Transcript
The air force. The invasion of Balikpapan was on. The liberators were bombing the Japs there and they said they wanted 50 to go to Tarakan, air force infantry, and 50 to go to Balikpapan so my mate and I instead of sitting around, we joined up to go on the invasion of Balikpapan.
The 2/2nd Pioneers took us in on the barges and took us up the hill behind the AIF. They were fighting the Japs all the way up and they told us to keep back, there's too much going on upstairs, so after a couple of days we finally got down to a place called Manggar and we were sent out doing guard work on all the main objects of the place where we got into a scrap with the Japanese, 2AD was what we were called and we got eight Japs and one got away at half past four in the morning, with hand grenades mostly.
I was just hoping, I had a Tommy gun but I didn't shoot any of them but maybe I did, I don't know but I was in it and we got eight and one got away and, of course, the funny part about that was I used to go to school with a bloke by the name of Mackay, big fellow, and he was the head of the commandos and they'd been chasing these Japs for weeks in the bush and they all came out of the bush with these big sprays on them, camouflage and he looked over and he saw me and he said "What are you doing here." He said "We've been chasing them for three or four weeks" and he said "And you just go and knock 'em off." And every time I go on holidays he says "Here comes that Jap fellow." He used to embarrass me.
