1944-1945

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My grandpa is 87, and my last living grandparent. I sat down and asked him some questions, and this is the result in his words (I wrote it down as well as I could, then checked certain facts with him, then had him edit it). I ended the story in Brisbane, because that is the point at which both of us began to cry.

In 1942 things were very bad in the war. The Japs had just landed in New Guinea and were threatening to move over the mountains to capture Pt Moresby. I knew it was time to go and strike a blow, so I enlisted. I tried the air force first (but they did not want me because I am colourblind) then the Australian Imperial Forces. They took me.  

On Saturday 29 January 1944 after nine months in New Guinea,I was on leave. I was groomsman to Ian Proctor who was marrying Phoebe Pendlebury. Edna and her sister were Phoebe’s cousins, and they sang at the wedding. It was at the Methodist church at Dulwich Hill. That church was an old-style brick church, and a good size.   

At the reception Edna and I talked in a group and I discovered that I had known her aunt for years so I went to talk to her  after the service. On Tuesday I went to take back a set of golf clubs to my uncle, catching the tram home to Wynyard. They called them toast-rack trams; the compartments were six to eight foot long, with doors each side.. AND THERE SHE WAS.. I walked along the runningboard to get into the same compartment. Then we went out Wednesday night, and Thursday night, and on Friday night I took her home for tea with Mother. Then we went to Manly in the blacked out ferry on Saturday night.

Next day I left for my final lot of training up in Queensland. That was for a period of eight months, and while I was there Edna and I wrote – oh, it must be hundreds of letters. We’d known each other for a week and a day but we had an unfair advantage you see – she and my mother got on like a house on fire. So by the time I returned Edna already knew all my habits and what I liked and disliked.

Final leave was in October. It was Edna’s twenty-first birthday on the 19th. I bought the biggest bunch of flowers you’ve ever seen, and I took them to her home in Newcastle in time for her family birthday party. Some aunts were horrified that she actually sat on my knee.

A couple of mornings later I seized the chance to talk to her Father (she had lost the Mother and I had lost my Father)and told him it was likely that we would wish to become engaged.

Now you’ve never seen a man so embarrassed in all your life. He didn’t know what to say. “But – you’ve only known one another a week,” he said. It was perfectly clear he didn’t want to say no – but he couldn’t say yes.

So Edna and I went down to Austinmer – lovely place with my Mother as escort.  I waited for the full moon but the night before it came I took Edna out for a walk along the beach, in the moonlight. That was about the 26^th of October 1944. There was no discussion; nothing. I just asked her if she’d marry me. And of course she said yes. So we strolled back home, and woke up my mother. She sat straight up and said, “What’s wrong? What is it?”

“We’re engaged!” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Is that all?” And she rolled over and went back to sleep!

A few days later I was sent to North Queensland en route to New Guinea. I was part of the 2/1 Artillery Regiment. We could fire a shell nine miles (hence the nickname “Nine mile snipers”). The first night out by rail from Sydney we pulled in for a meal at Newcastle. I went over the fence and caught a taxi to Mayfield. On seeing me the family exclaimed

“Edna’s down at the station to see you.” So back to the taxi, over the fence and there she was – the only woman on the platform!

The Liberty ships they sent us off in were rotten things, made of great big pieces of steel shoved together any old how. When I went down in the hold – oh! We were meant to sleep in there – on these bunks. They must have been eight bunks high; each one about two feet above the next. That was all; that was your only private space.

Well I took one look at that and I thought to myself, “No thank you.” Now they gave each one of us a groundsheet – like a tarpaulin; rectangular. We used them for everything – raincoats, shelter, warmth. Just one each. But I found a second one, and I pinched it. I don’t know now where I got it from, but it was mine. So I took my two groundsheets up on deck, and set myself up there – and I used my boots as a pillow.

There were storms then, as we got up into the tropical areas. They didn’t bother me one bit. But oh, the rain! It just flowed straight on over the ship and off the other side.

I wasn’t bothered. I could sleep through all of it; every drop. One of those storms was fantastic. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ll never forget it. Spectacular. It’d make the best fireworks you’ve ever seen look like penny crackers.

