Horace Young
1815
HMAS Goolgwai
HMAS Gerard
HMAS Swan
HMAS Assault
Operation Jaywick
Flinders Island
HMAS Yandra

Tape 1
01:00:40:10

Q: Start by giving us a summary of your life.

A: I was born in Perth in Western

01:01:00:00
Australia on the 11th of April 1921. I was educated at Perth Boys' High School. I joined the Postmaster General's Department when I was 14 years of age. It was the height of the Depression and it wasn't possible to go on for further education because of financial constraints. I applied

01:01:30:00
to the Postmaster General's Department position as telegraph messenger and succeeded in passing their entrance exam; commenced work with them at 19 and sixpence halfpenny per fortnight. I don't know why the halfpenny, but that was the salary they paid me. I went through a period of training with the Postmaster General's Department. In those days everybody

01:02:00:00
had to learn Morse code. I was one of them. Sent to a country post office down in a place called Pemberton a year or so after I joined the PMG [Postmaster General]. Stayed down there for about 18 months. Had a fairly busy time. As a kid of barely 15 or so I had to work the Morse line, the telegraph line, whilst the postmaster stood in front of the fire. It was a cold place,

01:02:30:00
Pemberton, had to light a huge fire first thing; that was the first job, 6:30 in the morning. Then I used to have to man a 48-line switchboard. I had a draw on the counter for stamps, postal notes and all those sorts of things. I was a general factotum sort of thing and delivering telegrams. My day was from about 6:30 in the morning till about 6:30 at night. I had a short break during the middle of the day.

01:03:00:00
From there I came back to the telegraph office in Perth. I was in the operating room there for a while and by this time I'd become interested in crystal sets, like most children of my age, and started playing around with radio. I also joined the Royal Australian

01:03:30:00
Naval Reserve as a cadet. I wasn't old enough to be a fully-fledged naval reservist. Because I had been fully trained as a telegraphist, the navy were quite happy to take me on board as a cadet. I became besotted with the navy. I wanted to join the permanent navy. My folks wouldn't agree because in those days getting a government job was like winning the lottery. So

01:04:00:00
they were quite happy for me to stay as a naval reservist and I did so until I migrated to Sydney. My family came over to Sydney about 1937 time. I transferred over from the post office and I joined the radio branch of the post office as it was then, as a very, very lowly junior assistant.

01:04:30:00
Still remained as a naval cadet until I was 18. When the war started 3rd of September 1939 I was asked to leave my position with the PMG Department and I was mobilised into the Royal Australian Navy as a telegraphist. There I stayed

01:05:00:00
through the usual induction courses the navy had at that time. I suppose about 3 months after the war started, about the late October/November, they drafted me to a minesweeper called the [HMAS] Goolgwai. The minesweepers in those days were deep-sea trawlers

01:05:30:00
with facilities onboard for streaming paravanes for minesweeping and they were ideally suited for quick conversion to a minesweeper. I was posted to Goolgwai with a small group of naval Perth gunnery fellows and signalmen and there I stayed

01:06:00:00
minesweeping off the Australian coast for I suppose about 12 or 18 months. Then I think I had a short spell in the hospital at Randwick. When I came out of there, they posted me to the examination service on HMAS Gerard. I was examining merchant ships entering port. Then down to

01:06:30:00
Flinders Naval Depot for what they call a WT3 [Wireless Telegraphy] course, it's a course that ultimately leads to leading hand, similar to a corporal in the army. After I finished the course there I came out as a WT3 and I was posted to Garden Island standing by a corvette called HMAS Geraldton. It was fitting out up

01:07:00:00
in Cockatoo Docks. In the meantime I spent my working days at the wireless station. The navy had a very large wireless station on Garden Island. I was watch-keeping at that stage until I got a call for a crash draft to HMAS Swan. Apparently the leading telegraphist on the Swan had taken ill and I

01:07:30:00
had to take his place. Away I went on HMAS Swan and it was convoying to Papua New Guinea and that general area. I became ill on Swan with infected tonsils. I was pretty seasick all the time. They decided that I should get rid of these tonsils so HMAS Colac was travelling south from

01:08:00:00
Port Moresby. They transferred me over in the middle of the Coral Sea onto HMAS Colac. I finished up again in Randwick Military Hospital. Had these infected tonsils removed. Then I was posted to the combined operations people. This was the land-sea-air warfare that was just being set up. I think Lord Louis Mountbatten was the

01:08:30:00
father of it. They established a base up at Port Stephens, which they called HMAS Assault. I was posted out as, I think they called themselves beach commandos. I have a bit of a smile when I think of it now compared to the special operations people in Services Reconnaissance Department. I was off to HMAS Assault and I had a group of

01:09:00:00
very, very young telegraphists. I think they were only about 17 or 18. I think some of them should have been still at school. They were a pretty wild, lively bunch. That was my group of radio operators. I think I was posted to the second or third wave Red Beach; I think was my posting.

01:09:30:00
The idea was that we had a medium size radio station; I suppose one would call it batteries on one carrier, transmitter receiver on another, and required four telegraphists to carry the thing. They would put us in these invasion barges and were exercising from about 3-4 in the morning til about 6 o'clock at night.

01:10:00:00
Running into the beach from these barges and setting up. Whilst I was there it wasn't a particularly pleasant job. These barges had young American coxswains driving them at the time. They had the happy

01:10:30:00
knack of putting these barges where they said on the beach, they dropped the front flap and said, "Away you go" but you weren't on the beach at all. You were often on a shoal. They called it Shoal Bay up there. These characters used to put it on the shoal and say, "Away you go": drop the flap and you jump off the front of it and you'd be up to your neck with water.

01:11:00:00
Whilst I was at HMAS Assault a very strange character came, Lieutenant Davidson, an RN [Royal Navy] fellow [Lieutenant D. M. N. Davidson, Royal Naval Reserve]. He was a green striper, which is special service, wearing jungle boots. Looking rather quaint compared to the rest of the navy people. He had with him a small group of sailors

01:11:30:00
similarly clad in jungle boots, navy hats and khaki military green shirts. They had a leading telegraphist with them and we virtually swapped drafts. He asked me whether I'd swap drafts with him. I asked him where he was going. "A small ship up in the islands to browse around." My assault ship was [HMAS] Kanimbla

01:12:00:00
heading for the Balikpapan landings. He was very keen to change drafts. There was an episode that pushed me into change over to his Services Reconnaissance Department and I volunteered for that after being checked for security and all this sort of thing. Donald Davidson called me in and said, "Well, Leading Telegraphist Young, you've now joined

01:12:30:00
Services Reconnaissance Department and they'll pay you 50% over your base rate of pay while you work with us." Next thing I'm on a train heading for Cairns to a very strange looking house called House on the Hill. It was called Z Experimental Station. That's where the Special Forces people were,

01:13:00:00
one of their forward bases. From there I was introduced to my next seagoing vessel, which was the motor vessel Krait. That was a shock to the system seeing that. From there Operation Jaywick was being formed. We started, after a lot of preliminary

01:13:30:00
training in the Hawkesbury River area here, very close to where we are now. Operation Jaywick completed. We came back to Exmouth Gulf and Davidson went off for his debriefings and Page [Captain R. C. Page Australian Imperial Force (AIF)] went off to marry his fianc?. Patty Morris [Corporal R. G. Morris, AIF], who had a wound in his foot, went to have that patched up. Davidson said, "You'll have to

01:14:00:00
stay here till we get back." A couple of weeks he was away. When he came back he said, "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that you're going on 6 weeks' leave, but you first of all gotta take Krait to Darwin and hand her over to a group of people called the Lugger Maintenance Patrol." They were in Timor and some of these other places where we had people on. The bad news was they knocked

01:14:30:00
off our 50% money. That didn't go down well. He said, "Don't worry about it, it's only a hiccup. By the time you come back, it'll all be fixed up and restored." Never was restored. So I was not very happy about that, so I finished up. We went up to Darwin, handed the vessel over to the Lugger Maintenance people

01:15:00:00
after our leave and then shipped off to the Fraser Island where the reconnaissance department had set up a big camp for Z Special Unit people. It was a multi-national thing for training people in the type of warfare that special reconnaissance was engaged in. You name it, they were into all the dirty tricks.

01:15:30:00
I eventually felt, we'd have a handshake agreement on this 50% above our base pay. I thought that was binding. My first child had arrived. My eldest son arrived the day we left Exmouth Gulf to go onto Operation Jaywick. I was on 8 shillings a day and another 4 bob a day was 12 bob a day.

01:16:00:00
It was very useful as a young family. So when they wouldn't pay us the money when we came home I said, "I'll have to go back into general service." I couldn't get any promotion or anything like that whilst I was with SRD [Services Reconnaissance Department] cos it was primarily a non-navy turnout. There were navy people there, but the reconnaissance people were army. After a few attempts to get out,

01:16:30:00
I was able to get somebody to listen to my application. I returned to general service. I finished up going to a ship called HMAS Yanderra where I stayed until the end of the war and paid off from her in 1945 I think it was. After a period of

01:17:00:00
leave, back to the Postmaster General's Department radio branch. There I gained a fair bit of experience one way or the other technically and I was given the position of assistant radio inspector. The job there was chasing complaints from the general public about interference with their radio reception, powerlines and domestic appliances and things like that. Used to have to fit suppressors on them

01:17:30:00
to clean the noise out of them. I progressed a fair bit. I went back to school and did study. Eventually I progressed up the ladder through the radio branch and I went to Papua New Guinea with my family about 1956 as the district radio inspector for the whole of Papua New Guinea. My job was to establish

01:18:00:00
the radio inspection type of thing for the Papua New Guinea administration and also to set up a frequency monitoring station. There were good reasons as to why that had to be put in. After about 2 1/2 years in Papua New Guinea, they offered me a secondment to Kuching. I had two of my children at school and I turned that

01:18:30:00
one down and came back to Australia. I was offered a job in Hong Kong with the British administration. I said, "Yes". My daughter, my youngest child, decided to get married, so I turned that down. No use going to Hong Kong and have to come back to a wedding. So we finished up

01:19:00:00
going down, coincidental of that, my chief in the Postmaster General's Central Administration in Melbourne retired and they asked me would I go down and take his job on, and I went down there as chief inspector of wireless down in post office headquarters. From there I was appointed deputy assistant director general in the radio regulatory section. With the break-up of the

01:19:30:00
PMG Department into the Telecom Commission and Postal Commission, they created a new department of state, which was Department of Post and Telegraph; secretary chief man. I became an assistant secretary in that department until I retired. From then I was having a little bit of heart trouble. Fair bit. The medical people felt that I should

01:20:00:00
take an earlier retirement, which I took eventually and came up to the central coast of New South Wales to Ettalong, Woy Woy and that general area. I stayed in the same area every since.

