Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Max Hall was my father, I have been doing my family history for sometime, and have recently been asked to take part in Commemoration of Cheer Up Hut Association in SA. I work as volunteer at our local Library, and they are going to have a display about this shortly in one of the rooms there, I happened to mention that I have a War time diary that my father wrote over a period of 6 months from mid 1941 until early the next year. Although it does not say much about any actual fighting as such, but is a very descriptive and interesting record of his trip from Australia to the Middle East on the first Queen Elizabeth passenger liner, which was taken out of the transatlantic service between London and New York to be converted to a Troop carrying ship. The outside of ship and funnels, were painted grey, and some of the more opulent fittings on board were changed to suit it’s new role, although in the diary Dad describes a lot of decor of the ship, and still sounded rather nice. Years ago I typed up and have copies and the original hand written version, and have lent it to some people to read, and even though they had never met him, because of the way he wrote it, they still found it very interesting.

The up shot of all of this is, that looks like I am going be going to be interviewed about my Dad, his diary and his War Service. Has 36 when he joined up which is probably fairly old to some degree. He rose to rank of Lieutenant and though he started off with the 2/7 Army Field Regiment at Woodside, later on he worked in the 2/3 Baking Platoon (he was a Baker before he joined up) and he worked in that area for a fair part of the war, as well as normal soldiering duties. He visited Jerusalem around Christmas time which must have been amazing, and also got to swim in the Dead Sea. He arrived home in Adelaide not long after my sister was born in February 1942. He had a short time home with Mum, my brother and new baby, and the was off again to New Guinea and later Borneo. Luckily he came back home safely at the end of it all, and the bit later I was born.

Looked up bit of information on QE1 ship, even found a video of it and showed how lovely it was inside before change to troop ship. Was biggest liner for it’s time, but would be dwarfed by some of the huge passenger liners these days. Was only in service for just over 30 years. After the War went to become a tourist item in Florida, that did not work out, was then sold to Company in Hong Kong, and it was moored in the Harbour there where one night it caught fire and was destroyed, sad end to a great ship by the sounds of things.
]

Max had worked as a baker with his father and a brother for many years before the War, he worked as a Baker from about 1953 and eventually changed to an Office job in the late 50's. He died in Adelaide, aged 71 in 1979.