It Happened to Us: Mark II

By Colin Finkemeyer

These are the stories of the `boys' of the 4th Anti-Tank Regiment who served in World War II in Malaya and Singapore in the defence of Australia, and spent three and a half years of their lives as POWs.

The gun crews’ task was to destroy Japanese tanks, which they did with distinction. No enemy tank broke through their lines. Fighting a rearguard action down the Malay Peninsula they destroyed over sixteen Japanese tanks.

After Singapore surrendered, anti-tankers were allocated to various POW work parties. Collectively their stories cover a broad range of the experiences endured by all Aussies in Japanese POW camps.

These 109 stories have been told for young of today, who are the same age as the anti-tankers when they enlisted 60 years ago - 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21.

Stories highlight the qualities inherent in Australia's youth. They believe given similar circumstances, the youth of today would manifest the same qualities they demonstrated.

If you would like to read how the 16 to 22 year old, happy young Aussie soldiers faced the challenges that confronted them as POWs, this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colin Finkemeyer
• Release date: Jun 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9780958618540

Colin Finkemeyer

THE AUTHOR: Gunner Finkemeyer, alias Colin, Finky, Baron, Sandy or Stinky, was one of the lucky ones to survive being a World War II PoW and return home.Colin was an ammunition number and gun loader for 'George' Troop 15th Battery and a proud member of the 4th Anti-Tank Regiment.He is one of the many youths who loved Australia with boyish pride, and who were prepared to do what had to be done at the time to help defend their country from invasion by the Japanese.As luck would have it, he happened to be in a number of the same camps as that great man, Weary Dunlop, and is one of the many who owe their lives to him.Finky was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to complete his studies in Commerce (in Personnel) at Melbourne University.He was able to spend his working life with men and managers in Australian owned and operated manufacturing companies. And he loved it.

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WHERE – IT HAPPENED TO US

FOREWORD

WE Australians have a quirky way of looking at our past, particularly when it comes to war. When we reflect on World War I, we tend to flit lightly over the triumphs of the Light Horse in Palestine and Monash's Australian Corps in France. These were mere victories. We prefer to linger on Gallipoli. It might have been a defeat, but it has a hypnotic quality and we can't get enough of it. Beersheba and Amiens are for military historians; Gallipoli is the stuff of mythology, our Homeric legend. We like to think that it tells us much about the Australian character, and maybe it does. In our eyes, it had honour.

The soldier we remember most tenderly from World War I is not General Sir John Monash, even though he is the finest commander this country has produced. We prefer to honour John Simpson, a private in the field ambulance, a tough man with a big heart and a rough sense of humour who (as Patsy Adam-Smith has written) was dead before Australians knew he was alive.

When we look on World War II, we think of the Ninth Division's part in the victory of El Alamein and the grit of the Seventh Division on the Kokoda Trail and elsewhere in New Guinea. We remember generals such as MacArthur, Blamey and Morshead. But, again, the stuff of mythology comes from defeat: the fall of Singapore in 1942, and the terrible events that followed from it.

Our Eighth Division became prisoners of the Japanese. About one-third of them (and other Australians captured on Java, Timor and Ambon and at Rabaul) died in captivity. They died of disease and beatings and massacres and malnutrition; they died from being worked to death. In one sense, they died in the most degrading of circumstances; in another, they died in the most exulted of circumstances. Their mates sat with them, talking and joking and maybe holding a hand, until all life left the body. That was the way things were done. No one wrote down the rules. No one needed to: this is the way Australians looked after their own.

These men are our popular heroes of World War II. If they too were victims of a defeat, their story, like that of Gallipoli, has honour. We see in these men a celebration of the best Australian virtues: mateship and good humour, a God-given skill at scrounging and improvising, an independence of spirit, a refusal to take too seriously little things like amputations and cholera and captors with a tendance towards hysteria.

And, shades of Simpson, the man we remember most fondly from World War II is Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Edward Weary Dunlop, a medical officer who became a Christ-like figure in the camps along the Burma-Thailand railway. No matter how bad things were, Weary always had a smile on his face and rebellion in his soul. The Japanese only thought he was their prisoner.

The story of the Fourth Anti-Tank Regiment has already been told in It Happened To Us, also edited by Colin Finkemeyer. And an extraordinary tale it is. These men enlisted as boys of 18 or so. They fought in the battles of the Malay Peninsula and it wasn't their fault that their struggle was unwinnable, mainly because the Japanese held superiority in the air and on the sea. It wasn't their fault that a generation of Australian politicians had let the nation's defences run down.

