Conditions on Bougainville
During campaigns and that was pretty scampy because we used to say we had four star comfort. That is, that you can see four stars through the jungle canopy at night time.
And every day without fail there'd be a heavy downpour of rain, a real torrential downpour. We'd get soaked to the skin, but you wouldn't worry about it. That was how we were dressed and that's what we had to go through, so we went through it. At night time was pretty horrible because you were wet and soaked and you had to make sure your weapons were kept above water level. So that nothing could get in them at all.
So they'd be ready for action if you need it. Fortunately the perimeter that I was in didn't get raided. A lot of them got raided at night time. The Japanese would come in, in the dark. Wonder how they find their way, but they did and they would attack ... And we would get up to 75 millimetre shells, and we'd get anything up to 50 or those a night, anything up to 50 of those a night, sometimes more sometimes less. And on occasions those 75 millimetre shells were punctuated with double the size, 150s and they were big ones and really, really shook the ground.
Diseases
Diseases were absolutely rife over there. I myself suffered a lot with foot diseases for long, long time after the war finished. I had to be buried in marshal powder every night otherwise I would break out.
Very uncomfortable, but you sort of got used to it and just accepted these conditions because you could not change them. So if you can't change a thing, then it's not possible to do so, you accept it. Nothing else you could do. Nothing you could do mate.
Mortars in the jungle
Mortars were the main thing. But they could only be fired where there was a break in the canopy. You couldn't do anything about it when they were in the jungle. Mortars were no good, absolutely no good whatsoever then. But they were very handy weapon when there's a bit of open space.
But then judging the distance was also hard. It's like that gum tree is so far away, you couldn't see that gum tree. You couldn't see anything, you just had to send a forward scout out and he would estimate the distance and then the mortar fellow, which was made up from a special platoon of mortars.
They would ... go to the open spot, we think with great effect. We believe, and we hope. Terrible thing to say that. But that's how it was. It was war. And all's fair in love and war they say, so you had to put up with these things.
Shells on the beach
I remember one night we pulled out, we did a campaign and we were feeling pretty wretched, very wretched indeed. Our nerves were shattered, lost a lot of weight and we were what you call having a rest period, rest period and we were on the beach. High Beach they used to call, used to have a name for everything, High Beach and anyway we were there and quite enjoying it. Lovely on the beach.
And it was night time. They started up with shells but they were small shells, little shells and they used to come over the top of us and then land in the water on the beachhead. But they were plain expensive shells, you had come back a bit closer.
And so all these blokes out there at night time, all those getting lit up with the light that was there above us, digging, digging, digging in there to get down below ground level. That's was ... then, didn't worry us at all. Bit scary though just the same.
Tunnel Hill
There was a place there outside ... which was well known, they called it Tunnel Hill. Tunnel Hill and this was covered in deep and long tunnels and in those tunnels they were so far underneath that the aeroplanes couldn't do much damage to them even with the big bombs they dropped. They wondered why.
Afterwards they found out ... when they won the day ... found out there's a hospital underneath there, and a big transport business underneath. Oh, anything you could think of instead of being up there it was down under here. Underground.
And they wondered why these bombs weren't having their desired effect. That was why. They could not get to them.
