Ian McDonald - One of our many Australian heroes. We will never forget

Ian McDonald’s Recollections - James McDonald

These recollections are primarily the result of notes provided by Ian in 2001 and from interviews with him recorded in Coffs Harbour on 7 December 1991 and 26 April 1993, Canberra in 10 January 2004 and a series of phone and face-to-face conversations conducted in Brisbane, 2014-15.

World War II (1942-1943)

Ian rarely spoke about his experiences during the war. Fortunately for the family, he started opening up about his experiences in the later years of his life.[1] When he did speak about the war, it was usually to convey a humorous incident. He said that he used to watch Anzac Day parades quietly on television every year, finding it too painful to attend a ceremony himself.

McDonald family, Civic, Canberra 1941. 
Left to right: Heather, Ian, Bert (Father), Greg and Tilly (Mother).

His parents, Bert and Tilly, did not want both sons in the war. Ian reluctantly agreed not to enlist, but kept seeking his parents’ permission to join up. When he was 19, they eventually relented and gave their consent to him joining the army. Sensibly, they asked him not to join his brother’s unit in Malaya. This was wise counsel, as Greg was captured in Singapore and spent the rest of the war as a POW and suffered badly at the hands of his captors on the Burma Railway and in Japan.

The only other condition that Ian’s parents placed on him was to take the temperance oath. They were worried that a young impressionable man in the army may come back to them with a well-developed taste for alcohol. Tilly had seen the impact of the war on her badly shell-shocked brother, Alf, who had sunk into alcoholism and may have been fearful of what might happen to Ian.

Ian underwent basic training as a sapper in various locations in country NSW. But as he was keen to follow his brother’s example, he asked to be transferred to the artillery. He was successful in his requests and joined the 2/11 Australian Field Regiment.

He spent time at a training camp, which had been erected at Pymble Golf Course. Of course, the Diggers did not take security precautions, seriously at Pymble, where there was no real threat. At night-time, four guards were meant to be posted at each ‘beat’ of the large rectangular training camp (about 2-3 acres in size). They would either take it in turns to sleep through, while one guard kept watch on all four sides or they would even go into Pymble to drink (AWOL), while one stayed in case an officer came by to check. One night, a good friend of Ian’s, named, Gunner Hobbs (who came from the Hunter Valley), whose turn it was to keep an eye out for ‘the brass’, had been left behind. He challenged the officer, saying ‘Halt, who goes there?’ ‘Captain Charge’ was the reply. Hobbs then said ‘Advance and be recognised’ and then said ‘Pass friend’. Unfortunately for Hobson, Captain Charge was intent on ensuring that he was challenged at each beat of the camp. So Hobbs ran from corner to corner, to challenge the officer, pretending, in vain, to be a different man. The officer, of course, was wise to what was going on, but appreciated the humour of the situation and was relatively lenient in the punishment he inflicted on Ian and the other sleeping guards.

A similar situation occurred at a firing practice range at Appin, where Ian and his battery had been training. His good friend, Roy ‘the Boy’ Woods was on guard duty but had given up and went to sleep. Ian was stirred at about 3:00 am when he noticed a lantern-light coming towards them. He quickly woke up Roy, who was had been sleeping naked in the summer heat. The Officer came to the guard post and Roy, still naked, but had managed to grab his gun, stood and challenged the officer as best he could. Roy was put ‘on a charge’, but nothing happened of course.

He said that he spent the first few weeks as a new gunner in the Newcastle district at Nelsons Bay, where he manned an old WWI 18-pounder piece dug into the side of the cliff, which, he claims, was one of only a few artillery guns that Australia had deployed between Sydney and Brisbane at that time. It was positioned in a bunker overlooking the beach where they had rolled out barbed wire. One of the crew was the Australian writer, Donald Horne, whom he remebered as an expert gun-layer.