The anti-tankers went to Changi Prison. From there, many were sent to work on the Burma-Thailand railway, a succession of hell -holes in the jungle: fetid heat and dysentery and guards obsessed with speedo. Some anti-tankers went to Borneo and were killed by the Japanese in the Sandakan death march. Others, after returning from Thailand, were sent to Japan to work in the snow at the Nagasaki shipyards and in the coal mines at Nakama. One day at Nakama, the Australians saw a huge orange and white cloud over Nagasaki. Nagasaki's really copping it this time, one of the boys said. He didn't know it, but he had just seen the atomic bomb go off.

This second volume is mainly about humour, the dry and laconic humour of adversity. Again, it is a peculiarly Australian thing. You are reminded of its flavour when you stand in a bare paddock with a farmer and he squints as he tells you that the drought has gone on so long that if it ever rains again you'll see frogs carrying life jackets.

Only an Australian could think it amusing that the railway line he was laying in Thailand was stamped BHP. When Japan surrendered, Australians at Nakama were punctilious about doing things in the right order. They first hit the local bank for cash -- then headed for the brewery.

Only Australians could set up frog-racing at Changi, complete with bookies, a committee, stewards and a colourful racing identity who was suspended for livening up his frog by attaching a drawing pin to its belly.

We read of a Japanese guard trying to hit Weary Dunlop, who was very tall as well as being a former boxer. In the end, the guard stands on a box to find Weary's chin -- and still keeps missing before losing his balance and falling off.

In Thailand, we see Australians shifting the goal posts -- the markers the Japanese put out to designate how much rock and earth had to be moved in a day.

We read of Australians assembled in Singapore and given saki with which to toast the birthday of Emperor Hirohito, who, three years later, should have been prosecuted as a war criminal but was given immunity in an exercise that was a triumph of politics and a travesty of justice. What to do? The Australians wanted the saki but not at the price of saluting the emperor. Read about the inspired compromise in The Emperor's Birthday.

Colin Finkemeyer has again done a loving and painstaking job in assembling these anecdotes. He has no pretensions about what he is trying to do. This book is meant to be humorous and a good read, and it is both.

But it becomes something else as well. It reminds us what mateship is all about and what another generation of young Australians did in another world. This book sets out as a series of yarns and jokes; it ends up being about the triumph of the spirit.

LES CARLYON

August 1998

PART 1 IN THE BEGINNING

1 Second's Out

2 Where Angels 'Dare'

3 Nelson Mark II

4 Short Arm Inspection

5 Salute to the Army

6 Gunner's Lament

1 SECOND'S OUT

We had written the stories about our lives as Anti-Tankers and as POWs of the Japs in our first edition of 'It Happened To Us'. It took two happy years of our time, and while we touched a soft spot here and there, the boys enjoyed the exercise and we all got a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction putting our stories together.

The book was written for the benefit of anti-tankers and our friends and relatives, as we felt that it was unlikely that any other history of our lives would be left after we had moved on.

To our great surprise and joy, the book was well received and we quickly disposed of our limited edition.

There was considerable pressure to publish a second run, but we felt that the effort would not be as rewarding as the fun we had putting it together the first time.

And there the matter might have rested, had it not been for the persistence of some of our good friends.

Quite a few had enjoyed the humorous anecdotes in the book and insisted that we should tell them more about the lighter side of what happened to us.

The ground swell continued, and one person in particular would never let me out of his sight without trying to convince me that it was about time I settled down and put together the stories about the lighter side of lives.

He was Peter Rawlins, my good friend and nurseryman whose father had also been a POW of the Japs, but who never talked about his experiences, much to Peter's regret.

Your POW mates must have a hell of a lot of stories to tell about the lighter side of their lives. You were just boys at the time and must have got up to all sorts of skull-duggery. Soon it will be too late for your stories to be told.

Go on 'Dad' tell them to us 'Boots and all'. Don't pull any punches, tell us your stories in the same language as you used in the army. Everyone uses it these days.

I knew what he was saying was true, I had heard so many stories about the lighter side of our lives whenever the boys got together. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that we could still have quite a lot of fun putting them together. Our circumstances were unique and as young men in our early twenties, we confronted them as best we could.

