Being drafted
In May, I was drafted to the HMAS Manoora. May, 1941. She was a armed merchant cruiser. You know what an armed merchant cruiser is? It's a ... well, you know, the ship that sank the Sydney, I suppose you've read all the story about the Kormoran? That's the type of ship we were.
Now, the only difference between the British Navy and the Australian Navy is we fly our flag the white ensign and our armament is exposed. The difference between the German Navy, which were operating around our coast at the time when I joined, was, that they had their guns disguised, camouflaged, and they don't fly their origin flag. And you don't know if you approach them, that you're in danger. And that's the difference.
Now, we kept chasing those ships when I joined the Manoora. We knew they were active, and in fact, they sunk three or four ships at ocean at Nauru island, phosphate ships. But unfortunately, we weren't in the area at the time.
Training
I was just happy that I was able to keep up with the very stiff gymnastics work required and all the five-mile runs we did, and all the heavy work we did. As well as that, overnight, you took your turn on being sentry, doing a patrol around the area.
Gas mask training we had, of course. And they went in, and they even stripped your mask off with a little taste of mustard gas. They gave you all that. Using gas mask, anti-flash equipment, the necessity of using it so that gunfire flashes you had your anti-flash equipment on. You were pretty well-trained but lacked the experience when you left there.
One time only, that I remember, you ran with full pack. That was only around the oval. And the other thing they did, you had to swim with all your clothes on, boots and all. You had to swim the length of the ... Not everyone did well, but they did by the time they finished their course. But I could swim, so it didn't worry me. But you had to swim, boots, clothes and all. In case you fell overboard.
Experience in Calcutta, Madras and Colombo
We were mobbed because the people want to know, did their sons get to where they were supposed to go? And we could say "Yes, they got there safely."
What we would do, we were taking them from Calcutta to Rangoon. We were feeding them in to get on the Burma road, to get in the back of Singapore, to help Singapore. Some of them were good ... they were very good. We had a lovely time with them. We didn't have many on our ship, but they were nearly always in ...
Our ship, we kept mainly not too many troops on, in case we got into action. And, Gurkhas... mainly just Indian troops that were ... Very well behaved and we took quite a few and every time we'd go back to Calcutta ... I think it was only three times we went to Calcutta anyways, so I'm saying every time. Parents wanted to know.
Then we started picking up troops from Madras, from Colombo, taking them across to Burma, Rangoon. And we were losing ships right and left because the submarines were active. And to our surprise, some of them were German submarines that were acting in there. And so, they were working very close with the Japanese, which we didn't know. I didn't know till after the war anyway. So, we lost a lot of ships there.
Just outside of Colombo, they sank three oil tankers and Colombo ... The oil was, I suppose about 12 to 18 inches thick, right in the harbor, all the way up the harbor. And we happened to be in Colombo at the time, and somebody, we believe deliberately set fire to the oil up the river, trying to drive the shipping out of the harbor. And so, all Navy personnel from our ship and other ships, all firefighting equipment experience. We were sent ashore to kill this blaze so that it wouldn't get down into the harbor and set the harbor alight which we succeeded in doing
Disrespecting sacred cows in Madras
In Madras, we used to be treated very kindly. The people loved us, used to love us. And what happened was, I was ashore with our status, we were a sort of a get-around bunch. And we're walking back to the ship, and there's a whole lot of trams all lined up, going 'Clang clang, clang clang, clang clang.' Because all these animals were standing in front of the tram.
What we didn't know was they were sacred animals, what we didn't know. And this Mick Parks, a stoker with me, we enlisted together. Mick was a bronco-breaker and a horseman. The next thing he says, "Hold my hat." So, I held his hat. He takes a running leap, flaps on the back of the sacred animals, which we didn't know were sacred, flips it, gets them off the tram track and said to the people "There."
But before you could say anymore, they'd ... after us, going to kill us. So, we managed to get back to the ship, but every sailor from the Manoora came back after, they were belting up. And we were ordered out of the harbour and never allowed to go back into Madras. Because our stupidity, we didn't know. Nobody had told us they were sacred animals. And Mick honestly thought he was helping them, but our ship was never allowed to go back into Madras, the Manoora.