01:20:30:00

Q: What was your father's job?

A: He was a foreman boilermaker in Midland Junction Railway Workshop. With the Depression all those people were put off. He had to finish up doing relief work. Those days, if they

01:21:00:00
were out of work they received a small amount of sustenance like tea, sugar, bread and stuff like that, and a day or two a week if they were lucky they could work on roads. They were very, very hard times. Many a day we never saw much of decent tucker. It was always bread and dripping.

01:21:30:00
Kangaroo tails were on the menu quite a bit cos there was plenty of them. My father used to bring home a few kangaroo tails. It was rather a red-letter day. Usually some fish and chips went with it, which was highly sought after. He never really

01:22:00:00
recovered from the Depression days. He came across the eastern states to try and get a job on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He was a very, very good tradesman. He made a lot of his own tools. I remember him hand-beating a set of copper saucepans by hand out of sheet metal. They were absolutely perfect. A remarkably good tradesman.

01:22:30:00
He couldn't get a job anywhere in the eastern states. He was unhappy I think. The upshot was it created a few family problems and my mother and he parted. My mother, sister and myself came over to the eastern states and set up shop over here.

01:23:00:00

Q: Had your father served in World War 1?

A: No, he was turned down. He was born in Canada. In those days we didn't go too much into family trees like we have here. He had some problem with that; he was rejected. If your feet weren't

01:23:30:00
proper or flat or something or other they wouldn't take you on. He was rubber out there and didn't go to World War 1.

Q: What was Perth like in those days?

A: Much like a country town. Probably something like Newcastle. It was a very clean place. I had

01:24:00:00
generally speaking, whilst the childhood wasn't marvellous because of what I've just explained, the shortage of food and entertainment and the things children enjoy today was nowhere to be seen in my time, but we struggled along OK. Perth was a very, very pretty place especially in the wildflower season. I remember

01:24:30:00
I used to ride my bike as a messenger down at Pemberton; I used to go out with a couple of the lads. Just outside the town there were huge fields of brown Boronia. They were actually shoulder high. You'd wade through these things. You could smell it miles before you got to it. Gather up great

01:25:00:00
heaps, bring it home and distribute it around the place. Nothing too much startling in the childhood side of things.

Q: How did your mum cope with the lack of money?

A: I somehow feel that the ladies of those days were quite remarkable in the way they could create a meal virtually out of fresh air.

01:25:30:00
My mother was a fairly good cook as most mothers were I think in those days. That was the primary role, cooking and cleaning and rearing children. She used to make ends meet. I often wonder how she ever managed to handle things. There was always something to eat. It mightn't be too marvellous, but we survived OK on it.

01:26:00:00

Q: What did you do for fun as a boy?

A: Most boys in those days used to play marbles and big ring and little ring and all that sort of thing. We used to play with buttons. Some of the smart kids used to cheat by putting the buttons. The idea was that you had to pick a button up with a finger. If you could get it up,

01:26:30:00
you retained that button. Buttons are not always easy, particularly mother of pearl buttons. So some of the smarties used to rub their finger in the gum of a tree and it'd rub off; a bit of cheating. We had tops and we used to bolt tyres. We had hoops with a wire thing that we used to run around the place with. Play cowboys and Indians and all

01:27:00:00
that. I don't know whether kids play that now. That's the way we used to fill our time in. School was?there was always plenty of homework from school, so that used to take a fair bit of our spare time.

Q: Where did you go to school?

A: I started off at the infant school in St James in James Street. Then

01:27:30:00
it only went up to certain grades and we had to go to Highgate Hill, which was a little bit further away from where I was living, but we used to have to walk there a couple of miles. When I did 6th class I had to go to James Street High School and

01:28:00:00
there I stayed until I departed to enter the post office.

Q: What did you have as treats? You mentioned fish and chips.

A: During the Depression

01:28:30:00
I can remember there were soup kitchens and as kids you could go along and get a bowl of soup. They were free. Christmas time was grim because there was no money to buy toys or anything like that. My father used to make most of ours. He made a magnificent replica of a locomotive

01:29:00:00
all out of cheap metal. It was a pretty fancy piece of work. Then mothers used to make dolls for the girls and gollywogs and things like that. I remember I started selling papers. I did a few things to get a few extra dollars.

01:29:30:00
Before my voice broke, I used to do a bit of singing. I used to do a bit of Shakespeare. Everybody seemed to have a thing for tap dancing. I used to have a flare for that so we used to do a bit of Shakespeare and sing a song. I'd get a week's work at the Luxor Theatre, which was a vaudeville show. I'd get a pound for that week. That was very useful. My mother wouldn't even afford the price to go in to see me act.

01:30:00:00
That's how grim things were. Used to have to peek through a hole in the door. Then she started taking washing and ironing for the Bank of New South Wales. She used to boil these things up in a copper. Outside coppers were all the go in those days. She used the outside copper and stoked it up with black boy,

01:30:30:00
fairly fast burning thing. She used to get these tablecloths from the dining room at the bank. I never saw the dining room except for taking the things back to the lady who was looking after it. It was a pretty elaborate dining room. They did pretty well the bank people. Then

01:31:00:00
I got a job selling newspapers for the Daily Mirror in St George's Terrace. They gave me a stand on the corner of Howard Street and St George's Terrace. St George's Terrace is a pretty busy street. There were a lot of professional offices around there. I wasn't a very big kid at the time; I was a bit on the small side and rather lean

01:31:30:00
and hungry-looking. A lot of the solicitors around there used to give me a few sandwiches and things like that to fatten me up and keep me going. They were very kind to me in a few ways. So I sold papers there and did fairly well. So much so that I finished up employing two boys. The Turnbull brothers was their name.

01:32:00:00
I had the top end of Howard Street. Howard Street runs from St George's Terrace to the Esplanade so I parked these two employees at the bottom of Howard Street on the Esplanade. They were a bit slow. This is not much chop. As a paperboy you had to leap on trams and buses and run in between motorcars. You couldn't afford to be,

01:32:30:00
you had to get a sale. These kids were standing around like dummies so I finished up firing them. Nevertheless, I did sell papers for quite a while. I used to collect bottles. Every kid collected bottles. The flat oval-shaped wine bottles were worth four pence each. They were real big prize. Chaff bags used to fetch a similar price from

01:33:00:00
Sar [?] and Cooks, the produce people in Perth. So anything where there was a bit of dough to be paid. Everyone had to do this sort of thing. There was nothing unusual about it. When Dad would come home on Friday night with his bag of kangaroo tails, he had some fish and chips he'd buy from the local fish and chip shop and

01:33:30:00
that was really a red-letter day when they arrived. We didn't have refrigerators in those days. He devised what they called a Coolgardie safe. It was a metal frame thing that was riveted and covered with hessian. It had a water tray on the bottom and the top. The water used to drip from the top through the hessian down to the bottom.

01:34:00:00
It'd keep things reasonably cool. It was quite remarkable. I don't know whether he invented these things, but I know he used to make them. That was the refrigeration side of things. We were able to keep the roo [kangaroo] tails for a while because they had to be disposed of. Not much was thrown out.

01:34:30:00

Q: Where did you learn your singing and dancing from?

A: My mother used to play the piano. She wasn't a bad pianist either. In those days the Sunday nights around the piano were a ritual. My sister had a fairly good singing voice.

01:35:00:00
We all used to do a bit of dog howling around the piano on a Sunday night. Somewhere along the track, I was asked to go into a pantomime. A lady, Lucy Peters was her name, her and her husband used to run a dancing school. They used to teach all manner of dancing: ballet, but particularly tap dancing.

01:35:30:00
They conned my mother into letting me take some lessons with them. I guess that's how it kicked off.

Q: What was your act at the Luxor Theatre?

A: Usually a bit of an introduction song; something that

01:36:00:00
could be jazzed up a bit and do a bit of tap dancing after you finished your song. Bow out and away you go. I think that was really, but I, like most boys when their voices break, they're a boy soprano one day and they're a frog the next day.

01:36:30:00
That was the end of my vaudeville career. I did get quite a few engagements at the Luxor Theatre. It's long since gone now, but it was a scene of many interesting episodes I can tell you.

Q: Where did you pick the newspapers up from to sell?

A: There was a chap that was in charge

01:37:00:00
of the circulation. He had a big Desoto Tourer, quite a nice looking car in those days; big lump of a thing. He used to deliver the papers. You go to your stand. When you kicked off, you may take 50 papers or something like that with you under your arm, head off to your stand and then he would keep you stocked up. He would

01:37:30:00
stop his car, "How are you going? You want some more? OK." He'd keep you supplied. We used to work till about 8 o'clock at night I suppose. Say from about 4 o'clock till about 8 o'clock at night. Then we used to have to go home and do homework and get ready for school the next day.

Q: You were a sharp sales boy?

A: I'm not too sure.

01:38:00:00
I didn't go too badly in the newspaper business. Wasn't too bad.

Q: You left school at 14?

A: Yes. It would have been 14.

Q: Why?