Maybe our friends were right, this was the time for a second edition. It was a challenging and exciting opportunity.

Maybe the boys of today, who are the same age as we were when we enlisted and who could have easily have been in the same position in which we found ourselves, might find our stories amusing and perhaps even a little enlightening and encouraging.

So away we went. In seeking the co-operation of my mates, their first response was, What the Hell was funny about those days? But as their thoughts mellowed, they began to chuckle as they related their stories.

Some of the stories have been drawn from diaries. Others have been recaptured from the records of our experiences written when we first returned home. Others, quite a few of those presented here, we just remembered.

When putting these stories together, the stark reality of our main interest became embarrassingly evident. We must have spent half our time talking about bowel related matters.

Food and its consequences constantly occupied our thoughts, but eating, though crucial to our very existence, wasn't funny. In a lighter vein we found what happened after we had eaten much more amusing. This makes some of our stories pretty earthy and sometimes rather crude.

To convey an appreciation of our life at the time, I have written all the stories in the context in which they occurred.

Hopefully our tales will not offend and will be enjoyed as much as we have enjoyed putting them together.

While we don't profess to have literary skills, we still have our sense of fun and hope we are able to share it with you.

After all Geoffrey Chaucer wasn't all that discreet when he wrote his 'Canterbury Tales' quite some centuries back.

In writing it I have sailed close to the wind of reality.

So here it is Peter - 'Boots and all' - Well! as near as I'm game.

IT HAPPENED TO US - MARK II

2 ... WHERE ANGELS 'DARE' ...

George Lancaster

I had not yet turned 18 when on Friday 14th June 1940, I did something that changed my life forever. With four other lads I caught the tram from Moreland into the city. As our tram rattled along, we dared each other to enlist in the army.

We went straight to the Recruiting Centre at the Melbourne Town Hall and lined up behind the other men. On reaching the counter, the sergeant asked me my name and address which I gave very confidently. I was already beginning to feel quite grown up and cocky.

Age?

Twenty one. I told him in the same confident voice.

Date of birth?

My mind went blank. I had three stabs at it, ranging from 1914 to 1917.

The sergeant just sat there looking at me.

I.. I. just can't remember sir. I finally stammered.

Never taking his eyes off mine, he slowly tore up the papers.Are you that desperate to go lad? It's all right to wait until you're the proper age.

I assured him I wanted to go, and asked him what to do.

Get out of here and walk around the block, then come back to any other counter than this one. And lad, this time do your sums first.

Feeling pretty foolish, I scurried around the block, returned to the Town Hall and presented myself to a new face. This time I got my date of birth right. Then the soldier asked my occupation. I was still going to school and didn't have one, and looking around for an inspiration, I noticed a board with a long list of jobs printed on it.

Merchant seaman. I said resolutely.

He gave me a nasty look. Can't you read? Can't you see that board lists all the exempt occupations? No one whose occupation is on that notice can enlist.

He tore up my papers. You're wasting my time boy. Now Piss off.

What a sausage I am, I thought. Around the block again and back to another table. This time I heard the man in front of me say he was a labourer, and as this caused no reaction from the soldier asking the questions, I became a labourer and successfully completed the preliminaries.

The medical examination was another nightmare. The doctor asked me to squat down with my hands on my hips. I kept falling over. After my fifth attempt the doctor called in a colleague to observe my efforts, muttering something about 'lordosis', whatever that might mean. They looked at me quizzically and asked me to try again. With a supreme effort I just made it.

My initial feeling of great joy was suddenly squashed when the doctor said, Right oh, you've had your little joke boy, now get out.

Scurrying to the next medical line, I joined the queue, wondering what was going to happen next. By this time I was in desperate need for a pee and as there was a door saying 'Men', conveniently right alongside me, I joined the throng using it. I was surprised to see how many others had the same urge, and in my turn, gratefully relieved myself.

Back at the medical cubicle, I was confronted by another soldier with stripes on his arm. He handed me a small beaker. Pee in this and bring it back to me.

I told the man that I had just been, but he insisted. Just a few drops will do lad. Why we can even test a mosquito's pee, so you won't have any trouble in making just a few drops for me.

Well back I went into the men’s' and nervously strained and strained. I was becoming desperate when the man in the next stall said that he had plenty and could give me some of his if I needed it. I was about to accept, when a few magical drops appeared.