Their equipment and provisions were poor. At Greta, near Cessnock in the Hunter Valley, they had been issued with uniforms and equipment left over from WWI. Some of them were even given wooden guns with which to drill. Nevertheless, they were trained in jungle warfare to prepare them for deployment to New Guinea. When Newcastle was shelled by the Japanese submarines that also attacked Sydney in June 1942. Ian’s battery of eight guns was set up at Stockton Beach ready to shell the submarines if they surfaced again to fire.

With the bombing of Darwin and other Australian ports in early 1942, Ian was dispatched to Darwin in late 1942 where the 2/11th was deployed. Once there he was assigned to the first gun of the 21st battery in A-troop. He described the devastation in the town of Darwin as being similar to the photographs he later saw of Cyclone Tracey. Of course, they were not able to talk or write home about the level of destruction, as this information was withheld from the Australian public. There was hardly a building not destroyed or left undamaged in Darwin. Initially he was stationed on a 25-pounder near the main harbour and the troops slept in tents on the beach. They would often swim in the harbour, that is, until one of them saw what they thought might be a crocodile. They shot at the object, which swam off, thus confirming that it wasn’t just a crocodile-shaped log!

Ian says that due to the continued success of the bombing raids on Darwin, the command decided not to leave the troops concentrated in one area. They were, instead, staggered along the road in camps every mile or so south of Darwin following the course of the Adelaide River.

As Ian had taken the temperance oath, he was a popular companion when alcohol rations were doled out. He was often one of the few sober men in the unit, when the men had leave. He remembers that, although he had no regrets about his abstinence, he preferred the company of the drinkers to the company of those who didn’t and he felt isolated, in this respect, when his mates would go out together.

Marriage and Honeymoon (March-April 1944)

In early 1944, Ian married Nell Curran in Canberra. As the war had gone on for so long and there was still no end in sight and as Ian was about to be sent overseas, he and Nell decided to use his furlough to get married quickly. He proposed to her in early 1944.

Having been stationed up in Darwin for some time, he contracted a tropical rash under his arms, which wept and wouldn’t dry out and heal. Tinia was also rife in Darwin. Most of the troops had it and many of them even between their thighs and other places. So, as they were travelling down from Darwin, in order to dry out and get relief from the rash, most of the men were naked. There were truckloads of naked troops travelling down from Darwin. At one stop for ‘smoko’, the troops saw a car travelling up to Darwin and threw naked Ian out of the truck onto the road as a prank and drove off.

Ian’s parents opposed an inter-denominational marriage. Ian was so hurt by the response and the prejudice they were showing to Nell’s faith and his decision to marry a Catholic that he took a bike from the garage and rode straight out to her parents’ farm, ‘Deasland’ at Ginninderra. He stayed there for the duration of his stay in Canberra before the wedding on 25 March 1944. Despite the ‘bad blood’, they quickly arranged a wedding, including a small-scale reception at the Blue Moon Café in Civic. Fancy weddings took place at the established hotels, but there was little time and few provisions available due to the wartime rationing.

Ian and Nell enjoyed a very brief wartime honeymoon in Sydney, staying with Nell’s aunt, Margaret Pooley. He also remembers travelling with Nell on the Manly Ferry and worrying about a possible attack on the boat by a Japanese submarine and thinking of what he would do to keep Nell safe if they were hit.

World War II (1944-1945)

At first, Ian was part of the reinforcements sent to Lae in New Guinea. He says that, when he arrived at Lae in 1944, there was little fighting, as the Japanese had been subdued by the allies and a large US force was stationed there.

He said that when he was camped at Nadzab after the Markham Valley campaign and just before they were about to move into the Ramu Valley (Ramu means ‘death’ in the Papuan because of the prevalence of scrub typhis there). The Americans had constructed a large airbase at Nadzab, which was important for the bombing of Rabaul.

