Larrikins in Khaki Read online

  On these exercises the gunners would take up their imaginary places on the make-believe gun and stand awaiting their next order. On the command ‘Load’, the gun loader would push an imaginary 2-pound shell into the imaginary breech, moving the palm of his hand upwards with sufficient vigour to ensure that the imaginary gun was correctly loaded and the imaginary breechblock closed firmly. On the command ‘Take aim’, the gun-layer would wind the imaginary traverse handle and set the imaginary trajectory, then make the finer adjustments through the imaginary grid on his imaginary sights until he was ‘dead on’ his imaginary target.

  With a tap on the shoulder from the gun sergeant as he commanded ‘Fire’, the gunner would dutifully depress his left foot on the imaginary firing pedal and away would go the imaginary 2-pound shell on its way to demolish an imaginary enemy tank. After the first exercise, the gun crew would then reform behind their imaginary gun and the sergeant would give the order ‘Change round’, and each member would take two steps to the right and the whole process would begin again, each one having a different task. In this way their versatility and confidence were assured. Well, almost! Colin Finkemeyer recalled their commanding officer came out to inspect the gun crews in operation: ‘He was most impressed with their zeal and expressed his confidence in the ability to handle the real McCoy when our genuine two-pounders arrived.’

  Fortunately, before they embarked for overseas, two Anti-tank Guns Mark I did arrive at Puckapunyal and the gunners drilled feverishly on them preparing for their first ‘live’ shoot. Drivers hauled a target in the rough shape of a tank well back in the hills, on a very long lead—safely, it was hoped—behind their trucks. The gunners opened up on the tank shapes with great enthusiasm and a surprising degree of accuracy. This was followed by the appearance of silhouettes of tanks, which popped up at various spots in the scrub beside the hill about 1000 yards away, which the guns promptly annihilated.

  Finkemeyer was confident. ‘The shoot was a good indicator of our promise. Having once fired our guns with live ammunition we were ready to leave Australia confident that wherever we were going, when we received our guns, there would be no holding us back. We were ready to tackle any enemy tanks that came our way.’

  In February 1941, the 13th Anti-Tank Battery boarded the passenger liner Queen Mary for a destination unknown, believing their complement of anti-tank guns was on board. The troops were full of enthusiasm to be finally on their way to do their bit for their country. On disembarking they discovered that their mystery destination turned out to be Singapore, where they were put on a train to Seremban on the Malay Peninsula.

  Their accommodation was a disused school, its large playing field ideal for parades and pack drills for the battery gunners now far from home. But their guns were not on the Queen Mary. However, loyal and conscientious as ever, they marked the outlines of the guns on the school’s playing field—there being no old red gum logs to be found—and dutifully carried on their make-believe training with phantom guns.

  After three months, word came that their guns had arrived and were actually waiting on the wharves of Singapore. Drivers were quickly sent to collect them. It was thought it would only take a couple of days at the most to bring them up from Singapore and the gunners’ excitement was palpable.

  But a week went by, then ten days, and still no sign of the guns. What on earth could have gone wrong? The gunners clung desperately to their faith in the army that all would be well. Just as they were beginning to lose hope, out of the blue came the message: ‘The guns will arrive at 1500 hours tomorrow’. Anticipation by this time was at fever pitch. At 2 pm, well ahead of the estimated time of arrival, the gunners were lined up on both sides of the driveway to form a guard of honour to receive the guns.

  To their great joy, they heard the rumble of approaching vehicles. It had to be the guns! In rolled the vehicles towing World War I, 18-pound Royal Artillery pieces, clad with iron wheels. The iron wheels had accounted for the delay in their arrival as their towing speed was restricted to 5 miles per hour. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, they noticed the words prominently displayed on the shield of each gun in large white letters, ‘FOR SALUTING PURPOSES ONLY’.

  Finkemeyer said the guns had reportedly been taken from the palace grounds of an Indian rajah and sent post-haste to Singapore so that they could play their role in defending their ‘illustrious, impregnable isle’.

  Clarry McCulloch was a Tasmanian boy from Ulverstone, in the north of the island. He was one of a number of north-west coast boys who had been in the 22nd Light Horse Regiment before joining the AIF. They had, on arrival at Brighton camp, just north of Hobart, been drafted into the 2/40th Infantry Battalion which was just forming—much to their chagrin, having previously been indoctrinated in the Light Horse with a healthy contempt for the lowly ‘footsloggers’, as infantrymen were called by those on horseback. ‘However, all was not lost,’ McCulloch wrote, ‘as it soon became known that a new unit was being formed which, in addition to being a machine gun unit had the advantage of being fully mechanised.’ This they thought meant no marching! They were not to know that at a later stage of training their battalion would set a new army record by marching 200 miles carrying full kit.

  As the boys who had been in the Ulverstone troop had been trained in the use of the Vickers machine gun, they headed straight for the headquarters of C Company, 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion. There they were welcomed with open arms and the necessary transfers arranged immediately.

  Here it was that McCulloch met a most remarkable fellow-recruit. He was tall and angular with bright red hair and a prominent chin and his name was Lorimer Anzac von Stieglitz.

