Early service
Before the war, I joined as a cadet at 16, when I turned 18 I joined the militia and I was a corporal in the cadets and then I was a corporal in the militia and when the war broke out I tried to enlist in the AIF but they wouldn't allow me. My age was one problem, had to grow a year older. The other one was that they wouldn't let me. The army rounded up all of the best training NCOs and put them into a training corps so they could train the AIF recruits as quickly as possible and they formed a big camp up in North Queensland, Miowera outside of Bowen which is my hometown and before that it was a brigade, militia camp for training for preventing invasion so being there... they kept me in that camp and then they moved to Brisbane the exhibition ground then I went out to Grovely.
I was enforced into this training corps and we couldn't, they wouldn't allow us to go overseas and I had, they kept training, but anyhow in 1942 they ran short of officers so they wanted about 50 officers so all of us NCO's in the training corps, we were sent to the officers camp at Liverpool to become a Lieutenant in the AIF. I joined the AIF then, so I said, "Oh good I can go overseas." I wanted to go overseas.
When I got back into my camp the colonel called and he said "Listen, there's, we're putting you in charge of training." So I was in charge of training instead of being in training. I was in charge of training being a lieutenant. I had no chance. They wouldn't let me go overseas and now the Japanese war broke out when I was over in Cowan Cowan that's a fortress outside of Brisbane. Sydney had these three fortresses Middle Harbor North and South, Brisbane had Bribie Island, Moreton Island and one on the land and I was over at Moreton Island to put a defence around it because the Japanese war had started.
Anyhow I got dengue and I was in hospital, doped and so forth and the matron said, "Do you want a cup of tea?" And I said, "Yeah for sure, I would." And now the tea didn't come around and I said, "Where's the tea?" She said, "I didn't give you tea." I said, "You asked me did I want a cup of tea?" She said "No I want to know do you want to go overseas? And you said yes." That's how I got overseas. The Japanese war had started so I went in the last reinforcements over on the…So I got there in January and was a prisoner in February.
Love of the army
I put my age up a year so I could go to officers' school. I still had my pay books, but I didn't hand them across when I was being recruited in the AIF. Now I had my mother, my mother was down because under 21 and in those days, you had to get your parents' consent. My mother came down and she signed the paper that I was 21 and I was 20 but anyhow, it's sort of, I love the army. The army was my life. The reason was I had a lousy childhood life and the army was my life, I loved it. It gave me everything I wanted, friends and there's respect and a systematic life.
Singapore
When I got there they were up at Muar having a big battle with the 29th and the 19th. Half of 'em got wiped out, it was really bad and all the recruits I brought over for the 26th they went to the 29th. So I was in Base Depot and the first job I got was going into town, rounding up soldiers who were coming back, were getting cut off, overrun, working their way in the drains back into Singapore.
So I had trucks there taking them back to the Base Depot to reissue them clothing and arms and so forth, form them into units so they could go back and fight. So I didn't get into the battle 'til the last 10 days and I had a company, had to get up to the mountain not a hill where they had the big reservoir and our job was to defend the reservoir against the Japs taking it over.
It didn't work, the Japs blew up the pipeline and the water was coming from Malaysia so the Governor ordered the general to surrender and we hated it, it was so bad having to surrender, we considered we could hold 'em off but anyhow that was a, when we all marched in to get into camp to Changi and we all sort of hated the idea of being prisoners of the Japs. We didn't know what it was to be in prison until we went into these work forces.
Changi
I was in Changi six months. A force was the first. It went up to Burma. We were in B force, we went to Borneo to build a big aerodrome for the Japanese Air Force up in Sandakan and that's when we become, we went over on the Ubi Maru like we call a potato ship. Ubi is potato and the worst situation I've ever been in in my life, this little ship with 1700 troops crowded aboard in three layers and they only went out on deck for about 20 minutes a morning and twenty minutes in the afternoon, get a meal and pee and crap and so but people were getting dysentery and crap and urine was leaking down on top of us, the smell was shocking and the food was shocking.
