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Lansell West Transcript of interview by Ina Bertrand 21 December, 2000 - tape 1 (90 min)
Lansell West, interviewed at Mentone on 21 December, 2000 by Ina Bertrand. OK, can we start with the very beginning, where and when were you born? I was born in Alexandra, in Victoria, on 31 December, 1918. My family shifted around quite a bit before settling down, over near Ballarat. A soldier’s settlement block, my father was a returned man from the first War. We lived there for awhile and then we moved, the settlement block wasn’t a success so he shifted to Beaufort and a place called Navigators near … out from Ballarat a bit, and from there I was about 8 I suppose and shifted over to Kilmore to live, and we lived there for some years, as a matter of fact I, served in the Militia while I was in Kilmore for sometime and from then I went down to Melbourne and enlisted in the AIF. Tell me about schooling? Where did you go to school? I went to Kilmore State School, mainly. Most of the time yeah, Right and how old were you when you left school? I was 15. What did you do then? I went to … worked in a local Chemist shop they had an idea they might make a chemist of me, but I wasn’t very … I wanted to be a journalist. Mm, right But there was no opportunities, in those days. I remember going to one of the offices in Melbourne, they said, "Son", they said, "We’ve got experienced journalists, looking for pick and shovel work". That would be the depression time. Yeah, yeah, during the depression, yeah, and that. I worked at the Chemist shop for about 12 months, when they realised I wasn’t really interested in it, they told me I could go, and they got another young bloke, who became a successful chemist too. From there I went to work, at, in the bush, for the Forestry Commission, for about 2 years, my brother with me. In fact my brother was at Noojee when the big fire went through in 1939, he was one of the survivors there, I had left. I’d taken a job as a baker’s apprentice back in Kilmore. So tell me about the militia. Who organized the militia? It was a Government … I don’t know who, who was the Government officer, or member of Parliament that started it. It was one of the … the threat of War was getting bad, you know, it was getting out of hand in Europe. It was threatening War, and they asked for volunteers to join the volunteer army, militia. So a lot of us said we’d join the militia. What was that like, did you have a uniform? Oh yeah, army, army uniform, just like the AIF. But they used to call us the "chocolates". "Chocolate soldiers", they said, "We’re frightened you’ll melt", but anyway they … those same chocolate soldiers got a lot of publicity during the fighting in New Guinea because some of those militia units stopped the Japanese. Right Before the AIF was there in force. You know. What did you, how did you train for the militia, did you have real weapons? Oh yeah, yeah, we learned to use machine guns, throw grenades, and all that sort of thing, become reasonable fit, I have to say this because it’s true: a lot of us ate better than we’d eaten up-to-date. Things were pretty tough, you know and the Army fed you all right, it was good. So did you train for some weeks at time, or a regular weekly … ? Every fortnight, we used to attend drill sessions, in the local hall, and at certain intervals we’d go away to camp. Two weeks I think it was. When the outbreak of War was imminent, they called us in, for I think for a 3 months camp, continuous training. But towards the end of that training they got us all in on parade, the whole brigade, and they asked for any men - the AIF was being formed then - and they asked for any men that wanted to enlist for the AIF to step forward. Quite a few of the men did, quite a lot of them became Officers and NCO’s in the AIF. I can think of one or two officers who were really brilliant Officers went to the AIF. And I stayed in, I didn’t want to go in the … my father was a returned bloke for the 1st War, and he, he used to say to me, "Don’t go yet, you don’t want to go yet. France hasn’t even called up all their Divisions yet’. Next thing we knew, France had collapsed. France was just rotten to the core, they just, just collapsed, and I said to mum, "I’ve got to go now. We’ll have to go. Who in the hell is going to stop em?" I said "The Germans have got to be stopped". And I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t really feeling very brave even though I was a militiamen, I didn’t fancy dying, you know. How old were you then? I was, ah 22, going onto to 22 when I enlisted in the AIF. 21. Right. So did you go with your unit, with your militia unit? No, no I transferred from the Militia to the AIF and um, when I went into the AIF we just went in as reinforcements, to the 6th Division. We went over in the Middle East, and … .   Hang on before you get to the Middle East. Did you have to do further training, when you first joined, or did they take your militia training as enough? Oh, they did , we were lucky in that respect. They asked us to do duties, like kitchen duties, and that, fatigues … All the militiamen were picked out there one day, and the Company Commander came along and he asked us, he said, "What we want you... we would like you fellows to do, is you to take over duty in the kitchen and all that sort of stuff to save the other blokes, who are untrained. We want them out training them full time. If you blokes are prepared to do this, I’ll see you get looked after, as far as leave or that goes". Right. So, we did the … once we went into the AIF we did the training pretty easy. Where was the training? I was in a camp down at Balcombe. Scattered around. When I was first, first went in the AIF, in the Camp at Caulfield Race Course, yeah. Camped in there in the stables. Right. In the stables, yeah. Where were you sleeping? On the floor. Did you have palliasses? I don’t think we had very much at all, I don’t think we had much at all, might have been a bit of straw or something. But some NCO brought us out … .. "Come out here," he said "You, right" he said, "You go that way, you go that way, you go that way, you go … " and the blokes going that way were all sent to the artillery units. And the mob that I was with they went into the infantry. The next thing we were told we going to be, the draft I was in were told we were going as reinforcements to 2nd 7th Battalion. I already had 2 cousins serving in that Battalion, I was glad to be going to the same Unit. And that’s where you went, that is where you went? Yeah, when we eventually got to Palestine. So the first, your first active service was in Palestine? Yeah, yeah Right, anything interesting happen on the ship over? No, there were no scares, a submarine looked at us all the time. A funny thing happened on that ship. When I got ashore I’d souvenired a knife, I took a knife, they had knives sort of embossed handle on them. The ships’ knives and I pinched one of these knives, when I got ashore every second bloke had one of these knives, they all had the same idea. They were an unusual sort of knife you know. Right, OK, so you landed in Palestine, and where were you posted to there? At a place called Beitjorja, not far from