Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

A long time ago, when I was about 7 years old, I first met Merv Loxton. He cut my hair for me. From that day, when I needed a hair cut, Merv was my barber. Though I was new to Normanville SA, I soon discovered he lived in the town. I later was taught basics of bicycles, & how they worked. We became very good friends, & remained as such until he passed away. I spent a lot of my after school & holiday time at the Loxton home in Normanville. We repaired bicycles, planted onions, & made things. I have fond memories of those times. At this point in time, I keep regular contact with Neil Loxton via Facebook.

My Story by Mervyn Edwin Loxton.
(Written in 1991 at age 74)

Born to William & Lucy Loxton Jan. 6th 1917 at Loxton Sth. Aust. (which I believe later became a Boarding house). My parents had a fruit block at Moorook 20 miles downstream on the River Murray from Loxton, and my father took up a farm from the Govt. 9 miles out of the township where he grew wheat when the rainfall was around 8 inches.

I attended school at Moorook with 5 other family members, Lucy VIOLET, William ROBERT, GEORGE Murray, SAMUEL Charles Walter, HURTLE Ivan. Four more family members later attended the same school, IVOR Ancre (the latter being the name of a French town that would have come from Thomas Loxton, 1st A.I.F. army in France) Muriel ROSE, and Nancy PEARL born at the new Loxton Hospital.

I left school at age 14 and worked at home on the fruit block under irrigation at Moorook, for upwards of ₤5. a year plus keep.

In 1935 I went to Sydney N.S.W. with my dad on the MV Manoora passenger vessel to be present at cousin Archie Byrne’s wedding. In 1938 at the age of 21 years I sailed to Brisbane aboard the ship Duntroon, from there I boarded the SS Canberra travelling through the famous Great Barrier Reef to Cairns. I travelled to Babinda 56 miles south of Cairns and took work on a dairy farm belonging to Tom and Milly Carr where the pay was 30 shillings a week plus keep with a promise of an extra 5 shillings after 6 weeks if satisfactory, rising at 4am daily, milking cows, then delivering milk to the township by “donkey” cart and horse.

After six weeks I became interested in sugar farm work and Tom got me a job with D.O.James at the nearby township of Mirrawinnie towards Cairns. I received 18shillings and 4pence per day on the cane fields and by working overtime I made a clear ₤1 per day with board of 25 shillings and 6pence week, mostly tractor driving, helped in the cane fields for planting cane. I slept with about 10 Italians, Albanians and Greeks. They were a good mob.

Four months later I reluctantly returned to Moorook as my father wanted me home to help on the farm and the fruit block, but I should have stayed in Queensland as the future looked good. The fare return by sea was then ₤22.10. or 45 dollars.

At the age of 24 in January 1941 I went to Adelaide and enlisted in the Aust. Navy as a steward where I spent 5 1/2 years. I travelled to Sydney and boarded the Queen Elizabeth to pick up the HMAS Australia, which at the time was undergoing a refit at Cape Town in South Africa.

That was when the Prince of Wales 16-inch battleship was sunk together with the RN battleship Repulse in the Java Sea. The Prince of Wales took 17 torpedoes and shot down 74 Japanese planes. [10 December,1941] On one occasion during the battle a raider chased the Queen Elizabeth and she left the raider behind by doing 34 knots.

We were a Naval draft of 65 ratings and were put aboard the escorting 8 inch cruiser Cornwell at Trincomali, Ceylon, then continued up the Red Sea to Port Tawfiq (Bur Tawfiq) near Suez, near Cairo, leaving the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary to disembark troops at the end of November 1941

We came back to Aden in the Suez Canal and camped there for 3 1/2 weeks then joined the Empress of Russia loaded with 4,000 British troops and 1,000 Italian prisoners of war heading for Bombay. Had 10 days camped there and went by train to Madras over 3 days journey to a southerly point of India and then crossed the water to Goshen in Ceylon, took a train to Colombo.
The Aust HMAS Hobart was waiting there for us and the ship joined an 11 knot convoy of 23 ships to Malaysia then went back to escort another convoy of 8 ships to Malaya. Met a Greek ship doing 3 knots and the Captain asked them to join us for protection, they tried but had to pull out with a sick engine, it was bombed that night but we did not hear if it was sunk.

Fuelled HMAS Hobart till 10pm at Singapore, had two air raids and took off for Batavia, completed fuelling and took off for Perth. Singapore fell soon after.

After two weeks at Fremantle we joined a troop train for Sydney and went straight to Sydney Harbour, boarded the 8 inch cruiser HMAS Australia and left for Wellington New Zealand, stayed 4 days then off to Fiji and Noumea. The story of Noumea went something like this: it was French owned, the “Adelaide” took a Governor who asked for it to surrender, but they refused so a few salvos soon caused the French to change their minds. Noted for very rich nickel mines made it a valuable prize during wartime, pretty girls there too.

Back to Wellington, then Fiji, (English currency). Had shore leave and had a ₤10 note picked out of my pocket in the hotel. Off to sea, rendezvoused with American invasion force, landed troops on Aug.7th at Hollandia, Aitape and Tulagi Island, three simultaneous landings. A couple of weeks later the Ausies at Aitape were pushing the Japs.and the Yanks were running out of dirt so we were called in to pepper the Japs, killed 500.

