Joining the AIF
I said to my girlfriend I'd rather volunteer than to be conscripted and that was when Rommel, not Rommel, Hitler was in Poland coming down into France, you know, so I went down to join the RAAF so I went down there to join up and I did all the medication [sic] and they found I was colour blind and said "You can't go in aircrew but we'll still take you, you can be a clerk or a mess orderly." Well I didn't want to join the air force to be a clerk or a mess orderly, I was already a clerk, so I said "Thanks but no thanks" and I went back to work.
And then of course Hitler came in and Dunkirk came and I thought things are getting serious now so I went down to the Commonwealth Bank building up in Martin Place and I went to Martin Place at lunchtime and joined the AIF and that's really what happened. It wasn't any thought of having great fun. I can never believe that. It was just something that had to be done.
Aboard the Queen Mary
We boarded the Queen Mary which was built to take 2000 passengers and probably about 1500 crew. When we moved into, part of our convoy going over to the Middle East, I think it was improved so it could take six or seven thousand troops, but on this occasion, it took 17,000 troops and the swimming pools had three tiers of bunks and every lounge in the place had three tiers of bunks and hammocks slung up on top of that. Every space on board was used.
Volunteering for the kitchen
We left South Australia and got onto the Johan De Witt which was a Dutch cargo ship, very small, and we went down into the hold, we were on the bottom level of the hold, designed in two sections, and there were big long tables and hammocks over the top of the tables and that was where we were going to eat, that was where we were going to sleep and just spend our time there.
Well, it was stinking hot down there and then, of course, a mate and I were told we were on kitchen duty for the night so we were dragged up and we had to start up and dish up the rest of the meal and wash up and then we were told you have to be here at 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock in the morning to dish up breakfast so you're allowed to sleep up on deck, so I said to my mate "This'd be a good idea to volunteer and do this for the rest of the trip". So we told the sergeant in charge and he said, "Yeah you can be on duty for the rest of the trip if you want to."
So we were quite happy so we were up there, at night about two o'clock in the morning we could go out and have a shower in the sergeants' showers which we did, not supposed to, we reckoned they wouldn't be there at 2 a.m. in the morning whereas down in the hold you had one or two basins for a hundred men and no showers and toilets were just as bad down there so we, I won't say we enjoyed it but we made it in reasonable comfort. It was hard but it didn't matter, at least we were in the fresh air.
A dud bomb
Then our next job was to go down to the wharf and guard the big petrol tanks, thousands upon thousands of gallons of petrol here and the night before we arrived a 1000-pound bomb had landed but it hadn't exploded.
I'm not sure whether it was that bomb or another 1000-pound bomb afterwards but one of these two, when it was deloused, they found the chamber inside was full of sawdust instead of explosives with a note on it "Good luck, Yugoslavia". The Germans were using Yugoslavian labour and they had sent us this note.
Strafed by a Stuka
Anyway this was Good Friday, coming to that part when the Germans surrounded Tobruk and on the Easter Monday we were told we were going to join the infantry because we had no trucks and they were going to make use of us as they could and we'd never had any infantry training.
Infantry training was a lot different to the training we had, so anyhow we all gathered from all sorts, there was only about half a dozen doing the job I was doing but others were working tight throughout the area. We all sort of met in this one area and we were marching up this road, onto the Bardia road. The Bardia road was, of course, a bitumen strip that ran right through from Egypt to Tripoli just the one lane each way.
Then there was another bitumen road came up to the Bardia road then another one from the Bardia road down to El Adem which was inland and we were walking up this road to an escarpment by the Bardia road and the air raids were going on at the time, one line of soldiers on each side of the road and this plane, a Stuka, happened to see us and he dive-bombed us.
Well, we scattered, of course, and the road broke us into two groups really because we went off from that. He dropped his bomb on the right-hand side and my mate and I, Les, he and I were on the left-hand side and then he came back and strafed us and we lost thirteen men on that sortie.
Battle of the Salient
Around about the 15th of May when they made another big attack and on this occasion there were sixty tanks and the instruction went out that the tanks were to be allowed through the that perimeter but on no account were any of the troops hiding behind, trying to get protection of the tanks, they were to be stopped.
