Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

My Uncle Ben wanted me over, to get used to the figures, a big long book. Long digits and we were pretty busy, but I had to get, as the loads came in, loads of wheat or barley came in, I had a thing ready, a brown ink thing that I made up, and a tin with black ink in it, like an old jam tin, nothing fancy, we’d put it in the jam tin, the farmer would put the bag of wheat on the scales, I’d round the number, ‘184’ or whatever and I’d just give it a pull onto the elevator that would run up and down, it would fall on that, get underneath it with his back and take it over and dump it in a corner of the truck. In the daytime. In the nighttime I used to do all the homework, with the tallies. And the tallies were what I did during the daytime with brown ink and the bags. But the numbers suggested to me that ‘184’ meant that it should have weighed heavier. I knew it should have weighed heavier, I’d been there long enough. You’d pull it out and say to Uncle Ben, “I think I’ve got a query here.” He’d look at the query and say, “It should have been a bit heavier. We’ll dock this bloke.” And he’d go in and he’d take a docket, halfpenny a bushel or something, halfpennies in those days. And a bushel was three bushels to the bag it was then. They’d do that until the truck was full, then they’d push that out of the way and bring another. At night-time, Uncle Ben was a nice feller you’ll see a photo of him later on, Uncle Ben and Uncle Jim, Uncle Jim was killed in Gallipoli. Because they were too Uncles and two good soldiers, Uncle Ben started as a corporal and ended up as a ‘two pip’ officer [lieutenant], which wasn’t bad; to start off with one ‘pip’ [second lieutenant] and come up with ‘two pips’, three pips and the Captains then they go up with the naming of the rank. I was bombardier, cause it was two, we call them ‘hooks’, two stripes on the arm to show your authority you see. But I never tried hard to get anything past Bombardier because all these mates that I was with, I loved all me mates you see.

I’d just like to know more about Uncle Jim, what did he tell you about the war?

Not a lot, he talked about the charge they did outside Aleppo there, where they all charged, they marched three miles off their horses and marched with their horses and with their chaff bags and all so their horse could get a bit of. When it got close enough to this place to charge there army, that were in there. They all got back on their horses gave them a good feed and they charged the last, exactly what was hard to say, I couldn’t really get him down to it. But to say this, I used to make my own combat, now how far did they charge, well, it couldn’t have been three miles because the horse would have been too tired for the last bit, jumping over bridges and stuff and over creeks as they charged in, but they all charged in and it was surprising that they lost only so few fellers. He told me about the casualties and that. Then they just took over the whole town. If the fellers, if they didn’t surrender and say ‘camerade’ which is surrounded, then they just gave themselves up and no more was done. They pushed them off, sent them away somewhere. But that was one of our first wins of the war, the second AIF, went down in history as a famous charge.

Vincent McNamara on March 30th, 2004