Gaza. Right And ah, we were there and just after Christmas there was an awful brawl, Christmas Day, I’ve never forgotten that. Hand on a minute, Christmas which year? 1940 1940 yeah. Christmas 1940. Yeah, yeah. Right. In Gaza? Yeah, no in Beitjorja, in the camp where we were. In the camp? Yeah. And what was this about? Oh, it was a dry canteen in those days. And it was Christmas Day, I never used to drink in those days. And um, Christmas Day they opened the canteen and boozed flowed you see. Anyway, after awhile they were drinking and that, you know Australians, they go mad when they’re drinking some of them. Anyway they started a hell of a brawl, general fight between some of our reinforcements and some of the reinforcements from the 6th Battalion. So there’s fighting, and anyway they said they ought to close the canteen. They closed the canteen and a couple of NCO’s come … and I was up in the tents, at this time - I wasn’t interested in the booze - and they come, "Right you, you, you. Come on, with me". Rifles and bayonets, foot gear, "We’re going down to guard the wet canteen. n case there’s, any of them get stroppy, and try to break in you see. So you got to guard the canteen. If anybody challenged them, tell them not to come. If they keep coming shoot to kill." Had you been in action before this? No, no, no we hadn’t been So it looked as though the first action you might see might have been against you own men? Yeah, yeah, and anyway we patrolled that night, like around the building. There were blokes coming down, they had it fairly well lit. You know, there were blokes coming down prowling around, but none of them really come near us, didn’t abuse us or anything, they just was trying to get into the damn canteen, instead of leaving well enough alone, you know. I’ve never forgotten that, but we got these orders if they tried to break in, shoot to kill. Right, so where did you first see the enemy? Ah, in the desert. We went up after Christmas to join the Battalion. And we got up, went into Egypt for a start, and only stayed there for awhile, and gradually, transport was pretty scarce, to you know, this was early stages of the War. And they got us up to Tobruk and they left us in a wadi, a big gully camping there, in dugouts, that the Italians driven out of. And we occupied them, the reason why they shifted us up by stages, up to a place called Barce, we stayed there a day or two and then they shifted us on again, another stage to Bengazi. And by this time, the Germans were coming in and starting to bomb and shoot up everything in sight. We hadn’t met the Germans at this stage, and anyway from there I joined the Battalion up near [?], we caught up with the Battalion, transferred to the different Company, you know. I was glad I was transferred to one of our popular officers, Lieutenant. While I was there, I got the first taste of the Germans - they come over strafing and shooting up, bombing and machine gunning, and anyway we were there for awhile and we were the most forward troops that any British troops got at a place called Mersa Bregha. Weren’t any British troops got up there, for ages after us, because when we pulled out we had, a NSW unit took over from us. And they only had one Bren gun, I think, for each Company. It’s ridiculous, to fight the War! But anyway, on the way back, German planes were coming over, they weren’t worrying about us, we had to jump out of the trucks, drop down the side of the road in case they started bombing us. But they didn’t worry us, but there was enough of em, coming over. But when we got back to Egypt, we were only there a few days in the camp, and they called a bit of a conference, at Company Headquarters, and our Corporal went over and he come back "You know what? You know where we’re going? We’re going to bloody Greece!" He said "This is going to be another bloody Dunkirk". He said, "We’ve got 2 Divisions, 1 Australian and 1 New Zealand division. They’re throwing us in against the bloody German Army. What can you do, we are going, we’ve got to go". And eventually, we got down to the troop ship, to go, when it was time to go. Where did you embark from? Alexandria, and those of us that were already on board - we’re like camping on the boat, on a big troopship - and I went up on the deck watching, just curious, watching who was coming on board, you know, to help us, and there was a lot of Airforce blokes came on, aircrew blokes we saw, we said, "This is all right, if we’re going to have the bloody airforce with us for starters". They were gunna be stationed on the boat. Next thing, back they all come, the whole lot, down the gang way and off the boat. We said, "What’s the matter?" They said, "Our orders have been cancelled", so they didn’t go, we should have seen the writing on the wall then. What it was going to be like. Had you been doing much fighting in the desert yourself? No, no, our Unit fought in Bardia and Tobruk, but we didn’t do any fighting when we got up to the front, because there were no … the only troops in front of us were the armoured units that were skirmishing. A road block, I remember manning a road block, we were right out in front of everybody else, I said "Gawd its going to be lovely if somebody … German tanks come along here. We’ve got nothing to fight tanks with". There was a Hurricane made a forced landing, a Hurricane fighter made a forced landing behind us there one day, within yards. We all run over, he pancaked it down in the desert, just slid along the sand, and he got out, and he was an Australian pilot too, come from Sydney. He said, "I’ll have to ask you boys something", he said, "I know it’ll be hard as Australians, but I don’t want you to take any souvenirs off this plane". He said, "I’m reporting this. This is the second one that the engine’s seized on me". Anyway we um, up to the stage we … um. So you hadn’t actually seen action. Until … . No, no I hadn’t Yourself. OK, you shipped over from Alexandria to where in Greece? Piraeus The port, yeah What did you think of Greece when you arrived, how did the people behave towards you? Wonderful, all for us, you know and to see.. look at the trees, look at the nice white-roofed houses and red-roofed houses and that. And the trees, the pine trees, vegetation, grass and that - gawd we saw nothing like that in the desert! And anyway we landed and I think we were only there for a night. And they loaded us on the train the next the day, and there was something wrong with that Greek crew - they didn’t want to move that train. Any excuse at all they’d stop, and we’d send billies up to the engine to get some hot water to make tea. And as we were travelling, we were travelling, the Greek women working in the fields were all crossing themselves. That looks nice, anyway, on the way up we passed, what they call a "blood train", coming down, a Red Cross train with all the wounded. A lot of British troops and that coming down, I don’t know where they’d been stationed, they’d been up there somewhere, and I remember one of them said "Oh, you don’t want to go up there", he said, "They’ve all got bloody tommy guns!", he said. And my mate said, "What did you have? Bloody pick handles?" Didn’t go down too good, you know … but when we got up there, we got up, we eventually