Carefree War
Page 9
The choice of children being victims of a ruthless invading army or fleeing to a quiet farm out of harm’s way was not a simple one. Some children left the safe haven of their home, and returned only to be sent away again, in the uncertainty of the times.
While the public protested and bureaucrats procrastinated; families evacuated their children and women joined groups organising themselves against air raids. The Air Raid Post in Victoria enrolled over 1,000 women in the metropolitan area, learning first aid work, stretcher bearing, clerical and mobile unit work and training as aircraft spotters and telephonists.
If there was lingering doubt about Japanese policies for domination, on 4 April, 1942, Australian newspapers were full of seizures of Japanese arms in the State of Sao Paulo, in south Central Brazil, described as a ‘hotbed of fifth columnists.’ The first Japanese immigrants had arrived in Brazil in 1908, to work on the coffee plantations, the largest concentration being in São Paulo and Paraná. The plan was to take over the immediate area as a stronghold. Eighty Germans, Italians, and Japanese were arrested. Naval officers were found in possession of uniforms, photographs of ships, and strategic Brazilian maps. At Sao Paulo, Brazil, police arrested a Japanese army captain who had masqueraded as a woman cook for five years in the household of a director of an important Brazilian war-materials concern! Another one was posing as a dentist! Arms were smuggled into shops and hidden. No similar cell was discovered in Australia, although ‘information gathering spying’ had gone on for years. Perhaps this is another indication that the Japanese did not intend to invade Australia - not in the 1940s at least.
Eventually the tide of war changed and evacuees returned, but the heartache and fear always remained. Shirley Killeen remarked that we should remember those who were left:
I went to the birthday party of my friend, who is eighty, recently. Another friend said, ‘How marvellous that you have been friends all these years.’ The eighty-year-old said, ‘No, she went away and left me.’ She meant when I was evacuated for two years and she wasn’t.
Chapter 8
Keep Calm and Carry On
Mum wouldn’t go into it, (the air raid shelter), because she said there were spiders. So we put a mattress over the dining room table and sat underneath.
– Bev Kingston
In December 1941, NSW country trains pulling out of the city were packed. By February 1942, the newspapers stated the NSW government had assisted 2,000 civilians to evacuate from the city into the country, but many stayed put and some drove into danger deliberately to be with loved ones.
In London, Queen Elizabeth, (later the Queen Mother), famously said, ‘The children can’t go without me. I can’t leave the King, and of course the King won’t go, earning her the undying affection of Londoners in the Blitz, when many crowned heads of Europe were leaving their countries. Churchill was also a familiar figure in the ruins, cigar clenched between his teeth, offering a cheery word to shop keepers, who put up notices saying, ‘Business as Usual’ in the ruins of their premises.
Manchester Guardian on 19 August, 1940:
* * *
480 British Children sent to Private Homes in Australia
Last night there was a touch of near-weeping about a few children. But at the dock today they marched stoutly, in tartan, blazer, brown shirt, shorts, infants’ skirts and schoolgirls’ skirts, halting, breaking ranks to watch a porter wheeling a woolly toy lamb on wheels. Gas masks went on board only to come ashore later. Then it was time for us to be off. The last sight was ‘thumbs up’ at the portholes’.
* * *
British chldren were evacuated to Victoria between 1940 and 1945, following an agreement between the British and Australian governments and boarded out with families. The Children’s Welfare Department oversaw the allocation of the children to their custodians and their welfare. Sixty-two children and young people came to Western Australia under the Overseas Children Scheme.
In Australia, people stayed put for various reasons: mothers of large families in poorer suburbs were too busy rearing children to worry about something that might never happen, seeing evacuation for those with money and said they would sit tight until the government told them to move. A Mrs Witcher, with eleven children, the youngest aged eighteen months, stayed at home. ‘Besides, Dad says they’ll never take Singapore.’ she said.
Jack Davey sang Our Air Raid Shelter on the radio in 1942:
There’s no more room now in our air raid shelter,
There’s Aunt ‘n Gran ‘n Dad ‘n Mum ‘n me.
And when the sirens sound we all run helter-skelter,
Just Aunt ‘n Gran ‘n Dad ‘n Mum ‘n me.
In air raids, civilians were told to walk, not run into shelters, (the enemy didn’t like you keeping cool!), and to: ‘Keep in readiness by your bedside a torch, a candle with matches, some money, a warm sweater, and a pair of slacks. In the case, have a roll of bandages, cotton wool, drinking water, sticking plaster, a bottle of iodine, some cakes of plain chocolate, a pair of low-heeled shoes and a change of clothes. They were advised to keep their bath full of water, turn off the gas and electricity and cover food in case of flying glass splinters.
When Bev Kingston and her family went to North Queensland in 1946, she found a level of disapproval of those who had evacuated. We sat it out back in Manly, me and Mum under the dining room table, Dad braving the submarine barrage across the Harbour to go to work every day on the ferry. My parents were probably too poor to send me away but I was also only a toddler – we lived in Manly just a few doors up from the barbed wire entanglements on the beach. Dad constructed an air raid shelter in the backyard according to the plans given in the Women’s Weekly I believe, but Mum wouldn’t go into it because she said there were spiders. So when Manly was shelled from the sea we put a mattress over the dining room table and sat underneath. The people next door had their windows broken by the shells.
