Second World War Service

 

The Second World War Service of John Francis Cleary

NX21853

Frank Cleary turned up at Paddington on 25 May 1940 to enlist in the newly re-created Australian Infantry Force (the 2^nd AIF), the volunteer army which would fight in the Second World War. This would probably have been the Victoria Barracks, bounded by Oxford Street and Moore Park Road, and to this day still a functioning Army base in Sydney. War in Europe had been declared on September 3 1939, finally triggered by the German invasion of Poland, the step too far after a series of expansionist moves in various European countries. In a memorable radio address, a sombre Prime Minister Robert Menzies, accepting that Britain’s declaration meant that Australia was therefore itself automatically at war, informed the nation of this event, on the evening of Fathers’ Day 1939, 3 September.  Although memories of World War 1 (1914 – 1918) – “the great war”, “the war to end all wars” – were still fresh, there seems to have been ready acceptance by Australians that this new war had to be fought, that Nazi aggression had to be met and conquered. There is no reason to think that 24 year old Frank Cleary would have thought any differently. Successfully completing the medical examination, 2 days later, on 27 May, he signed the “Oath of Enlistment”, and was now a member of the “special forces raised for service in Australia or abroad”.

 

“I, John Francis Cleary, swear that I will well and truly serve our Sovereign Lord, the King, in the Military Forces of the Commonwealth of Australia until the cessation of the present time of war and twelve months thereafter or until sooner lawfully discharged, dismissed or removed, and that I will resist His Majesty’s enemies and cause His Majesty’s peace to be kept and maintained, and that I will in all matters appertaining to my service faithfully discharge my duty according to law. So help me God.”

 

Now enlisted, he became one of the approximately 1 million Australians who went into uniform of some sort over the 6 years of the war, the population of Australia being around 7 million at that time.

 

His address at this time is listed as “Post Office, Goondah”. It’s surprising to think that Goondah would have had a Post Office, being little more than a railway siding on the main southern line, between the (now closed) railway stations of Bowning and Binalong. This was clearly his parents’ address, and perhaps their house was a NSW Railways property, as his father, my grandfather Thomas Francis Cleary, was employed as a “Railways Fettler”, one of a team of 5 men whose job it was to maintain the railway track, usually for a distance of about 20 km.  Their’s was the hard physical work of replacing decayed sleepers and worn rails, shovelling clean ballast, tightening bolts on the fishplates and clearing the line of fallen trees. Any damage to the line could have derailed a train. Fettler’s tools included jiggers to make holes in the sleepers, giant tongs to lift up the heavy track, round-mouthed shovels, hammers and crowbars. At some stage in his work, Pop became a “ganger”, the person in charge of a gang of 5 fettlers. This work would have also included the smaller gauge rail line that ran from Goondah south towards the under-construction Burrinjuck Dam.

Young Frank at this time lists his occupation as “crane driver or fitter”. It seems unlikely that he himself would have been living at Goondah.  Bookham (a village on the Hume Highway 30km west of Yass) is given as his address at the time of his wedding in October 1942) and may well have been home, or Bowning - which will feature later in this story – or even Yass. Somewhere a bit  bigger than Goondah where a crane driver / fitter could find work. Digging through his war and post-war health records, it becomes clear that he was employed by the NSW Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission as a crane driver, and a “cable way driver”. It seems this work was somehow associated with Burrinjuck Dam, completed around 1930 and the first irrigation dam in NSW. He would have been aware that the waters of this dam now covered the original farm properties of his grandfather Daws, and where his mother had been born.

 

The newly enlisted recruit was posted to the newly-formed “1st Anti-Aircraft Regiment”, based at Ingleburn in the western suburbs of Sydney. As required by his enlistment papers, he arrived with a small kit including a comb, hairbrush, shaving brush, razor, fork, knife and spoon. The army would provide the rest. The camp itself was a fairly unprepossessing kind of place, being in reality not much more than an enormous paddock, with the main road to Sydney going right through the middle of it. Various barracks and huts, mess halls and latrines, were dotted here and there……….and so began the training to knock raw “civvies” into a fighting force.