got to a place called Larissa at night. And the German planes came over bombing us … it’d just got dark and they came over. We’re hiding amongst crates and crates of stuff all around, positioned ourselves among them, for a bit of protection, if, in case the bombs came down. Anyway, what happened then, the Greek train crew had gone and shot through, they’d had enough. Anyway.. Leaving the train? Yeah, left the train, we waited there, we didn’t know what was happening, we were just watching the fires from the bombs were starting and that. When it come daylight, we were moving, going to move, we were going to fall back and defend this area, while other troops fall back - the Germans had broken through everywhere - and two blokes in my unit, one of them was named Jock Taylor and one of them called Buddy Young. And this Jock Taylor had been there - he used to drive engines around the state, road graders and all that sort of stuff, you know - and he knew, knew a bit about steam engines, so him and this Buddy Young, they got in this train, and they started it up, and got us out. And we come back, fell back to a place I think it was Domikos, where the terrain was pretty flat and then all of a sudden it started going up in the hills, all around you know, we had to get up in those hills facing the road, turn round and dig in wait there for any action, and Buddy Young and Jock Taylor, they saved us. Right. Just ordinary, ordinary soldiers, you know. Yes, so did they do that on their own initiative, or did the Officers tell them? No, they offered to do it. Offered. And the Officers then, right so … .. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we fell back there. What were your uniforms at this stage? Were you given a different kind of uniform for Europe. No, no this, I’ve got a photo of meself, there, when we were in Greece. When we went to Greece. So, it was different, from what you were wearing in Egypt. Oh, no same uniform. Same uniform, even though the weather and the terrain, were so different? Yes, just the same. We had new uniforms, only difference, they gave us new ones, when we went to Greece. What was the weather like then in Greece? Oh, it was mild, sort of mild weather, it wasn’t bad. Pretty wet, and up at … that’s the only thing that saved us. It was hampering the German tanks, because once they get off the road, they used to get bogged, the few tanks we had they were inclined to bog too. But rarely ever saw a German … a British tank or a British plane So what next? Well then we got … stayed there for a few days, and held that position, had to hold it till 24 hours after the last vehicle had gone through, before we called move out ourselves. And when we did move out of there, apart from one occasion, we had a bit of skirmish with some German motor cycle blokes - we cleaned them up too, beat them. And gradually made our way back through Greece, and got to a place called Kalimata. A hell of a lot of them had been evacuated … everybody was falling back of course. And we got to Kalimata and we were hiding in the olive trees for a couple of days, and we got the word this night the Navy were coming to take us off. Made our way down to the port, whatever you call it, and a destroyer just tied up along side, it was a real precision job. Herded on to this thing and it took us off to a troop ship, called the Cost Rica. And it took us out to that, and herded us on to that, that’s the first time we got anything to eat, when we got on the troop ship, but anyway … Now what do you mean by that, first time since when? Or, since … Surely not since you landed. Since we landed, yeah, we lived on tinned stuff and biscuits and that sort of thing. What you were carrying with you? What you were carrying with you yeah, didn’t have a hot meal or anything like that.   Right, where were you sleeping, you just bedding down wherever you had … On the ground, on the ground, yeah, yeah. How long had this been? That you’d been living like this? Aw, it seemed like an eternity, but it probably wasn’t that long, about 2 weeks I suppose at the most. Right. So much happening and you’re moving and moving again, and on the run, you know sort of thing. We got out to the Costa Rica, and the next thing bloody German planes come up, bombing the hell out of it, out of the convoy. And our old ship, I believe, was the slowest in the convoy. We had a naval escort, like they were hammering away at the planes all the time. Somebody came down, and said, "We want all the machine gunners up on deck", and all the machine gunners, bren gunners, and vickers gunners and that went up on deck. And the NCO came down and he said "No, we want everybody down here" - we all had bren gun magazines, everybody carried magazines - he said "I want everybody down here, check what ammunition you’ve got and load all the magazines you’ve got." And they kept blokes running backwards and forwards bringing the empty magazines down. And they were giving em the hell up on the deck too, the racket’s going off … . Hundreds of machine guns all firing at once, you know. The noise was something shocking. Anyway after awhile everybody stopped firing, they all cheered, they reckon they shot one down. But whether it was them, or the Naval gunners they’d never know, but anyhow, you couldn’t believe how unlucky you could be - or lucky in a way. The last plane dropped his last bomb, and that bomb was the only one that did any damage, it sprung the plates in our ship and everything stopped, the engines stopped, all the lights went out, and the ship started to … oh, God, we’re going down, you know. An NCO, Warrant Officer, I think he was a pommy, he stepped up on the gangway, "Stand fast lads. Don’t anybody move." He said "The blokes up the end there, they probably copped it worse then we did. Just wait. Obey orders." So we just stood there waiting, and eventually got the order, "Make your way up on deck, but leave your weapons, all your gear behind. Don’t bring your weapons or anything, make your way up on deck quietly". We filed up onto the deck and formed up as you did with your lifeboat drill. And he called out "Anybody that hasn’t got a life jacket and can’t swim, go up to the top". That was me. I couldn’t swim, and I didn’t have a life jacket, and anyway about 5 of us up on deck and we were first off The British destroyers, one come in on each side, and tied up, and took us off. And they took us to Crete and dropped us, you know, the sad part of this, both those, both those destroyers were lost with all hands, fighting off Crete.   