A: There was no money available. Dad was out of work. They didn't

01:38:30:00
pay them the sort of money they pay them nowadays. Somebody had to get some dough. I stole down to the post office and asked them was there any chance of a job. They said, "Fill this form in" or something like that and the next thing I know I had to sit for this examination. They started me off as a temporary and at the

01:39:00:00
public service examination was held in the December. I was a bit lucky. I wasn't a bad scholar I suppose. I had a mother that used to stand over me and make me do my homework; do the proof reading of the compositions. I was lucky enough. Many were called but few were chosen for that. They used to get hundreds of kids. They only used to take

01:39:30:00
20 or 30 of them. Might take a few more later in the year, but I was lucky to get in amongst the mob. That's the way it went.

Q: Your family must have been happy when you got the job.

A: My mother was ecstatic. I always remember the Australian

01:40:00:00
Naval Squadron came to Fremantle for a visit and was thrown open to the public. I went down, "I'm gonna join the navy." My parents were horrified, "You just got a good government job and that's where you're gonna stay." That was it.


Horace Young
1815
Tape 2

02:00:35:00

Q: You decided to join the naval reserve against your family's wishes?

A: Very much so. I was too young. I'd have had to have gone in as a cadet anyway. Hadn't reached the age of 18 and my parents wouldn't sign the papers. They said, "You can be a cadet reservist and

02:01:00:00
be content with that. Stay with the public service."

Q: Tell us about your decision to join the naval reserve later on.

A: Even though I was a cadet, I had joined the naval reserves when I was

02:01:30:00
15. Then when we transferred over to the eastern states, I transferred over with the post office and with the navy as well. So I still remained as a reservist. When I turned 18, I became a fully-fledged naval reservist. I was a cadet no longer.

Q: As a cadet, what training did you do?

A: We used to have to go out to Swanbourne rifle range

02:02:00:00
and we used to do a fair bit of shooting with rifles. Even if I was a telegraphist there was still the basic training that has to be gone through. Then we used to have to do sailing. The navy had whalers and cutters and things like that, which we could take out at any time over the weekend and we used to sail around Garden Island

02:02:30:00
and get terribly seasick. Then we used to have to do our standard Morse exercises, which fortunately, because I had been taught by the post office, I didn't find that much of a strain at all. I think I was regarded as being a reasonable sort of

02:03:00:00
telegraphist, so much so that I used to do the sending from the boats to the rest of the troops.

Q: What was involved in being in the radio branch at the post office?

A: When I went back into the radio branch I eventually

02:03:30:00
was appointed as an assistant radio inspector. My primary job was attending to complaints from the general public. Back in those days, you had to pay a wireless licence. About a pound a year or something to listen to your broadcast radio. Because of that, if you couldn't hear your radio programs you could go to the post office ad get a questionnaire and fill it

02:04:00:00
in and then a radio inspector would come out to see what your complaint was about. He would normally ask you to demonstrate your interference you were complaining about. If they were able to demonstrate that interference to the visiting inspector, he would go out with instruments and trace out where it was coming from. Then he would interview the person who was causing the interference and explain that they were interfering with the radio and

02:04:30:00
advise them on suppression methods, how to filter the interference out. Hopefully everybody would go away and live happily every after. Sometimes it didn't work out because you had strange people that used to hear things that they thought were coming out of their radio, but weren't. Some people are

02:05:00:00
a little bit, well, they imagine things. They were very difficult to convince because they were hearing things that we couldn't hear. Trying to tell somebody that they're imagining that they're hearing noises is not easy. I had some very unhappy moments in my time. I was pleased to get outside the

02:05:30:00
door. That was one side of it. The radio branch was responsible for a number of things. It used to inspect the radio installations on merchant ships on behalf of the department of navigation because we had the experts that were involved in that field. We would go aboard merchant ships and check all the

02:06:00:00
main wireless installations on the ship and the emergency equipment, lifeboat equipment, their DF [Direction Finder], all that sort of gear had to be inspected under the Merchant Shipping Act. It was the radio regulations that applied to the safety of life at sea. Those were the things that had to be looked at. That fell to our people because we had the experts to do the work,

02:06:30:00
whereas the Department of Navigation had ship masters and surveyors to check on ships' hulls and things like that and lifeboat equipment, but they didn't have the technical people to do the radio side. Then we used to look after all the examinations, the certificates of proficiency. There was a first class, second class,

02:07:00:00
third class certificate and broadcast operators. All those qualifications fell within our province. We were examining people to be issued those qualifications. In other words, before a technician could be employed in the broadcast station, he had to have a broadcast certificate of proficiency and a pretty solid technical examination too. The same with the first class certificate. That entailed a telegraph test,

02:07:30:00
25 words a minute Morse and also radio regulation paper and electro-technology paper. A practical examination on all the equipment then a traffic-handling test where you had to set up two ships and send telegrams. There was a fair bit to it. You had to have those certificates before you could go to sea as a radio officer on a ship. That was another one of

02:08:00:00
our responsibilities. There were illegal radios that were causing strife. They had to be chased down. They'd be prosecuted under the Wireless Telegraphy Act operating unlicensed radio equipment. It was jail or a thousand pound fine. Penalties were exalted.

Q: What kind of

02:08:30:00
people had the illegal radios?

A: A lot of them were high school kids that liked to dabble with the radio particularly when the citizens' band opened up. That was the big problem that we had to deal with. Kids were buying these CBs [Citizens' Band] and talking to each other. Some of the equipment that was coming into the country was pretty

02:09:00:00
ordinary stuff technically. Some of it had capability of causing interference to other services like aeronautical services and shipping services, particularly to broadcasting television services. That's where a lot of our complaints used to come from. A lady would ring up and say, "I can't watch my TV [Television], I've got a hearing pattern on the screen." You know straight away that it'd be a CB somewhere.

02:09:30:00
They were a bit of a problem.

Q: How old were you when war broke out?

A: I was 18.

Q: You were a fully-fledged member of the navy reserve?

A: Yes. I turned 18 on the 11th of April 1939 and I was mobilised on the 3rd of September. We had to go to a drill the week before, the war started

02:10:00:00
on the Sunday, and we had to go to a drill at Rushcutters Bay that week. I remember the naval fellow in charge, Lieutenant-Commander Shaw. He was a permanent service fellow. He said, "War is imminent," this is the Tuesday before the Sunday, "When the war is declared you must

02:10:30:00
get a telegram from us and you must leave your place of employment immediately. There's no ifs or buts. When you get that telegram, you must leave your place of employment and report to Rushcutters Bay." I think I got my telegram the day before, on the Saturday or something like that. We never used to work on Saturdays or Sundays. I

02:11:00:00
had to ring somebody up and say, "I won't be in to work on Monday, because I've gotta go into the navy." Everybody anticipated it, so it was no surprise.

Q: What were your thoughts on being drafted?

A: I thought it was very good; a bit of adventure. I didn't see anything wrong with it at all. I thought it was pretty good.

02:11:30:00
I didn't have too many complaints.

Q: What were you doing in the navy initially?

A: I went to sea almost?I'd only been mobilised a couple of months and 'bang' off I went to sea on this minesweeper with all these characters that had been taken over with the ship. They were merchant service fellows, fishermen; they were a rough lot too.

02:12:00:00
Trawlers, they're not too clean. They were awful special about having showers every day and things like that. And the crew's quarters were very, very confined. They almost sleep on top of each other. The living quarters were very smelly. If you're a bit squeamish in the stomach, because these trawlers would rock on a dewy lawn, they were so

02:12:30:00
terribly rough sailing on. My induction into the sea-going side of the navy, I always had stars in my eyes, the glamorous big cruisers, destroyers and things, but it didn't happen.

Q: Were you working as a telegraphist?

A: Yeah.

02:13:00:00

Q: What training did the navy give you as a telegraphist?

A: They didn't have to give me much at all. I had far better training from the post office telegraphist school. Although I was using a sounder in the post office and the buzzer style of thing, the musical tone that you mostly hear of, is a lot easier to read than the sounder. I'd been

02:13:30:00
brought up on the sounder, so the other was no trouble to me at all, plus I had my ham station. I got my amateur licence when I was 17 years of age. I passed the exam for the telegraphy post efficiency and I'd already built a transceiver unit. So I was well and truly into communication by the time I was mobilised. So I was a ready-made product

02:14:00:00
for the navy.

Q: Where were you based at the beginning of the war?

A: Our base was at Rushcutters Bay. That was the big naval base there. When we went to sea I suppose Sydney would be our base when we returned from our minesweeping operations.

Q: Did you live at Rushcutters Bay?

A: No, I didn't. I lived in Petersham actually.

02:14:30:00
My family lived in Petersham. I used to catch a train from Petersham down to Rushcutters Bay. The navy gave you a little tram ticket so you didn't have to use your own money.

Q: You must have been horrified when you saw the trawler.

A: It was a bit of a disappointment. Still, I suppose it's a ship. Something different.

02:15:00:00
A little bit of adventure. The crew weren't exactly what I would have regarded as navy crew. They were very rough characters. They were taken over when the navy took the trawler over. Put the skipper over and gave him a commissioned

02:15:30:00
warrant rank. The rest of the fishermen were made AB [Able Seamen]. They were wonderful sailors, but that's about it.

Q: How many crew?

A: I'd have to be relying on memory. I'd say about 20.

02:16:00:00
It's a very small crew.

Q: Tell us about your first operation.

A: You mean going to sea? I don't know whether, I know I'd be violently seasick. I wasn't the world's best sailor. I suffered from a bit of inner ear trouble. These perpetually bouncing small ships. They're only 230 tons. Very, very

02:16:30:00
rough seas. In those days you did a fair bit of listening. You had to do normal watch keeping, special watch keeping laid down for the telegraphists. You were only allowed to use the telegraph key under pain of death. You've gotta keep WT [Wireless Transmission] silence under

02:17:00:00
all circumstances. So the only time you'd be permitted to use the transmitter would be if you happened to sight an enemy submarine or something of that order. They'd probably let you send an enemy report. Generally speaking

02:17:30:00
transmitters, no way. Absolute emergencies. If the vessel was sinking you'd get the OK to send a message asking for some sort of help. Watch keeping, receiving was very important. You had to maintain a very, very careful watch

02:18:00:00
on your receiver.

Q: Where in the ship were you stationed?

