Joining the navy
Well, I grew up in Burnie, which is right on the coast, a port, and about every three or four years the navy would come in with big cruisers. And we would go down as kids, and I'd go on board and see all the sailors and go down the mess deck and they'd bake hot cakes and just the whole smell of the ship, and the uniform and everything, and I just loved it.
I thought, "Gee, if I ever go to war, I'll be in the navy." And I remember, I was out at a friend's place, I was 14 or 15, and they said, "Well, now we're at war with Germany." At 3rd of September 1939.
And I rode my bike back and because I was only 15, I thought, "Oh gee, I hope the war keeps going so that I can join." And sure enough it did! And at 16 I passed all my medical and everything but I couldn't join until I was 17.
So on July the 4th, I sent a telegram to Hobart saying, "'Ay, I'm now 17." And so they took me down there and officially I joined in August so I was 17 and one month. Went down to Flinders naval depot. But I just loved the navy.
Dixie on board
But, as I said before, I was the youngest on board, but I was the most popular because one of my jobs, oh, my action stations were, I'd have to, "Action stations" would go and everyone goes to their things.
I'd race down aft and they had a little flag flying. And then I'd hook up the big ensign, about as big as this room, our battle ensign. And then, I was like this pretty skinny kid, then I'd put this up and the wind would take it and sometimes I'd feel I'd be going out over the side with it! So I'd secure that and then go to the coding office.
But on other jobs when we did three shifts, eight hours a day, and they reversed them because they have, called a 'dog watch', that's 4:00 to 12:00, but the afternoon dog watch was 4:00 till 6:00, and then 6:00 till 8:00 so that put it all out of sync and everyone, you weren't on the same thing all the time.
My job was to, as soon as I got on watch, I had to go aft to another control point on the warship in case a bomb took out, or a torpedo, blew up, the bridge. And this other one had all the controls in it, so it could be ... it was there. But they would have a big blackboard down there but they had to have, if that was the case, they had to have where we were.
So my job was to go, as soon as I went on watch, I'd go up to the navigating officer, get the latitude and longitude, then I'd find my way down in the dark with the heaving seas and had to feel your way down because you couldn't even light a cigarette at night, in the dark, I got pretty good at it. And I'd get down, feel my way around, open the door, close it and then turn on and there's the light.
So I'd put up the latitude and longitude. When I went off watch, I had a map of the area that I had, like an atlas, and I would find out where we were. Now, the officers knew but they'd never tell the ratings, the below-decks. And it was so stupid because who could we tell? But they liked to have the secret things, they were officers. That's the terrible part about the navy, in those days, officers with men.
So, I started to plot these and I was telling all my friends in the signals and communications branch where we were, and they'd come out, "Hey, Dix!" I'm 'Dixie Lee'. "Hey, Dix. Where are we now?" I said, "We're going to Perth, I think. By the looks of things." And we kept on going down.
Sealegs
We did a couple of those convoys. One was very horrendous. And we had these 1100 soldiers on board. And as I said before, some of them had never seen the sea, and to see the gigantic waves.
And I'd, you know, get say scrambled eggs or something from the cook house. I'd walk along and all these fellows were just trying to hang on and as I went past them with the hot scrambled eggs in the morning, they'd be, "Argh," over the side. Some of them didn't eat all the time, they were terrified of the conditions.
But you don't notice it after a while and so the heaving decks doesn't mean, It means you're uphill one while and then next thing you're going downhill. So, it's marvellous how the human body, you don't know that it's happening, but the soldiers did because they were on land and that must have been terrible for them.
Bomber in Singapore Harbour
I went on Manoora, that's a warship, and we went to Darwin. I joined it in Sydney. Went to Darwin. I was the youngest on board of 640 or so.
And then we went on to Singapore. And we stayed alongside a pier and jetty between Singapore Island and the mainland. And we'd been there one ... we had arrived on the 6th of December. Next day we're at war with Germany, I mean with Japan rather because we were already at war with Germany, and we got bombed in Singapore Harbor.