Then we were grouped into task forces of about 2 cruisers and 4 or 5 destroyers to comb the Coral Sea.
On 7th May 1942 we were attacked by nine low level torpedo Japanese planes, shot down 5, then attacked by about eighteen high level bombers (U.S. bombers), no damage. Our 4-inch guns capable of 2,000 feet could not reach them

U.S.S. Lexington carrier was sunk in the Coral Sea, also one Jap. Aircraft carrier sunk by Lexington; this was the first time in history that two carriers sank each other by aircraft. Other invasions included Gasmata in New Britain, Arawe, Biak Island, Moratai, Noemfore, 1st Kamikaze, 611 ships, Leyte in Phillipines, (mast damage) and Lingayen Gulf in Phillipines 630 ships, our ship damaged in both. Then back to Guam for temporary patching shipside and Sydney for proper repairs. We then went off to England via New York City, June 1945 where we received Honourable Treatment
.
On 2nd July we marched through London to the Guild Hall with bayonets fixed, an honour, which had not been bestowed on any group for about 300 years, to a luncheon by the Lord Mayor. The ship was in dock for six months in Portsmouth, we had spare time. At the end of six months we sailed to Australia, January 1946. As we approached Leyte Gulf the Shropshire picked up a mine and it fouled the mine-sweeping gear so the ship carried on and finally shook the mine off and sank it with small arms fire. It was an anxious time for us all.

My action station on the ship during the Coral Sea battle was, for a few months, in the cordite handling room or magazine, the rest of my five years apart from being officer’s steward was served in the forward high angle control elevation and average projectile velocity, own speed, in other words fuse setting. One day our 4-inch guns fired 125 rounds per gun bombarding an airfield, 13 rounds a minute. The nose-cap is set to explode the shell at a certain number of revs. at aircraft. Our ordinance officers created nose-caps for 8-inch shells to act as fragmentation bombs for the first time ever. I loved gunnery.

Our ship “The Aussie” travelled over 300,000 sea miles during World War 2, our skeleton crew manning our action stations approximately 9 or 10 hours a day in 3rd degree of readiness, seldom under 98 degrees down there; helps to keep a person slim. During the invasion of the Phillipines the fifth Zombie came in with a 14inch naval shell fitted like a torpedo. The Jap. Pilot released the shell before it (the plane) crashed into the super structure killing ? men and wounding many others. The shell made a bad hole in the side (7/8 spring steel) exploded almost under us, the hole being below water line. When we left the scene, we had been accredited with having shot down 24 aircraft in those three days, and our ship was named Australia’s largest aircraft carrier!!!

After discharge I took over my late father’s fruit block in my hometown of Moorook, which was suffering from seepage. This proved to be a major setback for me. In 1948 I became married to a young lady from Yankalilla, a country town south of Adelaide named Rhonda Edwards. I was then 31 and Rhonda was 24, so we lived in Moorook until 1951 when we sold the fruit block and moved to Narrabri in N.S.W. Rhonda’s parents became licensees of the Clubhouse Hotel in Narrabri where I was employed as Headwaiter. 18 months later we all moved to the leading hotel in Tamworth (the Royal). It was a lovely city and district of 2400 people.

After 3 years we all moved again to a smaller hotel, (the Royal) in Camden. We built a lovely home just off the Hume Highway, but owing to illness Rhonda’s father had to relinquish work and we were able to sell our home before we occupied it. Her parents retired to Hunter’s Hill a lovely suburb overlooking the Paramatta River in Sydney. My father in law helped us to set up business in a wholesale bakery at Newcastle, which unfortunately was sold to us on false figures. By this time we had three children aged 3 1/2 to 8.

After 12 months of very tiring constant work and no profit we moved to Narumburn a suburb of Sydney, still in the cake and pastry business and 12 months later we took over a pastry shop owned by my father in law in Orange. We now had all three children at school, we were busy still making dough, but the wrong kind and I contracted dermatitis in the fingers, so the business was sold and Rhonda and I with the children returned to Renmark in South Aust. where my brother Rob assisted us to start life over afresh. I should mention that my wife worked tirelessly for long hours especially writing order dockets till midnight in these pastry businesses.

Back in the River district we slowly got back on our feet, until one Xmas we were invited to mind our brother in law’s garage business at Yankalilla while they went on a long overdue holiday, Rhonda in the officer and me doing lube work. We both loved it there working in Bartons’ Garage later known as Martin Motors, so we moved from a rented place in Barmera to Normanville, 2 miles from our new jobs, still renting.

Later I took on a precision job working a lathe making pins and bushes for all makes of crawler tractors. This business closed down so, in 1962 I opened a barber shop (having been a barber whilst on the “Aussie”) and at the same time took on a milk round early in the mornings. I sold new and second-hand bikes and repaired bikes for all and sundry. At that time my price was four shillings haircut and Viscount cigarettes were three shillings a packet at my shop. I did the milk round for Glanville Bartlett for 8 years and ran my legs off but Glanville was a great man. Women used to leave out treats for me at Xmas and one joke I remember was when Mrs. Pete Law put the wrong billy out, the one holding the fresh scones and I took them all thinking how nice a Lady she was, it became a joke around the small township.

In 1964 we built our War Service dream home in Normanville, a beautiful looking towards the sand hills and sea, the children had a wonderful life, I bought them a canoe which their eldest boy Neil could drop over the back fence and into the Bungala Creek, from there they could paddle downstream to the sea. We actually began to live a normal happy life with real wages coming in. I had taken a job at the Myponga Dam as gardener, self appointed public officer, I used to conduct tours for bus loads of school children, mainly leading private schools and take them through the Reservoir wall. It was great to receive the many letters from the individual school children written in appreciation.

After living 30 years in Normanville and my wife working in the office 25 years at Martin Motors and Martin Machinery, we moved to Victor Harbor in retirement with E.C.H. in Hill Court, Hill Street which is walking distance from the main shopping area and near to our only daughter Marjory, living happily as bowlers and choristers in the local Choral Society ever after. This took place in Sept. 4th1988.