A: In the minesweeper? Right underneath the wheelhouse. We used to sleep n the bows. I got into terrible trouble one time. I left the porthole open and the ship went to sea.

02:18:30:00
I was going up on watch. There were four of us sleeping in this tiny little compartment right up in the bows of the ship. I was in one of the upper bunks so it wasn't too bad. One of the chaps on the opposite side, he was sleeping in the lower bunk. He was a New Zealand guy; a real troublemaker too.

02:19:00:00
The merchant seamen in those days were very militant. They had good reason to be I suppose in some respects, but this chap was very, very union keen. This day when the ship went to sea, I'd left the porthole open and the seas were coming through the porthole. He's asleep as a case of something comes floating past his

02:19:30:00
bunk. He thought the ship was foundering. There was a bit of a stink over that. We went into storm there. That same bloke, there was a fairly big ventilator that they swing around to get the air. He was up there turning the ventilator around

02:20:00:00
and I think we were just about coming into harbour and I was sending a signal of our expected time of arrival. The down lead from the transmitting aerial was very close to this air ventilator that he was trying to turn around. The ship was rolling like mad and the down lead struck him by the ear. He wasn't very impressed. He got what we call an RF burn,

02:20:30:00
Radio Frequency burns. They're very, very penetrating. Took a bit out of his ear there. Somebody was gonna get court martialled over that. It all simmered down. There were lots of funny little things.

Q: Were did you go minesweeping?

A: Mainly off the east coast here. The Niagara had struck a mine not terribly far between New Zealand and Australia here.

02:21:00:00
The Germans were laying mines along our sea-lanes here. There were quite a few ships lost on the east coast of Australia. We had to keep those sea-lanes clear for the troop convoys.

Q: How did your boat do the

02:21:30:00
minesweeping?

A: On the back of these trawlers there's a monstrous great, motorised thing for

Q: A winch?

A: Winch. Thank you. It's a winch. A huge

02:22:00:00
winch on the back of the trawler. They used it for pulling the deep-sea fishing nets in. These winches were really very, very big. They had devices on them for streaming the cables on them going out to the fishing nets. Those same, something like a davit

02:22:30:00
type of thing it was that these wires used to run through. They ran the wires through there and they used to put paravanes on them. They used to set these paravanes so they would sweep at certain depths and also at a certain angle off the ship. If you had three or four of these whips sweeping together they can sweep quite an area. The paravane has jaws like a

02:23:00:00
saw-tooth jaw on it. If they encounter a mine that's anchored they can usually drag the mine into the saw-tooth jaw and it cuts the cable and the mine pops up to the surface. It could be sunk by gunfire.

Q: What was it like when you did encounter a mine?

A: Interestingly enough, we didn't encounter any. We were fortunate that

02:23:30:00
the area where we were sweeping was fairly clean. We didn't actually strike any mines at all. It's no great drama. Once they hit the surface they can be sunk by rifle fire if you've got good marksmen on the ship.

02:24:00:00
And we had a 12-pounder there although that wasn't used to any great extent. We just had a few practice shoots with it. I had a bit of an incident with the Mariposa. You probably wouldn't know the Mariposa, Monterey with the Matson Line; big, white ships that the Americans used to use for the tourist industry before the war.

02:24:30:00
Beautiful looking ships they were. This occasion we were having a practice shoot off Sydney Heads. The Mariposa was coming out of Sydney heading towards Auckland. We're engaged in a practice shoot and we had a tug towing a kong-kong target. We all had to learn how to use this 12-pounder gun. Didn't matter who you were, you still had to

02:25:00:00
have a bit of a turn so as if the gun's crew got wiped out they had spares I suppose. On this occasion it was the signalman and the telegraphist that had their turn on the gun. The gun, we're all sorted out there?it was my turn. Just as Mariposa was coming out through the heads there I fired this 12-pounder.

02:25:30:00
Normally I think you fired it, once the vessel started to rise on the rolling on the sea that's when you fire your projectile. I fired the thing. I don't know, maybe I fired it too?I don't know. It skipped along on the surface towards the kong-kong target. It's off-shooting it so as it doesn't hit the target. This thing

02:26:00:00
bounced right towards the stern of the Mariposa and I never saw a ship change course so quickly. It got out of the way in a hurry. I got a bit of a reprimand for that. I said, "I'm a telegraphist, I'm not a gunner."

Q: How long would you be out for on each minesweeping operation?

A: You'd only be out for

02:26:30:00
a few days really because they didn't carry too much in the way of supplies and things like that; three or four days perhaps.

Q: Describe the cabins you were living in.

A: There was a large tin dish to wash in. That was about all the washing, no showers. It was pretty good to get into a decent shower and clean up

02:27:00:00
a bit.

Q: What was the captain like?

A: Captain Double was his name. They weren't exactly terribly well educated these characters, as you might imagine. Most of them were English, Scotch or Welsh. Double, he wasn't a bad fellow, but his English wasn't terribly crash

02:27:30:00
hot. For instance, during the meal hour, on my watch keeping I'd still have to keep watch over through the normal meal hour. You'd hear Double sing out, "Get the wireless operator his dinner." The cook would have to rush up. He was very, very broad with his, the hospital ship [?] weren't too frequent. But he wasn't a bad bloke.

02:28:00:00
They all got on very well together. There were a mixture of Scotch and Welsh, pretty good blokes, wonderful seamen. They used to give us rhubarb because we used to get seasick. We had a coxswain on there, he was a leading seaman who took on the job of the coxswain.

02:28:30:00
He used to suffer terribly with seasickness. Being the coxswain he had to get all the crew going on all the jobs like the foreman as it were. He'd be so terribly ill and still have to carry out his duties. The seamen who were a regular merchant service crew used to really rib him and give him a hard time. He had a remarkable fortitude I thought to

02:29:00:00
cope with the situation. I don't know whether you've ever been seasick, but it's not the best arrangement, I can assure you.

Q: How did you finish up doing minesweeping?

A: I think I got a draft from there to another ship called HMAS Gerard.

02:29:30:00
She was engaged in a port operations examination of merchant vessels coming in. I wasn't on that terribly long before I got drafted to Flinders Naval Depot to do this WT3 course. I think they were probably preparing a lot of the guys for leading tels [telegraphers] on corvettes and things like that.

02:30:00:00
I wasn't on Gerard terribly long before I got a signal to say I'd got to go down to Melbourne and go to the Flinders Naval Depot and there I stayed until I finished the course. After that I was posted to a corvette called HMAS Geraldton. I never took up that posting because from there I was posted to Swan and from Swan to the combined operations people with HMAS Assault and was posted to

02:30:30:00
Kanimbla as my assault ship. I didn't take the job on Kanimbla either because I swapped drafts with this, he talked me into swapping drafts with him, so I went onto the Krait from there.

Q: Tell us about the Gerard.

A: It was an interesting ship. It was a sailing ship originally although it had a diesel

02:31:00:00
engine. I think it was a ship that was originally a German ship and was taken after World War 1 as war reparations. I think it had been used for certain trips down to Antarctica. It was a very, very stoutly built ship, not very big; a bit bigger than the minesweepers.

02:31:30:00
Might say about 4 or 500 tons, maybe a little bit bigger. Its job was, no ship could approach the port unless it had been examined out at sea. A ship was not allowed to come in until it had been cleared by the examination services. So when a ship was due to come into

02:32:00:00
say Port Kembla where we were mainly operating from, we'd have to go out and examine her. Establish her bona fides [authenticity] as it were and then the vessel would be allowed to proceed. Pretty monotonous job. Fortunately it was only a few months and then I was gone from there.

02:32:30:00

Q: To the Swan?

A: I went from there straight down to the naval depot at Flinders for this course I had to do.

Q: Tell us about that course.

A: I suppose there'd be about 20 guys in the course at that time. It was a

02:33:00:00
much higher level of work, responsibility and so forth. Like telegraph tests pretty much the same, but a lot more technical. The navy produced two very, very fine technical books called The Wireless Telegraphy Handbook or something like that.

02:33:30:00
I've still got my copies inside. I had to buy them for 10 shillings each. Interestingly enough I had them onboard Krait when I was away; wonderful textbook; absolutely almost the family Bible for technical information Parts 1 and 2. We had a lot of study there. We had to go back to school and do maths and things like that.

02:34:00:00
Then we had to do a lot of other incidental work such as manoeuvring procedures and ships in line. It was pretty complicated business the way the navy used to use telegraphy for manoeuvring ships in a group. If you had a line of warships they all had to proceed in all sorts of manoeuvres.

02:34:30:00
If they're engaging another enemy ship or something there was certain procedures for directing gunfire and all that sort of thing had to be learned. A big emphasis on the technical side this one.

Q: Who else was doing the course?

A: I'd say there'd be about 20 different chaps

02:35:00:00
of about my rank. I was what they call a TO2, a Trained Operator Telegraphist. That was a grade in the navy for communications. You went in as what they called as an OD telegraphist, an Ordinary Telegraphist; lowest guy in the deck. Then you do an examination, Morse examination and a bit of other stuff, and

02:35:30:00
if you pass that they make you a Telegraphist and you get a bit of extra money. The next one up is what they called a Trained Operator Telegraphist. You had to do a little bit harder exam and you get a few extra bob [shillings]. From there you go to what they call a WT3, that's the thing that prepares you for your first NCO [Non-commissioned Officer] sort of thing. Fair bit of

02:36:00:00
study goes into it; quite surprising really. Having my ham ticket and having been a post office telegraphist I didn't seem to have much trouble at all getting through these things. Most those guys were doing the WT3 course all went to corvettes. I went to Geraldton, but she wasn't ready to go to sea,

02:36:30:00
so in the meantime they kept me off on the Swan.

Q: What kind of ship was the Swan?