And I was doing stoppage of leave for some, I was always getting in trouble and I was doing stoppage of leave, and some men were ashore. And I thought, "If a bomb drops here, I'm dead." So I dashed down. I had the ability, the companion way is a stairway sort of thing, and they've got brass rails on the side and being young, and like a monkey, I was tearing around all over the place.
I could hold this, put my two legs out and straight down without, that's how I went, ch-ch-ch-ch, right down in the engine room, so if a bomb dropped, I'd live. It'd go off before it met me. And then I could hear, "Voo voo." And I thought, "If one lands alongside the warship and the plates will open up, the sea will pour in and I'll drown!" So, sh-sh-sh. So, there I was, all the different decks, I'm right in the middle of it, so at any rate they left.
Kuttabul torpedoed
I was on board it would be about 9 o'clock-ish, I'd say. And I was doing, I couldn't get ashore because I was doing stoppage of leave. I don't know why. I might have been a bit cheeky or something, but I seemed to have the ability to, to get into trouble. However. So I didn't get ashore on leave, I was there.
So I'd do subs for the people, and some of them lived there, so they'd pay me money to do their subs so they could go ashore. And I was doing this. And the phone rang. And they said, "Garden Island here. Message here." "Okay." We exchanged initials and things. And it was from NOICS, Naval Officer in charge of Sydney, "To all ships. Kuttabul torpedoed." And I said, "Is this for real?" Because I know the Kuttabul. As a matter of fact, one of my friends went there. And he'd died. He got killed. And it was a staging place before it went to the Kuttabul and started there a couple days, and then he might catch the train to Brisbane and I couldn't believe it. I said, well, I thought it might have been a coder who'd gone ashore and had too much grog and came back, "Oh, 'ar 'ar." So I had to, I said, "Well, I'm going to show this to the old man." "Yeah, all right."
So I went up and, now, you're not allowed to touch an officer. If you touch an officer its cells because that means that it might be an uprising, a mutiny. So, I knocked on the door of the cabin. There's no answer. Then I open the door. There he was, snoring his head off. But it wasn't, the captain had gone.
The commander was in charge, and this is the one I saw. So I, "Ahem, ahem, ahem." Nothing happened. So I walked over. I was wandering around in bare feet. So I wandered over and I punched him on the side, raced back, closed the door. I heard, "What, what, what now?" And I opened the door and he was sitting up in bed by then.
"Message, Sir." I didn't say 'sir', I think. I even remember now his face, you know, his eyes sort of popped out of his head. And we had finished but we were, the next day we were going to go out. So they were going to pour water in, open all the big cocks and water's going in and fills it up then it gets to the level, open the gates and out you go. Well, we figured that and they did some more checking and found that it was torpedoed from a Japanese submarine.
Fishing with TNT
We had TNT and we made our own bombs and stuff. And the TNT was, there used to be Johnson's baby powder; came in a little rectangular thing and they were like that and to get fresh supplies, we would go out and, with the grenades, and bomb the fish.
Now, we discovered you get on a bit of a high point and there's all the fish, a great school of them. So we'd get the thing and throw it in. And that'd sink right down then go, "Boof!" So, the fish would go away and you wouldn't get the big ones. So I said to my mate, "I've got a good idea. These are 8 second grenades." And I said, "What we'll do. We'll hold them for four seconds and then we both throw them, each side of the school, and then they'd go down a little, not very far, and boom."
Now, I was the one with the, I'd been brought up in the water in Tassie. I live in the sea and I swam like a fish and all that sort of thing. So, I was the one who would dash in. The big fish, the little ones would go, "P-sh," dead. The bigger ones would ... You could catch those. But the very big ones would go, "Rah," turn on their backs and then turn around and swim off. So the idea was to dive in straight away and get the big ones before they heard what's happening. We did that. Fancy, I wouldn't dream of doing anything like that.
We'd go, "P-sh." Then go, "One cat and dog. Two cat and dog. Three cat and dog. Four cat and dog." Threw them in and "Woof!" And I'd dive straight in. Now, I didn't know but one of them wasn't an eight-second one, it was probably about a ten-second one, I was under the water and the other one went off. And I was suddenly knocked out and I didn't know where up or down was. And I looked up and I could see where the sun was, and I paddled up and climbed out and went on a rock. And I had pins and needles all over me.
