No Names - No Pack Drill

By Ernest Bywater

This is not a story about combat, but a recounting of the activities of my father, a transport driver, and his friends in the Australian Army during World War 2. It's the incidents and events they talked about over a drink when they got together to remember the old days. Most are funny, in many ways, and some are frightening. They convey what they did to stay sane, and also why they were there. Included is the poetry by the author, nearly all of which was written whilst on active service. 24,900 words plus pictures and drawings from that time.

This is not a combat story, but a recounting of the activities of my father, a transport driver, and his friends in the Australian Army during World War 2. It's the incidents and events they talked about over a drink when they got together to remember the old days. Most are funny, in many ways, and some are frightening. They convey what they did to stay sane, and also why they were there. Included is the poetry by the author, nearly all of which was written whilst on active service. 24,900 words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ernest Bywater
• Release date: Dec 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386325253

Ernest Bywater

Ernest Bywater was born and bred in Sydney, Australia in the mid 1950s. He was the youngest of three children born to a local truck driver and a mother with a rare eye condition. She went totally blind before he started school. Thus he grew up in an environment where nothing was left near a table edge, and he spent a lot of time in an adult world as his mother's eyes while still a child. After leaving school at 16 he's worked at everything from door-to-door sales to middle management while also earning many qualification through studies in his own time. At work he wrote many millions of words in reports, technical documents, and training documents. Since his retirement due to health issues he's written over 3 million words of fiction stories in over 100 stories as novels, novellas, and short stories.

Book preview

The Big Adventure Begins

1940, in a lot of respects, wasn't such a bad year, but it had its drawbacks. Like when I got that letter in October. It was short and explicit. 'Report to Belmore Drill Hall on such-and-such a day at 8:00 a.m. Bring two cut lunches.'

I duly reported, along with a large crowd of other 19 or 20 year-olds, and were promptly subjected to a complete physical by female medico's - our first taste of Army life's embarrassments. I recall we were handed a small glass jar each and asked for a urine sample. Some of the boys, having just used the toilet, could not comply. When approached the Orderly, he said, 'Well, there's a tap out there.' Anyone not in a wheelchair would have passed that physical.

Later, after consuming our first cut lunch, we were loaded onto a train en-route for Bathurst, where we arrived around tea-time, munching our second cut lunch. We were conveyed by Army trucks to the camp, given two blankets and a paillasse, which looked like an over-long chaff bag. This we filled with straw from a nearby hut, and then we were allotted the huts which we were to occupy. I'm afraid I over-did the straw in my liking for comfort, and kept rolling out onto the bare floorboards. The next morning we were shown how to fold our beds in three with our blankets folded on top. Needless to say, I was one of a long line back to the hay-hut, to empty out half our straw. That morning we were lined up, the roll called, and told that we were no longer men, or even numbers, just bodies with no mind of our own. We were in the Army, and bodies were expendable.

Our first dinner in camp was our introduction to bully-beef stew, and nestled in the middle of one fellow's dixie was a large triantelope spider, boiled bright pink. Thereafter, Driver Allen was known as Spider.

Our Unit was 2 Div. AASC, Amm'n Coy, so as well as basic training in the bull-ring, we were trained to drive and maintain Army trucks. One bloke always regaled us at night with stories of hair-raising tales of his exploits behind the wheel, always at high speed, which earned him the name of Sixty.

It was Sixty who was the first in our Coy. to fire a shot. We had .303 rifles, but no ammo. Somewhere or other, Sixty got hold of a bullet, and that night loaded his rifle and was waving it about in the hut. Another fellow, feeling nervous, tried to disarm him. In the struggle the rifle discharged, the bullet going through the wall, through the hut next door, and away over the bull-ring. I'd never seen a hut empty so fast.

One morning on roll-call parade, the Sergeant called for any motor-cyclists present to step out. We had heard stories about the life-expectancy of dispatch riders being 36 hours in action, so needless to say no one moved. However, standing next to the Sergeant was a cove I knew from Lakemba, and as he spotted me he spoke to the Sergeant whose next command was: Bywater, fall out! He then fell out the end ten men and said, You and Jones draw two motor bikes from Workshops, take these ten to the bull-ring and teach them to ride. For the next week we were untangling bikes and riders from barbed wire, and hauling them out of gun pits. I think we finally passed three of them. Apart from some nasty barbed wire cuts, our only real casualty was one broken leg.

I had started out as a Private, then Driver, and was now Don/R. Bywater, reputedly on a shorter life-line than when I was a mere body.

Army drivers were designated 'DR' then, and I knew a fellow who received letters from a girl he knew who addressed them to 'Dear Doc.' He was apparently well thought of by her parents - until they found out he was only a driver. That ended that romance.

One of our crowd was former jockey, and he had decided he'd seen enough of Army life, so he 'shot through.' Each time he was caught and brought back, he would disappear again as soon as he did his ten days in the lock-up. Finally, the Army gave up and discharged him on medical grounds, saying he had a weak chest, caused by wasting to ride racehorses. We had three other jockeys in our Unit, and when we were in Queensland prior to going overseas they rode at a local race meeting. Some of the boys made a killing backing Billy Patterson's mounts. Bill rode five winners that day.

Sometimes we had a Saturday's leave in Bathurst, with a Saturday night dance in the Mechanic's Institute. I think there were eighteen pubs in the town in those days, so the dance usually became a battlefield. The police were hard put to keep order, until it was our Unit's turn to supply the Town Piquet, under Sergeant S. and Corporal Happy W. They went through the Hall like a pair of steam-rollers knocking down brawlers right and left. The police hauled out the civilians and the piquet dragged out the soldiers, and peace was restored in no time.

One Saturday, Dick H. and I decided to hire a couple of horses and go for a ride. The owner of the horse-yard said he only had two available, a little Tea-gardens pony, and a 14 hand gelding. When we rode off, the owner and his two mates laughed and called: Don't bring 'em back sweating! We soon found out why that amused them. The gelding was a jib, and would not go above a jog! A switch cut from a tree had no effect, so Dick rode under a tree and cut a forked stick, which he tied to his heel with a boot-lace as a make-shift spur. When we cantered back into the horse-yard later, with the 'spur' discarded, and the gelding wearing dried sweat, the faces on the horse-yard mob were pictures of puzzlement. Apparently they always inflicted that old 'joey' on soldier customers as a joke, and couldn't understand how the joke had come unstuck for once.

______________________________________

Note: Don/R is short for Despatch Rider, and Coy is short for a military company. AASC is the Australian Army Supply Corps.

don-r dress

Smartly turned out Don/R Bywater

A Change of Scenery

After completing basic training at Bathurst we were sent to Greta, driving there in convoy, which wasn't without its share of incidents. The day before we left Bathurst one of the boys, who came from nearby Rylstone, had received word that his mother was very ill, and asked for some leave to go home. As we were all under 'movement orders' all leave was cancelled, so his request had to be refused. However, the Major routed our convoy through Sandy Hollow, which took us past Rylstone, where the Major called a stop for an hour's lunch break. Not all COs were the ogres they were painted.

Greta camp was built in two sections, one section with timber huts (Wooden City) and the other of galvanised iron, called Silver City. We were in Wooden City. Here our