A: The Swan was a sloop. Swan had actually been in the first raid on Darwin and was still showing quite a lot of signs of damage to the vessel when I was drafted to her. But I took ill with these tonsils

02:37:00:00
and I only really had the one trip up to Papua New Guinea on her, vomiting all the time. I vomited a fair bit of blood and the skipper started to worry a bit. He said, "I think you'd better get into hospital and see what they can do for you." They weren't coming back to the coast of Australia. Colac was coming south so they just dropped me into a cutter and took me

02:37:30:00
across and I travelled back down in Colac.

Q: Where was the Swan based?

A: I suppose it would have been Sydney originally, but she was at sea most of the time.

Q: What was it like going into enemy territory for the first time?

A: On Krait?

Q: On the Swan.

A: I see. We were only servicing Papua New Guinea at the time

02:38:00:00
and the Australian convoys and that type of thing. So we weren't actually in enemy territory at that time.

Q: How many ships were in the convoys?

A: There could be anything up to 10 or 12 ships in a convoy; nothing as big as the Atlantic convoys. That time the submarines were starting to become fairly active

02:38:30:00
off the coast here, particularly Japanese submarines. All merchant ships had to go in convoy then; could be anything up to 10 or 12 vessels I suppose. Varied quite a bit really.

Q: Were you going through the Torres Strait?

A: Yes.

Q: That must have been slightly hair-raising?

A: I suppose, but you never

02:39:00:00
think of those things. I think like all young people, they're totally indestructible. They think nothing ever happens to them.

Q: Did you notice the beauty of the reefs as you were going through?

A: Not on the Swan. We did subsequently on the Yanderra. We used to throw over a few depth charges to get a feed of fish.

02:39:30:00

Q: How long were you on the Swan before coming home?

A: I was only on that one voyage up. It wasn't all that special when I was drafted to her. I was waiting on Garden Island for the Geraldton. I hadn't been terribly well. I'd had sore throats and things like that persistently for quite a while. I had some medical treatment,

02:40:00:00
but that didn't seem to clear it up. On the trip up I'd started to haemorrhage rather badly and so they said, "You'd better get to hospital and see what they can do for you" and that's when I left Swan, travelled south on Colac and then to the Prince of Wales Hospital at Randwick.

Q: How long were you in the hospital?

02:40:30:00

A: I suppose I was in there for about 3 or 4 weeks. They say the worst thing an adult can get with having their tonsils removed is to get a cold. I got the flu and it wasn't too pretty. So that put me back a little bit. I was there 3 or 4 weeks I suppose.

Q: What was the treatment like then for tonsils?

02:41:00:00

A: Pretty basic. Not too much TLC [tender loving care] I can assure you. Quite remarkable cos they had a lot of World War 1 veterans in the wing where I was. One chap, I used to go over and see him when I was able to get up and walk around a bit. The poor devil

02:41:30:00
was lying in a bath of olive oil. He'd been badly burnt. I can't remember now whether he was in a tank or truck or something and it caught fire. All his skin was burnt away. The poor devil was lying in this bath of oil, I'm pretty sure it was olive oil. He was as bright as a button though. Then there was a guy called Dracula that used to come around and take blood out of

02:42:00:00
our arms every now and again.


Horace Young
1815
Tape 3

03:00:30:00

Q: When were you evacuated off the Swan?

A: It would have been 1942. I'd say about towards the end of 1942.

Q: What was the atmosphere in Australia at that point?

03:01:00:00

A: Pretty horrifying. I was at Flinders Naval Depot when the Japs [Japanese] came into the war and the [HMS] Prince of Wales and the [HMS] Repulse were sunk. They flashed it on the screen. I can remember being in almost a state of shock. We couldn't believe we could lose the Prince of Wales, particularly as it was a state of the art battle cruiser.

03:01:30:00
It just didn't seem possible. I think everybody was starting to get extremely worried because at that time Menzies had decided to invoke this Brisbane Line concept where they were going to evacuate part of Queensland and somewhere around Brisbane, to the south. That brought it home to the people that this country was really in

03:02:00:00
deep trouble. It was virtually on its knees. We had very, very little to defend the country with, almost nothing. The British had taken the cream of our army people overseas to the Western Desert and Crete, Greece and all that sort of thing. Virtually there was nothing much left here.

03:02:30:00
We hadn't been married terribly long. I was most concerned because the Japanese weren't terribly up with the Geneva Accord. I don't think they were even signatories to the Geneva Convention at all. They didn't recognise it. Their atrocities from Nanking were

03:03:00:00
well read and known down here. Australians generally were starting to almost panic I would say, then the Americans, the first contingent, started to appear. That I suppose breathed a bit of reassurance into them. Generally speaking there were a lot of very, very worried

03:03:30:00
Australian people at that time. They were expecting the Japanese to land at any time. There was nothing to stop them.

Q: When did you get married?

A: I think it was February 1942. Hazel, can you verify this? When did we get married?

03:04:00:00
February 1942? Would have been about February 1942. I was a child bride.

Q: How old were you when you got married?

A: I was 20. I hadn't had

03:04:30:00
my 21st birthday.

Q: Where had you met Hazel?

A: The Americans were starting to flood into the country by then. 1941 they started to move in in a fairly big way. They had warships

03:05:00:00
down at Woolloomooloo and they were all open to the public. I was with 3 or 4 different navy mates and we were out enjoying ourselves. Hazel and two or three of her girlfriends had met two or three American sailors and they said to come down and have a look at the ship. When they got there the policeman said, "You've gotta have an Australian serviceman

03:05:30:00
with you or you can't go on board". We appeared on the scene and these girls were walking away very disgruntled and I wanted to go somewhere. The navy guys struck up a yarn with them and I said, I know I had something on, because I

03:06:00:00
got into a cab and I was going to go. They said, "You can't go, we've got these girls here. Hang around." I very reluctantly got out of the cab. I met Hazel and we seemed to get on OK. She wasn't too bossy or too expensive, so we teamed up and

03:06:30:00
eventually we got married.

Q: What dealings did you have with American sailors?

A: I had some. Not until I joined SRD, then I did. You want to talk about it later on, do you?

Q: In 1942, having been sent off the Swan, were you happy with what you'd done so far?

03:07:00:00

A: I don't have any special recollections of being; it's just a job. You go from one ship to another, you do the same things when you go from A ship to B ship. It wasn't very much to get excited about really.

Q: Were you gung-ho [eager for action] to do more action stuff?

A: I think like all young blokes you

03:07:30:00
see things a bit lightly as it were. It didn't' start to warm up out here for quite a long while after really.

Q: Why were you posted to combined ops [operations]?

A: I think I just happened to be Johnny-on-the-spot [there]. It was only just starting to

03:08:00:00
form up this combined operations. I suppose I was the guy sitting around and hanging about there. Actually, I don't really know. You just go where you get drafted. They say, "You're going A, B, C and D" and you've just gotta pack your bag and hammock and

03:08:30:00
move off.

Q: Talk about the camp at HMAS Assault.

A: That was quite interesting in this respect that I had about the 6 or 7 young telegraphists that I had to take up there and turn them into beach signalmen or whatever

03:09:00:00
you want to call them. Beach commandos I think. They masqueraded under a term something similar to that. I thought it was rather humorous when I reflect on it. The camp itself was very, very basic. It was in those Anderson huts, the half-round huts. The chap in charge of the show was a

03:09:30:00
three-ring commander [a full Commander]. His first lieutenant was a lieutenant-commander, Lewis was his name and his nickname was Strangler Lewis, a real pig of a bloke. In my view he should never have been in charge of men. The navy had some strange people elected as officers. They weren't always

03:10:00:00
the best choice. The Strangler was one of those characters. For instance, I got 14 days stoppage of leave because I had a suitcase in the dormitory where I slung my hammock. You were supposed to stow your suitcases in a certain area. I'd just come back from leave and I was just organising myself and I

03:10:30:00
tried to put the case away. He came in through. He had a little regulating petty officer with him, Gibbons. We used to call him Monkey Gibbons cos he was a little bit that way. Monkey Gibbons and Strangler Lewis came roaring through this dormitory where I was, "What's that suitcase doing here? Get that rating's name and number." I got 14 days stoppage of leave because I hadn't put my case. Can you

03:11:00:00
imagine in today's navy? Those sorts of things don't win wars in my opinion. They just make you feel bitter about the type of people that are supposed to be the role models. Anyway, my 14 days, being a leading hand, you don't get the same punishments as the poor ODs [Ordinary Seamen] and that. I used to have

03:11:30:00
to take a party out that were doing 'jankers' as they called it, these young blokes. Had to run them round the oval, the parade ground, with bricks in their knapsacks and all the rifles over their head. I had a supervisor with me that was my punishment.

03:12:00:00
My assault ship was Kanimbla, but Kanimbla hadn't been completely fitted out as yet, so we were using [HMAS] Manoora. Manoora was about a 10,000-ton passenger ship that was on the Fremantle to Cairns passenger trail before the war. A beautiful ship: the Westralia, Kanimbla and Manoora. We were using Manoora, which was already fixed up.

03:12:30:00
The procedure was that the army people were putting on these exercises and the Manoora - there was a group of American marines who we were working with. They were mainly Negroes. We would be put on Kanimbla with all our gear.

03:13:00:00
My boys had rifles; I had a long barrel 45 [revolver], that was my weapon. We had these tin hats [steel helmets]. This is where it seemed to me to be so incongruous. These kids had to have these hats on and these rifles strapped on their backs and their bandoliers and all that sort of jazz; all their radio equipment with them as well.

03:13:30:00
We used to have to go aboard this assault ship and they lower these nets down over the side and you had to sc ramble down these nets at 3 or 4 in the morning, into these LCPs [Landing Craft Personnel], these landing craft things, various different types. And they're jumping up and down because in Nelson's Bay it can be fairly

03:14:00:00
rough. You get the seas coming through those heads there. These things are jumping up and you've got to try and get down with all this equipment, radio gear and everything. Then, to get up and then they line them up and on the appropriate signal each line go into the beach. The thing that really, I got used to this, being shortchanged on getting to the beach,

03:14:30:00
because the sand shoals were fairly prevalent and these things would hit the shoal and these guys would say, "Out you get". It wasn't so bad if you were just wading in water, but when you get it up around your neck in the middle of winter and you've got a greatcoat on and you're saturated, it's not too special. Then Lieutenant Davidson arrived with his team of

03:15:00:00
SRD operatives. Sharple, the leading telegraphist, was put into my mess and we were pretty chummy. He dropped it on me to swap drafts. He'd take my draft on the Kanimbla and I'd take his draft on Krait or wherever, he didn't name the vessel at the time. He said, "It's just a small vessel going up New Guinea there." I'd been used to small craft, so it didn't worry me too much.

