Senior cadets and militia
I joined the militia when I was 14. Actually it was the Senior Cadets that I joined, where I put my age up to 16, another story. Served with the cadets for a while, and then when I got to the age of 18 or their age of 18, I was transferred to the militia. That was in 1938.
Call up
Of course the militia was just part-time and I'd become involved in an apprenticeship as a boilermaker welder, that was all accomplished through Melbourne Legacy. I'd done two years of my apprenticeship when war broke out. And because I was a member of the militia, we were automatically called up to do full time duties, the day after the war broke out.
Our duties were guard duties on all the oil wells and things of that nature down around Melbourne until civilian authorities trained other people to take our place. We then went into a three months' camp, training camp. And the idea of that was to train universal trainees. Back in those days, they called up all the 18-year overs and how our job was to train them. I got sick of that in the finish. So that's why I joined the AIF.
Well going back a few years, I was a Legatee Warden, a junior Legatee Warden and because of problems that I had at home, I was taken over by a legatee in Victoria who was a full colonel of an artillery regiment. And this is where I got the idea of services apart from my father, also being a member of the forces during the 14-18 War. So that is where it all started.
Transfer to the AIF
The furthest I'd travelled was to Leongatha in South Gippsland. But when war broke out, we went to the militia and then early the following year, I joined the AIF and we went to England. And when we got to England it was found that there were too many technical troops for the amount of infantry they had. And as I had joined a technical unit as a welder and being young and not having a lot of experience, I was seconded to an infantry battalion. And I stayed with that infantry battalion all the way through. We trained in England, we had leave in England. We got involved in the blitz of 1940. At one particular stage we were in London, assisting them there for a short while.
After the pitch was over and it appeared that Germany wasn't going to invade England, they decided that the Australian troops could go back to the Middle East and join the others, which we did. We left England in early January 1940, and it took us 12 weeks by troop ship to go from England out to the Middle East. Of course, that was via South Africa. We were very fortunate to get leave for three days in Durban. They would not permit us to have leave in Cape Town because the Australian troops had played up previously and they wouldn't let any more off. So we got into Durban.
So we eventually got back up to the Middle East, done a little bit more training, then the desert campaign started and eventually my battalion was transported into Tobruk. That was our first act of service. I remember very vividly the first day we went into Tobruk. The Stuka dive bombers came over, we said "God what have we got ourselves into here?" But it was okay because we did learn to watch a Stuka and wherever the Stuka pointed its nose, that's where the bomb would eventually end up. And usually it was well wide from where we were, so we were quite happy there.
Tobruk
Tobruk was a long, tedious type of warfare. During the day in most instances, you had to hide because if you put your head up, you'd get it blown off. Most of our procedures in Tobruk were done in the night time, like patrols, things of that nature. In August of that year, 1941, the powers to be decided that they'd try and straighten out the German lines a little bit. We were involved, and I got wounded and spent a few days in the Tobruk hospital. 14 I think it was. My platoon commander was killed, along with a few others, and when I came out of hospital and back to the unit, I became the platoon commander at 19 years of age. But that was beside the point.
Anyway, we eventually finished with Tobruk, went back to what is now Israel, what we called Palestine back in those days. Had some leave, had some training, refitted, got new clothes and all the rest of it. And we then went up to Syria. And the idea was that we were to garrison Syria because the powers to be thought that the German, who was in Greece, may come through Turkey and down into Syria. So we were put in there as garrison troops. We stayed there until about June, late June of 1942, when the Alamein business erupted.
Conditions in Tobruk
Now, in Tobruk we were a little bit better off because we did have dugouts and the dugout consisted of a hole in the ground with a sheet of iron over the top and rocks and dirt and things of that nature placed on top of it to keep the flies out or the light out and the fleas and the mice and that in. We'd put a blanket up the front that kept the light out but it didn't keep the fleas or the flies out. The place, the whole area was alive with fleas and mice and vermin that the Italian soldiers had left before we moved in there. They apparently had no strict ablution type things to do.
