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Australia

Robert (Bob) Campbell ­– Aircraftman RAAF

Robert (Bob) Bruce Campbell was born in Kapunda on 22 October 1908, the third of the five children of Charles and Annie Campbell (nee Keene).

The Campbells were a well-known family in Kapunda, Hamilton and surrounding areas in the first forty years of last century. Charles Campbell was stud master then overseer on Anlaby, one of South Australia’s premier sheep stations of the day.

The Campbell children attended school at Buchanan and Tarnma, travelling in a horse and trap or on their school pony. Bob pressed on past primary school, riding his bicycle over dirt roads to the high school at Kapunda for several years.

He disliked station life and moved to Adelaide in 1926. He joined Goode Durrant & Murray Ltd, the large South Australian drapery company, and rose from office boy to the company’s representative on Yorke Peninsula. In 1938 he married Muriel Head, daughter of the Kadina pharmacist, settled in the town and quickly developed a reputation for his honest character and professionalism.[1]

For the first part of the war, Bob continued as Goode Durrant & Murray. Then like thousands of others, he was spurred into action by the Japanese threat to Australia in early 1942. The return in March of his sister (Dorothy ‘Puss’ Campbell) from service with the Australian Army Nursing Service in England and the Middle East may also have given him impetus. He passed the necessary medicals for enlistment the same month and applied to join the RAAF. He formally enlisted on 28 April 1942 as a storehand, with the rank of Aircraftman. It is not clear why he joined the air force: perhaps he was impatient to enlist - the RAAF was a popular and rapidly expanding arm of the services.[2] He was thirty-three, average height, and weighed a solid ninety-five kilograms.

After basic training at the 2nd Air Observers School in Mount Gambier, he left Adelaide for Queensland on 14 June 1942. He started a diary the same day. Stacking fuel drums in the scrub around Townsville was a shock: ‘no good for the soft type from down South’.[3] He and his unit then boarded the SS Tasman, one of many Dutch merchant ships used by the Australians and Americans to transport troops and supplies in the South Pacific War. Once on board they were told they were going to Port Moresby.

It was the first sign of the uncomfortable even miserable conditions he was to endure for eighteen months. The quarters on the Tasman were a ‘dungeon’. Despairing of the bunks, he tried sleeping in the rifle rack.[4] The convoy of ships had a naval escort and air patrols looking for the enemy in the sea and above it.

Bob landed in Port Moresby on 26 June. Used to the mandatory blackout conditions in Australia, he was astonished to see the port ablaze with light (‘prefer the darkness’).[5] The first few nights were almost as bad as the ship: sleeping on the floor, his boot inner soles for a pillow, and nothing but tinned food.

Port Moresby was a dangerous place to be at that time. It was under constant Japanese air attack and for a time invasion by land from the east seemed imminent. The build up of Australian and American forces to defend Port Moresby, New Guinea and Australia was intense. He was a small cog in a giant defense machine.

Bob’s days were long and busy, spent unloading ships sometimes in daylight, sometimes at night. Activity reached a fever pitch as troops and supplies were readied for the Kokoda Track campaign in July. The conditions were difficult. There were constant air raid alarms at all hours of the day and night, and frequent Japanese bombings aimed at ships in the port and planes parked on the several airfields. Generally damage was limited, but Bob did note frequent ack-ack fire, and occasional hits and casualties as ships and planes were bombed. His hut was hit by shrapnel on one occasion.

The constant hard work of unloading ships and moving stores in the stifling heat and humidity on a diet severely limited in quality and quantity meant Bob trimmed down considerably. The food was largely restricted to baked beans, bully beef and dehydrated meat that smelt rank. The poultry and fruit salad served for Christmas Day lunch in 1942 were almost too rich for comfort.[6] From time to time he went ‘fishing’ while unloading ships and caught tinned fruit, condensed milk and jam: ‘if not one would starve’[7]. Food parcels from home rarely survived the trip and the heat intact. A short stint in hospital with malaria and dysentery gave Bob a welcome respite of good food and clean sheets.

Bob found guard duty around the ammunition dumps nerve-wracking, especially in the small hours of the morning in pitch black with only an occasional sweeping searchlight in the sky. An enemy attack, even invasion, was expected any time. Reflecting back as he transcribed his notes years later, he wrote: 'Paratroopers were expected. Not sure if we would have shot them on the way down or waited until they landed, thank goodness they did not arrive…In case of a take over by these expected invaders we had our gear ready and also orders to burn down huts, etc, then walk to the Fly River with help of native boys I think I would have collapsed on the way thank goodness this did not happen.'[8]

The Japanese were very close: snipers tree-climbing sandals were rumoured to have been found near Seven Mile Air Strip, eleven kilometres from Port Moresby.[9]

His sister Puss enjoyed a rich and varied social life off duty in her overseas postings in the AANS. Bob’s experience was very different and the opportunities far more limited. There were regular concerts organized by the padre. Picture shows were held in the outdoors with sheets as the screen and fuel drums as seats when weather, projection equipment and Japanese raids allowed. He played poker nearly every night (three pence the bidding limit), ‘almost in darkness had to keep light well down over table as Japs not far away and planes always overhead.’[10] Occasionally, he and others went sightseeing to local spots like Rouna Falls, and from time to time he visited an American canteen in Port Moresby where drinks were one penny a glass. He also enjoyed meetings of the so-called ‘MING Club’ at the Seven Mile Airstrip; the membership book included ‘chaps from all around the world’. He avoided ‘jungle juice’: ‘one goes troppo quite easily without that sort of drink’.[11] The rest of the time there were always letters to write to family and friends, and his shorts and shirts to boil.