03:15:30:00
I said I'd think about it. So on this occasion there was and all singing and dancing rehearsal, a full bit rehearsal. The navy, the army, the air force, I think it was the 7th Div [Division] that were up there in terms of there were soldiers everywhere. The air force was dropping dummy flares on the beaches, supposed to be bombing the beaches.

03:16:00:00
It was in the middle of winter, in June, cold as hell and raining. We got ourselves over the gangway. There was one of these kids that I had as a telegraphist, he was a darkish skinned boy. They were kids of 17 or 18 and behaving like kids of 17 or 18, all the clumsy falling over each other, dropping things. All the things that

03:16:30:00
18 year olds do. This boy particularly, he was terribly accident-prone. He had this massive shock of black hair and he was constantly throwing his head back to clear this hair out of his eyes, like a horse. They christened him Pelaco. You probably never heard of Pelaco shirts, but Pelaco

03:17:00:00
were manufacturers of beautiful white shirts. The buzzword for advertising Pelaco shirts was "Me think it no shrink it, this fellow" and it was an aboriginal chap with this beautiful white

03:17:30:00
shirt on. This guy got the nickname of Pelaco. So Pelaco's job was as front man on the battery carrier. The wireless station was mounted on two frames like stretchers. The batteries were quite big, very heavy. The radio was on the other one. Pelaco was front man on the battery carrier. On this

03:18:00:00
Mickey Mouse day, the full dress rehearsal day, over the side, onto the barges, all line up ready for the beach, Second Wave Red Beach or whatever it was. We got the signal to go into the beach and away we go, roaring. We hit what we thought was the beach and this American coxswain said, "Away you go". He drops the flap down.

03:18:30:00
As soon as he did Pelaco, you're standing there waiting ready to go cos you've gotta get off and get out in a hurry, and Pelaco goes charging off this flap and the next thing he's disappeared. There's no sign of him. We're all standing on the flap looking and all you can see is bubbles coming up.

03:19:00:00
What the hell's going on here? All of a sudden Pelaco surfaces. He's still got his tin hat on. I can see it to this day. It was one of the funniest sights. It wasn't funny at the time, but when I think back on it, this very dark skinned boy with his tin hat on and his rifle still strapped across his shoulder, and he's blowing bubbles and water flying everywhere. The batteries are gone.

03:19:30:00
Being the leading hand I was going to cop it. We'd lost lots of equipment so we all waded ashore very sorrowful. We'd fallen over. Our part was washed out with no radio gear. So we were sitting around the beach and the kids were grizzling and growling and wet and cold. One bright kid said, "Let's light a fire." Here's a total blackout of the beach. He says, "Let's light a fire

03:20:00:00
and dry ourselves." I can see it to this very day. They lit this damn fire. I should have had more brains to tell them not to, but I was just as miserable and wet as they were. They lit this damn fire. It hadn't been going five minutes when a jeep roared down and there was the reddest-faced looking army major I'd ever seen in my life. He's got a policeman with a band on his arm, a sergeant. And did they give us a payout. "Put that

03:20:30:00
so and so fire out." The words he did say, "Do you think this is a gypsy camp?" Those are the words he said. I got back to the depot very late in the afternoon, still soaking wet. Sharple said, "Did you think any more about the change of the draft?" I said, "Yeah, I've had this place. I'm fed

03:21:00:00
to the neck with it," something like that. We went over and saw Donald Davidson and Sharple mentioned that we had in mind swapping drafts. Davo [Davidson] was a pretty cunning rooster when I look back on it now. "It's a very serious matter, we'll have to give it very deep thought.

03:21:30:00
I don't know. See me tomorrow and I'll let you know." When I went up the next day he shook me by the hand. He said, "Well, Leading Telegraphist Young, we've decided to accept you into service with reconnaissance department. While you work with us, we will pay you 50% over and above your base pay" which was

03:22:00:00
another 4 shillings on my rate. I thought I was a millionaire. I think Sharple breathed a sigh of relief. I later learned that Sharple didn't want to go on this. I think he smelled a rat. He didn't want any part of it, plus I think he was about to get married or something. I was very quickly whipped away up to Cairns by train. Some army people in a jeep met me at Cairns station

03:22:30:00
and took me to the ES, it had a placard up that said, "Experimental Station". That was the House on the Hill. Quite a big old home a few miles outside Cairns.

Q: Was it at Assault that you first met up with Don Davidson and all his charges?

A: Yeah, I did

03:23:00:00
indeed.

Q: What did you think of these guys?

A: We were pretty impressed with them because they were, to us, fair dinkum commandos. We were supposed to be beach commandos, all the people in combined operations, cos they were commando exercises. But these guys were really fair dinkum and they treated us to some displays of unarmed

03:23:30:00
combat. They were playing with arms and slashing at each other with these great stilettos and parangs. They weren't mucking around either. You had to be quick to get out of the way. Davidson was always the showman, a wonderful fellow. Always liked to play to the gallery a bit. I was very impressed with them. I thought,

03:24:00:00
"This is what it's all about".

Q: You think the exercises the bulk of you were doing there were a bit Mickey Mouse [trivial]?

A: I suppose when I've reflected on it I know that you had to have these exercises and things like that, it's just that sometimes they're not as efficiently carried out as you'd like. But nothing in war I don't think is ever

03:24:30:00
efficient anyway.

Q: How did the batteries deal with the seawater?

A: They were lost. Pelaco dropped them.

Q: But assuming you didn't lose them. Did getting them wet matter?

A: In most cases we were able to keep them up so they weren't in the water. But there's no doubt about it,

03:25:00:00
they didn't like seawater. That was the finish of them if they got wet. They were fairly well sealed though. They weren't like the batteries you'll see as a car battery with knobs and things. They were all pretty much sealed on the top. Canvas bags around them and things like that. So they did have some protection, but no way in the world could you drop them in the water.

03:25:30:00

Q: You felt the American sailors driving the landing craft were not that crash hot?

A: I didn't think so. I don't know what other people thought about them, but we seemed to have quite a few occasions where they hit the beach and they were quite OK. There were a significant number of times when they'd land on these shoals. It's understandable, cos these shoals are moving all the time. They're

03:26:00:00
quite mobile. I suppose if there's a shoal there it's gone tomorrow and you can go in there, but you can't, because the shoals formed in there.

Q: Describe the House on the Hill.

A: It's rumoured that it was Kingsford-Smith's grandfather's originally.

03:26:30:00
It was a very, very large home. I didn't get to see all the rooms in the place cos we were quartered in this shelter thing fairly close by it. There were other native troops in those similar Anderson huts close by too. So we used to go up to the

03:27:00:00
house for messing facilities. It was a two-storey place. They did have a radio station there. I didn't see the radio station. I think they used to handle a bit of traffic there, probably with Timor or people like that. So it was covered with

03:27:30:00
vegetation. There were trails, acres of ground it was standing in, but it was all tropical undergrowth; an ideal spot for training purposes. Davidson's favourite trick was to - these paths that had been cut through the jungle, all this vegetation - he'd straddle himself across a bough going across the path and drop down on top of

03:28:00:00
some unsuspecting people passing down the trail, put a headlock on them and with his knife, just as a demonstration of what can be done. He did it to Carse too [Lieutenant H. E. Carse, Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RANVR)]. Carse was later the navigator, Skipper as we called him, and Carse wasn't very impressed. Food wasn't too bad.

03:28:30:00
We weren't allowed to talk to anybody, we were totally isolated even though we had, I'm pretty sure they were Javanese or Indonesian of some description, in the hut alongside us. There was an enormous mango tree alongside, full of

03:29:00:00
flying foxes. These Indonesian troops used to be screaming and yelling and yodelling and going on and firing their rifles at these damn things. We later learned they used to eat them. We could go for a run along the beach or walk along the corals.

03:29:30:00
One of the sheds that were there, I walked into this thing and there was a magnificent Luger pistol, a German officer's pistol, hanging up behind the door. I think I said to Davo that pistol was there. He said, "You can grab it." So I grabbed it, but it was a 9 millimetre. The cartridge that goes in the Owen gun is

03:30:00:00
similar size, but it's something to do with the rims, I couldn't actually use the Owen gun ammunition in it. It was a beautiful looking gun. I don't know what I did with it. I probably left it behind. I thought to myself now what a marvellous showpiece that would have been.

Q: What did you think of all the cloak and dagger stuff you were getting into?

A: I suppose I thought it was all right.

03:30:30:00
It's a little bit different to the usual humdrum discipline of the navy. It was a much more free and easy place. Davidson was in charge of the sailors. He was such a great chap. He was such a human being and he'd never ever ask a bloke to do anything that he wasn't prepared to do himself. He was greatly admired by this mob. They'd do anything for him really. Just had that ability to relate

03:31:00:00
to the guys. They were still disciplined. I've got stuff that I downloaded off the Internet, some of his files that are in the archive. He kept a logbook on all the guys that he was training with these cryptic comments about them with pluses and minuses. Fascinating reading.

03:31:30:00
I thought generally I was pretty happy with it. I was a leading hand. There was only one other leading hand on the ship and that was Paddy McDowell [Leading Stoker J. P. McDowell, Royal Australian Navy (RAN)] the stoker. He was a leading stoker. So I was one of the higher rating types on the boat I suppose.

Q: Give me your impressions of the crew on the Jaywick. You've talked about Don

03:32:00:00
Davidson and you obviously had a very high opinion of him.

A: Yes, he was a very, very decent guy; very capable, competent fellow.