I think the only washes they ever, ever had was when they went in to the sea. Although we can't complain. If we wanted to wash, we never had enough water to have a wash. If we were anywhere near the sea we'd go and have a bath in the sea. I can remember not... You don't believe this, I remember not changing my clothes for six months and they didn't walk. You would have thought they would but we never had anything else. You would say "well, what about B O". Yes, everybody had it, so they didn't know any different.
A self-inflicted wound
You slept during the day, and of a nighttime, it was just a matter of changing, completely from day to night. In Tobruk, as soon as it became dark, everybody moved around, but you dared not move prior to that. When you got a German sniper say 50 metres away, and they were pretty good, they were very accurate.
We had one small instance where a chappie from Melbourne, Albert his name was, and he was of the Jewish fraternity and Albert decided that he'd had enough of Tobruk, took his shoe off, put his foot up over the parapet like that. Five minutes later, no toe.
Mines
Well, I suppose one of the instances would have been where we went out to try and map a mine field. Now, the Germans used... They were very meticulous with their mine fields. They used two types of bombs, one that they called a Teller which was purely for tanks. You could stand on one and it wouldn't matter, the other was your anti-personnel mine. An anti-personnel mine was three little spikes, much thinner than that. Much thinner, three little spikes sticking up out of the ground like that and they'd be up about that much out of the ground and what you'd do is go out.... You'd crawl out on your tummy and you'd go off the bomb.
You'd denote that onto your map, the engineers would come up and they would delouse that. What happened with those, the ones, was this... If you touched downwards one of those three prongs, it would create an explosion and that explosion would blow up a cylinder to knee height. Only up to knee height. And when it got to knee height, it would explode and throw 300 odd ball bearings just out like that, which meant that if anybody was standing up they got it in their knees. A couple of our fellows got hit.
So getting back to the clearance, if you found them, you would get the engineers to clear them. Through that we would then get a track through their mine field and we could go up to... Nearly up to where they were, find out what they were doing so that our people back would be able to throw mortar bombs into them, or the artillery could throw shells into them. That was one of the things that you'd do on a patrol. It was always at nighttime
El Alamein
Well, as far as El Alamein was concerned, there was very little, we were in the back parts for quite a long time where we practised attacking with tanks and all those sort of things. We would exercise to keep fit. Those that had tummy problems would get it attended to so that they could keep in with the rest of us. We had a lot of motor vehicle problems where they'd get stuck in the stand and you'd have to get rid of them.
That was purely, mostly manual work until we got up into the front and we're up around Ruin Ridge area where you'd go out on a patrol in the night, find out who was who, where so and so was and all the rest of it. And the night that we went in onto the attack, we knew where everything was because we'd been there before. That's about it, later on I believe, things did really happen but I can't comment on that because I wasn't there.
Ted Richards KIA
Ted Richards. Oh Ted and I... Ted... I was in the seven platoon of A company and Ted was in 8th platoon of A company and we had an affiliation where the day's work would finish, we'd go and have a beer or something like that and he was a West Australian actually, had completed an apprenticeship as an electrician and I was halfway through another one, but we seemed to stick together until I got taken POW and of course he went away and got his commission and eventually ended up... He got killed the last day of the battle of El Alamein.
The last day they'd been out on a reconnaissance, on the way back from the reconnaissance, a hidden sniper had got him. Funny thing about Ted, he had a brother in the battalion who was probably seven or eight years older than him and his brother got taken POW and he was with me most of the time and he was informed through the Swiss authorities that his brother had been killed. There was quite a few instances where that sort of thing happened.
Captured at Alamein
We then went back down to Alamein, which was rather funny. Our orders were no slouch hats, and if you want to talk Australian, try and talk like a pom. But they forgot that we all had tan boots. And of course, everybody knew who we were because of our tan boots. Anyway, we got down to Alamein, had a few skirmishes there. And they decided to try and straighten out the line. We went in one morning around about 4:00AM and unfortunately the company that I was with proceeded a thousand yards more than what they should have. When daylight broke, we were completely surrounded by Germans. We had no hope. All we had was a rifle. All our other arms were back a thousand yards away which...