 

Abrasions to the face and hands were serious enough to require admittance to hospital for a few days in July, and interestingly, this was to Yass hospital. A month later, another medical event : “accidental injury (sprained right wrist) at Ingleburn while playing football, soldier not to blame”. In fact, the sprained wrist turned out to be broken, an injury resulting from a tackle during a game of football (presumably Rugby League) between opposing AA Battalions. This injury required investigation by an Army Court of Inquiry, “inquiring into and reporting upon the injuries alledged (sic) to have been received by NX21851 Gnr. J.F.Cleary, 1 A.A.Bty.1 Aust. A.A.Regt. A.I.F at Ingleburn on 7th Aug. 1940”. Two witnesses were called, the captain of the opposing team, and Gunner JF Cleary. Evidence was taken, and the verdict : this injury was caused “while on duty”, and that “no negligence is attributable to Gnr. Cleary or any other person or persons”. This is the first hint of the world of bureaucratic process that dad would encounter in later years, in applications and appeals for treatment for later health problems which he attributed to his war service. At this stage though, the Army needed to know that it was keeping on its books a soldier whose injuries were minor and which would quickly heal. A final comment from his Commanding Officer sums up the situation : “Gnr J F Cleary was participating in a game organised in accordance with Instructions for Training Chapter IX para 5, and forming part of the approved training”.

 

From then until embarkation in June the following year, there are no further entries in the “Service and Casualty Form”, with one exception. A reference 3 weeks before departure to “AWL” (Absent Without Leave), would not be the last hint of a less than full compliance with the full letter of military discipline. In this case, the offending action took place between 10pm and 7.30am the following day – let’s assume a good night on the town, before leaving it for who knew how long. The penalty? “3 days confined to barracks”. I think he would have thought it was worth it!! I wonder if the beauty from Newcastle was involved?

 

On his last leave, the family gathered on the back steps of their home. This photo records the occasion : Grandma and Pop at the front, dad and his sister Nolene behind, her arm through his, and Stella on the top step. Missing is Vera, now married to Ernie McDermott and living at Glen Davis (in the Cassilis area, between Mudgee and Lithgow). There is no joy on any face, and I read in every eye the unspoken fear of a final goodbye. That dread was realised, but not in the way they feared. Dad sailed for the Middle East on 28 June 1941. Nolene, aged 17, died 2 days later in Yass hospital. Rheumatic Fever had been the cause of a “weak heart”  since she was an 11 year old, and her death certificate records “Chronic Myocarditis” and “Mitral Endocarditis” as the primary causes of death. Her severely weakened  heart simply gave up.  It would have taken weeks, at least, for the news to reach him, and we can only guess his anguish. Years later, his sister Vera recalled, in a conversation with my sister Helen, hearing strange choking noises coming from the bathroom just before dad left at this time. “Frank, what’s the matter?”, she said. Dad had his fist in his mouth, trying desperately to stifle an overwhelming weeping. “I don’t want to forget Nolene”, he said. She had been in hospital the ten weeks before his final leave, and was able to come home now, to have this time with him and her family. The bond between older brother and youngest surviving sister was a close one, and sadly, a bond that we never got to witness nor enjoy.

 

The journey to the Middle East took a month – and I quote now from Peter Fitzsimons’ very readable book “Tobruk” : “For the men rising every morning to the sound of reveille played by bugles and a half-strangled bagpipe, each day aboard ship was a kind of bored blur of routine, meals, callisthenics, inspections and instructions on such things as health and hygiene, and how to survive gas attacks, as the Indian Ocean sailed backwards behind them. 

There were few interruptions to this way of life, though a welcome one was in the afternoons, when the aspiring ‘Ack-Ack’ – the Anti-Aircraft gunners – would trail enormous kites off the back of the ship and then set about bringing them down with the accuracy of their fire.  Early on, this could be quite entertaining as the men watched and ironically cheered as either the kites were missed entirely or barely winged – followed by a real cheer when they were knocked from the sky, exactly as they hoped any enemy plane that made it through the defences of their escort might be.” I think it’s a reasonable assumption that on dad’s ship, the ‘ack-ack’ boys would have done the same!!

And then, over the horizon, land. The Middle East. The Bible lands. New home : “hill 95”, Palestine.  And now a war to be fought. It’s interesting to consider why the Australians were in the Middle East at all. The thinking at the time was that this “backwater” of the war would provide a useful training ground, to skill the troops up for “hot” conflict areas. There is an echo here of the 1^st AIF, when Australians were unloaded for training in Egypt in 1915 prior to heading to the battlefields of the Western Front in France and Belgium. Gallipoli, of course, from April to December 1915, subverted this plan, which was resumed when the Australians returned to Egypt for rest and to rebuild after the evacuation in December. Now, here they were again, in the war that had been spawned by that earlier terrible conflict.