He describes a humorous incident from this time in which he stole a stretcher from the American camp. As the Americans had been there for some time at Lae, they were well set up and very well provisioned. The Australians were not. They were camped on the opposite bank of the Markham River, sleeping on the ground with just cover sheets stretched above them. Ian and a two mates waded across the river in moonlight and infiltrated the American camp, where they located a large supply tent. They saw shadows of Americans outside the tent, but they passed. They helped themselves to stretchers and other supplies and made off as quickly and as quietly as they could. At the perimeter, they were challenged by an American guard in the distance, but ignored the challenge and continued wading over to their camp on the other side of the river. Fortunately, the guard did not fire on them. They carried this gear around with them for the rest of the war, as it was so much better than the Australian issue. Ian’s stretcher was kept for many years after the war and it is remembered as having the US sergeant’s name (Insley) written on it. Somehow, Ian later found out that the man lived in the Great Lakes area of the USA and he fantasised about returning the stretcher to him one day after the war.

The only other interaction Ian recalls with the American troops was through a scam in which the Australians, sold beer diluted with black tea to their allies. The Americans had little access to alcohol and were happy to buy anything they could get.

Around this time, Ian spent a period on guard duty at hospital and nurses’ camp. He said that there was usually only one guard and that, at night-time, it was very tense. He also remembers, with embarrassment, stealing a canvass belt on washday from the clothesline, as he had none and was having difficulty keeping his pants up. He said that most of the troops were ‘thieves’ as there were few supplies and provisions and you had to ‘do what you had to do’ to get by.

After Lae, Ian’s unit was redeployed as part of General Blaimey’s Australian campaign in Bougainville. When they were being transported by boat they were in the Coral Sea, close to Bougainville, their troop ship broke down. They were drifting for miles, but fortunately, it was night-time and by morning the crew had fixed the engines and they were mobile again. This of course, was a very dangerous time to be broken down at sea, with the Japanese submarines still active in the area.

Ian even appears on archival footage at Bougainville. He remembers the cameras being there, but never thought that he would see the footage, until it appeared in the documentary, Bougainville: the Unnecessary War, in the 1990s. When asked about the war itself and what the Australians did, Ian agreed with the view that it was a ‘stupid’ campaign as the Japanese had stopped fighting on the island and remained in their camp and the Australians ‘stirred them up’. The other view, of course, is that a division of Japanese (30,000 or so) could not be left unengaged lest they be redeployed elsewhere.

Ian says that his battery was the first and last to be used on the island and that, within the battery, his gun crew operated the ‘number one’ gun.[2] He says that, as such, he thinks he fired more shells on Bougainville than anyone else. His specific role was ‘gun-layer’, which he says was a role that suited his skill with numbers. Ian takes pride in recalling that he developed the reputation as the best gun layer and was used for all the ‘range finding’ for the battery. The command would be watching the target area for movement or flashes of guns and would direct Ian’s gun closer and closer to the target. Ian, as ranger, would make each adjustment (e.g. ‘left 10 degrees’, or ‘up 500’) as ordered, while the other guns in the battery would be making the same adjustments, but not firing so as not to waste their shells. They would only start firing as well once Ian’s gun was hitting the target and the full barrage could then begin.

Ian said that the most stressful aspect was whenever he was ordered to range for ‘close target’, i.e. firing close to his own troops. He would often be asked to do this to offer support to diggers who were under fire from Japanese troops close by.

On one occasion, when planes were being used to help direct the fire on a bridge behind the enemy’s positions, a pilot wrote a note saying ‘good shooting’ and dropped it down to them.[3] He regrets not keeping the note, as he was very proud of his work that day and pleased that it had been recognised. It was a New Zealand pilot in a corsair. These planes would also carry two five-hundred pound bombs. Occasionally, he could see the pilots dive bombing Japanese positions. Ian says that on one occasion, when sortieing with the infantry, his unit came across a downed New Zealand fighter pilot, unfortunately, after the Japanese had got to him. The pilot had been badly injured and was unable to get himself out of the cockpit before the enemy arrived. While he was trapped, the Japanese tortured him to death by pouring boiling water over his head. The Australian troops got to him, but they were too late to help and he died.

One of their regular practices was to build a camp with a perimeter of trip wires and booby traps. A tank would be positioned in the centre and the troops would dig slit trenches for cover, if shelled. At night, guards would be posted at each corner in a small hollow.

