The Liverpool Kiss
There was only 80 Australians on the Suffolk and about 800 Poms. The only thing they taught me was the Liverpool kiss. That was the head butt.
They wanted to fight each other all the time too, the Scouse, the Liverpool Irishman, and the Geordies but we…and the rum issue too. We liked that.
Port overboard
I met this Viennese, this bloke from Vienna and his brother had been interned here when the war broke out and he was a member of the Mozart Boys' Choir and they used to bring them out and they were school leavers and younger and they were all interned in Australia. This chap was in charge of all the Germans next to where my ship was in dock…
I made friends with this Austrian and he said, he said "Excuse me Bill, you have a funny accent. I've never heard your accent' he said. He said "You're not British, are you? I said "Yeah, I'm British". He said "Yeah, but what part of Britain?" I said "No, I'm from Australia" and then, he was the one who told me about his brother.
He was a big fellow. He was a captain and he was so overwrought. He said, "What would happen?" I said, "Nothing would happen in Australia". I said, "He's probably living a life of luxury." And he said, "They wouldn't kill him or anything?" I said "No". I said, "You'll find out". He said, "If I write a letter and you make it home will you give it to him?" I said "Yeah" and he wrote a letter for me and I put it in my special bag that I squirreled stuff in that I used to like and take home…
When we got back to Australia they took us off the Suffolk just in Watson's Bay at the head of the heads and we had to go down in the bosun's chair and they sent a lighter out to take us back to the depot and the fellow he said, he read our names out to make sure they got us all off the ship and it was just underway and I gave him my port that I had all the stuff in.
A lot of good stuff it was too. Stuff I'd bought in Edinburgh and London, Tahiti, Panama and he put the half hitch through the handle of it and then you had two clips, one on each end that used to close those wooden ports and so I didn't know and he just said "Egerton" and you've got to have your name on it and he lowered it over the side and the next thing I heard is "That port. All that stuff is in the water".
I raced over to the guard rail and as he lowered it down the weight of the port with just the two clips holding it, he had through the handle, the lid just flew open and my best uniform was in it and all the stuff, the letter from the German…All that stuff was lost and my best uniform so you can imagine how I felt.
Kamikaze attacks
A lot of blokes died from shock and they were yelling out. They were mad. They'd gone mad. They couldn't stand the…it was terrible. The ones who were down below, all they could hear was 'bang', whereas on the guns we could see.
I don't know which was the worst, but they'd go for us really, like the one that got me, the second one. I think that was the one on 2 January and they didn't find that shrapnel until…I'd been in England. I'd transferred to a Royal Navy ship HMS Suffolk and she had a good record because she was in the Bismarck episode.
Shrapnel, hospital and Indonesians
I had the shrapnel and often I felt terrible. A few months had elapsed before the doctors felt…when I was in England, I always felt bad. They couldn't do much for you in our sick bay and being younger you put up with it…
And they sent me up to Townsville and the shrapnel I had in me and I didn't know where I got it from, whether it was the second kamikaze or the last one, the sixth one and I went to Townsville hospital and I said, "I'm sick all the time" and I used to pass out.
They sent me to Townsville hospital, and they said "Young man we can't do much for you here. You'll have to get on to your ..commanding officer and you have osteomyelitis of the left humour". That's bone disease if you don't know and he said, "You'll have to get it fixed up, it's invasive"…When they told me at the Townsville hospital about the osteomyelitis they said, "You've got to go out to the airport and get on a Douglas Dakota to fly out to Brisbane and we've notified Brisbane, arranged for you to go to hospital" and they flew me down to Archerfield and I got out and they took me to the American hospital.
They didn't take me to Greenslopes, they took me to an American hospital in Holland Park and it was a 900 bed hospital with a lot of Indonesians who had been captured by the Japs and we'd released them when we invaded the islands but a lot of them they wanted to let the people in Indonesia know they were alive and they…I forget what happened to a lot…they would have been Muslims from Indonesia and they made me their mascot and what had happened to the poor devils, originally it had been 28 from this camp of officers captured and the Jap driving them into where they were to hand their swords in and say they recognised the war was over so they did all that but then the Jap was driving them to the spot he thought "I'm not going to let these fellows back again" and he committed, what do you call it? Not hari kari, and he ran the bus over a cliff and the poor buggers had been imprisoned all that time in the war and nearly…out of 28 of them I think there were 14 or 15 killed and the others were injured and they were in the hospital with me.
Lady Mountbatten
One day they said 'Smarten yourself up Egerton. You're a navy man and we have a navy man's wife ready to come to the hospital because she heard there was a navy man here and evidently that's you" and I said, "You beauty". So they smarted me all up and in walked Lady Mountbatten, Edwina Mountbatten and that was in January I think, around my birthday time but anyhow the photographers took photos of her and it was on the front page of our local paper, the Telegraph and I was famous for the last few days of the war until I got better…
She just said "I believe that you have been on one of my country's and your country's ships and I said "Yes" and I told her how we got on and she said "I know all that history". She said, "It was wonderful to know that you are getting better and the war is over" and did I have a girlfriend a mother still alive and all personal questions just like a friend to a friend or a mother, she was older than me and at that time she was getting a bit of a ribbing about Nehru the Indian prime minister about her playing up with him but Lord Louie got killed by the IRA later on. It wasn't a very nice end to her story.