We were eating rice laced up with lime. Yellow rice. You couldn't imagine anything so bad as that. When we got off at Sandakan and half them taken ashore slept at the cathedral, Church of England cathedral. All their names in a diary and that diary is still at the cathedral. Anyone that goes to Sandakan get up to the Church of England cathedral give the dying, find all us who camped that night.
I was stayed on the ship and we came out next morning and we marched out to the Sandakan camp, packed, packed, packed but after coming off the ship it was like heaven. So but that's our first taste of prison camp in Changi. It was a mess, we were just crowded into, a whole division was crowded into one battalion's camp at Changi and it was just a mess.
We had to enslave ourselves, we put the barbed wire fences around ourselves and so forth. I was the first officer to get a bashing. We used to have little trucks. We used to pull the trucks out to the Changi Straits, get salt water to bring back to cook the rice in cuz there's no salt and my party I was in charge of was late and now the Indian officer there sent the troops to bring me over and at the time that the Indian army was breaking away from the British and joining the Japs and they become camp guards and so forth and they hated British officers.
So this Japanese officer, he called me over and smacked me across the face about six times and told me to stand there until he let me go but I was the first, first person to get a bashing. So surprising just because it wasn't a Japanese bashing, it was an Indian. But anyhow we realized you know, things were gonna get worse because the Japanese were pulling parties in to take into town and to clear up the wharf and clear up the streets and knock down burnt buildings and so they were taking prisoners into town to work and they were camping on the wharves and they were stealing foods that they liked. Then they decided they were gonna use us as slaves and we were, A force was the first one. They went up to Burma. The second one in July 42 was B force.
Borneo and bashings
We went to Borneo to build a big aerodrome for the Japanese Air Force. But it was then when our war started. The 10-day war we had, I had was nothing. It was shooting and bombing each other but the person to person war started when we become prisoners. And the Japanese in Borneo and other camps the officers didn't work but in Borneo every officer had to work, not every officer but 90 per cent of them because if you didn't work there was no rations.
You got rations based on the number of people working so we volunteered to do it so we get more rations in the camp and so we would work the same as the men, we got bashed the same as the men that would get whipped with canes and so forth. A lot of bashings went on the airport, bad bashings… See, when you were getting bashed by the Japs, a bashing would last about 15 minutes, you'd get bashed and kicked and hit and whipped not every day but reasonably often.
In about 8 months I had about 10 bashings and my neck broken but in Kuching the bashing wasn't the same as on the aerodrome when we were working. There were some smacks across the face for being rude to Japanese officers or so forth, but they took the slightest opportunity to bring us into line and not let us act as if we were important people and they were not.
Neck injury
We were knocking down a hill with picks and shovels, to fill in a swamp, the only level ground on this hilly country with this big swamp, so we had to fill the swamp in and make this flat ground airport. Anyhow I was working on it and I was talking to my friend next to me and a Japanese guard came up and yelled at me telling me "No talk, work" and he got a pick handle a changkol handle, swiped and hit me in the back with it. Now I was a boxer, so I saw it coming, I went with it and took half the pressure off, but it still broke my neck. My neck twisted like this.
Had I not moved I would have been killed on the spot. But anyhow I got carried back to camp and a chiropractor and a specialist, they worked on my neck got it back, tore my shirt up, soaked it in rubber, wrapped it round my neck…I was in hospital for about 4 months and I've been on physio for the last 50 years, 3 days a week. I just gotta have it otherwise my nerve, my nerves swell up and get hard. They gotta break down my nerve centres otherwise I have a neck in my, like today I twisted my neck too far, luckily one of the nurses she went and worked on it and got it fixed up. But it's a life-long thing.
The Underground
The death rate of Borneo was 95 and a half per cent and less than 5 per cent came back. Every camp was wiped out except the one I was in. I was in Borneo Kuching and that was the headquarters of the Japanese Army and we were down there. We were sent down there as a punishment because the underground movement started in our camp, eventually it become a revolution and the civilians uprose against the Japanese and killed about 2000 of them and about 6000 civilians were killed, women and kids were raped and so forth.
It was shocking but it started up in Sandakan. The underground used to bring in radio parts and they built two radios in our camp. We used to get news and the top bloke broadcast out messages which was received in the Philippines and so forth and the supplies were brought in from the Sandakan hospital from the Australian doctor who was in charge of the Sandakan hospital. He sent essential medicine in so the doctors could use it in operations and so forth.
