they all climbed back again. That was, you know, that’s what we were there for to teach em a lesson.

Yeah, not quite two years but near enough. I was in BCOF [British Commonwealth Occupation Force] for two years but I was only in Japan for say a year and eight months or nine months or something or other.

And I met one of me brothers there.

That’s one of the reasons I went because he was with the 9th Division, attached to the 9th Division. And he was in the islands when the war ended. And me mother told me oh Tommy’s joining BCOF. I thought well he’s not going to BCOF on his own and have all the fun on his own, I’m going too. Me little brother. And the things we used to get up to. You know, you could just about write a book

on my brother Tom and I, the Dusting brothers. See I was a sergeant in the sergeant’s mess. Me brother he was a private in the infantry. But I always had a spare jacket with three stripes on it. So when my brother Tom come to visit me I put the jacket on him with the sergeant’s stripes and walked into the sergeants mess. There’d be a general exodus, all the sergeants’d clear out, the Dusting brothers are here.

Drinking I suppose, carousing. But I was, I was playing it pretty tough then. Because we had money, money was nothing to us. And later on after we took, after the transit shed, we then took over the main, what they call the D.I.D. That was the Detail Issue Depot. Where we

would get stuff in bulk and we would there, and the troops would come in and pick up weekly or daily rations. So we had there. But of course everybody had money because the black market was taboo. On paper. But it was the only way you could live. Only way the Nips could live. It was the only way we could live. Everything was a pound. Fifty Yen. No matter what it was, tin of bully beef, packet

of cigarettes, block of chocolate, tin of peaches. And what we wanted, that was also fifty yen.

That’s right. A quid. So there was all this money floating around And blokes were knocking stuff off and selling it from the Black Market. The black market was rife. Because you know Japs for a bit of food, they were you know, a bit hungry. And so there was all this money floating around.

And I said to other sergeant, another bloke I’d met, Porky Pearson. I said, we used to live, we had this big sort of old building and we had a little room on our own. We had two beds in it. And we used to sleep there. Instead of putting a guard on it, we used to sleep there. And there was all this money floating around and we sort of got our heads together and they had, they had a radio station

And they could get, tune into the Australian ABC or something or other. So there was all this money floating around. And we thought gee you know this is too good to be true. So we decided to what they call start the SP [Starting Price] Bookies. So me mate and I we were SP Bookies. Well blokes’d bet on anything and we’d bet em. We’d didn’t worry us, had that much money. So we ran what we

call, what was you know, we ran the book. Because we had a radio. Old, I don't know we bought that, bartered or bought it from one of the Nips. We had this radio, we could tune in on a Saturday to the ABC and get all the races. And we’d bet on the races. Bet on the grey, greyhounds bet on anything. So we paid on the, that was stipulated, we paid on the prices in the paper. So we did, we had a roaring trade

going there. Money, oh. You’d think, the only trouble was, you couldn’t put it in your pay-book. You had to spend it.

It was. Well you’d buy, what, way, you’d buy souvenirs. Send em home and you know all this, send em. We had a racket going, we’d go and buy postage stamps. You know, nothing to go and buy twenty quid’s worth of

postage stamps. You buy, use two a week. But of course they woke up to that and you could only buy two postage stamps week. All these little things to make life interesting. So, money, there was money everywhere. Well that sort of came to a little bit of an end when they devalued the yen. We, here again, things way beyond our control when they decided to devalue the

yen. We went to sleep one night and it was fifty yen to the pound and we woke up the next morning and it was two hundred and fifty yen to the pound. So all the money, the Japanese money we had was cut by, reduced to a fifth. So you had to get two hundred and fifty yen to get a pound in those. Sort of a bit of a blow but of course we still overcame it somehow or other.

Well we were on holiday. Typical Australian.

Yeah well I was knocked back for a commission because I had to sign on for another term and me wife and family wouldn’t come, she wouldn’t come up so I got knocked back for a commission.

So then I was selected to join what they call the A.I.C. the Australian Instructional Corps. So I was flown back to Australia as an infantry instructor. And I get back to Victoria and I go to Royal Park and I had twenty-eight days leave. And found out that I had to go to Queensland or something or other. Atherton Tablelands. That wasn’t for me, I was home.

And I was still vigorous or whatever. I was only about, what, about twenty-eight. You know, I was still pretty vigorous and volatile I suppose. I’m not going back into the Army, I’m married. Got a wife. So I just, long and short, I got to Royal Park, had an argument with a sergeant major there. And I said oh, I’m, I wasn’t taking orders from him. He’d sitting behind a desk at Royal Park

all the war. I said I’m not taking orders from him, telling me what to do. So I said “I just, I want to get out of the Army.” He said “Oh,” I said “No.” Well before I knew it I had a piece of paper in me hand. Follow the red line. Three days later I was out of the Army. I was a civilian.

Eh?

No, I don’t know.

Well I’d had ...

Well I was married, I had a kiddie, two kiddies. One I hadn’t seen, she was fifteen months old before I saw her. So I thought well you know, perhaps my romantic, perhaps my days are over. I better settle down and be a you know and be a family man.

I was married, in love I suppose. I don't know. But all me mates, they were out of the Army. They got out, they couldn’t get out, well we all couldn’t get out quick enough. Which was very fatal in later years. That we didn’t take more time about getting out. We’d just had enough of the Army and by this time the permanent Army were taking over. Blokes who’d never left Australia and they were telling us blokes who’d been in the Army

six and seven years telling us what to do. It didn’t wash. So we just couldn’t get out of the Army quick enough.

