Harry Locke - Beach landing at Lae

Running time
1 min 9 sec
Date made
Copyright
Department of Veterans' Affairs

Transcript

I got promoted to lance-sergeant after El Alamein and because in our platoon there was only about five left they promoted me to sergeant and so I was a sergeant when we got back to Australia and we did training up in the Atherton Tablelands and eventually finished up in Port Moresby and from Moresby we did the landing at Lae.

The good thing about the landing at Lae was that there were no Japanese on the beach so we had a easy landing on the beach but out to sea I can always remember there was at least six Japanese two-engined bombers coming in to bomb us and they never made it. There was about twenty Lightning fighters from the American air force that shot them all down because if they had bombed, once we left the beach there was kunai grass which was about ten feet high and if that had of caught alight we would have been in big trouble.

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