  Naturally he became known as ‘Blue’, like all other redheads in the army, and in a short time we became good mates. Blue came into 11 Platoon on the same day as myself and was allotted the bed space next to me—well actually floor space. Instead of beds we had long hessian bags, called paillasses, filled with wheat or barley straw. These were folded in three and stacked against the wall during the day and rolled out on the bare boards at night with three feet between each paillasse. In this way each hut could accommodate a full platoon of approximately 40 men.

  C Company, 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion, like most AIF units, was made up of men from all walks of life. There were lawyers, rabbit-trappers, miners, bank tellers, farmers’ sons, schoolteachers, wharf labourers, sailors (including one who had sailed around Cape Horn in a windjammer) and sawmillers. Also included in their ranks were several members of Tasmania’s leading grazier families who, incidentally, went on the records as farm labourers. This was to avoid being hauled out of the army as essential members of a protected industry.

  Their commanding officer was a Victorian, Captain ‘Speed’ Gordon, quickly nicknamed after the cartoon character. He had a rather pedantic manner but McCulloch and his mates soon discovered that he knew what soldiering was all about, having been an officer in a Melbourne Militia battalion for several years.

  Their training began with a series of parades where they were issued with all the gear necessary for a fighting soldier. First came the rifle and bayonet, with the old admonition that it was a soldier’s best friend so it should be cared for above all else. Then came the steel helmet, or tin hat. Although this was heavy to wear, the recruits could see the sense of it and did not complain.

  The next major item was shown on the records as ‘respirator, gas troops for the use of ’, and loathed by all. The gas mask consisted of a close-fitting face mask with glass eyepieces and an exhaust valve which was attached by a short corrugated rubber hose to a canister containing a filter. These were carried, when not in use, in a haversack which was to be strapped to the chest of the novice gunners at all times during training hours. They were then given endless lectures on the correct use of the mask and the types of gas they could expect to encounter—and field tests. They soon found that phosgene was colourless and smelt like musty hay or rotten apples. Chloropicrin was sweet smelling and induce
d vomiting.

  A special sealed hut had been prepared where the various gases could be generated and each man in turn would have to pass through this area. During this exercise the mask had to be removed from the face temporarily so the gas could be identified later. Then during normal gun training it was common practice for the sergeant or platoon commander to suddenly shout, ‘Gas alert!’—usually at very inconvenient times.

  ‘A lot of the boys found the gas haversacks were a very useful place to store cigarettes, tobacco or lollies, and if one of these gas alerts came while we were marching along the road, it sometimes caused some confusion, with small items going in all directions and lots of bad language,’ McCulloch recalled. ‘Thank goodness we didn’t have occasion to use them in action, as they were vile things to wear.’

  The aspiring machine-gunners soon settled into a steady routine of rifle drill, route marches and lectures on tactics. Brighton camp was bitterly cold in a Tasmanian winter, and the issue of woollen scarves and balaclava caps was warmly welcomed.

  It was frustrating at first not having any machine guns, but as soon as they arrived (twelve of them—Tasmania’s total supply) enthusiasm picked up. There were some rocky hills quite close to the camp and day after day the recruits would scramble up the slopes, carrying or dragging the guns into various attacking positions, then dismantling them, and racing down the hill ready to start all over again. This was no easy task as the gun and tripod each weighed about 50 pounds and, for realism, the ammunition boxes were filled with stones.

  Overall, the troops were in good spirits, according to McCulloch:

  Sometimes as a break from training, the commanding officer would decree that the company would march to Bridgewater or Bagdad [a quaintly named local village far from the Middle East] and return. This was quite enjoyable as, apart from leaving and entering the camp, we were permitted to march ‘at ease’, which meant talking was allowed. After the evening meal we were free to amuse ourselves until lights out at 10 pm when everyone was expected to be in bed in the hut. Some would choose to stroll a half mile to the Pontville pub, where the landlord was always happy to greet us. That is, until some of the troops—not machine gunners—decided to liberate a full keg of beer which they’d found in the backyard.

  Others would spend the time in the hut reading, or wander down to the Red Cross or Salvation Army huts where there was always warmth, a plentiful supply of writing paper for letters to family or friends, and a hot cup of tea or coffee at 9 pm. The ‘Sallies’ always offered a short homily before the drinks were served, always cheerfully endured.

  From time to time, leave would be granted from 5 pm until midnight and it was possible to catch a train from Brighton to Hobart—about 18 miles—for a few hours recreation. It was about half a mile from Brighton Station to the main camp, and frequently well-lubricated gunners would have difficulty negotiating the track from train to camp if the evening had been a particularly convivial one.

  One night two soldiers were seen staggering towards the gate, supporting a mate between them. Upon reaching the gate and surrendering their leave passes, the two dumped their mate on the ground and began stumbling towards their billets. Immediately there was a plaintive cry from the prostrate soldier: ‘Hey, come on Blue, give me a hand mate.’ From the darkness a voice replied, ‘Die you bastard, die!’ Clarry McCulloch was glad to report that Blue did come back for him eventually. ‘Mates are like that!’