We'd pick up our convoy outside. We had no knowledge whatsoever about customs of the animals. And honestly, I felt sorry for Mick because he thought he was doing the right thing, and we did too. But every poor sailor coming back to the Manoora was belted up ... off the Manoora. So, we had to, we could no longer wear a Monoora tally band, which we were. And we were never allowed to go back into Madras. We'd pick up our convoys outside. But that was our own doing, we didn't know.
Transporting soldiers
Our main ports there, picking up troops, was Calcutta, Madras. Trincomalee, we used to go there but that was a Naval base and Colombo. But when we'd pick up troops, we would only come back, and they'd have the troopship loaded.
All we would do, sometimes we didn't did get ashore, turn round, take them. We were putting that many troops in there, as much as we could. Occasionally we'd have to go to assist them as ships had been torpedoed. But we couldn't stop because we had nothing to protect ourself.
So, what we would have to do was radio our message and usually, Nestor or Napier or Vendetta would come out, or Vampire would come out to the position we'd given them. And they'd pick up the survivors. But we never ever stopped to make ourself a target. We had no anti-submarine defence at all.
Sending ships to Singapore
We had to come back, pick up this convoy of the seventh divvy and some of the sixth, and we were heading back to come down to Sydney, to come to Australia I should say, and we received, I'm only saying this 'cause what happened, we received an urgent signal to detach four ships from our convoy to go to Singapore, to assist. And I felt terribly sorry when I learned later on what happened.
We sent four ships into Singapore. They got there in February before Singapore fell. And they became, after fighting El Alamein, all those things. They were taken POW. We felt terribly sad about that, but it wasn't our decision, we had to do as we were ordered. And so, we detached them, and they went, they became POWs.
Sinking of the HMAS Repulse and Prince of Wales
What happened then was that when we got hit at Singapore, they also dropped mines in the river, and that was on Sunday the 8th. We couldn't go to sea on Monday the 9th, so we went to sea on the 10th. Prince of Wales and Repulse went to sea at the same time to ... they went left, we went right. They went down to intercept a convoy that was supposed to be there.
We had radio contact pretty well all the way. The next thing we get while we were in those Malacca Straits, we're heading north, was they're under attack. Repulse went first we heard. Then Prince of Wales went, and our Australian destroyer, I think it was Vampire or Voyager, I forget which one it was now.
They were in escort from ... and one thing the Japanese did do, we understood at that time, once they sunk the Prince of Wales and Repulse, they let the destroyers go in and pick up survivors. So, then we continued on up through the Malacca Straits and we went to Calcutta because there was nowhere else, nothing else we could do. When we first went into Singapore and we saw those two battleships tied up together, we went over the other side to the causeway.
Everyone remarked on ship "Wouldn't you feel safe on one of those ships?" Now, that was our honest opinion. "Wouldn't you feel safe on one of those ships?" Three days later, they were on the bottom. It was disbelief to most of us, but it made us think how vulnerable we were. We had very little AA stuff, anti-aircraft stuff on. We had very little air attack defence equipment. Our air attack, on a big ship like the Manoora, was two three-inch HA, that's High Angle guns. That was our aircraft plus twin Lewis guns. Never had such a thing as a Bofor or anything like that. That was our aircraft. We felt very vulnerable to aircraft.
We operated in the Bay of Bengal, and we were losing ships right and left. And we had no ASDIC gear on the Manoora. So, we couldn't detect submarines. We had no depth charges if we did find them. Our only thing we had was the old aircraft, but you were very vulnerable with that. I'm trying to get the name of it now, the old pass a duck we used to call it. In order to drop that over the side, we don't have a catapult. We used to do a 360-degree turn full ahead. That calmed the waves down, dropped the aircraft over.
At that stage, we were very vulnerable because you didn't know what was in the area. We always felt much better when it was coming into land because he would do a run round and let us know if anything was there, and we felt much safer in recovering him. But we were always closed up ready for anything. So, we were always very vulnerable, and we lost a lot of ships there.
Midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour
In April, May, the Japanese were closing on Rabaul and they had some people they had to evacuate. I can't remember the name of the place we went to but we made a dash up there and picked up all this copra and the locals of it. I picked them up and on the way back we were diverted and I can't think of the name of the place we got diverted to. It's a well-known place but my memory just won't let me think of it.
We picked up the people there just off the coast of Australia, one of the islands there., picked them up, brought them into Sydney. We arrived in Sydney two days before the midget submarines hit Sydney. We arrived in Sydney roughly on the 29th May which meant, when you think about it, the mother submarine was sitting out there waiting for the little submarines to launch but we realised, I realised, that they wouldn't have upset the apple cart because they'd have never recovered the midgets and so they launched the submarines and came into Sydney.
We were tied up around Balmain. I was down on watch until 12 o'clock. I watched just near the engine room and we got a signal. We got 'repel aircraft'. We didn't know it was a surface craft. All that we got 'repel aircraft'. We didn't know what was going on until about 9 or 10 o'clock. We didn't have a clue what was happening in Sydney Harbour until it filtered through that there was midget submarines in the harbour.
When I came off watch, they loaded up on our pinnace, which was a motorboat, put a dirty big depth charge on the back and I'm the motorboat driver. That's what I used to do, motorboat driver, and I used to drive the motorboats and they sent us out into the harbour with this dirty great depth charge. If we'd have dropped it we would have gone up with it. Anyway, when you look back on it in hindsight, all that was over. The submarine had fired two shots under the Chicago, bounces off the wall at Fort Dennison and blew back and blew up the Kuttabul. I was there when they raised the sunken sub. I was over at Garden Island and saw them come in, bring the people out of the Kuttabul, some of them. A nasty experience that sometimes happens.
Taking a ferry to New Guinea
But what happened was, the army had an urgent need for a tank landing vessel in New Guinea. So, they seconded the George Pete ferry that used to run on Pete's ferry in Sydney. And they picked the crew to take it up, and I was unfortunate enough to get picked to take it up there.
With the instructions "All you need to do, is take enough gear to get you there, leave all your gear here, we'll transfer you back." That transfer took nearly two years to come back. We broke down off Moreton Bay. And seeing as I used to do signaling, we did run out a scratch crew and not too many onboard could signal.
So here I am out on deck there, signaling with an Aldis lamp. SOS, SOS up into the sky. Our radio packed up, we had no radio. Our engine, we only had the for'ard, we were getting washed away with the drift. And all of a sudden, a submarine comes alongside us, you know? We all panicked, went to our action stations, I had my lifebelt on, blew that up. Flashed the code of the day, I answered him on the signal lamp and American used his radio, we got towed into Brisbane, did repairs and carried on.
And I said to the crew leaning over the side, I said "You are pretty game coming to our assistance" and he said, "Oh, I know, my buddy is on the other side if you have a look." They were going out on patrol. Sure enough, I raced over to the other side and the other submarine had us covered on the other side. They didn't know what we were. But they were just playing safe. So, we went in, I had a few weeks for repair in there.
Got up to New Guinea round about January it was. We should have been there before Christmas. We got on board the ship to come home, we handed it over to the army, and we're all settling down nice and somebody come and said, "All Navy personnel, disembark." They wanted to use us there, and so we were put ashore to help in New Guinea. That's in Milne Bay, which had just been under attack all the time. We were getting attacked all the time."
Air attack at Milne Bay
They had no quarters for us. Here was a ... I suppose there would have been about 20 of us in the crew. I have photos of them upstairs. We got put ashore and where we lived was in an old hut, you know? And the only thing we had with us was our hammock. And like a lot of silly fools we tried to sling a hammock on, but the hut collapsed. We tried to sleep there but ... So, we got in more trouble over that. So, we finish up sleeping under the Naval officer's headquarters. That's all we had, we had nothing.