 

However, this quiet ‘backwater’ became anything but in mid-1940 when Italy entered the war as a German ally, and its colony Libya joined the fight against the British and Dominion troops in that part of the world.  During 1941, this area, and Libya in particular, became a very active theatre of the war. Dad arrived in this area on 25 July 1941, disembarking at Suez and travelling by train to Palestine. By this time the Italian army had been badly defeated, and the German army under the redoubtable General Erwin Rommel and his famed “Afrika Korps” had an Australian garrison at Tobruk under siege. Tobruk was a vital sea port and harbour in Libya. Although replacement Australian units were transported into Tobruk during the siege (March – December 1941), there is no evidence that dad’s Anti-Aircraft Regiment was deployed there.

 

Leo Cleary, dad’s uncle but only a few years older, was a good mate and in the same regiment as Gunner Cleary. There’s no photographic evidence of “Gunner” actually handling or firing weapons – on land or at sea! - and that’s understandable enough. Dad did mention – to  Neil – being caught up in a German air raid with bombs landing uncomfortably close, and presumably he may have been in action as an anti-aircraft gunner trying to bring down the enemy.  His unit records are currently being digitised by the Australian War Memorial, and I am unable to flesh out further this story. However, in his medical records – which I have obtained on a “Freedom of Information” request from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) – I have found two intriguing entries. One statement by dad says that he was subject to enemy air raids in the Middle East – indeed, he lodges a claim, which is dismissed, for eye damage due to “gun flashes” at this time and in later action. The second statement is an arresting one, and is the only reference to this place in any of dad’s official papers : Libya.

 

The map below, reproduced from Peter Fitzsimons’ “Tobruk”, is useful in showing the countries dad’s Middle East service ranged over : from east to west – Syria (including Lebanon), Palestine, Egypt, Libya. Considering where battles were being fought in mid-1941, dad’s Libyan service would have more likely been around Bardia, near the Libyan border with Egypt, and also the scene of heavy fighting over 1940-41-42. The Luftwaffe – Germain airforce – and Italian airforce bombed this area constantly and anti-aircraft regiments would have been constantly rotated through.

 

 

 

Dad has left us a wonderful treasure trove of a photographic record of his time in the Middle East. The photographs show marching in gas masks, living in tents, interacting with the locals – anything except the actual business of war. Commentary has been written on the back of the photos, and could be from any tourist enjoying a holiday in the exotic locales of countries in the Middle East : in Lebanon, a two up school outside  the Australian Club in Beirut (“a very

Coins : Palestine 20 Mils, Egypt 5 Piastres.
Below : 2 Egyptian medallions

nice town in parts”); in Egypt, a street scene in Alexandria (“a grand old place – note the trams”); in Palestine, the military cemetery in Jerusalem (“very well kept and looked after – a real credit”), Bethlehem (“an old ramshackle place – this snap flatters it”), a street in the old city of Jerusalem (“very narrow and cobbled stoned ….. very shiny and slippery….some of the streets stink a hell of a lot….nice clean people”), Arab market place in Haifa (“where the boys have fun bargaining for a long time and buying nothing”), the main street in Gaza (“the town of stinks and more stinks”), beachfront and street in Tel Aviv (“notice the Hotel Hess…there are a lot

of German names in the town”). All of this would have been reassuring at home. Whether Frank and Leo, in their letters, let on more about the darker side of war, is unknown. None of those letters remain. My guess is that letters would have carried much the same tone as the comments on the photos.