And we've got German tanks and everything in between us. So unfortunately the company commander had to surrender rather than have his whole company killed there and then. We went back to a place near Marsa Matruh, where I was personally interviewed by the German intelligence and they wanted to know this, and they wanted to know that. I said, "Well, I'm sorry, sir. But my requirement is just to give you my number, my rank and my name." He patted me on the shoulder. He said, "Thank you Sergeant for being a good soldier, but I have one little problem. You and all your men will have to be handed over to the Italians. It is their territory and they will now become responsible for you."
POW
Over a period of six months, it took the Italians to get us to Italy. We went from camp to camp from Mersa Matruh right along the whole of the coast until we got to Tripoli. And we got to the Tripoli on New Year's Day. They decide to put us into an old tramp steamer. Gave us one days' rations and set off to Sicily. It took seven days to get from Tripoli to Sicily, which was a distance of about... Equivalent to Tasmania to Melbourne, 7 days. The reason, of course, was the British submarines. I was fortunate, I got to Sicily.
The people, some of our fellows that went before us were torpedoed by a British submarine and most of them killed. So we were fortunate in that respect. We got to Italy, eventually they sent us to a camp in Northern Italy, which was specifically for Australians and New Zealanders. The Commandant was an ex, well known, Italian policeman. I say no more. When the Italians capitulated in September 1943, the German army came in, took all the Italians away, sent them up to the Russian front and told us fellows that if any of us had thoughts of moving, this is what will happen. He set a Spandau machine gun up and fired a couple of bursts into a sentry box and blasted all the windows out.
That's how accurate we are, the Germans, so naturally we went to Germany. That was in cattle trucks. Nevermind, it was an overnight journey and it wasn't seven days like the cesspot of a boat. In Germany, we got transferred from certain camps to another. The Germans were very astute. They'd set up what they called Stalag 18A. Stalag 18A consisted of probably 40 or 50 smaller camps. Might be only 10, might be 20, might only be 5. They sent them out, get rid of them and also assisted the German to use up all his old 1914, 18 men as guards. All our guards were 14-18 men. And most of them were very sympathetic.
POW clothing
When I went to Italy after being six months in North Africa, all I had was a pair of shorts and they weren't much good either. No boots, no socks, no shirt, no nothing. A pair of shorts and when we got to Italy, they issued us with a set of clothing, which was all Italian stuff, but it didn't matter, it was a set of clothing, which was a shirt, a pair of trousers, pair of old socks, a pair of boots, two shirts. That's all. That's what they issued and we kept those until we went to Germany and when we went to Germany, we were issued with English clothes and you'd say, "How come"?
All that stuff had been captured by the Germans in France, way back in 1940 and they utilised it to outfit all the prisoners of war. Same with the Russians. If a Russian became a prisoner of war, he would be clothed in Russian clothes, which had been captured by the Germans. Not that many Russians were prisoners of war because their belief was they either died or carried on, if they became a prisoner
Attempted escape and torture
In Benghazi, they had a very large camp. Consisted of prisoners of war from every country that was part of the then British Empire. At one stage, a ship arrived. The New Zealanders and the Australians into an area of their own. As a sergeant it was my duty to have a group of 50 men under my control. The idea of that was, that when they brought the rations around of a night time in half a 44 gallon drum. Consisted of rice and tomato puree, perhaps a bit of horse meat or something like that. The idea was to issue out that food to the 50 men. It was done with an old one pint mug. You dip it in, pull it out, scrape all the pieces of rice off the outside, and give it to the fellow concerned. If he had something to put it in, he did, if he didn't, he would gulp it all down there and then, lick all the bits of rice off and give me back the mug.
Now of that 50 men, there were a fellow from New Zealand of the name of Jack Woight. W O I G H T. He was actually an Australian, but he had joined the New Zealand army because he was in New Zealand at the time. He and I got together, and we decided that we'd try and get half a dozen fellows that were capable of holding their tongues and capable of doing a little bit of hard work. We did that. We picked them from New Zealanders and Australians.