So did everybody get off the Costa Rica? Yeah, I don’t think there was anybody … the Battalion commander, Colonel Walker, he went back to check. And eventually the Navy had to sink this ship with gun fire, because it was … it was just floating low in the water like and it was gradually going down, and they sunk it to speed it up. And we landed on Crete, we had nothing, we had no food or anything, and that night - it was quite warm on Crete - our platoon, about 20 odd men, I suppose, we had to sleep on the ground. No blankets, nothing, and the Lieutenant, he got a tarpaulin from somewhere. We all got under this tarpaulin to go to sleep, it was all right, it was nice and warm. You know, but woke up in the morning, yelling at one another, acting the goat, you know … all these blokes under this great tarpaulin. Was it cold at night? Oh, no it wasn’t bad, well Crete was quite warm, you know it wasn’t … We were living at scratch rations, all the time we were there. What, everything that you had around your person you had left behind on the Cost Rica? Yeah, yeah, yeah So where, did the food came, that you did have come from? Oh, they had stores, there at the port on Crete. And they must have taken, there were already British troops on Crete. Some units of the Greek Army too I suppose. But we were, on I think it was half rations all the time we were there. And then … How did this work, were you given, ah tins, to look after yourself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or was there some sort of kitchen established? They’d hand out, so many rations to each section. And the Corporal would go and draw the rations and come back to share it out between us to eat. And he’d share it among you. But after we’d be there for a little while, we started to get paid. Paid in Greek money, and we’d go and buy Greek bread and eggs, and stuff like that, that helped. Buy it from the local people? Yeah, yeah And were they friendly, and supportive? Yeah, yeah, all for us, yeah. A Greek … we come down to look at this place - we were living in a place, over in Warren Road - and we come over, we heard this place was vacant. You mean this flat that we’re talking in now. Yeah, and we came over to have a look at it. We made arrangements to come at a certain time to meet the Agent. And he was here waiting for us and we walked in, and I said "Whereabouts you from?" He said, "I’m from Greece, Greece, Crete actually". I said "What part of Crete?". "Oh," he said "Maleme". I said, "I fought at Maleme." He put his arms around me, he hugged me like a brother, you know. He hugged me like a brother. And he said, "There’s someone else, a school teacher and her husband, have applied for this too". But he said "I’m going to give it to you". He said, "I’m going to give it to you". So were you actually fighting, now or were you still just waiting for … Oh, just waiting for something to happen, see they … there was no fighting on Crete. But the intelligence - they must have had good intelligence service - they were sending messages across all the time telling them what the Germans are up to, how they were building up for this fight you see. Anyway, I never forgotten this … all the NCO’s were sent up to this conference this day, and our Corporal came back and he said this Freiberg - he was a New Zealand General in charge of the whole show, a VC winner in the First War he was, brilliant soldier, and this lad said, "I don’t know", he said, "He is the greatest defeatist I’ve ever seen! He was telling us how we were going to get thrashed", and he said, "Funny attitude for an officer to have, a Senior Officer, just telling us what an awful belting we’re going to get from the Germans when they come". Those were his exact word. Anyway when the fighting did start on Crete, we sat idle, our Battalion. We were held up at one stage we couldn’t from where we were camped, because the German planes were patrolling the road, all the time once the fighting started. Patrolling the road, our trucks were hidden under olive trees and that waiting, move, and it was damn dark when we got out, when we were able to move. And we got up to Maleme, where we was supposed to be going, and we sat there for a good 2 days, before we did anything. We could hear the fighting going on down in the gully below us. Hell of a lot of fighting going on. One of our blokes was shot by a German sniper, while we were there. You’d get out of your slit trench at night to have a wee, you know, and this Wally Farrer and I got out of … he was in one trench and I was in another, and we were standing there talking to one another and he said, "Bloody hell," he said, "They shot me through the arm," he said. We heard the smack of the bullet on a rock … they say sound travels … we heard the smack of the bullet hitting him, before we heard the crack of the rifle shot. Anyway … Tell me about the trenches, you were living in the trenches? Yeah, we were. You dug them yourself, or were they there? From something earlier?. Well the New Zealanders, were occupying them before us, we just occupied their trenches. Did they move forward when you … .? Yeah, they’d gone, you see … what they … we could never understand why he didn’t pull us in too, because … the general story was - I don’t know how right this was - but they said Freiberg wanted all the credit to go to the New Zealanders if there was a victory. He wanted all … see the New Zealanders hadn’t fought a blow in the War, so they’d fought in Greece but not in the desert campaign. All the stories, Freiberg wanted all the glory to go to the New Zealanders - he didn’t want us sharing the limelight, you see. But when the day did come when we fought alongside the New Zealanders, it was alongside the Maori battalion - they were bloody soldiers, the Maoris, that was the first time I ever heard that Maori Haka, in the battle field before they went into action that was. And our blokes … I was in the reserve company … we were one unit, one part of the battalion, we had no bayonets, we couldn’t get … no bayonets, we got rifles, we got rifles eventually, they took the rifles off the infantry … the artillerymen on the island, to give to us … the artillerymen didn’t have bayonets you see, they didn’t use bayonets, they weren’t issued with them apparently.   So this means no um, extra um, weaponry had been landed to support you. No, only what. Only what you’d already, and you’d lost all your stuff on Costa Rica? Yeah, yeah it was taken off the artillerymen on the island and of course the Germans - the paratroopers - they dropped on the artillerymen and they had nothing to defend themselves with, no small arms, you see. We had their small arms. We had, we just had bandoliers of ammunition, like mexican bandits, slung around shoulders, you know. Grenades in our pockets, tunic pockets and that, and that’s all we had. Even the … we lost our Bren, first time moved from the position, I was telling you about, we were could hear the New Zealanders having a go down the gully, and we got the word to move, we want, the Platoon to go over to Galatas to counterattack with the New Zealanders to take village back, the Germans had occupied it. So we set off to … come out broad daylight, across this dirty great hill, and over come bloody Stuker dive bombs, they’d go into a circle and then they’d come diving down one at a time. And one side of the track was a vineyard, quite a small vineyard, and down that side of it, there’s a sunken goat track, been there for hundreds of years, and along that goat track there are olive trees planted. So our Lieutenant said "Get in amongst the trees, head for the trees", so we headed for the trees, and when we got into the trees there was the sunken road - about that deep I suppose - and we lay down in this road, and it was good protection, but those Stukers they came on … everyone of them dive bombed the vineyard, they thought we’d gone into the vineyard you see. And um, we survived that, and we headed … we made our way to over to this village of Galatas. When we got there, there was nobody there, it’s had the daylight bombed out of it. That’s where I got my first taste of whiskey. We went into a little boozing place, there, just checking there was nobody in the building you see. My mate’s behind me, the rest of the section, I could … dust and dirt you know. Dust, brick dust, every and all over … there’s a big jar, on the counter … on a shelf like that and a bottle alongside it. And I picked up the bottle and shook it, I says "What the hell is this?" and Jimmy says to me, "Don’t you know bloody great whiskey when you see it? Give us a go at it." And he took it, and wiped it on his shirt. He took the top off, we all had a swig out of this whiskey, White Horse Whiskey, it was, it was sitting there for years, I suppose, Greeks don’t eat … drink that sort of stuff much. Anyway, we came out, and the Lieutenant says "Nobody here, so we can’t do any counterattack", he said "You can hear all that firing going on, on over near the sea", he said, "There’s a battle going on there, but we can’t leave here", he said, "There might be Germans coming right away. We’ll occupy this ditch." I don’t know what it was - an irrigation ditch, or some other sort of ditch- "And wait for somebody to contact us." And the situation was that the New Zealanders should have left one person behind to direct us, guide us. But I could never, can never work out what happened there. But then go, then you did find action, in, with the New Zealanders, when was that? Oh yeah, that’s er, few days later. The Germans attacked one morning, we’d just got into position and my mate and I we were behind a brick wall... When our time went, it knocked some of the bricks out of wall. Stone wall, it was, we knocked some of the stones to give us a decent view of what was happening, and these Germans attacked, they come up and you could hear them approaching, what we, we were bombed there, from the air, they dropped an damned bomb on us, only, in a room about the size of this room.   12 foot square? Yeah, and the damned bomb landed over … blasted a hole in the wall. Right. We just got the blast of it, you know. But anyway, when the … next thing later … in the afternoon, there’s a company of 8th Battalion, on our left, and they made contact with blokes out of our unit and they said, "You blokes got any orders?" and the man, me mate, said, "No". "We’ve got orders to fall back", and we passed the word on to our Lieutenant, and he said, "I don’t know anything about that. We’ve got to stay here, that’s all I know. We’ve got to stay here". So we stayed there, and the next thing we knew the bloody Germans came from all around us, and that. We … the only thing that saved us, we dived through the hole in the wall that the bomb had made in and we got up the other side of the wall and they couldn’t see us you see. Gradually, we raced back through a vineyard, and we could hear them coming behind us, the Lieutenant stopped, he said "Turn about," and he said, "Give them a few rounds of rapid fire", he said, "Give us everything you’ve got, through the vineyard", through the vines you know. We did that and that stopped them, for awhile, anyway we eventually got out through one of our other companies. And that night everybody moved back. But what had happened … there was a New Zealander Officer, had fought a pretty stiff sort of battle against the Germans at Maleme there somewhere. And that day, that day … I’ve read the accounts … this New Zealander Officer … his company had suffered very severe losses, and when he took stock of things the first thing next morning he said "I think the best thing to do is to fall back", and he said "I haven’t got enough men to hold this position". But he didn’t know that that night the Germans had, they had suffered a helluva … we met the New Zealand signallers going to Galatas, in a dugout in the side of the road and one of them said, "Where are you blokes going?" We said, "We’ve been ordered to do a counterattack with you blokes". He said, "Any idea what Gerry’s trying to do?" We said, "No, we haven’t got a clue." We said "We haven’t got a radio," you see, he said, "We are getting very confused signals", he said, "We think they are trying to pull out". And it turned out when this New Zealander Officer ordered his men to fall back, and the Germans came forward and ah, realised their luck, they radioed straight back to, keep, keep your troops, keep them coming, therefore the New Zealanders had fallen back. You know it was the turning point of the War, that was that we lost Crete. I don’t know why? It sounds like a very chaotic situation in which it was very difficult for you to get information. Information, oh yeah, yeah, you never knew what was happening. You’d meet other blokes and they’d say … when, when we stopped, fought the battle with the Maori battalion, alongside the Maori battalion, they drove the Germans back that far - our, our, our three companies of course and the Maori battalion - they drove them back that far that the battalion commanders had to order them to fall back. They said, "If you don’t fall back, then the Germans are going to come around behind you, and cut you off". Right. I don’t know how many miles they went. You could hear the firing getting further and further away. And while this is going on, we had to occupy … our, our company had to occupy a ditch, to defend these blokes falling back, you see. And while we were there, there was 2 young New Zealanders - they’d been separated from their unit - and they dropped into this ditch with us. And they said, "What are you guys doing here?", and we said "Our orders are to hold the fort till everybody gets out, and then move out at dark. We’ve got hold the position till dark, anyway", and they said … one of them said, "We might as well stay with these blokes. They’re the only ones who seem to know what they’re doing". And they stayed with us. You mentioned early that you heard a Maori Haka. Now what were those circumstances?. They, it’s a War cry before they attack. So you saw this done? Heard it, we didn’t, hear them, you can hear the noise. Awful noise, you know. So you don’t know whether they did it … in their trenches, or out in the open. Oh, we’re dug in, there was no trenches there, the Germans had caught up to us in a vineyard, olive grove. Ok, so, they must have done it out in the open air. Yeah, out in the open, yeah. The NCO’s jumped in front of them, and did the Haka and they all joined in and away they went. Right. Yeah, you’ve heard them do it on a football field, haven’t ya, yeah? OK so, um, were you captured soon after this? Ah, no we um, we were falling back all the time. And ah, none of us were prepared to counterattack any minute. The Germans were pretty close to us, and ah,. I thought "This is going to be lovely! No bayonet! All I can rely on is my rifle, and some grenades, out of my pocket". But anyway the New Zealanders came to our rescue then, and we were falling back again, along the road, we approached the last place on Crete, Sparkia. As we approached this place, the word went that … we met the Maori battalion again on the road, having a rest on the side of the road, as we walked past, we were yelling