A Japanese, I mean an Indian and a Chinese who were in the underground fell out, had a fight and the Indian went and reported to Japanese about the underground. That's how they found out. The Japs tortured them beyond belief. They got tortured, everything you can think of in torture they did and so they got the names of every person in the underground including about 15 from our camp. The head man of our camp, he was executed over this and his 2IC was about to be executed but they lost the paperwork and so his life was saved and in the war trials they sent them over to Outram Road.
Outram Road was the Japanese secret police camp in Singapore. It was a brutal camp but that's where the worst offenders of any prison camp were sent there. About half of them died before their sentence was over, but it was a brutal. But anyhow the Japanese decided that soldiers got no brains only the officers got brains and therefore it was the officers who started this revolution who started this and therefore they were to be punished so nearly all the officers were rushed back from work, to go into their cabins or … and they were shipped off to Kuching which was the headquarters and the big jail down there and that actually, it was tougher there but it saved our lives.
We were the only camp that wasn't wiped out, orders were given to wipe out the camp but and the graves were dug but the war finished before that could be carried out and the Japanese colonel in charge of the prison camp wouldn't carry it out cuz he served with the allies in the First World War. Colonel Su I mentioned in my book but it's a, sort of, you talk of these things generally but it's very hard to go into detail cuz at the time we didn't think anyone would believe us anyhow but to witness the torture is shocking, you feel it yourself. Your nerves, the screaming lasts, the next night you hear it but overall Borneo, as I said, was shocking, the biggest deaths of all, any prison camp more in line with the Jewish ones in the German war.
The Death Marches
On the death marches I can't talk about it because I wasn't on one but you hear about it from, I had two friends who were on the death march, Sergeant-Major Sticpewich and he said that and when a soldier fell back, he was shot. If you couldn't keep on going they had a Jap firing squad going behind the marches shooting them or bayoneting or whatever it was and chuck 'em on the roadside and that's why when the war graves people come in, all people could find is a bundle of bones here and there animals and birds and reptiles tore apart but with DNA they managed to get most of them together.
And this broke the hearts of so many prisoners, to see their mate, you know, and people were very sick, not only were they starving, they were sick from malaria, beriberi and all the other sort of scabies and so forth and at some stage got so they couldn't continue so they fall by the wayside and knew they're gonna get killed so they gave all their possessions away to their mates. Stripped their clothes off, lay there naked and give everything they had to their mates.
Mateship
One of the things about the Australian army it's so strong in mateship, more so than any other army. The mateship in the Battalion, there was no mateship stronger than the one prisoner over the other. They were just totally a brotherhood. They suffered so much, and you knew everything about everybody. Everything you told, everything you knew you told your mates and they told you. It was sort of a family. We knew more about them than their brothers and wives and mothers and that was a very a strong mateship and that made it very hard to see them die or get killed… This sort of mateship hung on post war.
Every group had their reunions like. There were battalions that were strong but battalions were broken up and these battalions gave 100 men or 50 men to a B Force, C Force, E Force, F Force and they become another unit and they would become even closer than they were in the own battalions and many of these POW's have their reunions in Sandakan and Borneo, it was the worst atrocity of Australian war history.
It was kept secret, no one was allowed to talk about it or write about it because they didn't want, MacArthur didn't want more hatred against the Japs than already existed and to show the Japs as cannibals and murderers they were it would have upset the system not only that it would have affected the relatives of the people who didn't come back.
Officer guidance
It was very bad because we used to help to guide our men. We slept in different quarters, but we'd have conferences and we'd guide them and give them advice, tell them not to escape because you got no hope of escape, there's nowhere to go, there's no means of transport. It wasn't until during the death march when they were able to meet with a local head hunters who got them to the, not many, only six of them, got them away from the Japs to the allies who were in there but quite a lot of people attempt to but they were killed.
They were bayoneted to death or shot to death and I had to go up and identify a couple before they were buried who they were and so forth. But we used to give this guidance and help them if we could, but it was difficult to leave because your leaving your kids behind virtually. As an officer your unit, your platoon was your kids, you looked after their health, you look after and when you have to walk away from it was just like a divorce leaving them. They felt the same way in many cases but in other cases they didn't. Some there wasn't a 100 per cent connection but there was a big connection.
