We were only nineteen
Well, from where I came from all my friends were about the same age and we all more or less decided amongst ourselves to enlist and about 200 of us went down by train to Adelaide. We enlisted in Renmark but you had to go to Adelaide to sign up and be given your army number and put into different units and that's how it first started off, we were all mainly 19, 19 and a half, you know, and since then I've often thought of the boys from Vietnam, you know, they sang that song ‘We were only nineteen' thirty years ago , we could have sang the same song.
When I was younger, I used to go out and watch the military at the showgrounds, you know, they were like training for army and I got quite interested in that and though I was only younger they let you handle some of the guns and, of course, I finished up a Bren gunner in Tobruk.
The Bren gun
I was a Bren gunner till we came out of Tobruk and then I got a promotion to lance-corporal. Well it's an automatic weapon that fires from a magazine of 28 rounds and it's got a range of about six, eight hundred yards, you know, but you could fire a full burst or just a single shot, you know, but we were only allowed one per section and, there's like, three sections in a platoon and I was the Bren gunner for No. 3 section and I remained in the same platoon, in the same section, right throughout.
Just very lucky and lots didn't come back, and, oh yes, yes, there were only one or two country boys in my section, the others were from the city but when you're together for so long, you're more or less all mates.
Defending Tobruk
When we arrived back in Tobruk, I think it was the 1st of April which was April's Fools Day and my brother's birthday and our captain sang out, "Fix bayonets and be prepared to fight." We were in a raging dust storm and I couldn't even see anybody between you and me, you know, and we just all stood still wondering what we were going to do but because it was toward the end of the dust storm we were placed in cement posts, they were originally built by the Italians and there was like a section, a platoon in each post and we were in R5 and the next platoon was R6, and R7 and that went right, just about around the whole perimeter which was about 26 kilometres around and you didn't remain in the same post all the time, you got shifted to other posts or you got shifted to the blue line which was the next line back in defence and you spent probably a couple of weeks there but in between times you still went out through the front patrolling at night but you got shifted around all the way around Tobruk.
A Gurkha surprise
There was three types, we did the patrol where you were looking for the enemy and the other patrol was a fighting patrol where there might have 15 or 20 fellas armed to the teeth and looking for a German or an Italian patrol to shoot up if you saw them but the other patrols, if you heard anybody you used to estimate how many were in the patrol whether you could attack them or not, but the other type of patrol was a listening post where members of the platoon would go out through the barbed wire entanglements and we'd sit around what they called a sanger which was a semi-circle of rocks up about two foot high and you'd sit there for a couple of hours and someone would come and replace you but I remember, I was only a Bren gunner but the fella I was with was a platoon sergeant and he was from the same town as me and we were sitting there, pitch dark, and all of a sudden we both got a tap on the shoulder and we spun around quick, there's two Gurkha soldiers and they said "Australiana soldiers, very good."
We didn't even hear them, you know, and they withdrew their knives and apparently if a Gurkha withdraws his knife he has to do a cut on the arm or hand just to signify that the knife has been withdrawn and eventually they left us and invited us, if we ever get back to their unit, they invited us for a cup of tea which we eventually did but the cup of tea was only about a tablespoon in a little tiny cup and very sweet with sugar and stuff but it was very good and we got to meet them and some could speak very good English, others you had to try and understand what they were saying but it was wonderful to know them, yeah.
Death of a best mate
One of our actions, our battalion was ordered into action when the Germans broke through the outside salient and we were told we would be supported by six British tanks on our left flank, well we moved in, I think it was about a quarter to five in the afternoon and we noticed these tanks out about 1000 yards out on our left flank and when they turned they had swastikas on them, they didn't have British flags and, of course, we were in a sort of a low dip in the ground and the first thing you do is hit the ground and my No. 2 on the gun he used to carry the box of magazines, he used to have about 12 magazines in a box, he said to me, "I think I'll stand these up for protection", you know, and we were getting fired on by machine guns mainly, and mortars, and he no sooner did it and we got a burst of fire and a bullet went through the box of magazines and through his throat and killed him instantly and the story, the long story about it was that.