 

My dad never moderated his language about “wogs and wops”. “Wogs” were Arabs (although as a derogatory term it was used in Australia to refer to Southern European as well as Middle Eastern immigrants), and “wops” is another derogatory slang term, meaning “without papers”, and applied to Italian immigrants. I think dad used these terms interchangeably.  Another term used in his photos commentary is “yids”, meaning Jews. I don’t recall him using this term in later life. It comes from the word “Yiddish”, the name given to Jewish populations in central Europe around the 19^th century and early 20^th century. It is  not necessarily a pejorative term, but can certainly be used that way.  The use of all these terms doesn’t sit well these days and the casual racism permeating his photos commentary would be regarded as offensive and unacceptable, although it was probably typical of that time. Some examples jump out :the photo of Rachel’s tomb (“the mother of the Jews – a dammed pity”), the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (“do these cows wail and howl. I would like to be behind them with a good military boot to give them something to wail about”). In a better vein, a photo of a street seller (“the fellow with a business in his hands is a drink seller. The stuff he sells would poison a snake”). Strangely, although there are photos of Islamic mosques and Arabs, the commentary is far more restrained and respectful.

 

My grandmother would have loved the photos and postcards of “The Holy Land”, and particularly the “Holy Places”. There is a little “Souvenir of Gethsemane” containing a “Daily prayer for the dying” and (what is purported to be) a “Leaf from the Trees of the Garden of Gethsemane”. Grandma would have absolutely treasured this. To think Frank had stood on the actual ground where Jesus had prayed before his arrest, trial and crucifixion. “In the Garden of Gethsemane eight venerable olive trees can be seen, the enormous bulk and the great age of which render it at least possible that they sheltered their Creator in the days of His flesh: a sweet and holy souvenir for those who believe and love”. I can imagine her reading and re-reading this little card, and replacing it carefully in her Sunday Missal each time.

Miniature Rosary Beads dad carried

 In a tough little box, which also looks like it survived war travels, is a small set of Rosary Beads that dad would have carried with him, or at least in his kit bag. I don’t know if he ever used them – they look in pristine condition!! – but I can imagine the comfort and the connection in carrying them. The connection to home, certainly, but also to channels of faith and belief furrowed out from childhood.  He would have known that at home, every night after dinner, his mother, father, sisters would be on their knees in the lounge room, fingering their beads through the rhythm of the rosary. A routine that we know his mother had faithfully followed as a family practice through her own childhood, and quite possibly his father’s family as well. In my own life, every trip to Murrumburrah during school holidays, we prayed that same rosary every night after dinner.

 

I should detour and explain a bit about the rosary – a practice of prayer that would be a complete mystery to youngsters today. The Rosary (from the latin word “rosarium” meaning “rose garden”) is the word for a practice of prayer and meditation involving “rosary beads” : a circular cord of 54 beads, arranged in groups of 10 with a separating bead between these groups. At the top of the circle is attached a smaller chain of 5 beads, in a 1 – 3 – 1 configuration, which is in turn attached to a crucifix. Specific prayers are said on each bead. The practice of praying using beads is ancient, and can be traced back to the 17^th century BC. Within the major world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam all use various types of prayer beads. The Catholic rosary takes about 15 minutes to pray, but is intended as a meditation practice rather than just saying prayers. The prayers (mostly 10 repeated “hail marys”) help establish a rhythmic effect,  that enables meditation. This meditation is about various events (called “mysteries”) in the life of Christ, mostly chosen from the Gospels in the Bible, with some minor supplementation from later Church tradition. There are 20 such events (an increase from the 15 in my youth!), arranged in 4 groups of “mysteries”. The 5 “Joyful Mysteries” (centred around the birth of Christ) are prayed on Monday and Saturday, the 5 “Luminous Mysteries” (only introduced in recent years, and unknown to my grandmother, father, and me!) on Thursday, the 5 “Sorrowful Mysteries” (centred around the trial and death of Jesus) on Tuesday and Friday, and the 5 “Glorious Mysteries” (Resurrection, Pentecost and Assumption of Mary into heaven) on Wednesday and Sunday.

 

I picture grandma and pop fingering their beads, praying their rosaries, and praying for Frank and “all the boys”. Every night, without fail.

 

However!!  There is more – or perhaps more accurately, less - to dad’s war service in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon than initially meets the eye, and a closer inspection of his ‘Service Record’ suggests that war in the Middle East may well have been a relatively benign experience for him – with the very notable exception of his time in Libya and the experience of being bombed!! The following timeline of dates helps explain why I believe this :

 

25 May 1940 : enlists, training

8 June 1941 : Allied campaign in Syria and Lebanon begins

28 June 1941 : dad embarks at Sydney, sails for Middle East

14 July 1941 : Allied campaign in Syria and Lebanon ends, with victory

25 July 1941 : dad disembarks, encamped at “Hill 95”, in Palestine. Thereafter, based at different times in Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon.

