Living in holes
Div Headquarters was built about, oh, four mile out of town and it was built in a big escarpment the Italians had built like holes right into the escarpment and they moved into there they didn't live in town and we used to live out on the ground outside.
We went out on the flat and dug a hole that fitted the three of us, sort of thing, we dug the hole so we could stand up in in it but with the bags on the side so that if we got blown in, we wouldn't get covered, you know. Just dust, we covered it over, we'd pinch stuff and covered it over and put rugs and that over the top. We had to worry about tanks going across in case they took the wrong road at times, you know.
Being strafed
If you could hear aircraft you just diced your bike and looked for somewhere to hide for the moment. I remember Emmo, the sergeant, he got caught one day on the flat and the Italians built stone dykes.
I don't know what they were for but he was near one of them and he stepped off his bike and ran to this thing and he hid behind it and the German went past, had a shot at him, went up and turned to come back and Emmo was standing behind the thing and he just give him a wave and kept on going.
Dust storms
It was cold at night-time. Hot in the day, cold at night, naturally. Very seldom rained. Mostly dust storms. Dust storms used to see them building up and coming through. Where we were, we were camped only about 100 yards away from where headquarters were and when it came through you couldn't see where the mountain was, sort of thing
Message runs
The brigades would be within rifle shot of the German guns and we would travel to each one of those and deliver our messages to Brigade and then Brigade would take it over and look after it from there on.
When you finished your run you went and had a rest and so forth and if anything happened, they would send you out again with different runs. We had runs each day and then we had other runs which we'd take messages out if things cropped up, they had to send things out.
Stuka attack
You're talking about the first time we were bombed. We went back and we settled into Tobruk, this was before anybody had arrived and our blokes were all lying out with their cars lined up and dug in and all the rest of it and we had a tent set up and we were getting messages on this phone. Anyway, we're sitting there and these five Stukas came over and the first thing we knew they were coming screaming down on top of this tent that we were sitting in.
Outside we had holes dug and, that's right, up in the hills area there, it was that hard. If you had a shovel it was alright but if you didn't you couldn't dig because it was too hard and they dug little slit trenches about this deep, and I'm thinking that's alright, so we built them along like that and, then of course, one could lie here and one lie across here, sort of thing, and when I ran out there blokes beat me out and there was blokes filled up the trenches all around, so I dived in on top of one of the other blokes and I was still a bit above the floor, as these bombs were coming down they had these sirens on them, you know, they used to put the sirens on them and when they let the bomb go, in five seconds, 1 2 3 4 5 bang, you've got it, you know, and after it was all over, while it was on, I reckon every time a bomb hit I was going below ground because these blokes were going down into the hole, anyway, when we got up, we had a fella from Wolumla, down near Bega, and when we got up, he just lay down in the tent where we was, a big tall fella, and when we got up he just came wandering out of the tent. He didn't bother to run. He stayed where he was.
Artillery patterns
The Germans had an idea, when they were firing, they used to fire five, 1 2 3 4 5 and if they found anything, that was looking for something and then if they found it they would fire four and that was the pattern. 1 2 3 4 and one in the middle, so if you were quick enough to see the Germans, you knew where they were aiming for. They used to, particularly in Tobruk, they used to fire into the same area nearly all the time.
Swimming at the beach
In Tobruk, just as you go around Tobruk, going west, there was a nice beach and a nice wadi that ran down to it. We used to use it for going down there to have a swim and clean up and all the rest of it. We used to go down there often and the actual bank used to be, oh about as high as that, you know, where the wave used to come in.
I remember being there when they come down and bombed the harbour the day, we were there swimming and we lay against the side as they were going out and I remember the Stukas going out over past us and they never looked back, you know, they were only looking at what they were looking at as they were coming down but all our fellas were lined up in our nuddies
Stolen oranges
The English ships were from the Indian Squadron and they used to come in and they'd park, there used to be two or three of them and they would park out in the stream and in Tobruk itself they had a Scotch unit there and they, what would you call them, things that went out to pick stuff up when they brought stuff up, like a little boat, sort of thing, and we were down there one day because we knew they went out there and we went down there as despatch riders and asked if we could go out with them.
