When war broke out in 1939 my father was one of the first to volunteer for service. He and all the other volunteers were sworn-in at the army barracks and fitted out with their new uniforms. Then they were given leave for the rest of the day and told to report back to barracks the following morning. Most of them (including dad) headed into town where they spent the night drinking in the bars and nightclubs. Sometime during the night dad was stopped by the military police (probably for being drunk) and they began to question him:
Show us your leave pass.I haven't got one.What unit are you in?Buggered if I know.Who's your commanding officer?I wouldn't have clue.OK smart-arse get in the van.
And that's why dad's first day in service to the country was spent in a jail cell.
Dad was fighting at El Alamein during the North African campaign when suddenly everything went quiet. The Germans were no longer firing at them and nobody knew what was going on. Eventually an order came down to the men in dad's trench: "Get up on the parapets and see if you can draw some fire."
Even as a child I realised that was a pretty dangerous situation to get into and immediately thought to myself that I would never have obeyed that order. "Gee dad, what did you do?" I asked him.
"Well we got up on the parapet and walked around to see if we could draw some fire," he said.
As it happened the Germans had already left their positions and were retreating to the West - but if they'd still been there, dad would have copped a bullet in the head.
It was during WWII when an Australian man was trying to steal goods from a railway truck in a small country town. A local policeman found him and a foot chase ensued. "Stop or I'll shoot," yelled the policeman and the thief immediately stopped and raised his arms in the air.
Back in those days, petty criminals of this type were often given a choice: They could be imprisoned for their crime - or they could join the army without having a conviction recorded against them.
This particular thief chose the latter option and finished up at El Alamein fighting alongside my father. One day while the Germans were attacking and they were hunkered down in the trenches with machine gun bullets flying all around them, the thief said to my father: "If I'd known how many bullets they could fire at me without ever getting a hit, I would have never surrendered to that fucking copper back in Australia..."
I once asked dad if he had ever got close to being killed in the war. He said that one day he was peering over the top of a trench when a bullet landed about an inch from his cheek and sent up a cloud of sand around his head - a sniper! Dad kept his head low for the rest of the day.
Dad's battalion was landing at a beach in New Guinea. They weren't under Japanese fire but they were desperate to get all their supplies onto the beach before the enemy arrived.
So there was dad and a couple of his mates, pushing a jeep that had got stuck in the mud above the high tide mark. It was hard work and they were exhausted, but they needed all the food, fuel, and ammunition they could get, so they kept on pushing.
And then one of the boxes fell off the back of the jeep. The lid flipped open and the soldiers noticed that it contained a china dinner service for the officer's mess!
Dad and his mates stopped pushing and left the jeep where it was. It probably stayed there for the rest of the war.
Dad was fighting at El Alamein during the North African campaign when suddenly everything went quiet. The Germans were no longer firing at them and nobody knew what was going on. Eventually an order came down to the men in dad's trench: "Get up on the parapets and see if you can draw some fire."
Even as a child I realised that was a pretty dangerous situation to get into and immediately thought to myself that I would never have obeyed that order. "Gee dad, what did you do?" I asked him.
"Well we got up on the parapet and walked around to see if we could draw some fire," he said.
As it happened the Germans had already left their positions and were retreating to the West - but if they'd still been there, dad would have copped a bullet in the head.
It was during WWII when an Australian man was trying to steal goods from a railway truck in a small country town. A local policeman found him and a foot chase ensued. "Stop or I'll shoot," yelled the policeman and the thief immediately stopped and raised his arms in the air.
Back in those days, petty criminals of this type were often given a choice: They could be imprisoned for their crime - or they could join the army without having a conviction recorded against them.
This particular thief chose the latter option and finished up at El Alamein fighting alongside my father. One day while the Germans were attacking and they were hunkered down in the trenches with machine gun bullets flying all around them, the thief said to my father: "If I'd known how many bullets they could fire at me without ever getting a hit, I would have never surrendered to that fucking copper back in Australia..."
I once asked dad if he had ever got close to being killed in the war. He said that one day he was peering over the top of a trench when a bullet landed about an inch from his cheek and sent up a cloud of sand around his head - a sniper! Dad kept his head low for the rest of the day.
Dad's battalion was landing at a beach in New Guinea. They weren't under Japanese fire but they were desperate to get all their supplies onto the beach before the enemy arrived.
So there was dad and a couple of his mates, pushing a jeep that had got stuck in the mud above the high tide mark. It was hard work and they were exhausted, but they needed all the food, fuel, and ammunition they could get, so they kept on pushing.
And then one of the boxes fell off the back of the jeep. The lid flipped open and the soldiers noticed that it contained a china dinner service for the officer's mess!
Dad and his mates stopped pushing and left the jeep where it was. It probably stayed there for the rest of the war.
No comments:
Post a Comment