Ian also recalls upsetting memories of Australians, who had been injured and were being transported on what they called the ‘Corduroy Road’. Due to the rain and mud, the Australians had laid a road of logs to give the vehicles traction to be able to travel back to the field hospitals. Sometimes, the cries of the badly wounded would come out every time they hit a bad bump in the log-road. Ian said it was a very distressing sight. He remembers helping build this road. They felled the timber from the neighbouring jungle with two-men handsaws, which they called ‘push-em she goes, pull-em she comes’. They would use axes to split these logs into planks for the road.

An often-repeated story he relates, concerns a time when Ian was seconded to a forward infantry unit as the spotter for his battery.[4] As well as his regular kit and rifle, Ian had charge of a carrier pigeon, which was to be used to send messages. He was told by the commanding officer that, under no circumstances, should he lose the pigeon. What they didn’t know was that a Japanese patrol had seen the Australians leave their base and set up an ambush at the river to catch them on their return leg.

Fortunately, the Australian platoon (about thirty troops) didn’t cross the Mebo River at the same point they had taken before. It was a fast flowing, but relatively shallow jungle river.[5] Nevertheless, the unit had just entered a river when two Japanese machine guns opened fire on them from different directions on the opposite bank. Clearly, the crossfire presented a very dangerous situation and most of the troops instinctively dived under the water to evade the bullets. Fortunately, a couple of men managed to get across the river and were able to return fire on the Japanese so that the rest of the unit could cross more easily. Ian was carrying a pigeon. He saw that he had two options. He could try to keep it above the water, but this would show the Japanese where he was and make him an easy target. But if he abandoned the pigeon to a watery fate, he would have a chance of surviving in the crossfire and be able to swim - which was hard enough carrying a rifle underwater in the other arm. Not surprisingly, he chose the option in which the pigeon died.

On the opposite bank, one of the Diggers, Peter Hunt, had dropped the platoon’s first-aid kit, which he had been carrying. The officer, Lieutenant Jimmy Lawson, told him to retrieve it. Gunner Hunt objected, advising the officer with a few expletives that he might like to collect the item himself. The officer insisted and the man, using even more expletives ducked and weaved his way along the beach to get the medical kit. He was able to get back safely, even though bullets were whizzing past him. No one had ever seen him run so quickly ‘in Olympic style’.

Remarkably, there were no casualties on the Australian side in this action, other than the loss of the pigeon. The unit must have been lucky in that the Japanese had been slow to see them crossing at a different point and, therefore, to open fire. If they had not had a few men across the river to provide covering fire to their comrades, the situation may have been very different. At a reunion of his regiment in Brisbane in the 1990s − the only one he ever attended − Ian was presented by his old comrades with a ‘lost pigeon’ in a cage, as a prank. They then continued the prank and waited for Lieutenant Lawson to arrive. Ian introduced himself, reminded him of the ambush story and told him that he hadn’t lost the pigeon at all. That he ran back down stream and caught it and he had been holding on to the platoon’s pigeon all these years wanting to return it! Ian said that he was really impressed with his old mates for arranging this. He has always shied away from reunions, but this moment was special.

Ian also recalled the pleasure he had in stumbling across a display at the Australian War Memorial one day which had a stuffed pigeon in a case labelled with the exact unit from which his pigeon came. He joked that this must have been his drowned ‘pigeon’s mate’. On another occasion in the war Memorial, he was showing a visitor around and he was approached by a school group from Scotch College who asked if he was an old digger. Ian said yes and they asked him to show them anything on display for battles in which he was involved. He thought it would be a good lark to go from display case to display case and pretend he was the hero of each battle. He pointed to a VC in a display and said it was his and then proceeded to tell tall stories to the class, but after a while, the teacher called him out − pointing out that the VC had been awarded ‘posthumously’ − and Ian admitted to the kids that he made it all up and that he was just an ordinary digger. They enjoyed the joke and he then took them to a New Guinea display and gave them a more serious account of what it was like.