31 Jan 1942 :  embarks at Suez, on SS Orcades, for return to Australia.

 

This shows quite clearly that by the time dad arrived in the Middle East, his main theatre of war – the Syria and Lebanon campaign -  was already resolved. I think this explains why he was able to take so many photos, and of so much of the area. In contrast, there are virtually no photos of his time in the Pacific, where he was constantly right in the middle of the ongoing and fiercely fought war. So what did he actually do while in Palestine / Syria / Lebanon? Apart from some time in “1st Australian General Hospital” (28 Oct 1941 – 4 Nov 1941), it was training exercises, keeping the peace in conquered areas of Syria and Lebanon, and being the tourist. Did they know at home the extent of his “luck” in this phase of his war experience? I suspect not, as the notes on his photos give nothing away in terms of “war secrets” – there is nothing there that would draw the attention of the military censors, nothing about troop movements, tactical deployments, enemy positions, etc. As far as anyone at home knew, Frank was “doing his duty” in the Middle East, and soldiering in any theatre of war was inherently precarious. But, in this case, not as continuously dangerous as they, and we, may have thought. That said, as I mentioned above, my brother Neil reminds me that dad said something to him about being subjected to at least one enemy bombing raid, and dad himself says he was in Libya and was bombed and this has to be taken very seriously.

 

Bofors AA crew in Syria

As the year approached its end, the winter weather became decidedly unpleasant with the arrival of the usual winter rains. In 1941, these rains held off until mid-November, and by early December  the rains had turned the Palestinian desert a carpet of green. Training exercises were impossible in the mud and sodden grounds, and moving around the camps themselves  presented a miserable daily challenge.  Records indicate that over 400mm of rain fell in Palestine in the weeks up until Christmas, often in violent storms strong enough to wash away the blackout paint on buildings. As well as the lightning and hail, Jerusalem that December received its heaviest snowstorm in 20 years. It’s said that the normal issue of 2 blankets was insufficient at night, which probably meant that a soldier slept in whatever extra dry clothes he could muster.

 

Somehow in this weather mayhem, a Rugby Union match was played in Jerusalem on Sunday 21 December, between the AIF 9^th Division and the Combined Palestine Police force. Dad was in the 7^th Division, so we can only assume that at best he was a spectator at this game, won convincingly by the AIF. At this stage, a famous Australian enters our dad’s war service story : Weary Dunlop. Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop was a doctor, a Wallaby (Australian Rugby Union player), and would achieve fame for his ceaseless and effective medical ministrations as a Prisoner of War of the Japanese, including on the Burma-Thai railway. Right now, he was also captain of the 9^th Division Rugby Union team, and in that capacity he had also organised a game the week previously against the 2/4^th Anti-Tank Regiment. Clearly, Weary had no qualms about playing in mud and snow!!

 

It didn’t take long for the Government, and the Army, to decide that Gunner Cleary was best deployed elsewhere. In any case, the Regiment had had to wait until January 1942 to be fully equipped, with some troops in the meantime training with British Light Anti-Aircraft units at Haifa and Lydda.. But everything changed when in December 1941, Japan entered the war with simultaneous bombings on Pearl Harbour and invasions of Hong Kong, the Phillippines and Malaya. Australia now needed as many of its soldiers at home as it could get. So it was that on 31 January 1942, 3400 members of the AIF, from the 6^th and 7^th Divisions, boarded HMT (His Majesty’s Transport) Orcades at Suez to sail for home. Their numbers included Gunner Frank Cleary, and Weary Dunlop.

 

“Convoy JS2” sailed on 1 February. In fact, the 1^st Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, and other units, were supposed to have sailed on the transport, Ile de France, a day later. There was an urgency to move however, and when the Orcades steamed into Suez ahead of the slower Ile de France and discharged its cargo, it was decided to load her with Australians and turn her around without delay. After 8 days, the faster Orcades had reached Colombo, in Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka), where it re-fuelled, offloaded sick, and took on supplies. The 3400 troops were jam-packed on the ship, to the extent that each soldier was permitted to carry a side haversack only. Rifles, ammunition, kitbags and everything else was transported in separate cargo ships.