The voyage should have taken a week, but there was a submarine scare so we had to stay at Lae for an extra ten days. A good many were seasick with the combination of tropical heat and the ship movement.  

I was made aft security detail. And do you know why? Because I could walk. I didn’t get seasick at all. Didn’t bother me.

We reached New Guinea at last, and put up tents to camp on the sand in our groundsheets until we could improvise stretchers. The Americans made a push into the Philippines at that time, and they took all the refrigerator ships, and all the salted meat, and left us with very little.  

For dinner, lunch and tea all we had was herring. We ate it out of our mess tins –  After several days of this, the Orderly Officer came around to us at lunchtime – that’s what they did, you know, and yelled out, “Any complaints?” Every last one of us stood up, and lifted up our mess tins and tipped them straight over. Out went the herring – all that herring – into the sand. And we said, “Where’s the MEAT?”

Your grandmother and I wrote – oh, hundreds of letters. Two or three a week. I couldn’t keep hers, not when I was constantly moving. You couldn’t keep a single thing you didn’t need. But she kept all of mine. She didn’t want to keep them after I came back, but I did. Some of them she got rid of. She said she didn’t ever want anyone reading those ones. I have the rest though.

The job of the Australian Imperial Forces was to work our way down the New Guinea coast, pushing the Japs out bit by bit. And that’s what we did. The Japs of course went inland, into the mountains, and we were ordered to keep pushing after them. That push down the coast – that made sense but to push after them into the rugged highlands lost a good many men for little result. That was just to make Generals Macarthur and Blamey look good : so they could say the Aussie advance was going well.

The worst part was slogging through that tropical jungle, in the mud. The Japs were fierce fighters – amazing. They could see our guns, and they fought ‘til the bitter end. It wasn’t easy to get to them – but when you did. . .

They were skinny, sick, malnourished. You could knock them over with a broom handle if you could get near enough.

I was a signaller at that time. This entailed carting drums of telephone cable and keeping phone communications going during the noise of action. It could get quite tricky with our troops on both sides of the ridge and the Japs in the middle. You don’t want to make a mistake. There were some tense moments then, I can tell you.

I’ve probably told you this story before, but I got malaria. In August 1945. It so happened that while I was sick in bed the Japs officially surrendered. There was a ceremony, and I missed it because I was sick in bed! That’s not a bit fair. I got better after that, but I’d missed the big day.

Once I got better my duties were the same as everyone else: digging holes for fence posts and filling them up. That wasn’t fun at all. One day a friend on Regimental Head-Quarters staff came to me and said, “Can you type?”

“Sure can,” I said. So they sent me to the RHQ to work there. And that was fine. The Regimental Sergeant came and told me one day that the CO wanted to see me “Oh no,” I said. “What have I done?”

“Just go and see him,” he said. So I went and saw him.

“Well,” he said. “It so happens that we need a records sergeant in Brisbane. Would you like to do that?”

“Oh, yes sir,” says I.

“I thought you might. Go and let the regimental sergeant know to write up your movement order.”

So I went back to the regimental sergeant and I asked for my movement order. He had it right there, all written. He knew what answer I’d be giving! So he slid it right across the desk, and I took it.  

I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. They all had to stay, digging holes in the mud and sweating in the sun. So I just took my things and slipped away without a word.

Now I expected plenty of delays. I got to the staging camp at Lae, and there were just thousands of people there, waiting for a plane to take them to their next spot. “Ooh no,” I thought. “This will be a while.”

The Martin Mariner flying boat came the next day, and took us away. I was taken to Townsville, to another staging camp there with cane toads hopping up out of the marshland. Oh, there were even more people there! “Here we go,” I thought. “Now there’ll be delays.”

But three days later I was on a train to Brisbane. I took up duty straight away.

The very next day, who should show up? I don’t know how she did it, but she did. She got my cable and she got herself transferred to Brisbane. And there she was, right there in Brisbane the very next day after I got there: your grandma.

Three months in Brisbane and then we were married in Newcastle and went to live in Sydney where I had been seconded.