My Grandfather's Seagoing Tent

HMAS Patricia Cam

The provenance on the back of the picture (clumsily redacted as per Mrs. R's wishes to protect family privacy.)

I rescued this lovely piece of militaria from the cupboard under the stairs at my father's beach house. He's moved down there permanently and has had to cull a lot of stuff from his other house to fit into the new one, and had always intended to give this to me, but somehow we never got around to managing the transfer!

It's a painting by renowned Australian naval history artist and RAN veteran Dacre Smyth of HMAS Patricia Cam, a coastal supply ship based in Darwin during the war. Apparently Grandpa commissioned the artist to paint the picture after getting in touch with him to tell him his story. Grandpa was a Chaplain in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and part of his duties during his posting to Darwin was sharing the pastoral duties with chaplains of other denominations and other services out in the Tiwi Islands. The islands were used as a early warning station for incoming Japanese air raids on Darwin and other communities in the Top End. With these raids in 1942 and 1943 Australia suffered its first and only attack by a foreign enemy. While the attacks pale into comparison when compared to the devastation suffered elsewhere, they certainly heightened anxiety in Australia, especially at a time when Britain was not surprisingly more concerned with home defense and the US had still to make its presence strongly felt in the Pacific War.

My dad and uncle both grew up knowing their father as well as becoming older brothers to their little sister. Their lives could well have been so very different; they may well have grown up without a father and have never had a little sister. Grandpa made one of those life-changing (indeed, life-saving) decisions when he agreed to swap rotations to the Tiwi islands with Rev. Leonard Kentish, who was to be on leave during his rostered trip to the islands. But for a fateful decision to help a colleague, it would have been my grandfather and not Rev. Kentish who would have been aboard the Patricia Cam when it was bombed and strafed by a Japanese floatplane. It would have been my grandfather, and not Rev. Kentish, who was then taken prisoner by the crew of the float plane and beheaded in 1943.

160th Anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion

Miners thoughtfully providing Her Majesty's Forces live fire and bayonet practice targets

Today marks the 160th anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion: the nearest to civil war any colony came in pre-federation Australian history.

Those familiar with the English Civil War and the American Revolution will be familiar with the cause; No taxation without representation! 

Miners were forced to buy a license to be permitted to prospect for gold. They maintained that it was an onerous imposition on free enterprise, the more so that they were not allowed the vote. Enforcement of the license by authorities was heavy handed and corrupt, Further exacerbating ill-feelings. Protests against the license escalated until they got out of hand with the death of a miner and the burning down of the Eureka Hotel in revenge after the hotel owner was acquitted of the murder. Radicalised miners built a stockade in Ballarat and swore an oath under the Southern Cross flag.

Authorities in the form of mounted police and detachments of the  12th (East Suffolk) Regiment of Foot and 40th (2nd Somersetshire) Regiment of Foot assaulted the stockade at 3 am on the 3rd of December 1859 in a short, sharp engagement. The whole affair was over in ten minutes. At least 22 miners died with allegations of the killings continuing after the miners had surrendered. There were at least 5 dead in the assaulting party as well.

In the subsequent trial of the ringleaders, they were all acquitted of charges of High Treason by a sympathetic jury. Leader Peter Lalor eventually became a pillar of the establishment, elected to Parliament and eventually becoming Speaker of the House!

I have a family connection to the rebellion. On my paternal grandmother's side of the family, an ancestor was involved as a messenger on the rebel side, as he was too young to fight. I'll have to do a bit of genealogical investigation to get the full story.

Unfortunately the flag has been co-opted by all sorts of causes, from the far-left militant unions who view the affair through a Marxist lens as workers asserting their rights against the bosses, to the far-right who use it as a nationalist symbol of exclusion. In reality the rebellion was more like a protest of small businessmen against the stifling hand of bureaucracy, not that of the oppressed workers and definitely not a white-power struggle. The protesters had a large foreign flavour with miners from all over Britain and Europe and especially the USA.

ANZAC Day 2012

Here in the Antipodes we are celebrating (commemorating, maybe more apt?) ANZAC Day, the 97th anniversary of the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on the beaches of Gallipoli in 1915.

In Australia it is also a day for remembrance of the sacrifice of all Australian soldiers from all conflicts we have been involved in from then on, especially of the World War II veterans who are fast becoming a rare breed, but also those involved in the forgotten or unpopular (at the time) conflicts like Korea and Vietnam. Participation of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are adding further poignancy to the day.

I have dragged out my grandfather's medal collection today as a way of remembering him and his generation. I really need to display them properly, as now I can't remember for sure which are his. I will have to do a bit of research to find out for certain. the first image is of his own service medals as far as I can make out. The rest are from his collection of medals from all the other major conflicts Australia had been involved in up until 1975.

Grandpa's service medals (I think): (l-r) 1939-1945 Star, Pacific Theatre Star, Australia Sercvice Medal, 1939-1945 Service Medal, Long Service and Good Conduct Medal 

Boer War campaign medals; (l-r)  Issued pre1900 with Queen Victoria's image on the reverse, clasps for Orange free State and Cape Colony; Issued post 1900 with King Edward VII image on the reverse.