  On Sunday morning all troops not on leave or guard duty were expected to attend a church parade. The Roman Catholic members had their own service while the Protestants were lumped together for the other one. As this meant sitting on hard seats for an hour or more, listening to predictably boring sermons, an alternative seemed attractive.

  Clarry and Blue discovered that declared agnostics could be excused from attendance, so one Sunday before the service they approached the sergeant major and explained they were now agnostics. Without a smile he agreed that this was so, and excused them from church parade. Immediately, however, he wiped the grins from their faces by telling them that there were three bags of spuds to be peeled in the cookhouse so they’d better get down there and get started. After peeling spuds for two hours, Clarry and Blue decided that they had ceased to be agnostics—for army purposes anyway.

  There were training excursions outside the camp. On one occasion the company went on a three-day bivouac on the south-east coast near the town of Sorell. There, much time was spent digging and sandbagging gun positions among the coastal dunes at Seven Mile Beach followed by live ammunition firing out to sea.

  On the last night a campfire concert was held and many interesting items were performed by various members of the group. The variety and vigour of many of these items was enhanced by one of the local farmers who had donated a 5-gallon keg of locally brewed cider for the occasion. After a very explicit recitation by one bloke, Captain ‘Speed’ Gordon was heard to remark, ‘Don’t you think that your language was a trifle expressive, private?’ To which the soldier replied quite nonchalantly, ‘I’m fucked if I know, Sir!’

  This cider was a fairly dynamic brew and as most of the recruits were beer drinkers and not used to cider, this led to some unfortunate results. One involved Clarry’s mate, Lorimer Anzac von Stieglitz—Blue. He had been raised in an apple-growing area in the Tamar Valley and when many of the blokes were reluctant to drink their allotted pints of cider, Blue was only too pleased to help them out, saying, ‘I can drink the stuff all night.’

  When the concert ended we all made our way to the area where we had previously made our beds under some boobialla trees. Blue, by this time in a rather happy frame of mind, decided that it would be a good idea to go down and pull our Commanding Officer Colonel A.S. Blackburn out of his bunk, just for a joke. All arguments were in vain, so to forestall a possible court-martial and discharges from the army, I decided that drastic action was called for.

  Distracting his attention for a moment, I delivered a hard uppercut to his jaw. This put him down for the count, so we all dragged him over to his bed and covered him with a blanket. In a few seconds he was snoring soundly. Next morning when we were getting ready for breakfast, Blue complained that his jaw felt rather sore and couldn’t understand why everyone in the platoon thought this was so hilarious. Sometime later he was told the truth, and after much strong language agreed that the joke was really on him.

  Ivan ‘Ivo’ Blazely was a knockabout young man from northern Tasmania who had left school at the age of twelve, and whose first job was an apple packer at an orchard, then wood cutting, sawmilling, fruit picking and underground mining. At seventeen he bumped his age up to 21 and managed to join the AIF at the Melbourne Town Hall. After a week’s leave, it was time to ‘get down to the serious business of soldiering’, Ivan said.

  One of the first things I remember was dental parade. At the initial medical our teeth were examined and whoever had crook teeth were paraded to the next dental tent, where we formed a queue and at the next call we went in and sat down. Those who had to have extractions received the appropriate injection, then went outside and got on the end of the queue waiting your turn to go in again and get your teeth pulled. Bad luck if the effect of the needle was wearing off when your turn came.

  Early in the piece Blazely was put on picket duty, posted on the side gate into the camp and told to stop anyone who did not have a leave pass from entering. It was late afternoon and there were plenty of customers, but Blazely got over this by pointing out to those who lacked the necessary document that there was a hole under the fence about 30 yards away. ‘This system went well until a sergeant approached and I gave him the same message. It turned out that he was one of the camp Provosts [military police]. He gave me my first army dressing-down—but to give him his credit the matter ended there. After this episode I trusted no one in camp with three stripes and very few with two.’

  For a week or two Blazely and his fellow recruits were kept busy getting injections against tetanus an
d typhoid, plus the occasional mess orderly duty and learning that you never just ‘went’ anywhere in the army, you ‘marched’, and you did not just ‘gather together’, you went ‘on parade’. One day an order was given for all recruits to fall in for a selection parade. All rookies paraded while teams of officers interviewed each of them about their civilian occupations and previous army experience if any. Quite a few had served in the Militia. When Blazely’s turn came he told them ‘timber worker’ and was told to fall in near the peg marked Pioneers. He wanted to join the artillery, but had been told they only wanted personnel with previous experience. He asked a more experienced soldier what the Pioneers were about, and was told, ‘It’s just a fancy term for the infantry.’ Blazely recalled, ‘I thought I’m out of this at the first opportunity.’

  Shortly after, an officer came along asking for volunteers for the postal unit. Blazely thought that would at least give him a little time to work things out, and was accepted with no questions asked.

  There were about 30 postal recruits and their daily routine, after the morning roll call and breakfast, was to be marched along Fleming-ton Road towards the city for about half a mile to a largish building, where they sorted army mail until about 3.30 pm, after which they were marched back to camp. Blazely stuck this for two weeks, but it did not coincide with his idea of soldiering, nor did he particularly like his coworkers.