Kuching concerts
In prison camp, in Kuching at Sandakan we used to have a concert now and again, we'd have a choir and singers and people would play things but it was very rare and the Japanese officers, they'd come down and watch the thing but in Kuching we built a stage on our parade ground and put all things around and every three months we could hold a concert, sometimes it would be a play, other times it would be a sort of a radio show behind a screen, other times it would be like sketches, like I put a couple sketches on as a hypnotist.
In my young days they used to have hypnotists come around to the town and put a show on and hypnotize people to do all sorts of strange things and so forth. So I put this show on and I won the academy award for the best radio show. I had the Scarlet Pimpernel. But it was, I used to like, at school I used to write plays as concerts and I used to, I had about four skit shows and one play and that was a wreck.
The first time, a huge scabie camp came in our camp, had to separate them, they'd live in one hut and we'd live in the other, so half my team there got scabies, so I had to cancel that show. The next show we retrained a new team and just that night it came down, it bucketed of rain, that had to be cancelled. So the third time it come on I managed to get it finished. But it had a bad effect, three times before, people talking about it and word got out on what it was about and so forth but anyhow they were good shows.
You had to go up to the Japanese headquarters. They had to read through. My show was called Love and the Double Cross, the double cross was this cattle station in America, a dude camp with people, but the double cross, the Japanese saw is a nasty word, doubtful word so I had to come up and explain why, what did I mean by double cross. Was I going to tell lies to the Japanese, was I gonna double cross them and so forth. They read the play and they agreed with us, there was no bad feelings.
Radios in camp
We had radios in camp, we had let the Japs find the one they found which was a… didn't work and the Japanese smashed it up so they thought they had it but when we went into Kuching the British signal corps they built a radio and we used to get the news once a week, we'd get the war news, so we knew what was happening, we knew how the war was going, we knew when it ended earlier than the Japs knew so we were sort of, knew what was going on so we were prepared for all sorts of things if the Japanese decided to attack us we were going to rush, shoot through, we weren't going to stand there and get shot. If they come out, we'd attack them even if we all got killed we'd at least kill some of those.
Journey home
Well the Japanese colonel called us up for a parade. Had to get dressed up in our best clothes and so forth. Got a photo of it there. And he told us that the Americans had atomic bombs and dropped them on Japan and his family was killed. He thought they were, but they weren't. They were at home. They were in Nagasaki and he said the war is over, but it isn't over for you yet because the general won't surrender and so the British, the Australian army sent people down to talk to him and he still wouldn't. So the Emperor of Japan sent a royal member down to order him to surrender so we were prisoners for a month after the war finished. We knew what was going on.
The Air Force came over and dropped us food and clothing and medicines so we thought we were picking up and really fit when the Australians came in to rescue us but they couldn't believe fellow soldiers, how we looked so dead and I caught a few breaking down and crying just seeing their fellow soldiers as we were. We thought we looked good, a month of food, we did look good to what we were before.
But you know we were all prepared to go and, ABC came in and we sent radio messages home to our, you know I got photos of that in my book and so we were sent out on American torpedo boats, they came in up the river, the Kuching, and took us out to Wanganella. We got on the Wanganella and it called in to the island, I forget the name of the island and then we got taken up to Morotai where the two army hospitals were and we got there but we started playing up too much.
We would go in the canteen. We had our pay books and we drew pay out. We were going to the canteens and knocking off beer and chocolates, breaking all the rules they set us like a perfect diet and anyhow two of the blokes went to Manila, got a lift over by American Air force, went over there and come back so they said "Oh Christ we can't handle these people" so they put us back in the Wanganella and we went down to Balikpapan, Banjarmasin, to get wounded soldiers there from the war and bring them up to the hospital so that took us another 10 days before we took off.
So after we got out, a month after the war finished, we didn't get home for another month, with hospitalization and return to Borneo and the trip to back to Australia we pulled into a couple of islands but we got back in end of October and it was just marvellous. That was the best part of the war, was getting back to Australia.
