War breaks out
I was babysitting. I had the radio on. We knew there was a lot of trouble and he said, "And Australia is now at war." I thought, wow. I got so excited. I thought it was wonderful. Grabbed the baby and I ran all the way up to our house. Burst in through the front door and stopped. There was Dad and Mum. Dad's standing there and he's got his arms around Mum.
Mum's crying on his shoulder and he kept saying, "It's all right, Meg. It's okay. The war will be over by Christmas. Pat and Jim won't have to go." My two brothers and I thought Pat, Jim, at the war? No. All the excitement, there was nothing. It just drained away and I thought no I don't want that.
The war didn't finish. Went on and on. Pat went away and then Jim went away and I became an ambulance driver and that's how we saw the war out. It wasn't pretty. I don't ever want to see another one.
Enlisting in the AWAS
I heard about the AWAS, the Australian Women's Army Service and I thought, "I'd like to join up. I'd like to go, too." I wanted anti-aircraft. I wanted to shoot Japanese planes out of the sky. I thought, "How am I going to join up? Mum won't let me go. Dad always thinks I was so delicate because the way I was born."
My cousin was the same age as me and she said, "They've got a woman's army going." I said, "Yes." She said, "Nice to be in that." I said, "I'd like to go, too." She said, "How about we go down to Newcastle, catch the train? I've got enough money for both of us. We'll catch the train to Newcastle, we'll join up and then we'll tell Mum and Dad later."
I thought, "Good idea." We went down to Newcastle. The first thing he said was, "How old are you?" "We're 21." Because we knew we had to have the permission, see. He said, "I see. And where are your baptismal or your birth certificates?" "Oh."
He said, "Hmm. Strange how birth certificates all got burnt at one stage. A lot of them were burnt in fires." We thought he's giving us an out here, so I said, "Well that's what happened to ours." "Oh, righto." He signed us up.
Becoming a driver
After the Sigs came in I thought we'd be going back and finish our rookie course.
"No. We need staff. So you two, you can be cooks." They were two that joined up for changing ... They were dressmakers and they were going to work in the Q store altering uniforms and that sort of thing. No, they were cooks. "You two, can you drive?" "Well, yeah. I did have a license." "All right. You can be drivers. The rest of you? Well, let's see. One, two, three, four. We need four mess stewards. You four can be the mess stewards." This is how we started off.
We were just railroaded into it. So I worked in the mess for a fortnight and I hated it. God, I hated it and they had a new CO came in. Every now and again he'd come into the mess and he'd look at me. Then he'd stand at the door and he'd be staring at me and I thought, "What's wrong with him?"
So eventually he came in one day and he said, "Look, I'm sorry." He was a new Colonel. He said, "I'm sorry. I'm upsetting you a bit, I can see that. I'm just ... My daughter," he said. "She was killed. She was 18. She was killed a fortnight ago. You're the living image of her." He said, "Do you like what you do?" I said, "No, I hate it."
He said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I wanted anti-aircraft." "Oh, I can't do that," he said. "How would you like to be a driver?" I said, "I can't drive." I hadn't even sat in the car. He said, "I can fix that. Send you to a driving school, they'll teach you how to drive." He said, "I'll fix that for you.
Mixed company
We marched out of the unit. He called us in and he said, I've never forgotten his words. I'm 95 now and I can still remember. "You are the cream of Australian womanhood. You are the future mothers of Australia. Your health cannot be jeopardised by the roads in New Guinea."
He wouldn't let us go and so I was put into a pool of drivers. The first job I was only ... I hadn't been in the army ... By that time I'd only been in the army three months. The first job the male driver of a male unit where they did repairs to fences and huts and things like that. He'd broken his legs quite badly and they needed a temporary driver until they found another male driver, so they sent me out. They'd never had a female driver.
In between jobs they used to play cards, play poker or anything else and I didn't know what to do, so I just disappeared into the furthest corner of the hut. Got a book and just lay there and then they got a bit excited. They were playing poker and they got a little bit excited and one fella slammed his cards down. I heard him say, "Three Johnnies." Then the other fella threw his cards down and he said, "Six Tits." Then all of a sudden there was dead silence. They suddenly realized that I was sitting in the room. I didn't know what to do, so I just let out a gentle snort to let them know I was sound asleep and didn't hear them. That was the first thing.
Then the next thing they go out on a job. I said, "How long are you going to be?" They said, "Two hours." I said, "What do I do?" "Oh, do what you like." I said, "What?" I thought, "Well I'll just park in a nice shady spot and I'll have a little snooze. I had my cap on, I just pulled it down over my eyes and stuck my boots out the window. I heard steps coming along and then somebody tapped me on the boot. "Excuse me, driver. Where's the shit house." I pushed my cap, I said, "I beg your pardon?" "Oh Christ," he said, "A Sheila." He took off.
Japanese submarine attack on Newcastle
At the railway we met two sailors who were waiting to go to Sydney. And as you do, 18-year-old, we got talking and they said, "We've got to wait in this dirty, old railway station for two hours." I said, "Well," What was it? There's a beach not far from where the railway station was at Newcastle, only five minutes up the road.