out to one another - they knew our colour patch you see - and that, anyway, we kept on going and the word went back through the ranks that we’d copped the last rear guard action, to hold the Germans down, up in the mountains there. We’ve got to hold them, while they evacuate more troops from the beach, you see. The thing I was dirty on, that most of the troops that were on the beach were non combatants and they couldn’t even force them to cart our rations up to us up on the mountains there. On starvation rations, and yet they couldn’t … they reckon they used to - this might have been a story - they’d get them to come half way up, and they’d sit down and eats the rations themselves and turn round and walk back and say they had delivered them. I’d heard they were very non-descript, mostly British, non-combatants, and our own blokes, they weren’t much, no value at all. Only odds and sods out of other battalions, I don’t think they ever did anything on Crete. So you had to dig in, in the mountains then? No just lying amongst the rocks. You were just lying down around the rocks. The rocks, yeah. OK. With not much food, and not much ammunition? No, no, you had to conserve your ammunition, yeah, and other blokes coming past they’d give you ammunition, that they had, you know. We had a tank, a couple of blokes in a tank, there, I wondered what they were up to. I found after the war what they did. The two pommy blokes, they said "You blokes must be short of tobacco?" I said, "Oh yeah", and they gave us a big tin of tobacco like that, pre-rubbed tobacco, we shared it amongst ourselves. It turned out afterward that they had backed this tank … its machine gun, was, I don’t think it was any good at this stage. They backed their tank back up into a little alcove at the top end of the road, long straight stretch road, went up like that and it’s a little sort of corner where the road went around the bend. And they backed the tank up there, waited … and the Germans, the Germans they were mountain troops at this stage. They come up the side and they waited till they’d all gone around far bend and opened up this damn machine gun and they got the lot of them. They were all riding bikes, the Germans were riding bikes, they got the lot of them, and they just ah, just dismantled the gun, and left it and went … headed for the beach. They couldn’t do anymore. All right so they took the rest of them off Crete. Leaving you behind?. Yeah, yeah, no there was a hell of a lot. That was disgraceful, I get sick sometimes when I think about it. I read an article, about how our battalion hit the beach.: "All in their ranks in order, still carrying their weapons, they waited in orderly fashion, for the order to board the barges". As soon as we hit the beach - our Battalion, our Company actually was one of the first, Headquarters Company in front and our B Company we were was next - and I got to … you could see the water, lapping the beach, you know, that close to it, with the moonlight, it was a moonlight night. And all of a sudden the moon, when we went around there was a great mob, there, lying around on the beach waiting to be taken off you see. And, they said … somebody said, "The rear guard’s here! They’re here! The rear guard’s here, with us. The rear guard’s here with us". They all jumped and panicked, tried to break … force their way in, and the Colonel said, "Don’t let anybody in". He says, "Shoot em if they try to break … force their way in, shoot". He said, "Don’t let anybody break the ranks". And that’s how close it went. The first batch of Battalions Headquarters went onto the barge, and the Colonel with them, and when the Navy announced they weren’t coming back for any more, he said, "No, I’ll stay with my Battalion", he said, "I’ll stay with my Battalion." He come back, and he climbed up on the rock, and he said, he said, "The Navy’s not coming back for any more", he said. They told us … the last order we got from this Freiberg, before he skipped off Crete, he said, "From now on you’re fighting, for fighting units only. The others will be taken off, for fighting units". They didn’t want any more non-combatants, they were useless, things were tough in the desert at the time, they needed every fighting man, they could get. So anyway Colonel Walker came back to us and said, "Ah, what I’ll propose to do … " - even, consider that! Most Officers say, "I’ll do this", and "I’ll do that", and he said, "What I propose to do", he said, "hide in the hills during the day, and try hold them off during the day, and we’ll signal to the Navy at night to pick us up". He didn’t realise at this stage, that the Navy wasn’t coming back. - they had, they’d suffered too many losses and that. He said, he said, "Now, if there’s any man here that doesn’t want to be in that," he said, "he can fall out". The blokes said, "If it’s good enough for you, sir, it’s good enough for us"... "Right", he said, "Let’s get moving. Get organised". "Let’s get moving. Get organised". And we took up our positions, and I remember hiding in the little stone yard, that the people must have herded their goats, or that. We were gunna fight our last stand there, we shook hands with one another, and all of a sudden they sent for the NCO’s. Our NCO went, he came back, Acting NCO, Corporal, had been shot prior to this. And the Acting Corporal, he come back and he said, he said, "I just got orders from Egypt to surrender". He said, "The orders were, we must capitulate." He said, "What’s the bloody word mean?" We didn’t even know what it meant. He said, "We’ve been ordered to capitulate". It was an insult to the blokes that we had seen die you know. To be sold out like that! Not given any choice, like a mob of sheep. And anyway, we were working out what we’d do, our feet were in a shocking state by this time, I took my boots off, and I could hardly get my boots on again. Anyway. What do you mean? What was wrong? Blisters? Blisters, and you couldn’t … hadn’t had a wash for a fortnight. So, Tinea and um … My feet, were raw. I had three pairs of socks, I carried all the time in my belt. And I used to … of course you couldn’t wash em, you’d no means of washing. I used to change me socks around everyday to give em a bit of a break. By the time I’ve finished with them they stand up on their own and bark at you. But anyway, we, may as well go back and find out where the mob is … you’re just so disheartened, you know, that they’d do that to you, you know. I’ve never forgiven them for it. I’ve never forgiven our Army for that. So it wasn’t your immediate supervisors, superiors who were..It came It came from General Freiberg. He’d flown off in a bloody plane, and got back to Egypt, and told us to pack it in, but he was a very incompetent leader. We reckon, if we had one of our Australian Generals we would have been all right. Did you name, I can’t remember on the tape, did you name the Colonel who came back. Colonel Walker. Right, you had a great respect for him. Oh, yeah, he died not long after we came back. And the 2IC, Major Marshall, he died, I think a week about a week after the Colonel. We reckon, he’d have been a General if he had got back from Crete, he’s the bloke who should have gone, he would have been a General if he come home from