Department of Veterans' Affairs
Transcript
Putting age up to enlist
Well, I was not a bad young fellow, just left high school and what have you, I was only 19 and another friend and I thought, "Well, gee, let's get into the army and we'll get a little bit of action in there", which we did and unfortunately, within three or four weeks, he was discharged for being underage but he put his age up, but they found out he was underage, because his father had passed and his brother was a widow.
And with me, I put my age up about 15 months, I suppose, and nobody questioned me. My mates I made did question me. You're supposed to be 21, you see, so that's how I got into the army. But it was mainly, I think, just the fact that I was in the army and you had activity and something to do for the tours, and that was it, because we didn't know we're going to end up working for the wrong party.
Trained to kill
The army does it to you in any case, see I didn't have to show it. If I'd have come face to face with one, I'd have been violent as well as they were and while I was in the Army you're shooting at, well you think you are, you see movement, but it's not, you know, I suppose if I'd shot one I'd have shown my full colours then whether I was sorry for him or not.
A great adventure
I was an anti-aircraft gunner, this is starting the war off, and we took off and we had this particular aircraft, like I had the gun on the tripod besides the net, we were in the pit, it was only that deep, and Claudie Macheson was his name, he was a Chinaman, he was a Chinese lad, and we heard this craft coming down, tree top high and it flew straight over the top of us and you could see it going away and we heard it turn around and come back and then dropped a bomb 1 2 3 4 and the fifth one straight above our heads, came straight through the tree never hit a branch and both of us were knocked out, like knocked cold and you get a feeling, a sensation of slowly going down into the earth.
Gee it was a beautiful feeling, and then you've lost your conscience, and we heard our names being called out, "Macheson, Jamieson" and gradually came to and the poor old gun that I had, machine gun that I had, tripod and everything just flopped over and so I never ever shot an aircraft even though we were anti-aircraft because they took the gun and everything with them. So that's about the closest I got to losing my life, I think, was that time, otherwise, as a young fellow, I didn't think, you know, it's all a great, still a great adventure.
Fighting the Japanese
We were actually, my party came into it about halfway down through the territory and we didn't see a great deal of jungle but a lot of thick rubber trees, rubber plantations and things like that. So, we didn't get out into the open very much, but we were subjected to a fair bit of bombing and shelling but not face to face, but the Japanese avoided face to face, too, in a way, because you'd hear them yelling at you, and particularly at night.
Just on nightfall and you'd hear these Japanese yelling at each other or us, I don't know who, so that's how far away so they were. They weren't too happy about advancing too close to us either. But they knew that they had the numbers and we had to keep coming back. When you hear them circling around, you have to move out.
A tough time in Thailand
The worst part that I had was 12 months up, 10 months up in Thailand, you know, in Siam actually, at that time. That was a bad time, we lost quite a lot of men up there because we had to do a 300 kilometre walk to get to the border. A lot of it was jungle that you went through and walked only at nighttime holding on to something between each other, and all the time nighttime walking. So, that was about the toughest time, I would say, that we had was that particular walk up through there, but the Japanese had to do the same darn thing.
Smoko with the Japanese
I'm not anti-Japanese by any means. The fact that if you if you had this hatred for them, you wouldn't, you didn't like to be working for them but you realized you had to work for them, you couldn't get out of it and I just sort of cooperated with them in that regard, not that I loved them, you know, particularly if I saw them belting somebody up.
That particular fellow would be hated but the majority used to sit around, have smoko with us, this is only in Singapore, have smoko with us, while were working on the wharves, and if they saw an officer, they'd jump up and start yelling at you, you see, and really laying it on because most of the hitting really came from officers, from the officious class, you know. I'm not talking about the really high-ranking officers, but the low ranking officers likes to show their seniority.
The war is over
Yes, at that time I was in the camp back in Singapore. We were mostly all in Singapore at that time. I can recall a fellow yelling out "Shhh Shhh". He's coming in from somewhere telling us not to yell out, not to yell out but "The war is over". Oh yes it was told by a fellow who was out on a work party and he was coming into the camp and I happened to be in the camp that day and they yelled out quite loudly "The war is over". Then when the aircraft started to move in on us, that's our aircraft and everything, and dropping messages and everything, we knew it was over and when the officials came in, surprising the number of Japanese that came in to watch it. Quite a surprise to see it. We were in Changi gaol at that time.
"that day with mum"
We came back on a ship, yeah. We came into, we flew into Darwin first, of course, we weren't allowed off. Certain people were but we weren't allowed off the ship there and we came around down into Brisbane and we were there quite a while waiting for something to happen and then all of a sudden this surge of people came through and they locked them out. They weren't allowed to get on the wharf. We saw them all come through and then they knocked another fence down further down from the main entrance and in the lead was my Dad, George. So I started yelling out to him, and there were quite a lot of blokes who never saw anybody they knew, "Hey George. George Jamieson", you know, "Come and join me". Yeah, that was very very nice and when we got down I got into a car, they had cars ready with my parents, with my mother in it, to … or wherever it was. That's how that day ended. She was in the front seat and I was in the back seat with another two blokes, holding on to my hand all the way. It was really a memory that you don't lose, that day with mum.