When you go for a pension now, disability pension. You know where’s your discharge, show em your discharge. Oh there’s nothing wrong with you. When you were discharged from the Army you were A1, fit. But

we weren’t. We just wanted to get out of the Army. Poor blokes now, hobbling around with arthritis. And you know there’s some of them half, you know a bit funny. And all these things are coming out now. But there’s no record of it on our service records. So they just, not due to war service. Cunning blokes, some blokes they were a wake up to all this. They got out of

the Army and a fortnight later they’re getting a pension. Us blokes went back to work. So like we were, my wife was living at Rosebud by this time in her family’s weekend shack down there. So I thought I’ll get out of the Army. And I used to frequent the hotel of course. At Rosebud. Big staff sergeant with six ribbons on me chest. I was the ant’s pants.

I used to go to the pub nearly every day and you know chat to the locals. And of course football came up. That was my go, football. So anyhow I got out, got out of the Army, living at Rosebud. And I knocked off work on, got out of the Army Thursday and I didn’t what I would said I would do. They said “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get out of the Army.” I said “o to the pub and shout for the bar.”

So I got discharged at Royal Park, caught the train and the bus home and walked into the pub and shouted for the bar. Man of my word. So all the locals got to know me and I got out of the Army on the Thursday. I say went into the pub, shouted for the bar, probably finished up whacked. Anyhow on the Friday, I picked up the local paper and there’s an advertisement for a grocer.

So I went down to the, there were three general stores in Rosebud. So I went down to this particular store, which was the main one. It had grocery, it had the newsagent, it had the ironmongery and it had the haberdashery and dresses and all that. It was like a general store. So I got out of the Army Thursday, went and saw the

blokes running the store and I started work Saturday morning. A day out, two days after getting out of the Army I was working.

Oh well I suppose so but you adapt to all these things, it’s all part of life.

Well I was still

virile and vigorous so no, you know that went off alright. A few times you know I used to go off me rocker a bit. But I used to wake up to myself. So anyhow I got this job in the grocer’s shop. And of course I was a grocer. I was what they would call, say I’d been through the retail trade and I’d been through the wholesale trade and I was what you’d call a master grocer. Now the people who had this

general store, it was husband and wife and daughter and son-in-law. It was a family affair. Now the elderly people, they’d been in the haberdashery trade so they ran the elderly people, they ran the haberdashery, like clothes and all that. And the ironmongery, you’d have

pots and pans and saucepans for the campers. The son-in-law he was a newsagent. So he ran the newsagent and the grocery.

No, no, no.

Course it was fun. You go and ask me mates when we get half whacked. No like just a quick resume of after the war. I was a sort of a master grocer, and here I had a bloke who was a newsagent telling me how to run the grocery part of it. Well it didn’t work. So I said I’ve finished. Don’t bother coming to see me. But they were around Monday morning trying to get

me to come back. I went, I had to get a job so I got on the council. I was on the council for about three or four months cause I was playing football. And one of the blokes at the footy club he says “What are you doing?” I said “I’m working at the council.” He said “Do you want to come and work for us?” I said “Righto pop I’ll come and work for you.” Him and his son. So I became a builders labourer. Feeding the concrete mixer and making bricks and labouring. So I did that and by

this time my kids were growing up so the wife got a bit unsettled so we moved up to Melbourne. I went back to me old firm, S.E. Dickens and got a job in the store. That was a bit difficult. I finished up the head storeman there in three months. I was living at Laverton, at the milkman there, he wanted a milkman so I became a milkman. While I was there I,

friends of my parents, they had a grocery shop there in Caulfield. They wanted to sell out so I bought this grocer’s shop in Caulfield. Ran a grocer’s shop for four years. Got the right price, sold out. Bought meself a car, put a deposit on a house. Then I hadn’t got a job. So I happened to pick up the paper one day and there’s

public servant applications to join the public service. So I wrote a letter, lo’ and behold I become a public servant. And I stayed there for twenty odd years until I retired. I was a senior supervisor. And I retired at the age of sixty. That was from a public servant. Just shows you how you can adapt. There again I don’t know whether you make a

fatal mistake but I put all my money into superannuation. They had the superannuation scheme and it was run on how much money you got, how many units you took out. But that gives you so much a fortnight when you retired. And of course when I retired I was getting my fortnightly super cheque and couldn’t get a pension. See.

So I sort of

wangled and wangled and I finally managed to get a pension. But I was retired.

I do some, sometimes yeah.

Yeah. Last night was a bad night.

Well I just couldn’t sleep, I kept thinking of things. Not so much of death or anything like that but getting buggerised around. That’s is, you spend more

time you know, without being rude, you spend more time being buggerised around than you do in battle. By officers who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. That’s what gets you. Not the battle, that’s a relief to go into action, that’s a relief. But to go out on parade every day and do the same old things, route and squad drill and rifle drill and officers and,

you know, that’s another battle. You got your men to look after you. You know you’ve got your ten little men to look after. That’s why you’re the corporal. And as I always say you never become a platoon sergeant on a popularity vote. You had to be a soldier to be a platoon sergeant. Wasn’t just because you’re a good fella, probably because you’re the worst bloody fella of the lot.

Another thing I learned you never become a platoon sergeant on a popularity basis. I was never very popular. Even in the public service. With all my little darlin’s, I used to have about fifteen or twenty women working for me. And oh I used to have the time of me life with them.

So, that’s the way it...