A census taken by the local air raid wardens of those desiring to evacuate resulted in 200 residents moving to the Tablelands.
Shelters in the backyards were usually a deep trench covered by a corrugated water tank cut in half and covered in sandbags with steps down inside. People left their comfortable living rooms, grabbing warm blankets, pulled wellingtons on and went down the shelter steps, where muddy rainwater collected. Spiders and the occasional frog shared the space with stores of food, first aid items, essential tools, torches and water. Some people took personal documents and photo albums, a favourite party dress or special pair of shoes, along with the pet dog, rabbit or cat.
Geoff Hoad remembers discussions about leaving, but nothing happened:
My family talked about two main things in the war, my uncle being on the ferry that the subs followed into the Harbour, and my mum being told to go up to Junee because she was expecting me - she stayed with my dad!
John Squires says his wife’s parents changed their minds:
My wife, who was a year younger than me, with her older sister, my age, prepared for evacuation from Paddington to Gunning, with some other local friends, but cooler minds prevailed and her parents couldn’t part with them, so their little Shirley Temple’s farm overalls remained unused. Her father built a slit trench in their tiny backyard, beneath a three storey building that would have buried them had a bomb or shell struck.
Charmaine Piaud thinks they had every reason to go, but for some explained reason they did not:
I remember the attack on Sydney Harbour as we were down in our air raid shelter and a next door neighbour had a heart attack there. She died several weeks later on my second birthday. I was supposed to go to the Blue Mountains, my mother to accompany me but to no known relatives. My father and my brother who was born in 1929 were to stay behind. I don’t know why the move was cancelled. Mum never said.
Barry Hishion lived by one airfield and his only relatives lived next to another one, so they stayed put:
At Port Kembla, barbed wire entanglement had been laid along Port Kembla b
each because enemy submarines were active along the coast. On the night of November 4, 1942 a Lockheed Hudson that had been searching for enemy submarines during bad weather, crashed into the escarpment west of Dapto killing the crew of four. It was bad weather, not submarine activity that saw the US tanker Cities Service Boston wrecked off Bass Point at Shellharbour on May 21, 1943. Four soldiers from the 6th Machine Gun Battalion (AIF) patrolling the coast that day, lost their lives whilst helping to save the 62 man crew. The steelworks remained safe throughout the war with production running 24 hours.
My parents had great concern for the safety of their children and with good reason. Our home in Birdwood Rd ‘Bass Hills’, later designated Georges Hall, overlooked Bankstown Aerodrome from high on a ridge above. Built in 1940, the 640 acres of bushland had been reclaimed then levelled to form a primitive airfield. Primarily it became a training base for pilots, using two seater Tiger Moths to do circuits and bumps before the unit was transferred to Point Cook in Victoria. This happened following Pearl Harbour and after the Federal Government had acquired military equipment from America through the Lend Lease scheme. Huts were built, along with hangars for Bell Airacobra P39 fighter planes that arrived later with American pilots. These were the first of many military aircraft to be based at Bankstown, seeing it become a prime target for any invading force.
When Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour on 31 May, 1942, one torpedoed and sank HMAS Kuttabul. That night the aerodrome erupted with noise so great, that all thought an invasion had come. Searchlights combed the sky and with confused radio reports, it took a long time before events on the Harbour came to be known. In the frantic action for pilots to answer the call, one plane did not take sufficient time to warm up and crashed across the Georges River at Chipping Norton. De Havilland Aircraft built a very large hangar and set up production of the Mosquito bomber, providing employment for many people. It was there that I later served my apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker during production of the Vampire jet fighter.
Could we children have been sent to the country for safety? Our only country relatives were at Richmond, where another air base was located, a prime target, so we stayed at home. We gained a sense of security when soldiers became camped on the vacant land sloping down to the main gate of the aerodrome. Their stay was short and we believe that they went on to number among the heroes of Kokoda. Each night three searchlights combed the skies and picked up any planes in flight. One effective unit was located on nearby Black Charlie’s Hill overlooking the aerodrome, offering a false sense of security. In a large bunker under a hill that over looked Bankstown, there was located the operations centre for the war in the South Pacific. It was heavily guarded by soldiers and very secret. It was only after the war that its operations were revealed. Along with mates I crawled through a hole to view and discover the abandoned site in 1946. We weren’t the only ones to do so. In 1945 and prior to the war’s end, the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy took over the aerodrome, naming it HMS Nabberley.