Q: What about Ivor Lyon? [Major, later Lieutenant-Colonel I. Lyon, DSO, MBE]

A: He was obviously a very good British Army officer. I don't know quite how he took to our people. I suppose it must have been a shock to the system as most British Army people think

03:32:30:00
when they meet Australian Service people. He was all right. He was quite OK. Very quiet fellow. He'd sit down, on Krait where the wireless equipment was, it was an operations room, it was a wireless room and it was a sleeping quarters for three officers. Lyon used to have the bunk on the

03:33:00:00
starboard side. Davidson on the portside and Bob Page [Lieutenant R. C. Page, AIF] had the one that ran between the two of them. There wasn't too much room to move around down there. What I remember about Lyon, his wife had been taken prisoner of war by the Germans. A German raider had

03:33:30:00
picked them up off the west coast. He was probably pretty upset about that, but he used to sit cross-legged like a yoga thing. He'd sit up there on his pillow for quite long periods. I might be down there fiddling with the dials. He'd sit there as though he was looking into space. I thought it was just remarkable. He used to speak to me now and again, but he never spoke

03:34:00:00
a great deal. He obviously had plenty on his mind to think about I suppose. He wasn't the same style as Davidson was. Davidson was always swashbuckling, a gung-ho type of guy. Lyon was the far more quieter of the two of them.

Q: What about Moss Berryman? [Able Seaman (AB) M. Berryman, RAN]

A: Moss was quite a good guy.

03:34:30:00
He was younger than me. He was quite a good hand.

Q: Buff Marsh? [AB F. W. L. Marsh, RAN]

A: Dear old Buff. He was the larrikin of the team. He was never happier than when he was pinching somebody or pushing somebody or tripping somebody up or making a pest of himself. Very jovial fellow.

03:35:00:00
Quite a good fellow. Never took anything terribly seriously I don't think.

Q: Joe Jones? [AB A. M. W. Jones, RAN]

A: Joe was exceptionally good. A very good fellow. Joe was older. He'd been on Manoora when she was an armed merchant cruiser. He was used to naval discipline and normal ship routine. Joe was a very, very

03:35:30:00
efficient guy, very quiet, unassuming. A very popular guy too. Very good.

Q: Happy Huston? [AB A. W. G. Huston, RAN]

A: Very quiet lad. Very, very serious. Happy, I don't think I ever saw him laugh. Everything was a big deal. He was a very, very serious boy, but very efficient too. I think he might have been the youngest member of the party.

03:36:00:00
He took everything very, very seriously. He did very well too. Quite good.

Q: How did he take his nickname?

A: I don't think he cared much about it. There's not much use caring about it. You get a name and that's it, you've gotta wear it.

Q: Crilly the cook? [Corporal A. A. Crilly, AIF]

A: Poor old Crilly. A hell of a good bloke. It must have been an awful shock to his system to leave the army and

03:36:30:00
to get mixed up with this bunch of hooligans who at every opportunity they got, they'd be having a shot at the army, how crook they were. Crilly used to take it all in stride, but he was really one of the boys. Fine fellow.

Q: He'd taken on this job as a way of avoiding discharge?

A: Yes, he wasn't terribly well and I think his mustering was as a motor mechanic. I'm led to believe that he was a mechanic in civilian life.

03:37:00:00
I think he was doing much the same in the army. Generally he wasn't very well. He'd been wounded a couple of times I understand. He was scheduled to be boarded out [medical board] for discharge. The original cook shot through and Laurence was getting close to departure time. I think Laurence was starting to get a bit concerned, so he went up to some army barracks and

03:37:30:00
lined all the soldiers up on the parade ground as they usually do I suppose, and asked for any volunteers to go to sea for a while for fun and games to step forward. The only bloke who stepped forward when the pack had moved away, the only bloke that was standing there was Crilly, so he got the job. So Lyon bought

03:38:00:00
him a cookbook in Cairns and said, "Study this cookbook." He says, "I'm not a cook. I'm a pretty good motor mechanic, but I'm not a cook." Lyon is alleged to have said to him, "Well there's the book. Start learning." He used to make these pancakes. You get on a ship like that, anything is good tucker, it doesn't matter what it is, but the pancakes were very popular.

03:38:30:00
They nicknamed him Pancake Andy.

Q: Cobber Cain? [Leading Seaman K. P. Cain, RAN]

A: Very quiet fellow. He'd been to sea on some ship. I don't know what ships he was on. I'm pretty sure he had also been in the merchant service for a period so he was fairly familiar with ships. Extremely quiet chap. Very, very presentable fellow.

03:39:00:00
A good solid guy. He was the oldest of the crew I'd say, below the deck as it were.

Q: Paddy McDowell?

A: Yeah, Paddy was unique. He was the sort of thing that films are made about I reckon; the type of rascal sailor that you see in movies. I think I wrote in my book that I can never forget my first

03:39:30:00
meeting with Paddy because when I went down and saw the Krait and the state of it, untidy, ropes scattered everywhere and filthy, dirty looking, I thought, "My God". I stepped onboard the thing, this grizzled-up, dried-up bloke like a prune walked

03:40:00:00
up from the engine room. All he had on was a pair of old khaki shorts covered in grease and stains and a navy T-shirt thing. He had a badge of a stoker on it. His fingers were like boot polish.

03:40:30:00
He said, "I'm Paddy and I'm the engineer." He referred to himself as the engineer. He's got an old durry [cigarette] hanging off one of his lips bent like a hockey stick. He's rolling one as he's talking to me. He was very, very sparsely built.

03:41:00:00
He was damn nearly all skin and bone. There wasn't much of him. And these funny old bandy legs sticking out from these shorts. He was a real fright. Not only that, he had one behind his ear. So he's got this thing that's out, I'm pretty sure, he's rolling one, he's already got another one stacked. He had a curious way of looking up under his eyes,

03:41:30:00
a quizzical was of looking at you. He started talking to me about the different boats that he'd been on and things like that. What he was doing was feeling me out I suppose to see was I a real rocky or had done any sea time.


Horace Young
1815
Tape 4

04:00:32:05

Q: What about Poppa Falls? [AB W. G. Falls, RAN]

A: A very fine fellow. Poppa was the oldest of the canoe parties and he was a dour Scot. He was a very, very serious person and a very, very capable fellow, the sort of guy that would be handy if you were ever in a tight spot. He was a very dependable bloke to be with.

04:01:00:00

Q: Taffy Morris? [Corporal R. G. Morris]

A: The effervescent Taffy Morris. He was a Welsh guy. He was a sick bay?I think he was Royal Army Medical Corps. Taffy had a very good singing voice. A very lighthearted fellow, very easy to get on with. He used to rag the Australian sailors

04:01:30:00
quite a bit. He had fairly good vocab [vocabulary]. He used to give them as good as they gave him. I always remember Taffy; his job was to feed us all these tablets he had, dozens of tablets. We used to have this great ration of tablets. It was routine every morning that we had to line up and get our shots as it were: malaria tablets, vitamin tablets. He used to throw

04:02:00:00
them down your neck as he went along the line like this. He was always singing. He had a very fine singing voice. Fairly well in the music department. He had a good knowledge of classical music as well as the pop music of the day. He was always singing away.

04:02:30:00
I think I wrote something about it in that book of mine. He came skipping along the deck full of the good things of life. Some characters would be lying in the engine-room trying to get a bit of sleep. Taffy had a fairly loud voice. He'd be screeching out something from a song and the next thing you know a missile would come flying over at him and he'd have to duck

04:03:00:00
to dodge it. The only time I ever heard him sing as he got hit with a bit of debris off a tomato sauce bottle. It unfortunately discharged a Bren gun. We were all witting around. This projectile whizzed around amongst the leg and the feet and finished up hitting a tomato sauce bottle. A big part of it cut an artery in Morris' leg,
04:03:30:00
in his ankle. He had a pretty bad time of that. They stitched him up; he was OK.

Q: How about Ted Carse?

A: A good bloke, Ted. I feel so sad when I hear people try to rubbish him because I always said, "I never heard Ted Carse waste a word." Whatever Ted said was worth listening to. He was a chap of immense

04:04:00:00
experience. He'd been in the permanent navy at the very end of World War 1. I don't know whether he saw the tail end of Jutland or no, but he was in the navy at the very end as a midshipman. He was permanent navy. After the war they had these treaties where they were scrapping ships left, right and centre and we

04:04:30:00
had to sink some of our ships. They put off a terrible lot of navy people: sailors, officers, the whole lot. Ted left then and he went into the merchant marine service where he was a deck officer in the merchant service. He was also a general rouseabout. He worked on pearling luggers.

04:05:00:00
He was a man of many, many parts. Tremendous experience of life he had. A very good seaman, very good sailor, very good navigator and very popular with the sailors. He is the only fellow as far as I'm aware that had what I call proper credentials. I say that you've either got a degree; you've got a certificate,

04:05:30:00
you've got something, a bit of paper to certify that you have certain skills. Like Davidson and Lyon were very good at what they were supposed to be good at and they had a fair bit of experience on small ships and things like that, but I'm not aware that they had master mariner's qualifications

04:06:00:00
whereas they could have, but I don't think so, whereas Ted did have. He had a proper master mariner's certificate and I always think of him as the only bloke who measured up as far as having qualifications that would qualify him with the Safety of Life At Sea Convention where you've gotta have a master's ticket or a mate's ticket or something like that. You've gotta have that bit of paper. If you

04:06:30:00
don't, you're not it. Ted did have that as far as I'm aware, cos I've seen a letter which explains that he does have those qualifications. A very quiet man. He never threw his weight around with the crew. He was very, very popular with the crew. The crew idolised him. Ted

04:07:00:00
would say something. Whatever he said you'd be very foolish not to take account of. I've seen Ted leaning against the wheelhouse or something like that, smoking fags, he was a very heavy smoker, and he'd look up at the sky. He'd be watching it for a while and he'd say to Cobber Cain who was virtually the Coxswain, "Cobber,

04:07:30:00
get some of the boys to check those drums up forward there. We're gonna get a blow shortly. In the next half hour or so, she's gonna be rocking around a bit. Make sure they're all tied down and ready for heavy weather sailing." You can bet your life that within that timeframe he'd be right. You could be sailing on an oily sea,

04:08:00:00
not a ripple, and I'll guarantee within a half hour the sea would be absolutely boiling. There'd be waves breaking over everything. He just had the ability to read weather. I had quite a high regard. You couldn't help but like the guy. OK, he used to drink a bit, but show me the sailor that doesn't. I've never met one. That's all they've got to do when they come to shore is to drink.