All around this big, large camp was what they called 12 holes. That was for people to relieve themselves. Just a box that high. It was six holes there. They'd dig a big pit, and when that was full, they'd transfer that box somewhere else. There was about 40 of those around the camp. You can imagine the smell, but beside the point. We'd thought that we would be able to get a hold of one of those boxes, which we eventually did and we got 12 fellows to continually sit on them as though they were using their bowels, which they weren't. We were underneath digging a tunnel. We went down about, I think it was about eight feet and we went right through under the barbed wire and up about, I think it was around about 60 or 70 yards out from where the box was.
We didn't break the last post until the time that we decided that we would go. Was lot more to it than that. We had to have torches, we had to have air, we had to have all those sort of things. Most of that was procured from the South African Division who had capitulated in Tobruk at the same time. The Germans didn't take anything off them at all. They'd left everything with them. Eventually one night we got into this tunnel and we said, "This is it, we're off." We're just about to break it out and, "All right, all right, all right! I'll come out, you've got me!". An Italian carabinieri had been advised somewhere along the line that it was on. So they'd taken the box up, and out you come.
A New Zealand fellow, Tasmanian fellow, and myself were kept. We were put into solitary. The rest of them was put on a boat the next day and set a course to Italy. Us three were kept in solitary. The Carabinieri's decided that it has got to get out of this hell. We got the implements to dig the tunnel and all the rest of it. To do so, they hit us across the back of the neck with rifles. They hit us across the chest with rifle butts. They put our thumbs into vices and screwed it up. What happened after that I don't know because I went out. The same with the New Zealand fellow who said he went out. I believe the Tasmanian fellow went out. That my dear girls is one instance.
Italian irregularities
I came back from leave. We were, what should I call it? We were... You'll have to excuse me for a minute I've lost my thought. We were interviewed by the intelligence people and we were told that if we had anything that we wanted the intelligence people to know, that we were to write it out on paper and let them know. There were six of us, four Warrant Officers and another two of us sergeants.
We wrote six foolscap pages on the... irregularities carried out by the Italian Carabinieri and the Italian police in North Africa and in Italy. We gave it to the intelligence people. They read it and they said, "Sorry, we can't believe this... The Pope would not have allowed it." My reaction was, "Why? I'm telling you." "It wouldn't be allowed." Said, "Good, thank you. Can I have my six sheets back, please?" They gave them back to me, we just tore them up. The same applied with the other five.
Learning German
Sergeants weren't permitted to do anything. We had to just stay there. We would play cards, we'd do certain things. One thing that we did do was learn German, and that was done by this... We had, in the first camp that I went to in Germany, there was an ex-intelligence sergeant out of the British army who could speak many, many languages very fluently, and he taught us all the fundamentals of the German language sufficiently enough to get yourself a feed, to get yourself a drink, something of that nature if you ever wanted it.
Red Cross parcels
We got a lot more Red Cross parcels in Germany than we ever, ever did in Italy. I say it with tongue in cheek. I believe the ones in Italy never reached the camp. Black market. We'd be lucky to get one, in Italy itself we'd be lucky to get one at once every three or four weeks.
In North Africa we got nothing, not even a cold smile, we got nothing there but we did occasionally get one in Italy, but in Germany, right up to the end we got Red Cross or they got Red Cross parcels. I didn't because I was down with the Russians, but I believe the others did get them right through to the finish of the war.
Sawdust tea
In the Red Cross parcels... It depended entirely where they came from. If they came from Canada... Oh gosh, they'd have a tin of meat, a tin of creme, what they call creme, which was powdered milk, a couple of little tins of sardines, packet of biscuits, ordinary biscuits plus sweet biscuits and you might get a small piece of chocolate, small packet of tea, a little two-ounce pack, a two-ounce packet of tea or cocoa. With the tea, we used to get 20 cigarettes. With the tea... We would go and buy the empty packets off anybody else that wanted to go and we'd buy them.
We'd get two packets for a cigarette. We used a cigarette, was always a currency, and with those packets of tea, we would clean them all out nicely, fill them up with sawdust, get a little few specs of tea to put on the top, and stick them down with perhaps a little bit of jam or if there was syrup in the parcel we'd use a little bit of syrup and we'd go out to the wire at night.
