Film - 'Bill Rowe: A Military Family - Interview with Bill Rowe', Red Cliffs - Irymple RSL Sub-Branch

I think it was very close within the first two days of the War being declared dad immediately joined up, as did his younger brother as soon as he was old enough to join up. And he had two other brothers that eventually got old enough and joined up the Army, too. So there were four out of the six of them joined up.

I'm one of eight children. And they had the four boys and four girls. Burt joined the Air Force and was, as I say, killed in Canada. And we idolized him, too, you see, Sorry, getting a bit emotional.

So when I was old enough to join, I sort of had to talk my mum around to signing papers and things to join the Army. I was in the 22nd Second Infantry Battalion. Brother Jack, as soon as he was old enough, he joined the Air Force. Then brother Rex, as I say, as soon as he turned 17, he did this Officers Training skill at Portsea and came out as an officer when he was 18.

So that's the boys sort of the side of the family. The girls didn't join the services. They all married ex-servicemen. And two of them married two ex-servicemen, or servicemen.

When the big fight came on in Gallipoli at Lone Pine, dad transferred to the 7th Battalion from the headquarters division so he could go up and fight at Lone Pine. And on the night of the big battle, dad was wounded. It went about on and on at 10 o'clock at night or something, I think it was. And they carried him down the beach where he laid there for 24 hours whiting for a place on one of the hospital ships out in the bay. So eventually he got on that and went back to Egypt into hospital.

There weren't many of them alive that next morning, and four of them got VCs. He said to me-- I can remember this. I was only, what, probably four or five years old. I didn't even know what a VC was. And he said, Rusty, he said, if I'd have lasted til the morning, I'd have got a VC.

His records read that he went to a headquarters unit for a while. And then he transferred out of that into the 9th Field Engineers because he wanted to get back into the action. He actually dropped his Sargent's stripes again to go back as a sniper. And he went to the Western front with the Engineers and had a pretty hard time of it there.

There's a story. And I can't provide any evidence or proof of it at all, but this was dad's story. He was walking back to the lines one night from the front after being up there. And he walked past some big brass and he didn't salute.

The big brasses already come, pulled dad up. And they started giving him a bit of a dressing down and said, why didn't he salute? Dad said, if you'd been where I've been for the last 48 hours, without any sleep and fighting, he says, you wouldn't be saluting anybody either.

So the officer then again started to give dad a dressing down. And the senior officer that should have been saluted said just a moment to his [INAUDIBLE] and questioned dad about where he'd been and what he'd done during the war up to this juncture, and he asked dad what he would like to do. And dad said, well, I'd like to join the Australian Flying Corp.

And so he was asked his name and rank and Army number, and said, right, we've got that information now. You can go back to the back lines again, which dad did. And sometime later he got a notification that he was to attend Queens College at Oxford University for training to be an Australian Flying Corp pilot, which he accomplished and was finished up the war, the last several months of the war, in the Australian Flying Corp.

And of course, dad again had joined up as soon as the Second World War broke out, dad joined up again. And I suspect from this, you'll gather the type of fellow he was. He was a gung-ho fellow. And he wanted to be where the action was and where things were, and looked to be doing something good.

I didn't get to come home on leave very often in the four and half years I was in the Army. But each time I did, dad just looked and saw my two stripes which I'd got after about a few months in the Army. And four years later, I still was walking around with those stripes of mine. That didn't impress dad too much at all. I suspect that when we were growing up, if dad had had his way, we'd have come into our meals up at the bugle call, for a missed bugle call, and we'd have lined up and we'd have saluted him at lunches.

I was in the 22nd Infantry Battalion. And not long after I joined the Army, I found myself in the horse stalls at Caulfield Racecourse on the ground, on the duck boards in the horse stables. That was our sleeping quarters.

At this very same stage, my father was also billeted in Caulfield Racecourse. It was a bit of a giggle, actually. His quarters were in the ladies toilets at Caulfield Racecourse.

And to this juncture, I hadn't been in the Army long. I'd never, ever saluted him because he was an officer and I was at this stage still a private. Of course, you were supposed to salute the officer every time you see him. And, of course, if I saw dad coming one way, I'd duck around another way. Never, ever saluted him until years ago when he was at land Army headquarters up in Swanson Street.