04:08:30:00
He used to have a few grogs. I think you might want to know more about that further along in the interview. No, I thought a lot of Carse. He got them there and he got them there without casualties. That's gotta be worth something.

Q: Bob Page?

A: Very nice

04:09:00:00
man. A very, very nice person. Very popular with the troops. He was much the same age group. Bob was very good at what he did. He was studying medicine and he was very helpful when Taffy suffered his injury to his ankle. He was able to stich him up and get him on deck again. I thought Bob was a very decent guy.

Q: How did you relate as a crew

04:09:30:00
when you first got together?

A: Very well. The guys in the canoes were sort of?I think they probably saw themselves as being a little bit different than the crew on the ship. But generally speaking I can't remember hearing any brawls, arguments or things that I would have regarded as

04:10:00:00
not being in the best interest of the ship's company. They all got on very well together. I'll say that Lyon and Davidson picked the crew very carefully. The result was really quite obvious. They were very compatible. They came from many walks of life. They were a good team. The best ship's company I've ever sailed with I'd say.

Q: What do you know about how the crew was selected?

04:10:30:00

A: I understand that they went down to Flinders Naval Depot. I wasn't in that side of things at that time. I'm sure this is right, cos I've read a lot of these diaries and reports about this. They went to Flinders Naval Depot and selected I think about 40 fellows. Fairly new entries I think they were,

04:11:00:00
the majority of them. And they took them away and they put them through certain training places and they filtered them out. Davidson very carefully monitored each to see whether so and so had a problem or this one could be difficult to get on with and things like that. They were quietly weeded out and sent back to general service. He finished up with a

04:11:30:00
much more condensed team just around the corner here at Refuge Bay, near Lion Island. That's where a lot of their training was done at this Refuge Bay camp. I wasn't at the camp. I didn't join the team until further along from there. The team were trained there and the army provided certain army instructors to teach them all about explosives and weapons,

04:12:00:00
Bren guns, Owen guns, all that sort of thing. They used to have to come ashore here to Patonga to get their supplies and that. Then they'd row across to Refuge Bay and had to go up a rope to get to their camp, which was up on top of the cliff. They had to be pretty fit. You'll see photographs out there of them exercising in their fold boats around the

04:12:30:00
base camp area there. They used to exercise in these fold boats in all winds and weather. They did 360 degrees rollovers and things like that in the ocean to get back inside of them. From there Davidson still had too many and he had to get rid of

04:13:00:00
a few more of them. They were very carefully watched to see who was quarrelsome or irritable, who might be a bit temperamental. He finished up with the team he finished up with. It was a pick of the crop.

Q: When you were selected, how immediately were you informed?

A: Almost straightaway. I think I was on the train to Cairns within a day or so,

04:13:30:00
almost immediately.

Q: What did you think?

A: I suppose I was a bit intrigued with all the secrecy, but then I wasn't told anything and I apparently wasn't to know anything. I was very much in the dark and I suppose I'd be thinking, "Had I done the right thing or have I done the wrong thing?" The money was the big attraction. So I wasn't

04:14:00:00
worried too much about the incidentals I guess.

Q: Did you meet the crew at the house on the hill?

A: I met some of them. How Donaldson and these fellows came to be at HMAS Assault, Krait had already picked up her operational crew over here and had started on her

04:14:30:00
journey. She kept breaking down all the time and the skipper they had on there apparently was the same skipper that Lyon had met in Singapore when he first saw the vessel up there. I've heard a few little stories. I never like to say too much unless I'm an eyewitness to these things, but some of the guys that were on board

04:15:00:00
when it happened said that he wasn't as compatible as he could be for the rest of the crew. So it was decided to look elsewhere. I guess this is where Ted came into it. The vessel had made a fairly big start, breaking down all the way up the east coast there until it got to the Lindeman Islands near Maryborough. The German Deutsch engine that was in it

04:15:30:00
blew up totally and it had to be shovelled out of the ship. So they split the crew up and sent some down to Assault and some went to, the lucky ones I think went to Coolangatta or Surfers Paradise, around that way. They were put in hotel accommodation there. The crew were spread out a bit.

04:16:00:00
They all came together in Cairns eventually and that's when I met them. I did meet some of them at Assault, but not to converse with cos they were isolated. They weren't supposed to talk to anybody. I suppose as a leading hand I didn't worry too much about them. I had my own business to look after.

04:16:30:00
It's really Cairns when we all officially met.

Q: What did you do training-wise initially?

A: I was already what you'd call a specialist in the field that I was working in. So there wasn't any training much for me. Even as a naval cadet I was a member of the navy rifle club in Perth. We used to go to

04:17:00:00
Swanbourne Saturdays for our shoots. I wasn't an expert, but I'd had a fair amount of experience with 303s. As far as the Owen gun goes, I was given an Owen gun, a Smith and Wesson [revolver] and some knives and things like that. The old parang's still hanging

04:17:30:00
up in the shed. So I suppose in my field I was trained. I was a leading telegraphist, a reasonable rank in the navy, as far as experience goes. I wasn't going to be hanging limpets on ships, so I didn't need to play around with limpets or anything like that. My basic job was to maintain communications on the ship.

04:18:00:00
As a seaman I was issued with those firearms. Everybody had to have firearms. Even the sick bay fellow, who's not supposed to carry firearms under the Geneva Convention, Taffy I'm pretty sure had firearms as well. As far as my training goes I was already a trained person. All I had to do was slip into the chair and I was away.

04:18:30:00

Q: You came down and trained in the Hawkesbury?

A: I didn't. The canoe parties did. The chap I took over from was at the Hawkesbury, but Krait had already started on her mission north at that time. That's when she blew up and they had to get this new diesel engine flown up for her. By that time

04:19:00:00
the leading telegraphist had gone. He'd taken my place at HMAS Assault and I'd moved on to Cairns to away the arrival of the engines of the ship to carry on its journey.

Q: What did you tell your wife you were up to?

A: Nothing. You weren't allowed to tell your family anything. They were paranoid about security. Couldn't tell

04:19:30:00
them anything at all. All she knew was that I was going to sea on a ship and that was it.

Q: What did you think of the Krait when you first saw her?

A: I thought it was the most dreadful thing I'd seen in my life. Even my trawler days, when I think of them, I thought they were bad enough, but nothing could equal Krait, I'm sure.

Q: Describe her.

04:20:00:00

A: God. She was dirty, untidy, full of cockroaches the like of which I've never seen in my life. They were monster big cockroaches. You could almost hear them walking around they were that noisy. I don't know whether you can find words to describe how it really looked.

04:20:30:00
It looked so crook. It was terrible. Then again, it was fitting out. All ships when they're fitting out are usually untidy. There's tools everywhere and stuff all over the place. It was really a very, a most unimpressive sight, I can assure you.

Q: Who was fitting her out?

A: Paddy was checking on the engine.

04:21:00:00
He was a very, very competent engineer Andy McDowell. He was getting all the stores ordered and getting them delivered and things like that. My radio gear arrived and that had to be installed. Generally speaking everybody was fairly busy loading the ship with stores, it had to be fuelled and there was a

04:21:30:00
tremendous amount of fuel carried on the ship, which was of interest to me when I saw extra fuel tanks on the ship. I was thinking to myself, "This doesn't sound to me as though they are going to be just cruising around Port Moresby cos they couldn't want all those additional tanks on for fuel." Basically that's what it was all about. Stores coming

04:22:00:00
down and being stacked. It looked untidy. Nothing properly stowed.

Q: Why did you think it would just be around Port Moresby?

A: Sharple said to me, the guy that I took over from, when I said to him, "What's this vessel?" He said, "It's only a small thing." "Where are you going?" He said, "We're only gonna be around New Guinea waters there." I knew there were

04:22:30:00
small ships working in that area doing survey work, mapping beaches and things like that. I thought perhaps that was it. Nobody knew much about what it was all about anyway, cos it was an absolute secret where it was going to until the vessel got underway. I suppose I took Sharple on his word. "Well, if she's going to New Guinea,

04:23:00:00
I'll be up." When I saw the fuel tanks and the limpet mines and the cases of hand grenades and arms and things like that, it didn't ring true to me.

Q: Describe a limpet mine.

A: I'll show you one.

04:23:30:00
Will I slip out and pick it up for you?

Q: Let's do that on the next tape.

A: A limpet mine was a container that I think they put about 10 pounds of this explosive, plastic P808 I think it was called. It was a new plastic explosive developed by the British, which was far, far more destructive than anything previously.

04:24:00:00
It had little flexible, well they were fairly big magnets, on either side of it. The cortex and all the firing gear was put on the top and the idea was that if you put it anywhere near metal it would cling to it. There were timers and things like that which was arranged for the detonation of the thing and

04:24:30:00
at the appropriate time these things would fire and away they'd go. They were alleged to be capable of blowing, I think they claimed it would blow a hole about a yard square in the type of steel that was being used in the merchant ships of the day. The merchant ships at that time were nearly all riveted. Welded ships were only just coming into fashion. There were

04:25:00:00
a huge number of ships were still riveted. The idea was that you lower the limpet down under the water and it hangs onto the side of the ship. Gotta be very careful the way you put them on and make sure it doesn't clang. If you hit the side of the ship you could hear it quite clearly inside. Put three of these on each ship. They'd blow a fair size hole in it. What

04:25:30:00
compounded the problem was that in the detonation would also loosen rivets and the plates, in addition to blow holes in the thing it would also rivet some plates and compound the damage quite considerably.

Q: That was the benefit for you to be mining ri