I was able to reach over and take his wallet and because when we came back from the Middle-East after El Alamein we only had fifteen days leave and I got married and we returned to the unit and I never had any chance to contact anybody and return the wallet, but fifty years later, fifty years later I got a phone call from a gentleman in Adelaide, he was a police sergeant and he asked me if I was a member of the 2/48th Battalion and I said "Yes" and he said, "You wouldn't have known my brother?" And I said, "Well, what was his name?" He said, "Alan Porter" I said. "Yes, he was the No. 2 on my gun" and I said, if you're ever in Renmark I've got something I'd like to present you with."
He turned up about two or three weeks later with his two sisters and I presented them with the wallet and he wouldn't open the wallet in front of me. I said, "No, take it home." It was a lovely surprise for him, not a really nice surprise. He was only about three years old when this happened, you see, and of course he didn't know anything about his brother, so that was one of the worst things, losing your best mate plus others, but he was more with me than anybody, and anyway, it was so long, at least fifty years but I never opened it.
I had it wrapped in a soft-tissues just to protect it and it was left in the drawer of my cupboard and I never looked at it and thought one day I'll be able to contact somebody and the elder [sic] brother contacted me which was good, really wonderful and he always rings me on the 1 May of every year because that was the day his brother was killed. It's a sort of reminder, he doesn't ring me, I always ring him. That's the usual thing.
Bombing of Tobruk
The Germans bombed us every day, I reckon we were bombed more than some of the cities in England, you know, and not only just one or two trains, but probably 20 or 30 flying over at one time and plus that, they had a long-range gun about twenty miles out from the perimeter that fired about a 210-millimetre shell which sometimes it exploded and sometimes it didn't and it used to go over and you could see it and it used to make a noise like a motor bike and when it hit the ground point on it seemed to roll forward, you know, it might go for several hundred yards before it stopped and didn't explode so but it was very frightening but fortunately, they didn't fire it too often, I suppose it was expensive to fire. We were in several fighting patrols and we lost several men in the platoon but I was very lucky I came out unscathed, you know.
Battle of El Alamein
We went in on the 23rd of October and we advanced about 2000 yards and it was dark. It was about 10.20 at night and we had a Bofor's anti-aircraft gun firing. It wasn't firing like up into the air it was firing straight shots and guided us in our direction and besides that we had white tapes on the ground where the engineers had found German mines or our mines so we were protected to get through there.
After the second day we were dug in and we were relieved and on the night of the 26th of October we were sent in again to attack, our company attacked Trig 29 which was one of the German fortifications and we attacked about 11 o'clock at night, and we were being shelled and mortared all the way in, it was real dark, and our platoon attacked the hill.
It was only a small hill and our platoon, I was only a section leader, I was the lance sergeant commanded the No. 3 section and the other two sections were very much, 1 and 2 were in front of me and I was back about 20 or 30 yards behind, and we attacked the hill and we lost, we captured it, but we lost out of the 22 of us there was only five of us come out and one of those that was killed was Perc Gratwick the VC winner and he was in No. 2 section and the five of us well we eventually wrote the citation that got him his VC but you couldn't just write a story and hand it to the company commander it had to go back to battalion, and onto brigade and on to division and eventually we were notified that he was granted the VC but he was much older than us.
We were all in our twenties and he was more like 40 odd. He was an old miner from Western Australia, a very nice fellow but he didn't believe in carrying magazines for the Bren gun, he carried grenades in his pocket and that's how he put out two German machine gun posts where they fired little semi-automatic rifles and guns and, yeah, he was killed in the third little dugout.
Beach landing at Lae
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.
Tom Derrick V.C.
I knew him very well before the war. He was a bit of a loner. He was a fruit picker at Berri which was only about twelve miles from Renmark but he was a bit of a boxer and quite often at Renmark about every six weeks there'd be a boxing competition at Renmark and he always participated. He was a nice fella, tough. So our battalion ended up with four VC winners.