Ian was shelled most nights by the Japanese in Bougainville, as they knew exactly where the Australians were camped as they advanced slowly up to Buin where the Japanese base was. He remembers the frightening sound of the shells coming at them, sometimes exploding in the canopy above them and the splintering the timber. As a consequence, he always found it hard to sit comfortably through thunderstorms. He would be seen by family members sitting in the centre of the house, on these occasions.

Ian says that he was once asked to guard soldiers who were suffering from battle trauma. When they were put under his charge, they just ran off into the jungle. The other men in his unit wanted to chase them and get them back, but Ian says that he advised them not to worry, pointing out that these men had ‘gone troppo’, probably because they had been serving overseas for at least four years, i.e. since the 9th Division had been fighting in the Middle East at the start of the war. He also thought that there was nowhere for them to go in the jungle and that they would come back at nightfall, which they did.

One time, when his position came under particularly heavy artillery and sniper fire, Ian had little time to scramble into a shallow ‘slit trench’. Their position was particularly dangerous this night as the area they were in was wooded and shells were hitting trees and splintered wood was flying everywhere. Unfortunately, Peter Hunt was already in the trench that Ian chose to dive into. His trench-mate started swearing at him and told him to find his own cover. Ian pointed out that he would give him better protection if he just kept lying on top of him. The man shut up, but Ian’s words were a little too prophetic, as when he emerged from the trench after the shelling, he noticed that the seat of his pants had been blown off by a piece of shrapnel. This incident, of course, led to many jokes for many years later.

In the morning after the shelling, Ian went up to Roy ‘the Boy’ Wood, whom he described as a very, very good soldier, and said ‘Hey Roy, how about putting up some more timber and branches to give our position better protection?’ Roy’s response was ‘Bugger that. I can’t be f…… bothered.’ So we didn’t.

One night in Bougainville, when stationed on guard duty, Ian said that he noticed two figures in the distant shadows, almost certainly, Japanese. He followed one of them with the sights of his rifle. They were too far away to challenge and the only option was to shoot. They were certainly not Australian troops, nevertheless, he couldn’t bring himself to fire upon them, not being sure, who they were, what their intentions were. He was glad that he did not take their lives unnecessarily, no matter how much he hated them.

Ian remembers being supplied by the ‘biscuit bombers’ in Bougainville. He was amazed at how low they would fly in and how accurate they were. Only a few times did they have to travel far to collect the supplies from these planes and were beaten to it by the Bougainvilleans.

When the Japanese surrendered on Bougainville, the Australian troops had a long wait before they could be collected. Much of the time, according to Ian, was spent playing sport, as they had done when stationed in the Northern Territory. As mentioned previously, he represented the regiment in cricket and football. He was the rover to Tommy Jones, who used to be the ruckman for the VFA team, Yarraville. He says that he played well in these games, starring in one, kicking a few goals and being judged ‘best-on-ground’. He says that the opposition crowd ironically nicknamed him ‘Muscles’ because he was skinny and used to barrack against him during these games. Other players in his team included: ‘Dickie’ Bird and his brother, who played in the centre and on the wing; Clem Francis, whom Ian described as a ‘loud-mouthed ex-policeman from Victoria’; and Clem’s friend, ‘Joe’ Johansen from Ballarat.

At this time, there were also parades organized by Blaimey and senior officers. These were resented as a waste of time by the Diggers, who were keen to put military life behind them and to return home. They would be forced to all turn out for the parade, but at any available opportunity during the proceedings, they would make their escape into the surrounding jungle; escaping into the bush in small groups.

There was also plenty of swimming and fishing on Bougainville. The former was usually undertaken naked, even when the nurses and officers were in view. Fishing methods were extreme. As they had access to plenty of munitions, they would simply explode a grenade or two in a section of the river and collect the stunned/killed floating fish, ready for a barbecue.