And when they knew I could signal, they were short a signal, so I went in, did wireless operating for them as well. That came in handy from learning from the cadets. So, I was used as a radio operator as well. I missed out on a lot of the battles that the army had, but we didn't miss out on the air raids. A 100-plane air raid was quite common. Yeah, one sits in me memory, it was rather funny actually if you got a sense of humour.
NOIC, that was the naval officer in charge. We had ... If you can imagine an oil tanker sitting there, and on the inside, port and starboard side, was Warramunga and Arunta fuelling. Then outside of them came two American destroyers, and they were fuelling over the top of the Arunta and the Warramunga and before we knew it, a red had come on. That said, "They're here." You usually get a yellow, which indicates they're coming, red and so on. The planes were there, that was the warning we had.
The Yanks went to panic station, they cut their lines, threw their oil went all over Warramunga and Arunta, I'm laying off, in other words, I'm standing clear of all that. And the two Yanks, Perkins class destroyers they were, were waddling up the bay. And I'm standing there listening to the orders coming down from the Warramunga and Arunta. "Finish fuelling", at the same time, I knew the signals "Stand by, stand by." Full steam, telegraph goes, they let go everything, and they went up straight doing around about 25 knots past the two American destroyers that never prepared.
Past them and up. Then all Hell breaks loose. Anyway, we all survived. We lost a few ships there, they sunk a couple of ships. But none of their naval ships was sunk. The Japanese were very cunning. This time we had no dive-bombers. They were all high-level and low-level. But there were no dive bombers in this line. Anyway, they sank a couple of ships. I forget the names of them now, but you always had to be on your toes.
Coastwatcher saves the day
We had a skipper on the ship. Look, he was a shocker. When I spoke to him, we only had one officer, the rest were all just men on there, we were delivering these goods. He used to get lost time and time again, up and down the coast. Now, we'd been up a few times. So, you'd think they'd know it.
Anyway, we were supposed to go to Langemak the PT base moved from down ... we were supposed to go and load the stuff on there and go there. We overshot Langemak which none of us knew. And we're sailing down this bay which we thought was Langemak.
All of a sudden, a light flashes out the bush. I run and grab the Aldis lamp. I answered the challenge, gave the letter of the day, and he wanted further identification. He could see the white ensign flying. I told him we were going to Langemak. He said, "You're in French Harbour, the Japanese are still here." I told the skipper, we turned around, got out of there, went back to Langemak. But we could have been POWs. Only for that coastwatcher or whoever he was. I don't know who he was. He flashed, we saw the signal, answered the challenge, got out of there.
Oh no, we had a lot of ... There was another one, another funny one. We were ashore at Oro Bay again it was. And we got hit again, and this time we were ashore. They used to use daisy cutters. Daisy cutters, what it is, it's a shell, when it hits the ground it fragments out and cuts everything off it. So, if you were laying in the open ground, you can't miss it you, know? Any near miss.
So, what we did, we built underground shelters out of air force landing strip gear and dug down, and we used to use that for the shelter so that you weren't up on the surface. At any rate, we dived into this air-raid shelter. It hit us without warning, and a Yank behind me hit the ... I knew what he did, he hit the corner and skinned himself on part of the thing. After the raid was over, they gave him a purple cross for being injured in action. But we knew what he did, he scratched it on the ... Us, you wouldn't get a thank you. But anyway, that was the Yanks.
Issues with the Repat system
Yeah, one bad accident I had was, I was Noyce's driver, and we had a ... I forget the name of the ship now. I keep thinking it was Channing but I know … The first one come into Oro Bay with a lot of equipment for us, and I'd taken Noyce out, and he was on board and I'm laying off. And they had a go at it, but they missed it. And the splashes blew us up in the water. We could see the pattern coming and the coxswain and myself, we dived for the engine room where it was.
I got there first, then he came with me and we got lifted up in the water, my chest got damaged. And I never took any notice, I would really ... But my chest got damaged, and I spent a bit of time in hospital with what they thought was, not dengue fever ... something they called it anyway.