After a year in Port Moresby, Bob was sent to Milne Bay in late June 1943 with 6 Stores Unit. He longed to go home, but at least this was easier and safer than Port Moresby. The scene of bloody fighting the previous August, Milne Bay was by then a major base for Australian and American personnel. He counted fifty warships in the Bay at times, often tied up to coconut palms.

Milne Bay was comparatively safe. There were no Japanese bombing raids, malaria was almost non-existent because of stringent preventive measures, and the living conditions much better than Bob had endured in Port Moresby. There was a field bakery, fresh meat and cultivated pawpaw trees.[12] Bob’s diary reflects the improvements: the unit was smaller, there were no guard duties, no ships to unload, and the meals were better.[13]

There were nonetheless horrible reminders of what had gone on before. He visited the scenes of heavy fighting between Australian and Japanese troops and was well aware that bones of dead Japanese had been dug up when the Australian forces were collecting gravel for his camp. The airfield with its makeshift pitch where he played cricket was ‘marked by some Jap bones as landmark.’[14]

Bob’s camp had the usual array of films and concerts, and organized sport as well – cricket, Australian Rules and rugby, despite the heat and humidity. Boxing matches attracted thousands of spectators, many of them Americans. One night he counted the number of picture screens operating on land and on ships - fourteen in all.

The wet season was difficult however. Tent living in the ever-present mud and slush was precarious – ‘chap should have been a duck’. [15] Not every one had the luxury of a camp stretcher and the Australians sought extra ones from the nearby American camp. Bob was astonished at the American camp and its ample provisions: ‘we only play shop’ he noted of his own store. He was amazed to discover the Americans troops ate their rations, stew and sweets, from the one eating container or ‘dixie’.[16]

Bob was constantly busy organizing and dispatching supplies and equipment: ‘Still going like a horse …Busy as ever…Flat out (work never slackens here), a man sure is a fool to work like it all the time…’[17]  He was grateful for the assistance of native helpers who he found always ready to lend a hand. There seemed to be no reward: he waited patiently for interminable weeks for his transfer while others left for Australia, and his applications for promotion were turned down. After a few months at Milne Bay and fifteen months in New Guinea, he was clearly flagging: ‘Full of complaints these days “going troppo” …old RB feeling very tired …old R.B.C. getting very tired.’[18] It was no fun being ‘the Grand Old Man of [the] Unit’ as his picture in the mess described him.

Bob’s posting south finally came through in mid November 1943, and he flew out of Milne Bay two weeks later. In Townsville he met young men bound for New Guinea and full of questions: 'our answers not so encouraging for their outlook, showed them dents in our Tin helmets from shrapnel from bombs (really we knocked dents in with hammer, to make things look really bad…)'[19]

He caught the Melbourne Express and arrived in Adelaide on 5 December. Under the seat in his compartment most of the way was a soldier trying to escape the Military Police. The escapee jumped from the train in the Adelaide Hills: ‘hope he survived the fall and arrived at his destination’ wrote Bob.[20]

Bob was home at last after eighteen months straight in New Guinea, twenty-five kilograms lighter. He spent the remainder of the war with 14 Stores Unit which was based in central Adelaide and kept no diary during that period.

Bon was discharged from the RAAF on 22 January 1946. He spent most of the rest of his life in Kadina, a well known figure on Yorke Peninsula.

He died in Adelaide on 24 May 2000 and was cremated.

(This material was previously published as part of an article by Janet Scarfe, 'One South Australian Family's Experience of World War Two: the Campbells of Anlaby', Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, No, 37, 2009, pp.75-96.)

[1] Robert Bruce Campbell (48158), Service Record, National Archives of Australia.
[2] By May 1942, there were about 80 000 personnel in the R.A.A.F., some twenty times more than its pre-war strength. George Odgers, The RAAF: An Illustrated History, Child and Associates, 1989, p.98.
[3] Robert Campbell, Diary, 22 June 1942 (in private hands).
[4] Robert Campbell, Diary, 23, 25 June 1942.
[5] Robert Campbell, Diary, 26 June 1942.
[6] Robert Campbell, Diary, 25 December 1942.
[7] Robert Campbell, Diary, Summary of 380 Days at Pt Moresby and nearby June 1942/July 1943.
[8] Robert Campbell, Diary, Summary of 380 Days at Pt Moresby and nearby June 1942/July 1943.
[9] Peter Macinnis, Kokoda Track 101 Days, black dog books, Fitzroy Victoria, 2007, p.9.
[10] Robert Campbell, Diary, Summary of 380 Days at Pt Moresby and nearby June 1942/July 1943.
[11] Robert Campbell, Diary, Summary of 380 Days at Pt Moresby and nearby June 1942/July 1943.
[12] Timothy G. Jones, Milne Bay Radar: Unit History of the No. 37 Radar Station 1942-1945, Australian Military History Publications, 2001, pp.48-50.
[13] Robert Campbell, Diary, Now at Milne Bay late June 1943 to December 1943.
[14] Robert Campbell, Diary, Now at Milne Bay late June 1943 to December 1943.
[15] Robert Campbell, Diary, 15 July 1943.
[16] Robert Campbell, Diary, 15 August 1943
[17] Robert Campbell, Diary, 30 September, 4, 15,16 October 1943.
[18] Robert Campbell, Diary, 12,14,19 October 1943. He usually referred to himself by his initials RB (Robert Bruce) or RBC (Robert Bruce Campbell).
[19] Robert Campbell, Diary, 30 November 1943.
[20] Robert Campbell, Diary, 5 December 1943.