Ian says that he remembers large numbers of Japanese troops coming in to surrender at the conclusion of the war. On one occasion, a large force (over 1,000), he said, came in from the jungle under a white flag to surrender to Ian’s unit. He said that they were very nervous as there were only about 200 Australian troops and they were significantly outnumbered. They contacted the command and military police (the ‘pro vos’) were sent to take charge of them. In the meantime, Ian and his unit corralled them into an area and stripped them of their weapons. They even brought in a Japanese tank, which he climbed aboard and inspected. He also remembers that they captured two naval guns that had been used by the Japanese on Bougainville and he was impressed with how cleverly they had camouflaged them.

He said that the Japanese prisoners were very ‘timid’ and many of them looked in a poor state of health. They were treated with respect and compassion by the Australian troops. He said that while they were firm with their prisoners, they were never maltreated, even though the stories of Japanese atrocities had already surfaced and he himself had seen what they had done to the Kiwi pilot. He said that he saw several thousand Japanese prisoners in the last days of the campaign surrender at Torokina and they were all treated well by the Australians, despite the contempt they all felt.

At some stage towards the end of his war service, when lifting crates of shells, Ian ruptured a disc in his back. After a short stint in a field hospital, he continued serving, but was to suffer chronic pain from this injury throughout his life.

Ian says that he didn’t have to wait as long as many of the other soldiers to catch a ship back home, as he was married and had a long service record and had accrued ‘plenty of points’ to be included amongst the first batch of troops to be evacuated.

His brother, Greg: A tragic tale.

Ian finds it difficult talking about his brother, Greg. He said that his life had been ‘a very sad one’. Greg’s 2nd 15th Field Artillery unit had fought in Malaya against the Japanese and was later captured in Singapore. He was a POW in Changi, Hellfire Pass and other points along the Thai-Burma Railway and then in Japan.

Given the sadness surrounding Greg’s life and suicide in 1947, very few stories have survived from his wartime experiences. Greg reported to Ian and his family that his worst experience was not the horror of Hellfire Pass, but the voyage over to Japan in 1945. The prisoners were crammed into the belly of an old vessel without food, water or toilet facilities and, in their desperation, resorted to eating maggots and lying in their own filth for several days.

Greg also reported that, while some guards were compassionate – one even gave him oranges occasionally – most were sadistic. Ian says that his brother was particularly unimpressed with the Korean guards, one of whom, used to beat him regularly with a length of fencing wire.

When Japan capitulated, the prison guards at Zentsuji Camp surrendered to the prisoners. Greg was taken back to Australia aboard the USS Consolation. He was given a military edition of the New Testament by the Chaplain, Edwin Lynn Wade (Presbyterian Orthodox), which Ian kept as a keepsake of his brother’s captivity, along with his bamboo POW tags and medals.

In late 1947, Greg suddenly took his own life at Farrer Street. Despite the frantic efforts of his young sister, Heather, to revive him, he passed away. The Coroner judged that he had been overcome by a sudden fit of depression caused by his depravations as a POW.

The tragedy had an enormous impact on the family. Ian’s parents never really recovered from the loss of their son in such tragic circumstances.

[1] Ian’s enlistment number was NX82678. He was a member of the Citizens’ Military Force until he volunteered for active service on 2 September 1941 and was enlisted on 21 October. He was initially recruited as a sapper, before transferring to the 2/11 Australian Field Regiment as a gunner. He first trained at Greta, before serving at various locations in country NSW and then Darwin. In 1944 he was sent to New Guinea where he served at Lae, before being sent to Bougainville. He was discharged on 13 October 1945.

[2] Cf. B. Lewis (ed.), Observation Post: Six Years of War with the 2/11th Aust. Army Field Regiment (West Essendon, 1989), pp. 152, 177.

[3] Mentioned in Lewis, Observation Post, p. 164.

[4] The incident is mentioned by the Lieutenant Jimmy Lawson in Lewis, Observation Post, p. 173.

[5] He also says that this was close to where the Japanese surrender on Bougainville was taken in 1945, shortly after this incident.