Don Anderson - Drafted to HMAS Napier

Transcript

I had a good job I’d come up a little bit when I felt sick. I went to the sick berth attendant who sent me ashore to hospital with chicken pox. Could you imagine? I was stuck there and when I came back to join my ship it had gone.

The next ship I went to, I went to another corvette. Bunbury, HMAS Bunbury We did a stint north in that and then out of the blue, somehow, I knew what happened, I got a draft to go south all the way from the north of New Guinea to cover a ship that was undergoing refit at Williamstown, the destroyer Napier.

I’d gone from corvette which was the lowest sort of warship to a crack destroyer and from there we did a stint off India and Ceylon bound at Trincomalee which was north of Ceylon, Sri Lanka.

Then we went through the Burma campaign successfully carrying troops and then supporting with our gunships, ship’s guns. That was continued successfully, then we made a hurried trip home to make a few alterations to the ship and then joined up with the British Pacific Fleet which was operating off the coast of Japan.