WWI medals: (l-r) Military medal, 1914-15 Star, Inter-allied Victory Medal,   1914-18 War Medal, miniature of same.

Coronation and Jubilee medals 

WWII service medals; (Top row, l-r) Atlantic Star, Italy Star, Burma Star, British Defence Medal,
(Bottom row, l-r) Africa Star, 1939-1945 Star, Air Crew Europe Star. 

Post WWII medals; (l-r) Australian issued Korea Service Medal, UN issued Korea Service Medal, Australian issued Vietnam Service Medal, South Vietnamese issued Vietnam War Service Medal.

l-r, Air-force efficient service medals and Regular Army Long  Service and Good Conduct medal

The Last Post

RAAF Chaplains' insignia

No, I'm not finishing this blog!

Remembrance Day has stirred up memories, as it and ANZAC Day always do, of my Grandfather the Rev. WFG* . At his funeral, the local sub-branch of the RSL (Returned Services League, Australia's version of the British and American Legions) organised a trumpeter to play the last post as his casket was lowered into the grave. At the end of a very emotional day having to keep it together to read Psalm 23:4 during the service and to be a pallbearer, that totally unhinged me and I let the tears flow uninhibited. Hearing the last post since always brings this memory back and leaves me a bit teary.

He was a member of the Royal Australian Air Force in it's infancy in the 1920s when he was an LAC (Leading Aircraftsman, equivalent to a private in the army, working as a clerk). In later life he was very proud to be presented with a copy of the order issued to found the air base at Laverton featuring his initials at the bottom of the order sheet as the man who typed the order. He left to become a minister in the Presbyterian Church, though he served in the pre-war Citizens' Military Force, the precursor to today's Army Reserve.

Grandpa served in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II as a chaplain with postings to training bases in the N.S.W. Riverina like Narrandera and Wagga Wagga, to Darwin at the time the Japanese were bombing it with a regularity to suggest that invasion was imminent, and eventually to New Guinea towards the end of the war.

Grandpa's war service as a chaplain may not be as exciting as some others, he faced his share of danger; his first night in Darwin coincided with a Japanese air raid which sent a great hunk of metal through his tent just where he'd been moments before. Lifting his head up after the all clear sounded, he found he was sharing his slit trench with his older brother whom he hadn't seen for years!

He was also rostered to pastoral duties in the outlying Melville islands to minister to the Coastwatch stations and the Aboriginal communities. HMAS Patricia Cam was the ship on ferry duty at the time and my grandfather was rostered to take the trip to the outlying islands, but for some reason or other he swapped his rostered trip after a request from a Methodist chaplain. Luckily for my grandfather he agreed to the swap, as the little ship was bombed and strafed by a Japanese sea plane which landed and took the Methodist prisoner, never to be seen again. It turned out he was eventually beheaded. The randomness of chance prevented my grandfather from being the victim of decapitation by the Japanese. A chilling thought!

While posted in Darwin, he too often had to write letters of comfort to the wives and parents of airmen who disappeared on reconnaissance or bombing missions over the Japanese held territories. He held many funeral services where there were no bodies to bury. Like a lot of his generation, his antipathy to all things Japanese lasted a long time, to the extent that the family had to do a lot of hard arguing to persuade him to buy a Toyota in the 1970s. He mellowed in his old age, admitting that the current generations weren't to blame for the sins of the past. 

After the war he returned to civilian life although he continued to serve in the CMF, rising to senior chaplain in the Victorian CMF with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

During the 1960s he was the minister of the parish of Coleraine in Western Victoria which was in the electorate of the future Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who infamously engineered the constitutional crisis of 1975 resulting in the dismissal of the Whitlam Labour government. Fraser was then Minister of the Army in the Holt Liberal government and often attended my grandfather's services. While not sharing his politics, my grandfather had a lot of time for him as he did a lot for the struggling soldier settlers (veterans of WW1 & 2 who had been given grants of farmland by the government) of the area and was always shook hands with him after the services he attended. One sermon Grandpa gave in his presence criticised Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War and afterwards Fraser refused to shake Grandpa's hand!

My grandfather also served as chaplain aboard the Achille Lauro (later infamous for being hijacked by Palestinian extremists who executed some of their hostages in 1985) in 1966 ministering to British migrants (or ten pound Poms, as they were known, because that's all it cost to emigrate) on the long voyage to their new home.

He was full of stories about his younger days, most of which I'd heard multiple times, but on one occasion when I drove him to Melbourne to one of his last reunions of the Pre-WWII RAAF Association, he told me some rather racy stories about his youth, including one involving my grandfather, a medical student friend of his and a group of nurses going on a boozy picnic and all ending up skinny-dipping together in the Yarra River! I can tell you that I just about drove off the road in shock after hearing that one!

The mournful strains of the Last Post always remind me of my grandfather and all those of his incredible generation.

Lest we forget.

*name changed to protect the innocent, as per Mrs. R's request!