This was in Italy only. We'd go out to the wire at night time and we'd say to the guards "Tony, Tony, ti daremo il te per il pane" which meant “We'll give you tea for some bread” and this went on very well for some time until the black market in Naples found that they were getting sawdust instead of tea. But those were some of the antics we used to get up to.
With the Russians
Eventually we caught up with what we believed were the Russian forces. Nobody could speak English. The only language we could converse with them was in German. Our German was a little bit better than what theirs was. Not very good but a little bit better... We tried to convince these fellows that we were escaped prisoners of war, was having some difficulty in doing it. Then a car came along and a woman poked her head out the window and says, "Are you boys in trouble?" Just like that. But as a Cockney, a Londoner...
She looked at us both and she says to Taffy, "I know where you've come from. You come from Wales don't you?" Said, "Yes." "The other bloke I wouldn't have a clue." I told her, she said, "Oh, that place way down the bottom of the world." That's what they knew. Anyway, it turned out that this woman was a doctor in the Russian army. She had done her training in London pre-war and she'd spent something like 5 years in London. It was where the Cockney... her voice came from. She put us on the strength of her unit. We stayed with her unit until after the war had finished in Europe.
Around about, I think the war finished in Europe about the 5th of May or something like that. 5 or 6 days later, she said, "Do you boys know the war is finished in Europe?" Said, "No nobody's told us." She said, "Well, it is." "Oh good. What do we do now?" She said, "Well, you've got to go back to England, whether you like it or not, you must go back to England." I said, "Well, how's that going to happen?" She said, "Well, you've got 3 avenues open to you. You either go down to Odessa on the Black Sea. Take the risk of a boat taking you back to England. It might take 6 months. It might take 12." "That's out." "Or you can go over to Italy, where the British forces were." And Taffy says, "No thanks, I know what the red tape will be like, if we get over there." "Or you can go up to Czechoslovakia along the border and meet the Italians...sorry, meet the Americans." "Well, I think we'll do that." She said, "Good."
The Russians had been supplied with vehicles made in America and Canada. Every vehicle they had was either American or Canadian. She gave us, what they called, a Canadian all steel utility, a small vehicle. Two 44-gallon drums of petrol and says, "On your way." Of course, we were down in Bulgaria. We went on our way, we had no problems at all, eventually we got on to the river Elbe, I think it was and the American troops were one side, Russian troops were the other side. We let it be known that we wanted to get across to the Americans, which we did. We left the truck where it was.
Return to England
And when we met the Americans, they said, "Well" After we'd convinced them who we were, they said "There's a tent over there, get over there and get yourself deloused", because we were covered in lice. Hadn't lost him since North Africa, right. "Go into the next tent and get yourself some clothing, go into the next tent and get yourself a feed. Go into the next tent and get yourself a bed. Whatever you do, be back here tomorrow morning at 8:00." "What's going to happen at 8:00 tomorrow morning?" "Never mind, just do what we tell you." So we done that.
The following morning we went... We were put in vehicles and sent out... And taken out to an aerodrome. When we got to the aerodrome, they separated all the countries. Australians were putting one area, New Zealanders somewhere else. Taffy, my old mate, he was put in another area and so on. The Australians were put in a converted flying fortress.
They'd taken the bomb bays out and put in boards and they put 50 of us in there. And we were taken over to England. And this was about 9:00 in the morning, by 4:00 that afternoon we were in England and by 5:00 we were at the Australian base down in Southeast... In Eastbourne, we were at Eastbourne. All they'd done the first night at Eastbourne was show us where we had to stay and, "We'll see you in the morning."
A relative in Scotland
In the morning, they sorted out who we were. They had brand new pay books for us. They had new uniforms for us, boots, the whole, everything fitted out. We were asked a lot of questions that particular day. And then given a pass for 3 weeks, anywhere in the United Kingdom. I telephoned to a relative of mine in Scotland, right up the very North.
"Come up, whatever you do, come up." I got him on a train and two days later I was in Scotland. I spent my 3 weeks up there, shooting rabbits. The fellow that owned the farm. His name was Calder they were a distant relative, somewhere along the line, never ever found out where or why?
