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Australia

Frank Miller, born in Adelaide, was the eldest son of William and Dora Miller who took up Section 25 of Cootra in 1928. Mr Miller senior was a Great War veteran who had served in France. Frank was one of their four children and he attended the Cootra West School where he was particularly friendly with Ambrose Webb and Max Hampel. Frank worked on the family farm after leaving school and according to his younger brother John, he was a great handyman who could fix anything.

Frank signed up at Wudinna on 14 December 1940 where he was examined by Dr Trudinger and pronounced fit to join the AIF. Frank gave his occupation as farm labourer, his religion as Methodist and his as next of kin as his father. It was not until two months later, however, that he signed the Oath of Enlistment at Wayville and was allocated to the 5th Reinforcements of the 2/6th Field Ambulance. Interestingly his old school friend Ambrose Webb signed the Oath of Enlistment on the same day so it may be that they travelled to Adelaide together.

At the end of April he travelled to Victoria where he was based at Balcombe, south of Melbourne on the Mornington Peninsula. Here he would have undergone training at the 50th Australian Camp hospital, apart from one week when he was admitted to the hospital as a patient. After his initial training Frank was detached for two weeks to the 106 Army General Hospital at Bonegilla near Albury in New South Wales. He was back with his unit by the end of April, but one month later he was part of the group of 4th Reinforcements for the 2/8th Field Ambulance, the unit he would serve with for the rest of the war. 

The Field Ambulances were mobile medical units responsible for the treatment of wounded men close to the front line. Generally the wounded were first taken to an aid post and then carried by stretcher bearers to the Field Ambulance. The Field Ambulance was staffed by a Medical Officer, medical orderlies and stretcher bearers. It generally took four men to carry the stretcher and they frequently came under enemy fire.  

Just four months after reporting for duty at Wayville, Frank went by train to Sydney and boarded a troopship (possibly the SS Queen Mary) for the Middle East on 28 June 1941. There is no mention in his Army record of any pre-embarkation leave, but we know that Frank attended dances at both the Warramboo and Waddikee Rock Halls towards the end of May 1941. At Warramboo he and Ambrose Webb were led through a guard of honour of local school children and presented with some money and woollens. At Waddikee Rock Frank was presented with some money, a Bible, a watch and a parcel of woollies from the local Comforts Fund. He would have been well prepared for any cold weather.  

After about four weeks at sea Frank disembarked in Egypt and arrived at the camp at Dimra in Palestine on 25 July. The Allies by this time were defending Tobruk and the 2/8th Field Ambulance was amongst the units serving there. Frank, however, did not go to Tobruk with the rest of the unit and remained at Dimra. He turned 21 while he was there.
 
He was hospitalised on several occasions with enteritis and sand fly fever and was working with the Australian Medical Corps Training wing. He re-joined the Field Ambulance in October 1941 where he was in ‘A’ Company and served as a stretcher bearer.

After returning from Tobruk the unit served in various locations in Lebanon and Syria. As well as tending wounded and sick troops, they were involved in wider public health issues such as inoculating Australian soldiers and dealing with the health issues of refugees coming from Turkey.

In July 1942 the 2/8 Field Ambulance hurriedly moved to Dekhelia in Egypt and then to El Hamman east of El Alamein. The main dressing station for the 2/8th was made up of canvas tents which were used for accommodating medical staff, triaging and surgery. Wounded men were carried back to the main dressing station where they were provided with more complex medical care. During the siege of Tobruk hospitals were frequently bombed by German planes who were no respecters of the Red Cross symbol. In August 1942 Frank’s company dug a large pit in the sand and covered it with a tarpaulin to protect wounded men in anticipation of an offensive from the German Army.

Members of the 2/8 Field Ambulance unloading wounded troops in the Western Desert near El Alamein. Photo courtesy of the Australian War Memorial.

Frank’s war record indicates that he was admitted to hospital in Egypt with dysentery in September 1942. Also not long after this, it is recorded he was up on a charge of wilfully injuring public property and was confined to barracks for seven days.

By the end of October 1942 he was back with his unit at El Alamein. It was at this time there was heavy fighting and the Australian troops suffered many deaths and casualties. This continued into early November with heavy shelling of Aid Posts and ambulances. By the second week of November, however, the German Army was retreating and the battle for El Alamein was over.

The unit left El Alamein in early December and travelled to Julius in Palestine where they spent Christmas Day 1942. Frank would have sat down to a Christmas lunch of roast turkey, plum pudding, nuts and one bottle of Australian beer.

Early in January 1943 the unit travelled to Port Tewfik in Egypt and boarded the SS Queen Mary . They sighted the Australian coastline on 17 February, arrived at Fremantle a day later, and eventually disembarked in Sydney at the end of February.  

