Victorians at War - Oral History Project

Training
William 'Evan' Allen joined the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) at the beginning of World War I. He was only 14 years old at the time and so joined the Navy as a boy soldier, completing initial training on a ship called the Tingira. As Evan explains, he had to complete 'gunnery training, rifle training and seamanship education'. He spent over a year on the Tingira before being posted to the HMAS Encounter, a cruiser that served as a convoy for Australian and New Zealand troop ships. Evan continued to learn about seamanship on board this new ship and was soon promoted through naval ranks.
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The importance of adequate training in a wartime situation, where you could be asked to perform under great pressure, was demonstrated by Beryl Hogarth, who had to rely on her general nursing training when she was thrown into a difficult situation in a hospital in Vietnam. When another nurse felt she could no longer work in the Intensive Care Unit, Beryl stepped in, even though she had little experience in that area of nursing. As Beryl recalls, 'She just refused to go, and then I kind of looked at her and she said, "I can't go there, I can't go there." And I said, "All right, that's okay." Cripe…I had to go there myself, and that wasn't too okay, but I did it. And, I think my basic nursing helped me, absolutely'.
Hear complete interviews with veterans in the "Personal Stories" section of the Archives