Crete. All right, now, there must have been chaos, I would think. Here you were capitulating, but who to and where would you go? Oh, we knew, our Germans were going to be our bosses. Did you know where they were? Yeah, the best thing to do was really show yourself, and any Germans were trigger happy - if you were hiding in bushes, and that, they would try to shoot at you. But if you just walked up … half a dozen of the locals was climbing up the mountain and here was the Germans troops up on top of the hill watching us. We just flopped down among all the other blokes who were already there, and the German Commander he stood up... Some bloke acted as an interpreter there, and the German Commander, he said, "I would like to compliment you on your fight, your fight", he said, "You all fought well, and bravely", he said, "We respect you for that". Our own bloody leaders didn’t respect us too much. So did you get fed by the Germans? No, we had to march, drag, drag, you’d call it, all the way back, to a place called Skenes, a little place that had been an Italian prisoner camp. On Crete still? Yeah, and that, they released all the Italian prisoners and put us in there. And I didn’t get much to eat there either. Very little. The Germans were just feeding us with our own rations that they captured, you know. How many men? Our Battalion, now they would be less than 200 in strength. Right. That, that would have been roughly how many prisoners were in this particular camp? Oh, that was, more than, than, that was just our Battalion, there were other British troops, and all sorts there, you know. I wouldn’t like to say how many was in that Skenes camp - a couple of thousands I suppose. How was the camp organised. Did the Germans manage it or did they leave it to the Allied Officers to, sort it out? Oh no the Germans were in charge. Our own officers were with us, but they weren’t there very long and they sorted them out, and picked out all the officers and sent them back to Germany ahead of us. So they couldn’t organize you or anything, you know. Right. Trying to break you up as much as they could. But one of our Senior Officers, he told us, he said, "As you were ordered to surrender", he said, "You don’t have to worry about a thing", he said, "Your pay will go on just the same. You get all your entitlements just the same, but you just remember in the meantime" … some of the lads were getting cheeky to our Officers, he said, "You’re still responsible to Army, Army discipline, and you’re still, still under Army discipline", he said "Don’t forget that". Were you able to stay with your mates? Oh, a certain amount, yeah, yeah, at the … in some ways, you were sort of getting sick of one another, you know. In the section there was always one or two blokes, who’d be disagreeable sort of blokes - bots and that sort of thing you know. As in Infantry you had to put up with that. If, you, depended on one another, so much, you know, in the Infantry. Some mates I had there, were my mates right to the finish. When I come home, one of them was my Best Man. When I was married, yeah. So when did, when did you move on?. To Germany? Oh they shipped us back to Salonika first. It was a hell of a camp. Aw, a lot of men died there. Shot, died, died of starvation, and what not. We were no better off, than the Japanese prisoners in that camp. In Salonika … Yeah, everybody will tell you about Salonika, what a hell hole it was. Describe it. Describe what it looked like I mean. Well, it was an old Greek Army barracks. Been there for a hundred years or more, I suppose. Nothing there really, real of importance. We were just sleeping on the floor, in the 2 storey building it was, it was lousy with bugs, I was getting lousy with lice, body lice, and you just lay on the floor. It was hot, hot weather of course. I remember, women from the Greek Red Cross, coming up to the fence and throwing food over for us, but the Germans wouldn’t let them. Stopped them. So, not enough food? you said people died of starvation? Well the Greeks had nothing much to give. They had water melon, tomatoes, and stuff like, loaves of bread and stuff like that. The German rations were pretty ordinary. Used to get half a German … half an Italian Army biscuit, they were a biscuit about so big … . That’s about six inches square? Yeah, and ah a bowl of lentil soup. Sometimes a broad bean soup, you used to get grubs and everything in it. You were getting your meat with it, I suppose, was one way of looking at it. Yes, good protein. Yeah, grubs and everything … and but no, we didn’t get cards to send home, that were all right, and I remember the first letter I got from my mother, when I got to Germany. I always remember this, she said "You can’t imagine with what joy I received word that you were a Prisoner of War in Germany". Yes. We were posted as missing first you see. To know, that you were alive. Just that joy, it was to know that you were a Prisoner of War. We didn’t think so. Did you get.. So you got mail in Salonika? Ah, no, nothing there. You said, that men were shot there. Why was this and how did this happen?. Germans. They were trigger happy. So they were young Germans about our own age, trained to the minute, and raring to go - like boxers want to have a fight, well the same with the Army. You get that way after a time that you have to have a go at somebody you know. You were trained to kill a enemy, but where were we going to meet this bloody enemy and prove ourselves? Well see these young Germans - a few of them on Crete were the same too, very aggressive - and they had to practice their firing, shoot something. Did you see this happen? No, you didn’t see, because you weren’t allowed out. Blokes would be shot going to the toilet. And they’d just lie there all night, screaming for somebody to go, if you went near them, you’d get shot too. They’d just leave them there till the morning, and do whatever you could for them. How long were you in Salonika? It seemed like years, but it probably wasn’t very long. Might have been only about a month or 6 weeks, something like that, but oh gawd it seemed long. Woke up one night, the Germans were going mad, there were a lot of people disappearing, overnight there’d be 10-15 blokes gone, and they were trying work out where the hell they were getting out. The Germans were ropeable, went mad and anyway somebody said to me, "You know, I just woke up, you know where they’re going," he said, "The bloody Cypriots", he said, "They’re going down through the sewer". I said, "All right, I’ll be in that". He said, "I believe you only just crawl on your hands and knees most of the way, to get out". So I said I’d be in it and I went out, and there’s a queue waiting to go. Oh, line to the back gate there, the sewer. I could see all the blokes crowding around. You know, it’d draw the crowd, certain the Germans couldn’t patrol around the compound, they’d see something going on and they’d be there with their torches. And anyway, I was right back leaning against the wall of the barrack. Leaning there, I asked my cousin if he wanted to be in it. And he said, "I don’t think so, not worth the risk". I said, "I'm going to give it a go anyway". We got the message that Cypriots, they get out somehow, they didn’t