There were a couple of anti—tank guns at the perimeter to put up a bit of a fight. You've got to realise that when the Germans are attacking like this, their sappers came in overnight and lifted all the mines so their tanks could get through. What they didn't know was we've got mines laid within the perimeter so when these sixty tanks came through and they hit this minefield and stacks of anti-tank guns and anti-tank rifles were there ready to knock them off. Seventeen tanks were knocked out and the rest turned and fled. That was what we call the Battle of the Salient.
And at that time we lost about four or five hundred thousand yards of the front line and the Germans captured a little hillock, probably not much higher than this hotel but it was just sufficient to enable them to look over quite a large area of the garrison, what happened then from then on we had to be very careful about how we gathered together. At no time if we were having a meal or something else did we ever gather in a group. More certain now after, we gathered in twos and threes because it wasn't worthwhile putting a shell over.
Driving at night
In the desert the sand and everything else, the windscreen gets obstructed and you can't see too much and of course all of our driving or most of our driving was bringing supplies, troops so we'd be travelling at night time, of course there's no lights and without a windscreen you've got a better view but, of course, you also got all the sand coming from the truck in front of you and if you were the leading truck you still had it with all the storms that came up.
Air attacks
With these storms, occasionally you might get a storm that would last two or three days. Well that was good, in so far as it was a relief from the air raids. Air raids were on all the time probably only one or two at a time, these planes. Other times it might be 15 or 20.
The whole idea, they got us on edge all the time. Day or night, especially the planes, every hour there'd be some planes flying over the top and of course, you were aware all the time. In the front line, of course, they were two lines of 70 concrete boxes you might say formed the front line and those were all built by the Italians, of course, and they were covered by sand and they were very hard to see from the air but they got their fair share of bombing but mainly the bombing was in the town. They got really blasted there because they were trying to block the harbour.
All they could do, at least on the front line was fire back but in town all they could do was swear at them. Up on the road with the noise of our own engines, we wouldn't hear a plane coming especially from the rear of us so we just kept an eye open and if we saw troops running for cover, we knew something was on and we did the same thing.
Scorpion attack
One of the places we had was called the bull ring and in the bull ring there was a sort of a wall built up and that wall was full of asps and the only place in Tobruk that we found these snakes and, of course, that caused a bit of concern. We had snakes, we had scorpions, we had fleas, and we had flies., and of course in our job we'd be working all night long going to the front line and back and things like that. I mean you might only go ten miles in a night.
It was hard to go more than ten miles in a straight line, it wasn't big enough. But you were only doing about five or ten miles an hour, less than that, so you were practically working all night long to transport troops and supplies to the front line and, of course, in the daytime in the daylight we were going up to town to take supplies to where we were stationed ready for the night into the frontline.
Well that meant we tried sleep. The only sleep we had was in the day and of course we were pestered by flies so it was the case, you never had any decent sleep, and the scorpions, well, fortunately I never got bitten…Chuck Greenaway, he was the…at the time, he got bitten on the eye one night and I had to be rushed to the RAP, the first aid post, and they fixed him up there and I was left on my own for a couple of days and he came back and he was still all swollen up on the face but at least he was okay.
Supply problems
Then, of course, a bigger problem was keeping up supplies, meat and things like that, we lived on bully beef and biscuits most of the time. Sometimes we got…and tomato sauce. We even got eggs sometimes, we got egg powder. So there wasn't much variety in our food. We had no fresh vegetable, no fresh fruit. I know a couple of blokes downstairs were talking about having oranges at one stage. I never saw any oranges there.
I think something just came in on a ship and they saw it there and got a hold, but food, there was always enough food but mainly bully beef and we'd heat, the first thing you'd do was open up the can and pour it out and all that fat that came with the bully beef would come down and you'd pour it out in the sand and eat the rest of it.
The hard tack biscuits were so hard you had to soak them in water to eat them properly and water was in short supply and it was horrible tasting bore water and we used that to drink when we're thirsty and when it came to washing, putting your hand in it and over your face like that, ‘cause there were no showers, nothing like that there and when it came to washing your clothes, well…we were fortunate because our petrol came in square four gallon tins and we'd cut those in half, turn down the edges and we'd use one of those to put our water in, put half an inch of water in and we'd wash ourselves down like that.