Some mothers took their children away but were so unhappy they went back home. Ida, who signed her letters ‘your loving wife’, left her husband Frank in Tully, taking daughters Mary and Jane with her to rooms in Stanthorpe, where she knew nobody. In March 1942, she wrote to Frank, to say her mother had decided not to come with them as she thought it would be too cold. Ida sent a wire to him to say she might come home next week, ‘… you’ll probably think we are all mad, and perhaps we are … accommodation is very scarce (and) … you don’t know how it feels to walk into a strange, cheerless looking double room and think that is home.’ She says her landlady; Mrs Finn is a good, kind, hard working little woman. ‘Most of the places you go to look at are full of ‘Don’ts’, and start off laying down the law about what you can do and what you can’t do. The old lady is still here. I think we will even get used to her cough.’ Ida ends the letter with, ‘Oh, well, dear, I will just wait and see what you say about us going home. I hope we will be able to. All my love and lots from Jane and Mary’.
Other wives and mothers followed their husbands, sometimes with children, into danger zones, to be near their loved ones. Georgia Newton was born in 1942. Her mother moved constantly to be near her husband, who was in the Navy on HMAS Canberra. On 9 August, 1942, in the Battle of Savo Island, off the Solomon’s, seven Japanese battle cruisers struck the lead ship Canberra in a surprise attack and it was finally destroyed by American torpedoes:
My brother was seven years old and my mother was pregnant with me when my father, who was in the Navy, was killed on board HMAS Canberra. I was born one month later. My mother moved to Sydney when he was based there, and then took the steam train to Brisbane and moved there. She must have thought it was better to be near him and in danger than left at home to worry. Many wives did that when their husbands were in the services.
Some people were disapproving of evacuees, saying they should stay and help with the war effort. The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday, 6 January, 1942: Ruth Watt replied to a letter writer criticising her and her friends for removing their children, as ‘a flagrant example of utter selfishness on behalf of a favoured few.’ She said, Being one of the four mothers who have taken a house between them I would like to state … mothers are naturally anxious to have their children in comparative safety … it is obvious to the meanest intelligence that the aforesaid parents, instead of being criticised for sending their children to the country should be commended for organising a household where children can lead a normal life and at the same time allow their parents to carry on with their war work.
If you were desperate parents without relatives, friends were the next option, even if they were afar and without a telephone. Heather Baker’s parents turned to people they knew from their Scottish village:
In 1941 I was eight and my brother was four. We lived at Mosman and were quite close to where the Japanese submarines came in. My father was away fighting in the Middle East, (he was at Tobruk), and my mother worked at the Menzies Hotel. Some friends of the family, the Houstons, lived at Tenterfield. Mrs Houston had worked in the same wool mill in Scotland as our grandmother. Mr Houston was a retired baker. We stayed with them when we first came to Australia, in Neutral Bay. One day, my mother came home to us two children and the Scottish lady supposed to be looking after us was under the table with a mattress on the top. We were in our beds. She decided to send us to the Houstons. We went on a long, long rail trip as we had to pull into sidings and let troop trains go by. Mrs Houston did not have any children and I don’t think she was overjoyed to have us, but we stayed two years, attending Tenterfield School. I think all the other children were locals. My father visited us once, going AWOL, and unbeknownst to him, my brother had mumps and he caught them. My mother visited us when she could. The Houstons did not have a telephone. I suppose they wrote to each other.
Andrew Kyle with his brothers - ‘Rabbit Boys’ in Oberon.
HMAS Kuttabul was torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarines with 21 Navy personnel aboard - Sydney Harbour, 31 May, 1942
Anthony Healey in his dad’s tin helmet, 1942
Valda McDonald with her Uncle Maurice Jeffriess at Werris Creek in 1941
State Emergency Services in Victoria advise what to pack for evacuation
Sunday Sun Colour Feature, February 8, 1942
Cassie and Jim Thornley in a hand tinted photograph
Bruce Baskerville’s grandparents with their oldest daughter, Geraldton, WA
Horace Goldsmith, part of kindertransport from Germany to Britain, who later settled in Australia
Bevan Walls and playmate Mick from next door outside their Ashfield air raid shelter
Kevin Murphy races past Lion Island as his neighbour Mrs Booth (left) chats on Ocean Beach sands
Kevin’s mum Noeline balances her charge on the knee with her mother Maud (Marsie) and sister Muriel looking on
Kevin Murphy on his trike in 1942
Maud (Marsie) Lamont, sunning on the veranda
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Maud and her youngest child, Noeline, 1942
Etna Street: The Gosford home of real estate agent and Gosford councillor Donald Lamont - Kevin’s uncle, circa 1945
Bev Kingston outside her Manly home air raid shelter, 1942
Cotswold, Armidale, a beautiful old home opened as a nursery, kindergarten and prep school in 1942 by a Miss M Buik
Heather Baker, aged 8 and her brother aged 4 being visited by their mother, at the Houstons, Tenterfield
Marie and John Costello with mother Eileen, travelled from Wollongong to Glen Innes, a 12 hour train trip
Heather Baker and her mum visiting Mrs Houston again
Jacqueline Parker aged 10, (right, front row) at boarding school, Bathurst 1944.
Jacqueline Parker (r) with friends Gwen and Francis at Bathurst
Shore School boys, Mt Victoria
Shore School Prep. boarders, Third and Fourth Form outside the Guest Hotel at Mount Victoria, 1942
Bob Taylor’s aunt’s refreshment stall at the railway station