Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Alan Bynoe, 2/9 Squadron was a jockey before the war and the 6 Div light weight boxing champion on the Tableland, but he was a heavy weight when we carried him on the stretcher from Aboama to The Bend.

According to the "Green Fields Beyond" he was wounded in the stomach when Laurie Hedley's patrol entered Aboama, but it was Lionel Oxlad's section that carried him back till they met Tim Watson's 6 section, with DR Peter Grieve.

We then took over the portage, arriving back at The Bend by lantern light after a precipitous descent and a hair raising crossing of the Danmap. Peter, who had been carrying the rifles of the stretcher party, operated on his lung that night and he was evacuated on the next morning's Boong train, never to return to the Squadron.

Post war he was unable to ride but became a successful trainer in Adelaide. When Edie Elston and I visited him in 1991 he still had a horse in training, stabled in the back yard of his suburban house. He was a bit forgetful at that time and, I think, a little suspicious of Eddie and me, but he eventually relaxed and posed for photographs as we talked about things he remembered.

He had other visitors of course. Bill (Snowy) Williams had been wounded a few weeks earlier and they met up at the American Hospital in Aitape where Snow, being penniless at the time, bit him for a quid.

Many years later, after the pound had long been superceded by the dollar,  Snow called on Allen, unannounced, greeting him at the door with: "Here's