 

From Colombo, the convoy sailed in a south-easterly direction across the Indian Ocean for the Netherland East Indies, which today we know as Indonesia, and specifically for the island of Sumatra. At this stage – early February 1942 – the invading Japanese were working their way down through Malaya, heading towards Singapore, and at this time the intention of the Australian government was to place our troops with our Dutch allies in the defence of their colony, the East Indies. However, events were moving extremely fast at this time, and the rapid advance of the Japanese through Malaya and elsewhere in the Pacific, caused almost daily reconsiderations of the safest and most useful deployment of the returning 7^th Division.

 

Arriving at Oosthaven (now Bandar Lampung), near the southern tip of Sumatra, on 15 February, 2000 troops were disembarked that afternoon during the daily tropical downpour. Suddenly the order is received – “no disembarkation from HMT Orcades”. Around the world, the shocking news is reverberating : “Singapore has fallen”.  That very day, the surrender had been signed.  It took until 2am the next day, 16 February, to get all the troops back on board. The Orcades now sailed south and the short distance to the island of Java, and at Tanjong Priok, the port for the capital city of Batavia, modern-day Djakarta, began to unload again its human cargo. By now it was clear that the Japanese advance was irresistible in this part of the world, Sumatra was already partially conquered and the rest of the Netherland East Indies must inevitably fall.

 

There was confusion all over the Orcades, as orders were given for some units to disembark, others to remain, and those orders then replaced with new orders. Whatever the initial orders were, the final orders for the 1^st Anti-Aircraft Regiment were that they stay on board. Weary Dunlop, however, was disembarking, with clear instructions to meet the need for medical services for the flow of wounded soon expected. He would be captured within weeks, and begin three and a half years as a Prisoner of War.

 

I had heard dad mention that he was in “Sumatra” and “Batavia”, and this is also mentioned in his medical records from DVA , but I have not been able until now to work out how this could have been possible. What is now clear is that his transport ship Orcades was routed through both these places, but dad did not see active service there. That’s not to say that his ship may well have been attacked by Japanese bombers on its journey through the East Indies – that’s something I just don’t know. In fact, with the total Japanese control of the air, bombings of ships and land was common and constant, and this would have been an extremely dangerous time. It’s no wonder that he spoke of these places as part of his war experience, and that he felt lucky to survive.

 

During these few days, while the men aboard are wondering why they are not back at sea and watchfully scanning the skies for Japanese bombing raids, big power discussions have come to a head. Both United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill and United States President Franklin Roosevelt want the 7^th Division to be sent to Burma. Each has their own reasons for this – Churchill wants Burma to remain as a British colony and be the roadblock for any Japanese invasion through Burma to India, and Roosevelt, not in any case sympathetic to continuing British colonial rule anywhere, wants to prevent the Japanese closing the supply route through Burma to China. It is in the Allies interests to keep China in the fight against Japan, by supplying arms and aid to China. Within Australia, there is split opinion on this. Opposition Leader Menzies and his colleagues in the Advisory War Council, and Keith Murdoch’s newspapers, support sending the 7^th to Burma. Prime Minister John Curtin and his War Cabinet are opposed, and with the support of the Chief of Army, refuse to bow to Churchill and Roosevelt’s strong requests. The 7^th Division are to come home, unaware of the storm of argument surrounding them. For Australia, this was a momentous time, our first declaration of independent decision making in this war.

However, before leaving its anchorage, the Orcades takes on another six passengers. There had been around 130 Australian Army Nurses still in Singapore in its final days of freedom, and these are now evacuated in three groups. This first group of six nurses are accompanying around 300 wounded British and Australian soldiers, who are being transferred to the presumed relative safety of Java. Like Weary Dunlop, these wounded soldiers would themselves shortly be captured, to become prisoners of war, or executed as a problem to be got rid of. The second group of nurses to be evacuated returned safely to Australia, but it is the third group, of 65, whose story we have come to know. Within this group of 65, were the 21 cruelly murdered on 16th February, on Radji Beach on Bangka Island. Vivian Bullwinkel was the sole survivor of that massacre. It would take years for these six nurses, now safely on the Orcades, to learn the fate of their nursing sisters. 