I remember one chap who was halfway through washing and of course, was caught in an air raid and he had to jump in a slit trench and cut his feet on the way through and he was in hospital for two weeks but those sort of things happened. You never knew when those raids were coming. As far as cleaning your clothes, well, they were really thick with sand.
Even when you washed your body the sand from your body would sink in the bottom of your water, so the water was a problem. So there were occasions towards the end of the siege when we got fresh meat. It was the only time we ever got fresh meat and we had I suppose you'd call it a roast dinner that day. But it wasn't quite fresh and it was the only time I got what they called desert fever, desert belly, there was no refrigeration there and with the heat the cooks just couldn't keep the meat fresh.
Supplying the 25 pounders
Our job, we were bringing up ammunition all this time and we were taking ammunition up, first of all to the 25 pounder guns which were probably a kilometre or so back from the front line and there were these big pits and we filled these pits with ammunition and camouflaged them. That was an easy job.
Then we moved forward and we moved a bit too far forward and we were bringing the ammunition up from Alamein railway station which is where the main ammunition dump was and we'd bring them up in this area in the daylight and then at night-time you'd move forward, well, apparently a spotter plane caught us, I don't know what happened but the shells started to pound us, a couple of the trucks were blown up but in one case a fellow was asleep on the tail port of a truck and he was blown off the tail port but he actually survived, badly injured, but he did survive but we lost a few more blokes on that occasion.
About eleven of us in our little group and the sergeant was in charge, sergeant or a corporal, I can't remember, he was injured and three or four others but we managed to survive that and we got to, we moved forward from that spot as quietly as we could right up to behind the front line and there we would dig more pits where we had to be very careful because you wouldn't want the shovel to hit or it and make a bit of a noise and the Germans would hear us and we put more 25 pounder guns in there, the idea being that when the 25 pounder guns came forward they had an allotment of their ammunition on hand besides what we were bringing up to them.
Booby trap
On one occasion we were told to be very careful because we were going through an area where mines had been laid and they hadn't been cleared and we had been instructed how to delouse, not to delouse, how to identify mines, so we were very careful in that area and we had a rookie corporal and he was sort of in charge of our group and he picked up something on the ground, it was attached and as soon as he broke the attachment and as soon as he broke the attachment it started fizzing. He threw it, it was a booby trap. It landed in front of one of the fellas and he lost a leg, and we were just cleaning up salvage, we weren't even in action at that time.
Dear John
Anyway, we finally moved back a bit further and it was this time I got a letter, a Dear John letter. Dear John. Hope you're having a good time. Sorry, I've found somebody else so our engagement is broken off. Well that was devastating news for me and I worked back because I had kept a record of the letters I had written to my fiancé and what those letters were, we always numbered our letters and she numbered hers.
She wrote a lot more than I did and I worked out that it was in response to a letter I had written just after we'd come in and we'd lost so many men when the trucks had been blown up and I'd written and said it doesn't look like the war is going to be over for a long time, you know, she used to love dancing, she used to go dancing but she'd never let anybody take her home and I said, I don't know what I said, some sort of, I probably, she got the impression that I didn't love her anymore, so, we got this letter and shortly after that we moved back into Palestine and I got a letter from my parents telling me that Margaret had written to them, had phoned them up, sorry, and told them she'd broken off the engagement and she was getting married in March to somebody else and eventually the day came and we moved down to the Red Sea…
Skiing in Syria
We got back to our place at Tripoli and one day they said "We're now going to form a skiing battalion" and so not a volunteer again, noone volunteered. "Has anybody here had skiing experience?" A few of us put our hands up so the officer turned to me and he said, "Righto Davis, you were born in England, you must have had ski experience." "No," I said, "The nearest I had was a bit of ice-skating." "That's near enough", he said.