Brother Jack that was in the Air Force, he happened to be on leave in Melbourne the same time as I was, and we needed to see him about something. And I said, right-o, Jack, we'll go in and front him and bung him one, which meant a salute. And I think it was one of the happiest days in his life when two of his sons walked up to his desk to see Captain Rowe and bung him the salute. Because a smile went from ear to ear on his face that his siblings would, or his sons, had actually walked up and saluted him.

Without really knowing, I suspect mum put pressure on dad to get me organized out of this 22nd Infantry Battalion that finished up going to New Guinea. And I went up to the territory, didn't I. And then we sailed off to Bougainville up in the Solomon Islands, and Guadalcanal, and all those dicey areas. And I was seasick 24-hours a day when I was at sea. Soon as I got on back on the land, I was right again.

The [INAUDIBLE] is probably the worst, my worst, Army experience. On that thing I just showed you, the machine guns on that have a steel sheet in front of them that you were standing behind. On our ship, we just had the bare gun. And to have a plane coming at you to strike at you when you've got nowhere to hide, bullets zipping off of a steel deck all around you, I tell you, it's the most frightening thing that could ever happen, and you just have to stand there and fire back. Yeah.

I can't, as I say, I think I'm lucky, or was lucky, in that I didn't have hand-to-hand fighting at ground level. So you know it's just like I don't profess to be a hero or anything else. But there were some very, very difficult times. 

Film - 'Remembering Ernie Wolfe OA - Interview with Robert Wolfe', Red Cliffs- Irymple RSL Sub-Branch

Robert Wolfe: One of the interesting aspects, I found, of Dad's army service, was he kept diaries throughout his time - both prior to and during and after the time he was a POW.

This is one that he kept in Greece.It was obviously bought in Greece. He's had another one here... in the early stages when he was in Egypt.

And he's had also this particular diary taken in the 1940... written in the 1940s, the whole year, when he was a POW.

And an interesting part to this one - I was glancing through it -it's obviously written in pencil and has faded quite a bit -but this is a Red Cross chocolate, indicating this was a gift from the Canadian Red Cross.

This was his bookmark at the time, and I've opened it on Christmas Day, 1942.

'They were awoken at four o'clock. Did the usual duties in the morning. Cleaned the rooms, went for breakfast, lunch at 11. Went to a service.' So it details... 'Invited Joe over.'This was Joe Wishart. So, this was obviously quite a special day for him.

Dad's first escape was with Hec Virgona, with Joe Wishart and Charlie Grandquist, and, I think, they thought because Hec could speak Italian, and it was close to the Italians capitulating, they thought if they got out of Austria and made it to Italy, they would be right.

Unfortunately, the first time they tried to escape, a Croatian lady found their provisions they'd stored nearby at a tip, and they were dobbed in, so to speak, to the camp commandant, and I think they did some time in a civilian jail.

But a few weeks later, they escaped again. Not very successfully. I think Joe lost his boots in a river and it was fairly cold, and eventually they were picked up by the Italians. So they didn't survive there very long, and they spent time in a place called Udine in a civilian jail, before they were taken back to the camp.

This is part of the escape story that was written in detail by Dad later - 'We climbed as far as we could into these majestic mountains, before day dawned. And as we sat up there, exhilarated with our freedom, we looked across and far down towards our camp visualising the guards standing up the boys for work, and asking, "Where's the Wolfe? Where's the Wishart?"

Towards nightfall, we had climbed a considerable height, bathed in a mountain stream, laughed with the birds and felt a great joy of freedom. Summertime in the mountains with all the beauty and tranquillity can also have an ugly mood, and this mood caught up with us in the form of a terrific thunderstorm. We sat huddled together all night, drenched to the skin, with only our shelter a small bush. Morning broke with delightful sunshine. So wet and hungry and wet smokes, off we set again.'

The years of 1941-42 were predominantly spent in Yugoslavia, which is now Slovenia.

Dad was in working parties, working in quarries on the railways - places like Maribor and also near Celje.

That was where he met the family, the Godecs.

Yuri is still alive,and the mother was... had conned the German guards to get some prisoners to help shovel snow from their house, and also to assist by chopping wood in the cellar. Her husband was in Dachau, a concentration camp, so she was fending for herself.

The danger for this was that it was partisan country, and there was quite a number of cases where the Germans had been killed by the partisans, so there were reprisals.