I returned triumphantly to the soldier and handed him the beaker. He dipped a little strip of pink paper in it, and said, "Right lad, the colour's right. Now go out to the front of the building and you'll find someone there to look after you.

Hooray! I had made it, I was in the army.

My four friends had also made it, and not without their fair share of confusion and excitement. We lined up in front of the Town Hall and were marched off towards Flinders Street Station to catch a train to Caulfield. We were on our way to serve God and our country. What! With soldiers like us, the war would soon be over.

We just reached Young and Jackson’s corner, when to my utter horror, a lady whose face was dreadfully familiar, ran over from the footpath waving her umbrella. I see you Georgie Lancaster and Charlie Doughney and I'm going to tell your mothers on you. You see if I don't. It was Mrs Paxton our next door neighbour and she didn't believe in armies and killing each other.

We were terror stricken. Reduced to craven cowards we slunk along, heads down, hoping the ground would swallow us up. But there was more to come from the other men with us. Doesn't your mummy know you've sneaked out of your nursery window? Where's your teddy bears?

Feeling guilt stricken we eventually made it to the Caulfield Race Course. Here we were greeted with taunts from a crowd of men who had gathered round to meet us.

You'll be sorry. You'll be sorry.

Well may be! But we had made it, and for the moment we were happy. We were now in the army ready to do our bit.

George had a successful army career and was a fun loving prankster right to his last breath.

3 NELSON - MARK II

About Clarrie Thornton

When war first broke out, our government had left us very unprepared. After all, why go to the expense of preparing for a war that may not happen? Australia was not in a position to defend itself, and with a population of around seven million, the Army found it difficult to recruit enough volunteers to man the battalions and regiments it envisaged we needed.

Australia was a happy care-free country and had a natural abhorrence toward conscripting young men to fight to defend it. Those who saw a need to serve their country, made up their own minds to enlist. Mark you, as the dangers became more evident, the persuasive pressures became more powerful.

Most of our population was centred around our big cities, where a large proportion of the eligible young men worked in commerce and offices. Not ideal occupations from which to draw practical fellows prepared to rough it out in the army as it was then, and it certainly was a rugged existence. The practical members of the city population, the engineers, apprentices, skilled machinists, craftsmen and specialist people in industry were quickly prescribed as protected occupations. As Australia had left its run a bit late, we needed someone at home to manufacture the arms and ammunition, clothing, equipment, food and all the other provisions our armed services required to do their job.

So to meet the needs of the army for young men, an unconscious bias developed toward those living in the country. The boys who had grown up on their dad's farms were pretty practical chaps. They were adept at handling guns and rifles, and having roughed out plagues and pestilence and the toughest of droughts and floods, army life with its rugged conditions would be a breeze. More so, they were familiar with all sorts of farm machinery and knew exactly where to 'kick' the most reluctant milking machine, or tractor, to get it going. By recruiting young men from the country, our Nation could get off to a good head's start.

As a young lad, Clarrie Thornton had grown up on his dad's farm at Berrigan, working with Clydesdale draught horses. He had joined the 20th Light Horse Militia Regiment, a few years before the outbreak of war. After listening to a group of recruitment officers in the Berrigan Mechanics Institute, Clarrie was so impressed by his Nation's call to arms, that he made up his mind to enlist. Being a practical young fellow, he didn't want to go all the way to Melbourne to find out that he couldn't pass the necessary tests, so he did his homework and sounded out his young Berrigan friends who had succeeded in getting through the mill.

As Australia didn't have all that many young men to choose from, Clarrie found there was not a great number of fitness tests to pass. Of course, the army, being the army, was expected to have some standards, so they rejected anyone who had diabetes, asthma, hernia, flat feet or hearing or visual defects. Familiar with the tests conducted and the standards set, Clarrie caught the train down to the recruitment centre at Royal Park, Melbourne.

He had no trouble in passing the preliminaries. When it came to his medical examination, he coughed, peed in a bottle, touched his toes, squatted on his haunches and breathed in deeply, as required by the medical officers.

Then came the eye test. To test his right eye, the orderly told him to place his left hand over his left eye, which he obediently did. Now read the top line. The next one. Now the next.

No problem.

Now, right hand over right eye.

Clarrie slapped his right hand over his left eye and read out the letters in their descending order of size, again without the slightest difficulty.

