05-28-2025, 08:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-29-2025, 03:23 PM by Man From Ironbark.)
I had similar experience in that my dad who was 12 when WWI broke out, had to run the farm and feed his mother and sisters because all the older men in the family were off to the war by 1915.
In WWII he enlisted but the enlisting officer changed the birth date he put down because men over 35 were unable to enlist. Yes I do have the enlistment form adjusted down from age 37 to 35 and signed by the officer. He was an engineer(sapper) and served in Tobruk as a Rat of Tobruk and various other engagements, El Alemain and in Syria where he was wounded in the leg by a strafing Stuka. He nearly lost his leg there in a tent in the desert but a nurse saved it by bathing it all night and day and he was put on a plane back to Australia and repaired and recuperated. The doctors said there is something else wrong but we are not sure and the Army sent him to the Kokoda Traxk where it was his mob of engineers who dragged 25 pounder field guns up and down the same muddy track that mere men were having trouble on. It was these guns set on high ground that stopped the Japanese advance through Papua New Guinea. It was discoverd on return that apart from the Dengue fever and stuff everyone had, he had done all of that with a dislodged kidney from Syria.
When I was 15 the school cadets did a 10 day camp where we did simulated jungle warfare as in Vietnam. I was only in the cadets for three months and only did the one camp but I'd been selected to go on a patrol surviving on rations and all hand signals stuff. At the end of that patrol we joied with some others who were supposed to be a Vientamese village. We wore black because we wee supposed to be the Vietnamese and the rest of the assembled cadets from different schools were told that some villages may be under control of the enemy, so they had to treat us as normal villagers while they loooked/searched for evidence of the Viet-Cong.
Most of the cadets charged the village rather than entering diplomatically. They were largely eliminated by my agricultural field that I was pretending to hoe the weeds in. Id' previously planted purple smoke mines in this field. The rest were surprised by my machine gun under the compost heap.
The army came to my house and asked my father for permission to train me to become an officer trainer. Dad said, "I'm his guardian but essentially he has to want to go before I give permission". So they came to my room and asked me. I said, "It is fun playing war games with blanks but I really don't want to teach people how to kill each other so that You can get the medals". They left.
Three years later I was due for the draft when Gough Whitlam became our new Prime Minister and cancelled our involment with sending conscripts to Vietnam and thus, I escaped the draft.
My father never talked about the war but he did have photographs he'd taken in Tobruk and other parts of North Africa and some he'd captured from the Germans in the desert.
Just before all of the above, when I was 14, they eventually had to remove his leg. So he was legless when I turned 15.
In WWII he enlisted but the enlisting officer changed the birth date he put down because men over 35 were unable to enlist. Yes I do have the enlistment form adjusted down from age 37 to 35 and signed by the officer. He was an engineer(sapper) and served in Tobruk as a Rat of Tobruk and various other engagements, El Alemain and in Syria where he was wounded in the leg by a strafing Stuka. He nearly lost his leg there in a tent in the desert but a nurse saved it by bathing it all night and day and he was put on a plane back to Australia and repaired and recuperated. The doctors said there is something else wrong but we are not sure and the Army sent him to the Kokoda Traxk where it was his mob of engineers who dragged 25 pounder field guns up and down the same muddy track that mere men were having trouble on. It was these guns set on high ground that stopped the Japanese advance through Papua New Guinea. It was discoverd on return that apart from the Dengue fever and stuff everyone had, he had done all of that with a dislodged kidney from Syria.
When I was 15 the school cadets did a 10 day camp where we did simulated jungle warfare as in Vietnam. I was only in the cadets for three months and only did the one camp but I'd been selected to go on a patrol surviving on rations and all hand signals stuff. At the end of that patrol we joied with some others who were supposed to be a Vientamese village. We wore black because we wee supposed to be the Vietnamese and the rest of the assembled cadets from different schools were told that some villages may be under control of the enemy, so they had to treat us as normal villagers while they loooked/searched for evidence of the Viet-Cong.
Most of the cadets charged the village rather than entering diplomatically. They were largely eliminated by my agricultural field that I was pretending to hoe the weeds in. Id' previously planted purple smoke mines in this field. The rest were surprised by my machine gun under the compost heap.
The army came to my house and asked my father for permission to train me to become an officer trainer. Dad said, "I'm his guardian but essentially he has to want to go before I give permission". So they came to my room and asked me. I said, "It is fun playing war games with blanks but I really don't want to teach people how to kill each other so that You can get the medals". They left.
Three years later I was due for the draft when Gough Whitlam became our new Prime Minister and cancelled our involment with sending conscripts to Vietnam and thus, I escaped the draft.
My father never talked about the war but he did have photographs he'd taken in Tobruk and other parts of North Africa and some he'd captured from the Germans in the desert.
Just before all of the above, when I was 14, they eventually had to remove his leg. So he was legless when I turned 15.
Happiness simply is.
There need be no pursuit.
There need be no pursuit.