Anyway, when we went out there they had one boat with people, with wounded fellows in it which went round one side and the other one that we went in, went to the left hand side and they had all the stuff they were handing out for Tobruk, carrying stuff to hand out and I can remember this particular time they went out and they had boxes of oranges which we'd never seen, you know.
Anyway when we were coming up Joe and I went up the front and were talking to the fellas running the show there and Bob stopped at the back and when we come near enough he dropped one of these oranges onto a path as we were coming past and the funny part was we had a utility at a time, we'd just been and gone and got our utility and come back to the walkway and just had it parked in the cover doing the flaps up and a couple of officers came up and said "Hello, what are you fellas doing here?" And as it happened we had our white and blue scarves on.
They said "Oh, despatch riders, ok fellas, keep going". We had this box of oranges in the car, pinching stuff but when we got back to the camp, we had this box of oranges and when we left them in the camp you could smell them for miles. They lasted about two ups you couldn't keep them and hide them everybody could smell them.
Bully beef and biscuits
Bully beef and biscuits, yep, that was the main meal, yeah. They used to have a copper, a big copper, you know, and they used to mix the bully beef and different stuff that they had, anything to spare, they put it all in there and mix it up. The cooks would do that up like that, yeah, it was good.
Casualties
Alamein was a different kettle of fish, of course, but it was only short, it was only a short distance Alamein, like between the river and the sea and we were all stuck near the sea, the 9th Div. That was the main drive, of course. We had a lot of blokes killed at Alamein which we didn't have killed at Tobruk, too, as well.
Men overboard
The British ships they were that Viking class, one of the new ones, and when they went into action, along the side they had a…with a rope right through the top but when they went into action they used to let them down but when they had troops on, they brought them up and about seven or eight of our blokes were sick and they were able to lean on this rope and the rope broke and they went into the water and as it happened they stopped because the British normally don't stop because of the submarines and so forth but they stopped to pick these blokes up. We lost a couple of blokes there, that was coming back from Egypt, sort of thing.
Married on leave
When I went away, I had Mary and we didn't get married, we got engaged, I reckoned if I went away and anything happened that was just too bad. Anyway when I came home, I thought this is no good and the first leave I had back we got married before I went to Queensland.
Fatalism
Not till late in the war, in the first part, after you've been there a few years and it gets to the stage that it doesn't worry you because you reckon if you're going to get hit, you're going to get hit but in the first place, yes, you'd be worried about it and looking for a place to hide and that went right on, through there and Alamein, you know, until we got to New Guinea and that's where I got hit and that's the reason I got hit.
Wounded in action
When we come back we were sent to New Guinea for the attack on Lae and we were the only people who did a seaborne landing. We landed, like had the ships land on the beaches and all the rest of it, and after we landed we were carrying all the stuff going to, oh about, what, it must have been about 6 or 8 kilometres from Lae where we landed and we were carrying all the stuff going up to Lae and when we got up near Lae, by this time I was sergeant of the despatch riders and Lae you couldn't use your bikes there it was a matter of, if you wanted something sent a bloke out walking, you know, and at this stage the sent me with nine or ten fellas to help the fellas up at the attack on Lae and when I got up there they were sheltered with a, the Japs had a four barrelled pom-pom and we had a Boomerang that was going over across the top of the trees with different lights, you know, and when he was going past and when he'd go over the gunners would fire and he would tell them where it was landing and when they weren't shooting at the aircraft they'd be landing on the bank near us and a couple came in about from here to the window, you know.
The four barrels used to land in a heap and they were all those point five bombs, you know, and how stupid we were, the captain said to me "We've lost touch with the 20th Brigade, take some hemp and see if you can get in touch with them and get us in touch", see. I had Keith with me and we took this bag through it and I was walking in the front and he was at the back and the lake there, there was about five different lakes, the big lake was quite near Lae and the others were up to about your knees like, running through and we started off.
We walked out, you know, we walked into the first lake with nobody about. When it happened, there was this burst that landed about fifty yards up the river and we didn't take any notice, see, then another burst landed fifty yards down the river and then we woke up, the Japs must have had somebody sitting out the front, had it all measured up right to the centimetre and I said to Keith "Oh right in the middle". And it landed right on top of us. But anyone, the time I'd been in the army and all the rest of it, never thought about marching through the river and taking the stuff over to Brigade. Just waiting to get hit.