So, Mrs Godec had to be very careful that she wasn't found to be harbouring prisoners or assisting prisoners, which in actual fact she was, because in..... in the cellar of this house they had an illegal radio. So Dad and some of the prisoners would,while out chopping wood, and while Yuri, who was then a boy of 15, kept guard, and Mum bribed the guards, some of whom were Gestapo, with schnapps, they would listen to the illegal wireless.

But in the letter written in 1975 to Dad, Mrs Godec said how dangerous it was to them, and had they been found, they probably would've all finished up being shot. So it was quite a risky business.

So that's been a very emotional contact for Mum and Dad, who visited the Godecs twice. He was extremely pleased to meet Mrs Godec after all those years, and to meet Yuri.

In the early 1980s, he went back again.Mrs Godec had passed away. But he again was made to feel very welcome by Yuri, and they visited there again. Then my wife and I visited Yuri and his wife, and saw the old house, which is still there, next door to where Yuri lives.

It was interesting there that Yuri obviously saw Dad and the prisoners as a bit of a father figure, and he often related to me that the first chocolate he ever got was from Dad and those prisoners. So it was a very special connection to me.

After Dad left Yugoslavia, and as the war progressed, Italy capitulated. A lot those prisoners were moved further into Austria or Germany, and the two camps that Dad was in were Stalag 18B and Stalag 18A in Spittal and Wolfsburg. That's where he reconnected with some of his early mates - Charlie Grandquist, Hec Virgona, Joe Wishart.

I mean, they actually met up, directly and indirectly, across those three years that he was a POW, both in Yugoslavia and later on in Austria.

Film - 'The WW1 Diaries of Pte. Jim Bailey 1st AIF - Interview with Pam Cummings, Brock Hermans, and Jonathon Wenham', 2011, Red Cliffs/Irymple R.S.L. & Military Museum

Brock Hermans (reading): 'Friday, 11 May 1917. Not a breath of wind. Dead calm. The whole earth is trembling like a continual earthquake.Flares of all colours light the horizon.

Everybody is watching the guns flashing,and on the highest spot to get a view of it, if possible. But the hill in front is too high to see over.

I think at 10pm, not a shot to be heard. Perfectly calm for a short while, then occasional big guns would speak out, and crash of the bursting shells from both sides, about one every few minutes till midnight, when a few more of the guns began to ship in.'

Pam Cummings: This one actually, and this one, were actually given to him by the Army. They were their own diaries that they carried with them. And they're canvas bound, and it really is amazing how much information they can fit in just such a small area.

He's written across and around the edges, and that to get all his thoughts and all his feelings into it.

Postcards were actually given with Red Cross parcels, and there's a few in there that actually... He lists what he got because he was so excited about what was in the Red Cross parcel. And tobacco is quite high on the list. (Chuckles)

What really amazes me is these diaries...um... were all given to the...or delivered to the museum in a styrofoam box because the family were cleaning out, and they just put all this stuff in a styrofoam box, and it had been stored somewhere, and it was just handed here. (Chuckles)

Jonathan Wenham: By February 1919, the war is over, and he's back in England waiting for a ship home.

He's disgusted at this point that -[reads] 'The base and staff heads and the ammunition workers, who've been living in luxury and pleasure during the war, are all going home already to get all the greeting and welcome.

But the unfortunate digger, who's put up with all the inconveniences and hardships, has to wait.'

He says, 'There's little or no pleasure in England now the war is over, with thousands of war workers - men and women - out of work.'

But he does say that he goes quite often to see the pictures. In fact, a large part of his diary is descriptions of many of the short films that were shown.

But, at this time, even though, you know, there are some things that interest him, you get the picture that he just...he wants to get home again. It's been four or five years since he left. That's a long time, especially when you're young.

Reading these diaries really does let you get a feeling for what it was like, but at the same time, I don't think it's possible to really understand how terrible it was.

Film - 'Researching Family: The Tickle Sisters - Interviews with Avalon and Isabel Tickle', 2011, Red Cliffs - Irymple RSL Sub-Branch

-I'm Isabel Tickle.

-And I'm Avalon Tickle.

-And I researched my great-grandfather Frank William Tickle for the National History Challenge and the Victorian Spirit of the Anzac prize.

-And I  researched my great-great-uncle for the National History Challenge. I chose to research William Thomas Yates because recently, before I started doing the project, we'd gotten a-- we just found a heap of letters that he'd written home to his family from the war. And so it was a good firsthand knowledge of what he'd been through and things that he'd seen while he was there.

