Playing Silly Buggers

Sydney
(1939 - January 1942)

I suppose my military career actually started in school where in 3rd and 4th Year I was a member of the Scots College cadets. I admit I didn't mind the military life: it was seen to give something for the youth of those days. Today, probably no. But times were different. Anyhow, that's just by-the-by.

War

War was declared, I think, on a Sunday night in Sydney in September 1939. At that time I was working for Starkey and Starkey, the accountants.

I remember it was a Sunday because on Friday nights Frank Richardson and Allen Wright (see Mates) went with me to a gym in George Street, next door to the Bjelke-Petersen gym. I can't remember the gym's name but we used to go there to do parallel bars and all that sort of jazz and a bit of mat wrestling.

I had enrolled at Sydney University in 1939 while I was still at Starkey and Starkey and I then moved to David Jones in January 1940.

After war was declared, Universal Training was implemented for all young men from 18 on [HEH was 17 years and 6 months at the outbreak of war] and you did some training at nights after work, for an hour or two at some station and once a year you did a three months' camp.

The SUR

I joined the CMF on 30 October 1940, which was a year after the war had started, by which time I was 18. I was doing a course, part-time, at the university, the Diploma in Commerce, so the CMF unit I joined was the SUR, the Sydney University Regiment. In the SUR we had all sorts: doctors ... budding doctors ..., lawyers, every type of course that was being done at university.

I was working at David Jones and they had to let me off, without pay, of course, for the three months' camp which was, because of the University holidays, over the Christmas break. It also included school teachers for the same reason. Our first camp was at Ingleburn which had been set up sometime before as a military camp. The first camp was over the Christmas vacation, 1940-41.

I can't remember any great details of it except that it was a fun thing. We had Lewis guns, which were no good, from the First World War. There was a horse transport unit and they had an artillery battery with eighteen pounders, also First World War and horse-drawn. They had a few trucks for the heavy work but they had drays and most things were horse-drawn and quite primitive. The good materiel was going to the AIF which had left the shores and gone over to the Middle East, except for one group of railway construction people who went to England. That was the army, of course. The Air Force was going to England.

Aside - The RAAF

Talking about the Australian Air Force, the British Empire Training Scheme had come in and most of the basic flight training was done in Australia but, once they had passed out on Tiger Moths which were the elementary flying machine, most of them went to Canada where they did their further training. Hal Dent, Norma's brother, went to Edmonton and did his training there, not as a pilot but as a navigator. All aircrew were trained in Canada.

The SUR and University

I went back to David Jones and did one night a month at the SUR, I think. I used to go to the depot out at the Sydney University Regiment and we played silly buggers all over the countryside out there for about an hour. Then I went to my normal lectures at about six o'clock, in my uniform and hob-nailed boots, where I used to arrive late for the lecture much to the annoyance of the lecturer who was mostly a guy called Professor Mills, who was the Economics Professor. He was a humourless man and with two or three of us stomping into his lecture late ... it didn't endear us to him at all.

Junior Leaders' Course

On 22 November 1941, I was notified that I was to do a Junior Leaders' course at Mona Vale. Mona Vale, in those days, was a hundred miles from nowhere - the bus service was pretty kronk - and I think it was a two weeks' course. I was an acting Lance Corporal by then and I did the course down there and, while we were down there, the Japs bombed Pearl Harbour and the Americans came into the War. Junior Leaders were from Privates up to Sergeants and we were trained by Warrant Officers who were permanent Army and, boy, were they tough ... but very fair!

Aside - The Middle East and Volunteers

It wasn't that they were regarded as too old to be sent over for active duty but simply that they had to use some people for training and these blokes would probably be in their 40s. There were plenty of people of that age who had gone to the Middle East by this time. Just reverting to the beginning, about the Middle East: you may remember that we were just coming out of the Depression in 1939 and a lot of the first volunteers were people who had not had jobs ever. Although it was "five bob" a day, which on today's money is a pittance, it was five bob a day with everything found: your food, your clothing, everything you could think of. When you were on active service you even got tobacco and cigarettes on rations. The only thing that your five bob a day had to buy, in Australia, certainly, was cigarettes and beer and anything else that you liked. This was money for jam and they thought it was a great adventure. This was in the early part before the Germans looked like winning the damned thing.s

Pearl Harbour

Anyhow, back to Mona Vale. So, on the Monday afternoon that we heard that Pearl Harbour had been bombed, they put us out on patrol, patrolling up and down Mona Vale Beach. To give you an idea of the futility of the whole thing, we took our rifles and all we had was blank ammunition. Although we were Junior Leaders, they wouldn't trust us with live ammunition.