have to go far, to get into the Turkish territory. Right, yes. … and they were right you see. And I said I’d decided I’d be in this too. And anyway one of my mates, he was head of me, red headed bloke, and anyway waiting there, the area was lit up a certain degree by the Germans, camp lights. I sat there with my back up against the wall, and finished up I went to sleep. When I woke up there was a burst of gun fire, and blokes was running everywhere. The German patrol had come in, and spotted this. What happened down the other hole, I couldn’t work out what the hold up was. And they said that somebody had gone down that hole, the gas that was down there, they’d fainted. And they reckoned there wasn’t room to turnaround you had to come out backwards. That’s what the Germans was told, to come into the compound and, realised there was all this hold up, there’s something’s wrong you see. Getting out of the hole he got a fractured skull, one of the Germans hit him on the head with a rifle butt and he got a fractured skull. I’m glad I didn’t make it that night. So that was the end of that escape route? Yeah, yeah. Um, Then the trip, when we eventually left there to go from Salonika to Germany. I think we were 5 days in the train - in wagons, not carriages, in wagons, covered wagons, on the train - one bloke got out one night. Somebody found a loose board in one of the wagons, and they made a hole in it, big enough for this bloke to get through. That night the Germans were firing shots everywhere, I don’t think they hit anybody, but I don’t know whether he got away or not, I never heard afterwards whether he got away. How many of you spoke German? Oh, I was never interested, all I wanted to do … I hated the place that much, all I wanted … the only German I wanted to learn was enough to keep out of trouble. I was really asking because of the escape attempts. You would have needed German to be able to get … bluff your way through, so … I knew no German at all. No, no Relying on the Cypriots to get you out, you know. Get out with them. But ah, So 5 nights, 5 days and 5 nights on the train. Yeah, yeah. They allowed us out of the train, once at Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to go to the toilet and have a drink. For the rest of that trip we had no water, we had a tin of food given to us when we got on the train, the first day, and of course most of us ate that the same day. So when we got to Germany we were starving, and we landed there at night, at a place called Moosberg, a prison camp there in Bavaria. Heard the dogs barking, and the Huns snarling orders, you knew the way they were carrying on what they were saying to you. Hurry, move quick. And the dogs barking at your heels, and the German Officer stood up and he spoke good English. He said, "Oh, you’re the boys, who are going to hang your washing on the Zeigfred Line", he said, "Well I’ll tell you now", he said, "You’re so many kilometres from the Zeigfred Line and that’s the closest you’ll ever get to it". That’s wishful thinking on his part, because we did get to it eventually didn’t they. Yeah, so what kind of camp was this? Where … was this a regular prison that had been converted? Yeah, there was thousands there. There was a big Russian camp, the first time we saw the Russians eating grass. The Russians’ life wasn’t worth two bob.   So they were treated even worse than you? Oh, far worse than the Jews even. Right. And you saw this happen? Yeah, saw it happen … we were, getting ahead of myself a bit... We went to Munich and when we had to get out of Munich, they sent us over to Lamsdorf, over near Breslau, to put us in the barrack. Next door to us, is a big barrack with barbed wire all around, there’s Russian prisoners in there and they were coming out of that hut picking grass to eat you know. Calling us for a cigarette, we’d throw them over cigarettes, and there was a German come and said, "Please don’t have anything to do with these swines", he said. "What’s wrong with em?" He said, "They have all got typhus", he said. "It’s a funny way to treat people with typhus, isn’t it? Bashing em?" Funny way … "Get inside, mind your own business", he said, and herded us into the barrack. And that night, one must have come over - gawd they used to take a risk those ones - and the 2 of them came into our barracks, 2 of these Russians, ah, their clothing was shocking, you know. How did they get there? They’d come over the wire, or through it, they were desperate for something to eat, you see. And we still had the remains of our Red Cross parcels. We were getting Red Cross parcels, at this stage. And I handed this Russian a tin of diced carrots, and he took the can, and he went down on his knees, and he kissed my hands. My mate said, "Did you see that! He went down on his knees and kissed your hands because you gave him something to eat". So the Germans were deliberately starving the Russians, then? Oh yeah, yeah what turned out, what was happening in that barrack, in that barrack. The Germans was starting to get a bit of hammering from the RAF you see, coming over bombing pretty frequently at this stage. That’s why, we believe we were shifted from Munich because the British Government made them shift us. And they refused at first, then the British Government said "If you not going to shift them, we are going to shift German prisoners into bombing areas in England". And that must have been the um, measuring stick. But anyway, what was going on, we was told afterwards, trying to put pressure on the Russians into going in and manning the Akak, guns around Munich. Russians are Akak gunners, you know, and they refused. They starved, starved them day after day, and they’d take them into this barrack and there was tables all up the middle full of food. A load of food, whatever food the Germans had available at the time. They said, "All you’ve got to do is sign this paper and to go and man those Akak guns, to meet the English swine and you’ll get all that food". The Russians wouldn’t give in. That’s why they were treating them like that. What about this disease, was there a lot um, say typhus, real typhus, dysentery, um, what, was there a lot of disease in the camps? It wasn’t, wasn’t so much, because … dysentery was the worst. And ah, which was this other disease you come yellow? Beriberi? No, um, cause of lack of diet, jaundice. Jaundice, scurvy. They’ve got another name for it, haven’t they, ah hepatitis. Isn’t now? I don’t know. I think so. Right. Anyway, um, the Russians, they used to have outbreaks of typhus every now and again, they’d die like flies. The Germans were very scared of that they when there was a typhus outbreak, they’d make us have a typhus injection too, because in case, they didn’t want it to get amongst them too, you see. Right. But um. But they didn’t mind you having dysentery and things that were not infectious but were diet-related? Give them credit where it’s due, as far as we were concerned they did have some respect for the Red Cross. You see medically they, they did do a fair job of looking after you, with what they had. And ah, can’t complain about treatment from the Germans in that respect.
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Victorians at War - Oral History Project