I'd never seen the ocean in my life, brought up in a country town. So I said, "Why don't we walk up to the beach and just ... Better than standing here at the railway." The four of us walked up to the beach. Standing on the beach and I could hear this thud, thud. A funny noise. I was looking out at the ocean and I think, "God, all that water."
And I could see a light and every now and again it'd flash. I thought, "It can't be a light house, it's the middle of the ocean." So I said, the sailors were talking to Dorrie and they were all laughing and I said, "Excuse me, have a look out there. What's that light that keeps coming on every now and again?"
He looked and then all of a sudden he yelled out, "Christ, they're shelling the coast!" It was the mother sub that dropped those two subs in Sydney Harbour. This was the mother submarine. They were getting their range, I think, and that was the thuds. There were dud shells on the beach.
They took out the shop front behind where we were standing and I'm standing there thinking, "God, I've only been in the army half an hour and they're bloody well shooting at me already?" Anyway, we couldn't get home that night. The lights were still on. There were no sirens. We weren't ready. The sailors raised the alarm and then the sirens went, the lights went out and we had to get the police to notify Mum and Dad. That was awful. We had to stay in Newcastle that night.
Army rations
Well we had lots of stews and we had ... we didn't get things like steak or roast or anything like that. We got sausages and we got stew. We had more sausages and we had more stew. I think that's all we had. Mashed potatoes.
Yeah, we had ... I could remember, see my mother never referred to lollies. They weren't lollies, they were sweets. We never called them anything else but sweets and at Christmas we always got our little bag of sweeties as mum called it.
When I first joined the army, one of the girls was saying that came in, I was the last one in the mess. She came in and she said, "Are you finished, Pat? Are you coming out now?" I said, "Yeah I suppose so." She said, "Have you had your sweets?" I said, "Oh you get sweets, too. Great." I'm waiting for my lollies, for sweets. We had banana and custard. Oh that's right we did get banana and custard but I was waiting for my lollies. I felt so stupid.
Returning POWs
Apart from that, I think the worst time I had in the army was when the POWs were coming back. We got the first lot of stretcher cases out. They all the same, their eyes were sunken in. Their faces were ... and they had new uniforms.
My brother, Jim, was just under five stone when he came back and he was six foot tall. He looked like a scarecrow with a new uniform on him. It just hung on him because no matter how small they were, it still wouldn't fit them. They had nothing. They had no flesh. They had bones.
Anyway, the stretcher cases came and I took off. We went to two hospitals in Sydney. You get about a mile down the road and there'd be a whole heap of people all standing across the road. "Are you going to the hospital? Did you come from the R.N.?" I said, "Yeah. Could we find out if there's anybody that knows so and so?" I'm in the back of the ambulance and they’re yelling out, "Do you know this one? This one?"
They're calling out names after names and everybody was trying to get their call first. The poor people in the back of the ambulance, they could hardly ... they were just lying there like skeletons. Then they threw in flowers, cigarettes, and chocolates. That happened three times before I even got to the hospital. The time I got there I was crying so much I could hardly drive.
We carried everything off. There was a lot of TB patients, very badly off with TB. We used to take the end of the stretcher, help them out and then go back in the ambulance, go and pick the next one up. There was no such thing as booties and masks and what have you but it was terrible.
Sorrow and celebration
I drove over to the post office and the post office was in a little shop and it was all this fruit in the window. Everybody was excited and they all told, "The war's finished."
There was a woman staring at the fruit and I walked over to her and I said, "Did you hear that? The war is over, it's finished." She just turned around and she said, "My two sons were killed in Tobruk. It will never be over for me." I thought "Oh, dear". I felt terrible then.
But when I got back to camp, oh God the whole camp was up. But we danced and sang right through the night until daylight. It was great.
Family Reunion
Then I had to go out to Ingleburn because Jim was one of the walking ones, even though he was skin and bones. He went out to Ingleburn and all the thousands of people at Ingleburn. Everywhere you went there were about five people trying to get their arms around one soldier. Mothers, fathers, uncles, and children. They were all crying.
I'd gone through enough carting those people back and forth to the hospitals. At the time I got up to see Jim I'm crying my eyes out. I would've walked straight past Jim, I wouldn't even have known him. And poor Sonny, our baby Sonny. He was trying to talk to Jim and he kept pulling Jim's sleeve saying, "Jim, Jim." Jim turned around. He got really angry and he said, "Piss off, mate. Family only." Sonny said, "Jim, I'm Sonny." Jim said, "You can't be Sonny. Sonny's only that high." Sonny had shot up.
Missing in action
Sonny, he was very upset when the war ended because he wasn't old enough to go like his brothers. He wanted to be like Pat and Jim and go into the army and go to war but he was too young when the war ended. But Korea started and Sonny was old enough then and he joined the AIF and he went to Korea.
We never knew what happened until we got the citation. What happened with Sonny, as I said, is just over there. Mum was terribly upset about Sonny. Recurring nightmares all the time. Mum had almost the same nightmare. One was where she was in a jungle and she was running to tree to tree looking behind her, hoping that she would find Sonny. We didn't hear anymore. They're still looking you know.
