Keith’s war of mud and blood

AS part of the general
World War II mobilisa
tion, I was called up for
Army service on Novem
ber 5, 1941.
At the time I was a young and
inexperienced 19-year-old country
boy sent, along with many others, to
do three months initial training at
Balcombe on the Mornington Penin
sula.
I was with an infantry unit raised
mainly from the Mildura area where
I previously had some signal training
with a local Volunteer Defence
Corps unit.
On December 7 1941 Japan
attacked Pearl Harbour and the rules
of engagement changed for all of us
for the duration of the war.
After six weeks of basic training
our unit was sent to build and man a
camp and defensive area at Dande
nong to ‘protect’ Melbourne.
At this time I was training in a
communications signal platoon to
be attached to the Headquarters
(HQ) Company.
In early February 1942, our unit –
the 7th Battalion Infantry – was
transferred to do garrison duty in
Darwin.
We were sent by train to Terowie
in South Australia, then loaded onto
the old, slow moving, narrow gauge
Ghan.
We were in the early Indian Fron
tier type carriages, 22 men to a car
riage, fed on bully beef and hard tack
biscuits, and sleeping on luggage
racks, seats or floors.
We amused ourselves by loading
stones on to the rear platforms at
stops and bombarding empty bot
tles on the trackside as we rolled
along at 30 miles per hour.
The couplings of the carriages
were so worn that there was 36 feet
of slack along the length of the train.
We hung on as it jerked into motion,
particularly when trying to shave,
wash or walk.
On the afternoon of February 19,
1942 we arrived at the Finke River,
south of Alice Springs to be told that
Darwin had just been blitzed by
Japanese bombers that morning. It
was panic stations from then on.
At the end of the train line at Alice
Springs we were transferred to
three tonne covered Army trucks
and rushed up the gravel roads to
Birdum.
We slept in the bush and drank
bore water which gave us all diar
rhoea.
As an imminent invasion was
feared following the first two air
raids, we were hastily sent to
Nunamah to camp 12 miles south of
Darwin.
Conditions in Darwin were
chaotic to say the least.
The shock and destruction of the
initial raid was severe and caused far
more loss of life then the 240 official
ly reported people.
On our way north we passed a
constant stream of civilian refugees
heading south by whatever means
possible.
Naturally we thought we were
going in the wrong direction.
No-one was prepared for this
major event and it showed how vul
nerable Australia was.
In our own case all our officers
were ex-World War I men in their
fifties.
Our junior officers and platoon
commanders were weekend CMF
soldiers, the rest were just con
scripts like myself with little to no
experience at all.
We were hopelessly untrained
and unprepared.
Had there been an invasion we
would have all been massacred.
Fortunately we soon had a new
NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer)
who urgently applied for trained offi
cers.
Our conditions in the wet season
were basic; the open tents were no
shelter against the heavy tropical
rain of the afternoon thunderstorms
and lightning.
Rations were light and our slit
trenches were often filled with rain
water.
In all there were 64 air raids on
Darwin in two years and we were
there for 60 of them.
They were aimed mainly at oil
tanks, shipping and airfirlds.
We could follow the flight of the
incoming formations overhead,
hoping all the time they missed us.
The civilian population at home
was unaware of these continuing air
raids and the damage caused.
Our supplies were terrible.
At one stage we had 27 consecu
tive meals of rice.
Once an American supply ship
needed to be unloaded and they
made the mistake of asking the
Aussies to do it.
Our meals made a dramatic
improvement almost immediately
afterwards.
Darwin was manned by a rotat
ing garrison system.
It was out of bounds to all other
troops not on duty there.
Those other units were posted to
guard other possible invasion areas.
We took part in mainly training
exercises where we could march 60
miles carrying full packs weighing
22 kilograms.
Some felt we had marched the
equivalent distance to walking
home.
Our wirelesses had a range of
five kilometres for voice communi
cation and 24 kilometres for Morse
code.
Our portable sets were state of
the art at that time.
The American air force sent P-40
Kittyhawk fighter planes to defend
us against the bombers, but they
were no match against the faster
Japanese Zero fighters which
guarded the bombers.
Later there were Australian pilots
defending us in P-40s but they were
always outnumbered.
Later they were replaced by the
more effective British and Australian
Spitfires.
At the end of 20 months in Dar
win our 7th Infantry Battalion was
trucked out south, this time on bitu
men roads, given home leave, then
posted to Queensland for jungle
training.
From there we were sent to Lae
in Papua New Guinea, which was a
swamp as it rained all the time.
From there we went up 3,000
feet to Wau in the highlands which
had regular earth tremors. Oh for a
bit of dry, stable land …
A few weeks later we were off to
the Solomon Islands.
Here we found out our wireless
es were useless in the damp and
dense jungle.
Instead we had to lay and use a
thin copper covered wire which we
left behind in the jungle.
My signal section saw action
along the Numa Numa Track in
Bougainville which was a narrow
muddy trail along a razorback ridge
topped with hilly knobs heavily
defended by the Japanese in
bunkers.
It meant close jungle fighting in
rain and mud and saw the dead and
wounded being brought back to
camp. Many of the men we knew.
One bright moonlit night at 3am I
was on signal duty at a forward
patrol base when I received a phone
call from the HQ Adjutant, Major
Jones, instructing me to go out from
my dugout (no-one slept above
ground) to find and inform the for
ward position patrol leader that the
Americans had dropped some sort
of super bomb on Japan that might
end the war. We were to sit tight and
await further instructions.
The patrol leader in turn asked
me to pass the orders on to the
artillery section.
These men had laboured all that
day to carry a mountain gun and six
heavy shells up the steep and rocky
ridges.
After receiving the news, the offi
cer got out a map, took a bearing on
the nearest Japanese position and
proceeded to fire all six shells.
There was no way they were
going to carry those shells back
down the ridge again.
We later found that the super
bomb was the atomic bomb
dropped on Hiroshima.
After the second bomb was
dropped the Japanese surrendered
and the war ended for all of us.
The army discharged the married
personnel first using a points sys
tem.
The rest of us in the battalion of
the 32nd Brigade served for another
eight months as a caretaker unit
guarding 26,000 Japanese surren
dered soldiers from all around the
South West Pacific region, awaiting
repatriation back to Japan.
After four and a half years away,
continuously serving in tropical
areas, in mostly difficult conditions I
was finally discharged on April 17,
1946.
I came home much older and
wiser, very happy to be a returned
soldier.