 

The Orcades left Tanjong Priok on 21 February and sailed for Australia. A significant event had occurred two days earlier, on 19 February, that would determine dad’s immediate future  -  Darwin had been bombed. In fact, the number of bombs that fell on Darwin that day was greater than the total number of bombs which had destroyed the American fleet in Pearl Harbour on 8 December 1941, and indeed more ships had been sunk in Darwin Harbour than in Pearl Harbour. 243 Australians had been killed in this Darwin bombing. This news was censored from the Australian public at the time, but the decision-makers quickly determined that the 1^st Anti-Aircraft Regiment, now on its way home, was to be urgently deployed to the defence of the north. When the Orcades berthed at Adelaide on 15 March, the Regiment was quickly heading  to the Northern Territory, most likely by airplane as the distance to be covered was nearly 3000km. Their job was to protect the airfields to the south of Darwin, the town itself and its port. Darwin was bombed another 60 times over the next year or so, and there is no doubt that the AA gunners would have been both busy and in danger. There are no photographs from this time, and no surviving letters either. Dad’s deployment in the north lasted for 6 months, until “marching out” on leave, in NSW, on 26 September 1942.

 

Bofors AA crew in action in Darwin

A wedding quickly followed, in Yass on 15 October. Clearly planned during the preceding months “up north”, its urgency suggests the common experience of war marriages – let’s just get this done while we can. And the unspoken subtext – while one of us is still alive. Why Yass – dad’s home turf – and not in Newcastle? My guess is because not only was it ‘home’, but it involved a Catholic ceremony, in a known Church, probably with a known Parish Priest, as I discuss elsewhere.   

Army leave continued for a while, and photos of mum and dad at my Grandparents’ place in Murrumburrah are most likely taken at this time. We never did ask mum or dad if they holidayed or honeymooned at this time – my guess is “no”, as wartime weddings tended to be low key events and just “fitted in” among the bigger life and death events that comprised a soldier’s life. I wonder how dad felt returning home for the first time with Nolene no longer there? Did he go to say a prayer at her grave in Yass cemetery?  I like to think so.

 

Returning from leave just before Christmas, on 21 December, Gunner Cleary had a new identity : Sapper Cleary. Dad was now transferred to “3 Docks Control Detachment”, at Victoria Dock, Melbourne. Had he applied for a transfer to the Royal Australian Engineers (RAE), or had the powers that be recognised his qualification as a Crane Driver, and saw where his skills could be better used, loading and unloading ships? Around this time, the communist-dominated Waterside Workers’ Union in Melbourne was refusing to load / unload ships carrying weapons and ammunition, and went on strike for more pay for working with such “dangerous items”. There’s an account at this time of a totally unimpressed group of soldiers – who daily lived with these “dangerous items” -  grabbing a few wharfies, stripping them and coating them in molasses!! Unsurprisingly this led the waterside unions refusing to work at all, but, no worries, soldiers stepped in and did the job for them. Interestingly, around this time the similarly communist-sympathetic Victorian Railway Union tried to refuse the 2/3^rd AIF Battalion access to a train, until the soldiers threatened to drive it themselves. Clearly the prosecution of war meant different things to different people!!!  Against this background, dad’s transfer to the RAE was permanent, and for the rest of his military career he would be a Sapper, the name for a Private in the RAE. Interestingly, the word “sapper” comes about because the earliest army engineers were primarily concerned with driving “saps” (tunnels) both towards enemy lines, and underneath fortifications. As we will see, for Sapper Cleary, the RAE opened up a whole new army and post-army career.

 

After several months on the Melbourne docks, on 30 March 1943 dad was transferred to the RAE training centre at Kapooka, near Wagga Wagga, from where he graduated on 4 August, having now been classified as a “Group 1 Engine Artificer”. That’s not a term we hear much now, and it’s really far more applicable to the Navy and to those engine room mechanics who keep the ship’s big engines working. In dad’s case it was the beginning of his transition to a life working with the engines and machinery an army uses.

 

With the completion of the training course, came relocation to 2/1 Australian Docks Operating Company, and in September a move to “Queensland Lines of Communication” area. A move to the Pacific theatre of war was clearly imminent, and on 12 November 1943 he embarked at Cairns, arriving at Buna, on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, 5 days later.