He didn't know the difference, ice-skating is nothing like skiing, so I was co-opted to join the group. So there was about twenty of us and they moved us up to Sidon In Lebanon and if you've ever heard of the Sidon, it's a beautiful spot, fantastic, and we went to the hotel, ‘cause the hotel was taken over by the army, and for a week we were taught how to ski and the leader, I think he was a major, he was one of the Olympic athletes, ‘cause a lot of them were British officers and we had, all the instructors were Olympic athletes and we learnt quite a bit about skiing but I think it really was just a bit of a ruse to give us a bit of a break because nobody in their right mind would put a few Australian soldiers against Italians and Germans that were born on skis but the whole idea was that the Germans could come down through Jordan and of course come down through Syria and make another attempt to capture the canal which was a major objective so we had about two months there on skis.
Reunited
We finally got on a train. I got on at Central and, of course, my parents had moved and they were living at Blakehurst when I joined up, they were now living at Bronte so I got on a tram to Bronte and he said, "Where do you want to go?" "To Bronte Road." "Oh, what part?" He said, "We've got the top of the line or the bottom of the line."
I had no idea so I gave him the number which meant nothing to him but he looked, and I had a sea kit bag, a kit bag, and packs on my back and he said, "Look, it's a very steep hill." He said, "Your best bet is to get off at the top of the hill and walk downhill rather than walk up."
So I took his advice and it was more than halfway down the hill but his advice was good and I got home because I decided on the way, "Do I go and see my ex-fiance or do I go and see my parents?" I decided I should go and see my parents despite the fact that I wanted to see my wife, my fiancé.
Anyhow, I got home, just there in time for lunch. We had our lunch, then got a telephone call, from Margaret. She welcomed me home and I said, she would have known that ship came in the previous day, of course, and I said I've only just arrived home for lunch and told her I loved her and put the receiver down. I didn't want to talk over the phone to her.
We made arrangements to see her on the Monday after she came home from work. When I got to the house there was a car, with a driver, not a driver, a bus and train from Bronte. Her mother said, "She's in there." She suffered from asthma and the worry and everything else brought on an asthma attack so she hadn't gone to work that day so I went in there, just stood at the door wondering what I was to do. She just held her arms out and everything was alright. That was the Monday, it was a Monday, on the Saturday we were married.
Malaria attacks and a foot operation
I never had malaria in New Guinea but I was shopping at Mark Foy's about a week after I got home and got malaria. The last thing I knew these three soldiers…about nine o'clock in the morning. Anyway I work up in Concorde Hospital and I was supposed to have had an operation due at that time, I dropped four 25 pounder shells, these 25 pounder shells came in steel boxes about that big, you know, and they, I dropped one of these boxes on my feet but if I'd had the army boots on I would have been alright but drivers had a soft boot and, of course.
It damaged my toes a bit. It didn't disturb me too much at the time, I was on light duties for about twent-four hours or something but in New Guinea where you're sloshing about in water all the time, your feet soften up, and on the way back to Australia I had a, I went to the RAP and they said "You've got to have an operation."
So they arranged for an operation at Concorde Hospital. Well the malaria attack at Concorde Hospital was about a week before that…so when I got over the malaria, I told them about the operation and they said "We'll get that rescheduled" and I had this operation and I got malaria again while I was still in the surgical ward, so they put me down in the malaria ward again and you're sort of in a coma for two, three, four days, you know, someone got round at last and I asked the nurse there if she could change the bandages around my feet . She said, "You're here for malaria, don't worry about other things."
So I asked another nurse, same reply. Ask the Matron, same reply. Finally a doctor came around a couple of weeks later to see if I was fit for discharge and I spoke to hi about it and he pulled the blankets back and said, "Matron you better arrange for those bandages to be changed" because when the bandages were changed all my feet were a sodden mess, so they sent me back to the surgical ward and they fixed up the damage done and I got malaria again. Back to the malaria ward and the same thing happened again. I finished up, through lack of attention, I was in hospital for eleven months for a simple thing really.
End of the war
I was still there when the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then we got the word that peace was declared they said "Now, you can't shoot a Jap now unless he shoots you first" which wasn't very good news, so we were in more danger then especially as most of these Japs didn't know the war was over and they were very hungry.
At night-time they would try and raid camps to try and get food whereas we were driving food, truckloads of food, ship loads through the jungle. Of course we were very cautious to make sure the co-driver had his eyes peeled all around to make sure we weren't attacked.