Frank was given immediate leave and travelled back to South Australia. In the time between his enlistment and arrival back in Australia Frank’s family had left the Koongawa district. However, he came back to Eyre Peninsula, stayed with his relatives the Daniels, and attended a welcome home dance at Warramboo in mid April 1943. 

On returning to his unit, Frank was based near Gordonvale on the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland for further training. Here he underwent training appropriate to jungle conditions which included education around anti-malarial precautions. There were also sports days, dances and picture shows at local towns and the availability of a unit library. The unit remained on the Tablelands until 26 July 1943. It then departed from Cairns on the troopship the Van Der Lyn, landing at Milne Bay in New Guinea on 30 July. The unit had only been there a few weeks when the monsoonal rains set in.

After the fall of Lae in mid-September 1943 most of the 9th Division, including the 2/8th Field Ambulance, moved to the Huon Peninsula to the north-east of Lae. The unit eventually moved to the Buso River north of Lae, set up a surgical unit there and admitted casualties from bombing raids. They set up Mobile Dressing Stations in readiness to receive wounded troops, while stretcher bearers and medical staff went forward with the troops to bring back casualties. There were difficulties with terrain, and it was necessary to hand-carry stretcher cases long distances because of the remoteness of the places where the wounded were found. Furthermore, there was also a dysentery outbreak amongst Field Ambulance troops (thought to be because of infected water) meaning the still healthy men of the unit were stretched thin in carrying out their duties. 

On 22 September the Unit, with other troops of the 9th Division, made an amphibious landing at Scarlet Beach. On the first day the Field Ambulance treated 53 seriously wounded men. By the end of September the unit had set up a Divisional Rest Camp for troops recovering from wounds and also for patients with malaria.

As the Japanese were pushed into more defensive positions, the unit set up a dressing station at the mouth at Katika Beach where on one day alone the surgeons performed 26 operations. Wounded men were often carried by native stretcher bearers and were evacuated by barge once they reached the coast. At this time there was an outbreak of malaria among the Field Ambulance personnel and stretcher bearers were trained in medical procedures to fill the staffing gaps.

Although by late January 1944 most of the Japanese troops were cleared from the Huon Peninsula, Frank was to remain in New Guinea with his unit until February 1944. During the last months of his time there he had two hospital admissions. The first was for an infected toe which kept him out of action for about three weeks, and the second when he was diagnosed with a fever of unknown origin. On 10 February 1944 Frank boarded the troopship Anhui bound for Brisbane where he landed on 21 February.

Frank was granted leave and he not only visited his family in Adelaide, but also visited Warramboo where he stayed with friends. The 2/8th Field Ambulance then had a long period of regrouping and training on the Atherton Tablelands where they were to remain until April 1945.

The last half of 1944 was not a good time for Frank. He was admitted to hospital with a respiratory infection and was also up on another charge. He was fined three pounds by his superior officer for ‘Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order and Military Discipline’. To make matters worse he spent Christmas 1944 in hospital with an ear infection.

In January 1945 the 2/8th took part in the 9th Division Gymkhana at the Herberton Racecourse. Frank acted as the patient with a splinted leg for a stretcher bearer’s race. It may be that Norm and Spitz Grocke were in the crowd watching as Frank was carried along by his fellow soldiers. 

By mid 1945 the Japanese Army was almost defeated, but there were still Japanese troops fighting in Borneo. The 2/8th Field Ambulance moved from the Atherton Tablelands to Townsville and left there on the troopship Frederick Lykes on 26 April 1945. The Field Ambulance landed with other units of the 9th Division on Tarakan Island off the coast of Borneo at the beginning of May. Frank was ill for 19 days in May, however, and missed these first landings. He would have taken part in the Thanksgiving Service for Victory held by the Unit on 21 August 1945, seven days after the Japanese surrender.

He was assigned to the 2/1 Casualty Clearing Station at Labuan on the island’s north-west coast from November 1945. Frank left Labuan in mid-January 1946 on the troopship Skagerak arriving in Sydney early in February. He travelled to Adelaide for discharge. However, he had several bouts of tonsillitis and malaria which required hospitalisation and convalescence, delaying his discharge until 25 March 1946.

After the war Frank went to live in Adelaide and he married Olive Leckie. He spent much of the rest of his working life with the Post Master General’s Department working at the GPO in Adelaide. He did attend a welcome home for local servicemen held at Warramboo on New Year’s Day 1947.
 
Frank is remembered by his nieces Robyn, Linda and Belinda as a wonderful and kind uncle who was a very good woodworker. He made each of his nieces a doll house when they were young, and a large wooden key for their 21st birthday. His niece Linda describes him as a very gentle man and she cannot imagine that he would have broken Army rules or fired a gun.

Frank marched with his unit on each Anzac Day and was living at Kilkenny when he died in September 1999. He was cremated at the Enfield Memorial Park.

Courtesy of Judith Long