But anyway, I went back on there and thought nothing of it. But it came against me later on. Well, then I went back to Balmoral, and I was transferred, and I can't think of the name of the ship. I got an idea it was Wilcannia. I was transferred to Wilcannia and I ... on there about five days and all of a sudden the radio operator, who I knew, received a message because I was still interested in radio. " Ask Stoker Abrahams to report immediately to Rushcutters Bay hospital immediately."
And I said, "What's all this about?" To ... I can't remember his name now. He said "I don't know," he said. Anyway, the officer on duty told me pack my gear, and I went ashore. What had happened was that when I came down from New Guinea, and I was in the depot, I went and got a medical check-up to make sure I had no more problems with malaria and other things I'd contracted up there.
What I didn't know was that that accident I had on the ship that I told you about, when it got damaged. I didn't realize any damage had been done. So, I went down, had the medical test, got married, came back, went to sea… got the signal, go to Rushcutters Bay, they said: "You've got TB." I said "what?" They said, "You got TB." I said, "Hang on a minute" I said, "Where did you get that?" Said, "That medical test we gave you when you came down." It took six or eight weeks to catch up to me. In the meantime, I'd gotten married and that's what they found. So, I spent round ... Naval wing hospital. I'm in there, married man. And then they decided I was no longer needed in the Navy. They discharged me in November, the 11th I think somewhere in November, the 11th.
And where I was on the equivalent of £14 a fortnight, I was on the equivalent. I was getting three-pound roughly, my wife was getting half of my wages, which was £3. And an allotment for being a wife was £8. So, I think that makes, 8, 6, 14. We're getting £14 a fortnight. When they discharged myself, I found I was on £2.10 a fortnight for all of us. So, I was kicked out of the services, on £2.10 a fortnight. As much as I complained at the RSL, parliamentarians "Oh no, we can't interfere."
To everyone like that. I finished up, eventually after six months, they put me up to £4.10, which was the TPI pension. I went onto a TPI pension. For £4.10, if you could try and manage a wife, a home on £4.10 a fortnight. It was only for my mother and people that lived in our street, that helped us, I'd have never got through. So, after I put up with that for a while, with TPI pension in those days, you were never allowed to work. Not with a TPI pension. So, I'd had enough of it and I think that lasted until about ... I lasted about another six months after that. That was six months to get the TPI, six months I had the TPI.
And I was studying all the time, which I was doing on the ship, for engineering. I was doing a technical college course, but I couldn't do it while I was in the hospital. And I went to the repat, and I had an interview, and I told them ... It was repatriation then, not veteran affairs. I said, "Look, I can't live on that." They said, "You definitely can't work with TPI" I said, "Well, take the TPI away." I reverted back to my £2.10. So, they took the TPI pension off me, I handed it in, and I went and did light work. And I could earn seven pound a week, part-time. I couldn't always do it cause my chest was playing up with me. So, I battled with that for quite a few years and then I found I could keep going, selected my light work. And I managed to go from then till 1980. In 1980 I couldn't work anymore I could never work full-time because my chest always played up with me. And I made application to veteran affairs to be reinstated to TPI.
They said, "No, you cannot be reinstated." And the appeal board scrubbed me. So, my minister, who was very active in the Christian world. He said, "I'll act as your advocate." Because I was never any good at putting my case forward. So, we had another set-up, and we went down to the appeals board, and they called me a malingerer. That's what they called me, a malingerer.
They said "No, he's malingering." Not only did they call me that, but their papers got mixed up with the papers they gave to my minister and here it is, in writing, "Mr Abrahams is a malingerer." And he pulled that paper out of his file, he said, "The good Lord had put this into my hands" he said "And this is what you're saying." he said, "I want to tell you that he's the best working person we have." Anyway, they ummed and ahhed and eventually, they granted me reinstatement.
So he said, "Just quickly, mathematically, if you got how much ... any idea how much Jack A-" They called me Jack Abrahams, “has saved the department?” He said, "All that time, not having the TPI pension?" That made them think, but they did call me a malingerer but anyway ... So I've had a couple of rough times with the Veteran Affairs plus with the Navy ... Well, I could have been entitled to that, but that's ... I don't hold any grudges. I'd still enlist if I was able.
