“We fought Rommel’s Afrika Korps for about 18 months. Every now and again, even after we left Tobruk and fought in Sierra, we’d be called back to block Rommel’s drive to Alexandria… it became more or less static warfare; both sides just staring at one another.

“When Bernard Montgomery [British Commander] came on the scene, he decided there would be no more of these battalion raids wasting manpower.

“He was quite prepared to wait until he had more than sufficient strength to tackle Rommel. So, we built up to the battle of El Alamein in October 1942. He gave ninth division the major striking power…

“The battle of El Alamein was a very decisive battle. It took 10 days to break through Rommel’s Korps. A thousand guns started the onslaught.

“I was with the Queensland battalion. We lost our Commanding Officer on the opening night. Our medical officer was also hit with a bit of shrapnel… he died a few days later. As far as I remember, we didn’t get much sleep for about 10 days.

“After we’d broken through Rommel’s Korps, we were withdrawn from eighth army [Montgomery’s command] and given a spell for a couple of weeks.

“They were very fair fighters… not like a lot of the German troops in Europe, the SS crowd that were murderers more than anything else.

“Both sides developed a tremendous respect for one another… Rommel was a very astute man, a very fair man. If prisoners were taken, they were to be fairly treated.

“Even today, if a German or Afrika Korps veteran happened to visit Australia and find a member of 9th Division, they would be looked after.

“We spent Christmas of ’42 in Palestine before being brought back to Australia. We had a bit of a rest and then were sent up into New Guinea.

“As soon as we arrived, we did two amphibious landings; firstly in Lae with the Australian seventh division, and secondly in Finschhafen. The Americans were dead keen on capturing Finschhafen, which had a very solid air strip. Once they got that, they were able to overfly New Britain and bomb the area around it.

“Once we got to know their [Japanese] method of encircling, we chased the Japs a hundred miles up the coast to Sio.

“Then we came home again and had a bit of respite… finally we went up into Morotai, through to Brunei and did another amphibious landing in Borneo.

“We had very little fighting up there as the Japs had retreated well up into the mountains. Our forces were quite content to just let them die really.

“Some of our Brigades had trouble on Labuan Island – fighting the Japs. When the Japs couldn’t retreat any further, they’d always put up a fight… there was some pretty severe fighting on Labuan Island.

“We held on until they dropped the bombs in August 1945… we came home.”

(Post War)

“Before the War I’d been batching and living in this house at Sutton Forrest. The house actually belonged to my mother, but I’d been renting it from her at time.

“When I joined the Army my dad worked as a bank manager in Bowral. He retired and they [mother and father] returned to live in this house.

“There was no future in the home when I returned.

“So I did a very stupid thing and bought an old, run down orchid between Batlow and Tumbarumba; a place called Loral Hill. It was one of the silliest things I’ve ever done.

“I married this lass I’d met in Brisbane during my time with the Army… June Darvall. She was a lovely girl. I asked her to marry me and she did.

“We went to live in this old cottage at Loral Hill… terribly cold. She had done a fair amount of sun baking up there [Brisbane]. I didn’t know about melanomas or anything like that. Turned out she had a melanoma on her ankle…

“We started a family and had two girls, Jennifer and Deborah.

“After we’d been married nine years, the cancer spread right through her body. She died in 1957… left me with the two little girls; one six, one three. We were living at this property I bought – which sounded cheap at the time – but was pretty awful. We battled on there… I brought the two girls up for about 18 months… we were getting pretty desperate. For a start, I used to run Jenny [eldest] out to school and take Debbie around the farm on the horse with me.

“I realised I needed help. They were growing up and I couldn’t go on. I put an ad in the Tumut paper; I’d tried a couple of housekeepers by then.

“I received a reply from a woman who grew up in Inverell – she’d been staying with her sister in Batlow at the time. I went in to see her… she seemed like a nice girl. She said ‘I’ll think about it’.

“She came to stay at this place at Loral Hill and said ‘I’ll try it for a fortnight and see how I get on.’ She took to the girls. Soft-hearted, she stayed for 40 years until she died in 2002.”