At the end of the morning Clarrie had been accepted into the army, A1, fit for overseas service. And the army got a very fine soldier.

As a boy of seventeen, Clarrie had been chopping the night's firewood for his mum, when a chip flew up and blinded his left eye. Clarrie went through the war with only the sight of his right eye.

4 SHORT ARM INSPECTION

The boys had only recently returned from their pre-embarkation leave. With the chance of not seeing their girl friends again for quite some time, they naturally took advantage of this last fortuitous opportunity to make hay while the sun shines.

This was followed with another lucky break when our troopship, the old 'Zealandia' berthed at Perth. The fortunate ones were given ship's leave and were able to enjoy their adventurous, carefree mood in the company of the local lasses who were only too happy to manifest their appreciation of the young soldiers on their way to do their duty for king and country. Some of the boys plucked up enough courage to test their manly prowess with the desirable ladies in Rowe Street.

Those unlucky enough to be balloted to remain on board as ship's piquet were allotted the far less pleasant task of washing the spew which had accumulated during the torrid passage through the Bight, off the sides of the ship with long handled brooms and buckets of seawater. Worse still, they had to put up with the boasts of their more fortunate mates, bragging about their conquests as they helped them up the gangway on their return to the ship at midnight.

The army knew their troops well and obligingly ensured that the boys were given every opportunity to make the most of their last night ashore in their home country. The lucky ones who were given shore leave were all issued with a generous supply of condoms. This was one of those rare occasions when the army's generosity exceeded the boy's youthful exuberance.

In those days condoms were something of an embarrassment. Firstly they weren't called condoms, they were known as French Letters, or more crudely as Frogs. It normally took quite some courage to front up to the local chemist to ask him for a packet. One almost expected an inquisition on which of the local's young daughters, he was going out with.

Even more frightening, 'condoms' were referred to in the little blue sex books of the day, as 'Prophylactics - For the prevention of venereal disease'.

There was a story around at the time that always brought a laugh, about the rookie serviceman asking the attractive young pharmacist's assistant for a French Letter, and asking her how to use it. Unabashed, the young lady took a demonstration model and deftly unrolled it on her thumb.

Sometime later, the soldier went back to her to complain that the condom hadn't worked and that his girlfriend was pregnant.

Did you put it on properly?

Of course I did, I rolled it onto my thumb exactly the way you showed me.

In the army, French letters were used for much more down to earth purposes. During our training exercises along the narrow Malayan roads, one of our tasks was to set up ambushes for the opposing side which, driving army trucks, were supposed to represent Jap tanks. The boys riding in the back of the trucks were expected to keep a sharp lookout for the ambushing teams and report any evidence that might give them away, to the troop commander. To represent Molotov cocktails or grenades, the ambushing teams were supplied with condoms which they filled with water. Well! they managed to fill them. Using these 'water bombs' added a lot more fun to what otherwise might have been an uninspiring jungle exercise.

Apart from their use as water bombs, there was a general reluctance to use condoms. So with all the happy times the boys had on their final leave, it became incumbent on our medical officers to check the consequences of their amorous encounters.

As our ship plied its way across the Indian Ocean, the time came for a 'Short Arm' inspection. The junior medico on board was assigned the delicate task, and with his leather gloves and swagger stick, he took up his position on a deck chair on the sunny side of the ship. His medical orderly complete with clipboard, stood on his right.

We then paraded rather sheepishly, before the doctor. As we neared him, the orderly gave the instruction Drop your Daks gunner, and we took up our position facing the doctor, not without a degree of trepidation and embarrassment.

The young medical officer went through the 'prick' inspection with an air of professional detachment. Lift it up a little, gunner. Turn it this way. Now draw the foreskin back a little that's the lad. Yeah that's fine. Now give it a little squeeze.

And so we paraded, the long and the short, the fat and the thin, the doodles and dangles, the whoppers and weenies.

'Keith Tyers, 'Flat' of the Numurkah Mob, was among the best endowed in 15th Battery, and when he reached the Doc, the Doc couldn't resist giving it a gentle flick with his swagger stick, My word Keith, that IS a beauty. I'll bet it's been on a few nests before.

Well sir, it might have been on a few nests, but it's never been on a perch before.

5 SALUTE TO THE ARMY

There is little doubt that one of the finer qualities Australians have inherited, stems from the rough and ready life our