This is one of the letters that he sent home to his brother, Ted. This was from Gaba Tepe. He sent most of his letters home to Dora, who was his sister. It was a really good way to learn about the war and everything. Like, sometimes you can just read it off the internet and it's just kind of what people think happened. But this is really what he went through and everything. And yeah, it was just-- it was really sad, like, to hear all the things that he had to go through and just, like, all the people that he had to see, like, die and everything. Like, in one of the places, there was 2,000 casualties or something in two hours.

This is a photo from Egypt of him and some of the other captains. He enlisted on the 19 of August, 1914. And he was a farmer in Camperdown and he sailed to Egypt in October of that year. And from there, he fought in places. He fought in France on  the Hindenburg Line and in places like Somme and Gallipoli. When he was fighting on the Hindenburg Line, he was shelled. And everyone thought he was dead, so they sent two men out to bring him back on a stretcher for a decent burial. And when they were bringing him back, they also got shelled. And one of the, like, the stretcher bearers, Private Carrington, he died that next day from the wounds that he received and Will survived.

This map was from when he was fighting on the Hindenburg Line, when he got shelled. As you can see on the back, it's got some of his blood. And it's got a little bit of something from the blast. You know, it just kind of shows half firing, everything he had to walk, and how well they had it all planned out and everything. He sent this home with one of his letters to show where he'd been and what happened to him.

ISABEL TICKLE: I'd-- I'd heard about Frank from my dad and my grandpa, but no one in the family really knew anything about him, because when he came back from war, he'd been injured. So his leg was always playing up. And he had post-traumatic stress, so he never spoke about any of his experiences.

I started off here, just trying to find out what I could from the War Museum. I interviewed my grandpa, but he wasn't really that helpful, because my great-grandpa hadn't talked much about anything. I spoke to some other family members who didn't really know anything, either. So I started with his defense service records. They were really helpful in piecing together his experiences. I also researched the battalion war diaries that had just been digitized.

Frank enlisted in 1914 when he was 26. He was at the Gallipoli landing. And within three days, he'd been promoted to sergeant, because obviously, someone had died. He was admitted to hospital with jaundice within the first couple of weeks and was then injured again when he came back on duty, but stayed on duty. Then, a couple of weeks later, he was shot in the leg and had to go to hospital for a couple of months.

In 1918, Frank was in Ypres and he won the Military Cross for bravery. And there's a letter here in the museum that was sent to his father. It was a report on why he'd won it. "For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in an attack. He led his men forward with great gallantry and personally killed the entire gun crew and successfully captured the position. He set a splendid example of courage and determination."

Just knowing what Frank went through in the war was-- we could-- my family could finally understand why he had post-traumatic stress and why he struggled to talk about his experiences.

Film - 'Soldier Settlement - Interview with Bill Rowe', 2011, Red Cliffs - Irymple RSL and Bill Rowe

Bill Rowe: The Government decided after World War I that they would settle soldiers back on the land.

And some were settled on... dairy farms and some were on wheat properties out west of Red Cliffs here and it was on pretty poor country, mallee country that they'd cleared and lots and lots of those chaps, they cleared their own land with teams of horses and tore the mallee stumps out of the ground and planted the wheat and lots of the men weren't really suited to the country life and farm life and some of them didn't even plant up their property, you know, or take up crop off it.

Some of them weren't capable or they had serious health problems to stop them from working. They had it pretty hard and it was pretty hot here.

But as I said, they made three or four allocations and by the time they'd made three or four allocations of property, there were about 700 properties here through the Soldier Settlement Commission and that was at the time the biggest soldiers' settlement area in the whole of Australia and probably the world, returned soldiers from the First World War.

But they weren't acknowledged after the First World War of having these problems and they played up a fair bit in this district and they were committing suicide and it was just sort of a thing that I accepted when I was a kid and I never thought about it and sort of took it in the... Gave it the consideration that it deserved that these chaps had a war neurosis and wasn't being acknowledged.

For instance when I was probably about five or six, I was staying with my grandfather out on his property out near the pumping station and it wasn't unusual to hear shotguns go off and I heard this shotgun go off and the next day my grandfather told me that a chap about two blocks away had shot himself, you know, with a...

And so, this was something that was going on in this district that as a lad, I took as a normal thing and yet it wasn't. It was a pretty terrible thing in retrospect when I think about it now.