Brisbane_Smith

Extract from my Dad's Story (Leslie James Brisbane)....

         On Thursday Island, we worked on building light emplacements and laying cable across the island for communication. From doing this, I suffered a severe case of sunstroke.

              One day, we were down in the town and we got talking to this bloke and he said he was a tattoo artist. So Doug said: “Let’s get some done!”  We went with him to the 49th Battalion Camp. He showed us all the different things he could do. Doug picked out the Australian emblem for his upper arms and a heart and dagger through for his fore arms. As he did this the chap put the transfers on his arms. He then started the tattoo. He had his bottle of different coloured inks and his  pen was like a pencil with about eight or ten needles on the end of it which he would dip into the different colours.  He said to Doug that he would have to wait about a fortnight to see the results. He then looked at me and asked me what ones did I pick out — I said, “None; I don’t  want any.” Doug looked at me and said he thought we were both going to have them done. I said:  ‘I am not!’

Doug’s arms, over the tattoos, all peeled but in about three weeks they cleared and the tattoos were real good. Doug wouldn’t talk to me for about a month.

On December 7th, 1942, we had just sat down for breakfast when the island C.O. came to the door and said, “ I have an announcement to make — we are now at War with Japan! They bombed Pearl Harbour; all Japanese on the island have been interned; civilian population will be sent back to the mainland as we are on a war-footing.”

Now we manned the search lights 24 hours-a-day. We worked six hours on and  six off. I was an engine driver and friendly with the cook back at the camp.  He asked me if I would like to be his assistant. I said yes because it got me out of the shift work.

              Things overseas were getting bad.  First Singapore fell with the whole of Australian 8th Division captured. The Philippines surrendered with General McArthur escaping to Australia. Japs invaded New Guinea. The 49th Battalion were sent from Thursday Island to Port Moresby from where they went over the Owen Stanley Range to stop the Japs. They joined with another Battalion and defeated them at Milne Bay. In the mean time other battles were going on at Rabaul, Bouganville, Wewak and Shaggy Ridge. Next Darwin was bombed, doing a lot of damage and sinking a lot of ships in the harbour. There was a raid on Townsville, then a big raid on Horn Island where we had built an air-strip which would be later one of the main defence points from which fighters and bombers took off in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

            After the war, we heard that the Japs wouldn’t bomb Thursday Island because of all the Jap graves there.

The CO lined us all up and asked for volunteers to go into training to join the paratroops. So both me and Doug volunteered. They said first we would have to join the AIF. As I was still under age, I had to get my parent’s consent so I wrote to them, explaining what they had to do and waited for their reply. The reply I got was not what I expected; my mother had written to the army  and said I had put my age up when I joined up and never had her consent. So they sent me back to Australia and released me on leave without pay for three months until they decided what to do.

  
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