There are some funny stories from that course. There was no leave; there was no curfew. The instructors told us we could go anywhere we liked at night as long as we were back and fit for duty the next day. Which left us a lot of latitude. We were all fairly young and we used to hitch-hike, if possible, into Dee Why and go to a dance there and then try and hook a ride coming back. Coming home one night I remember there were lights and everybody waved. A vehicle pulled up and it was a night cart. I refused to get on the night cart and walked back the rest of the way. I didn't want to stink the next morning.

Volunteers for New Guinea

I graduated from the Junior Leaders' course. I was promoted to acting, unpaid "blank file" or better known as a Lance Corporal, and we were sent back to our units which, it being the middle of December, was again, in my case, at Ingleburn Camp. On Boxing Day 1941, we were out in the paddock. I was a Lance Corporal so I had a section and was trying to teach the blokes something. An officer came around and wanted volunteers to go that night to New Guinea and about 6 or 7 of us from the SUR volunteered. They took us in by truck to the Sydney Showground which was the clearing depot. It was in fact the recruiting depot for Sydney and had full medical testing facilities. It was also a clearing centre used by troops in transit or going on, or coming back from, leave. There we were given medicals and all that sort of thing and then sent out on 3 days leave - pre-embarkation leave.

We came back 3 days later to be embarked on the steamship Aquitania which was in the harbour. There were something like 400 or 500 men in one of the big halls out at the Showground and I would say that 80% of them were as drunk as lords.

They were all CMF types. The only training we'd had was CMF but what had actually happened was that every unit that was in camp over the Christmas holidays had been asked to send in 5, 10, 15, whatever it was, people to fill this draft and what all the other unit commanders, in all their marvellous wisdom, did was to pick out the 15 worst soldiers (better known as "no hopers") they had on strength and send them in. This was evident when we came back after leave. They were nearly all drunk. Most of the guys that turned up at that draft were the dregs of the compulsory call-up, but that wasn't the way that our SUR group had been selected - we were 7 or 8 genuine volunteers. All of the others had been "volunteered" which was the euphemistic way of saying, "You, you and you, do it."

The 55th/53rd

They started calling the roll. They got through the As and, unfortunately for him, there was a bloke called Anderson (or Andrews) from the SUR and he was sent off to New Guinea. As they continued calling the roll, nobody could answer their name, because they were too drunk. So the person calling the roll just said, "You, you, you, you, move over there. You stay there", and they picked whatever numbers they required. There were about 150 or 200 men selected and they were sent off on the Aquitania. They became the 55th/53rd Battalion which, if you want to look up war records, had a bad time on the Kokoda Track as they were one of the first troops to meet the Japs. When they went into action, the first time, they were under-trained and had the misfortune to lose their commanding officer and other officers in the first engagement.

In the Army Now

The rest of us, those not sent to New Guinea, went back to camp, back to Ingleburn. I think there were around about 150 or 200 and, by this time we had been, as you can see by my Attestation Papers, "attested". We'd been medically examined and, while we were still technically in the CMF, we were put on full-time duty (FTD) and played silly buggers around Ingleburn till 28 January 1942 when we were sent to South Australia.

At this time I was still a Lance Corporal (being paid as a Private) and I was promoted to Corporal and then Sergeant-Major, still without extra pay. In theory we were full-time CMF on our way to Darwin via Adelaide. In the CMF (and the AIF) you got five bob a day as a private and ten bob as a sergeant.

Specific comments about Harold's memoirs can be sent to Harold Herman.

Harold's War was written and is maintained by Jack R. Herman as a part of the history section of his website.

Published by
Jack R Herman
Sydney, March 2007

All material © Copyright: Jack R Herman and Harold Herman.
Email: hhermie@iprimus.com.au

Last updated: 27 March 2007