 

The town of Buna has become well known in Australia’s war history as one of the main places the Japanese landed in their ill-fated push across the Owen Stanley Ranges, towards Port Moresby, which led to the battle of the Kokoda Track a year earlier -  July to November 1942. By 1943, Japanese movement through the Pacific, and through Papua New Guinea, had been halted, but they still held significant positions throughout that country and needed to be ‘dug out”. It’s always worth bearing in mind that while the fighting in PNG was itself tough and exhausting, the climate, the jungle, the mountains and the swamps were as much the enemy as the Japanese. This is certainly the case for dad, and he was to be plagued for the rest of his life with illnesses and injury from this time.

 

From now until dad left PNG, on the 18 February 1945, it is difficult to trace his movements. The Unit Diaries, which might tell us more information, are currently being digitised and this process could take another year, or more. They will be accessible through the Australian War Memorial website when completed. The only clear fact that emerges is on 3 October 1944, when his classification was changed from “Engine Artificer” to “Engine Fitter”. This latter is the qualification to fit, install, maintain, service and repair engines in all the vehicles an Army may use – cars, trucks, tanks, motorbikes. It means that dad was now effectively a “Motor Mechanic”, and had the trade qualification he would use in post-army life. However, like any serviceman – cook, mechanic, etc – he could be called on to join fighting units where necessary. His medical records tell us that he also drove landing barges at this time. As the Japanese were driven out, vehicles of theirs were also seized and used by the Allies, and this added a new dimension to Sapper Cleary’s maintenance and repair work. Perhaps this was the beginning of a lifetime aversion to ‘Jap cars’ !!!!

 

On 5 March 1944, there is a report of a “torn ligament right knee”. In fact this was a serious injury to his left knee, caused when he landed awkwardly when jumping from the back of a truck. The medical report at the time notes that he landed “with leg internally rotated and knee fully flexed”. Painful indeed. The torn anterior cruciate ligament was treated by encasing his leg in plaster for 8 weeks………and then, back to the business of war. It was to be an injury that caused pain and disability for the rest of his life, and one for which he refused to have surgery. A supporting elastic sleeve was the ongoing treatment.

 

An interesting entry in the war service record dated 31 May 1944 states : “Offence : Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” And the penalty? “Award : Admonished by Acting (?) Commander 1 Port Maintenance Company”. What could this prejudicial conduct have been??? Let’s hope the Unit Diaries can shed some light on it.

 

The strange thing is, that when Sapper Cleary left PNG, in February 1945, he “emplaned” at Aitape – which is also on the northern coast of PNG, but over 900km west of where he disembarked at Buna. That’s a long, long way to travel over the 14 months of Pacific service in one country, and there has to be a very interesting story there to uncover. One of these days!!  My guess is that it is somehow related to the “digging out” of Japanese units progressively throughout PNG.

 

There is little more to add to the war history of NX21851. From Aitape, he “deplaned” at Townsville on the same day, 18 February, and the next we hear is that he is in Yass hospital from 18 April until 28 April being treated for Malaria. 10 days in hospital for this disease sounds serious, and indeed it was.

 

The Second World War ended on 15^th August 1945 with the unconditional surrender of Japan, and  on 20 August 1945, Sapper John Francis Cleary was discharged from the Army, “being medically unfit for further military service”. At the time of his discharge, his unit had been re-named to “H.Q. 1 Australian Port Maintenance Company”.

 

The Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour for the dead of the Second World War, lists together “Small Ships, Docks, and Port Units”, within units of the Royal Australian Engineers, and records 65 lives lost. In contrast, the Australian Anti-Aircraft Regiments and Batteries record 360 lives lost. The better survival odds of the RAE, though, have to be offset against the enormous challenges and dangers of fighting in PNG. Don’t you wish we had asked him more about it?

 

In recent years my sister Helen chased up dad’s uncollected war service medals. He had never bothered about them. He didn’t attend Anzac Day marches, his observance of that day being limited to hours at the club, from which he would return home in a melancholic state. These were the years, of course, well before the current enthusiasm with which Anzac Day is commemorated across the country, and indeed in far pockets of the world. Helen’s collecting these medals grew out of this wider consciousness and understanding of Anzac Day, and the recognition of what military service meant and the cost it often exacted on individual lives. Each of dad’s children now has a framed display of dad’s war service medals, which will become treasured heirlooms within our respective families. It feels good, so many years after dad’s death in 1983, that the passage of time enables us to grasp a bigger picture of his life, and pay honour to not only the memory of what was, but what might have been.