Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Bibra Lake Anzac Day Dawn Service
25 April 2025

TWO MATES: DIFFERENT FATES
This is a tribute to two young Aussie farmers who went to war together, William (Bill)
Jackson and his good mate David (Dave) Beattie.
Although Bill and Dave came from the same district on the Atherton Tableland near Cairns,
they didn’t meet and become mates until after they had enlisted in the Australian army in
mid-1941. They were posted to the 51st Battalion, AMF. Not long after enlisting, two RAAF
officers visited their camp near Cairns. They were looking for volunteers to join the Empire
Air Training Scheme to train as aircrew. Seven from the battalion volunteered and were
accepted, including Bill and Dave. Dave was subsequently taken on strength with the RAAF
on 25 April 1942 and Bill on 23 May 1942.
After attending Elementary Flying Training School at Narrandera and Narromine in New
South Wales, Bill and Dave passed out and were posted for further flight training in Canada.
Neither of them passed the advanced flying course to become pilots and both were then
categorized as Air Bombers (also referred to as bomb aimers and bombardiers). The air
bomber was vital to the success of a mission. Lying prone in the glazed nose of the aircraft,
his role was to direct the pilot onto the target and then release the bombs at precisely the right
moment. When not engaged in this precision work on approach to the target, he was kept
busy as forward turret gunner.
From Canada, Bill and Dave were sent to England and met up at Operational Training Unit
(OTU) where they were formed into crews of seven from a pool of seven hundred other
trainees. From there, they proceeded to the Heavy Conversion Unit (HCU) and then
Lancaster Finishing School (LSF), where they learnt to operate the legendry Avro Lancaster
four-engined heavy bomber. Although in different crews, Bill and Dave stayed together until
training finished and their respective crews were posted to Australian Squadrons, Bill to 463
Squadron and Dave to 467 Squadron, both operating Lancasters based at RAF Waddington in
Lincolnshire.
Bill went on to log 480 hours on 35 operational missions over Europe, including the
devastating raids on Dresden in February 1945. He was commissioned, finishing the war with
the rank of Flying Officer. He returned to Australia and was discharged on 14 December
1945. He returned to farming, initially dairying and then from the late 1940s sugar cane
farming at Smithfield near Cairns. He married Daphne and they had five children.
Dave too served with distinction until he and his crew were on their 26th operation on 4
November, 1944. Their Lancaster, “L for Love” was approaching the target, the Dortmund-
Ems Canal in Germany, when it was attacked by a Focke-Wulf night fighter from below and
directly ahead. The fighter spat out a stream of tracer bullets and high explosive ammunition
causing one engine to fail. The pilot immediately put the plane into a corkscrew manoeuvre
and managed to lose the enemy plane.
When the pilot asked the crew through the intercom if they were all right, Dave failed to
answer. The pilot asked the navigator to check on Dave. When he went down into the nose of
the Lancaster, he found Dave bleeding badly and slumped over the bomb sight, which had
already been set to drop the fourteen 1000-pounders in the bomb bay. “He was out of it in a
pretty bad way, unconscious,” the navigator later recalled. “He had been hit in the face and
his eyes were lying loose on both cheeks,”
The navigator and wireless operator dragged Dave to the centre of the aircraft where there
was an emergency folding bed, blankets and essential medical supplies, including morphine.
Dave began to regain consciousness, his bloodied hand thumping down on a map on the
navigator’s desk. While the wireless operator gave an injection of morphine, Dave
stammered, “I’ve got to drop my bombs.” Two crewmates had to wrestle him to the bed
before he began to calm down as the morphine took effect. The bullet had entered his head
below his left eye and exited above his right eye. Amid this drama, the pilot ordered the
engineer to take over Dave’s job and drop the bombs. As the bomb-bay doors opened and the
weapons fell, the automatic camera captured the explosions. They had breached the canal’s
banks.
On the return flight to England, the Lancaster was attacked twice more by German night-
fighters causing another engine to fail. After crossing the English coast and being fired on by
British anti-aircraft gunners who mistakenly thought it was a German V1 buzz-bomb, they
landed the plane on just two engines at an emergency base in Norfolk. It had been holed in
more than seventy places! Paramedics on hand treated Dave and transported him to hospital,
where he was treated by an eye specialist, Mary Cripps, the sister of the then Chancellor of
the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps.
Dave was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM). The citation reads as follows:
Flight Sergeant Beattie has completed numerous operational sorties including attacks
on some of the major German targets.
During an attack on Gilzerijon (Netherlands) in August 1944, on the initial run over
the target, one of the bombs failed to release, but Flight Sergeant Beattie skilfully
released the bomb when a second bomb run was made so that it too could be dropped
on the target.
Again in October 1944, when the crew were attacking gun positions at Flushing
(Netherlands), clouds were low and anti-aircraft fire very accurate, but despite this,
Flight Sergeant Beattie completed his allocated tasks and obtained excellent
photographs.
During an attack on the Dortmund-Ems Canal (Germany) in November 1944, this
airman’s aircraft was attacked by an enemy fighter while on the bombing run. He
received a wound in his head which has left him totally blind.
Throughout his tour, Flight Sergeant Beattie has shown great coolness and
determination on all occasions and despite all opposition.
Dave was sent to St Dunstan's Institute for the Blind for rehabilitation before being
repatriated to Australia, where he was finally discharged from the air force on 19 January
1946 as a Warrant Officer. Despite his disability, Dave returned to dairy farming. He married
Mary and they had a large family. He later left farming and became a prominent chiropractor
in Cairns. He never considered total blindness a handicap. He died in 2008 at the age of
eighty eight.
In a tribute at Dave’s funeral, Bill recounted “We both had very scary encounters, contending
with atrocious weather conditions as well as enemy attacks from fighters, anti-aircraft
artillery and search light batteries. David, together with Mary, achieved much more than
many able-bodied people. David was one of Australia's greats.”
Bill died in 2014 at the age of 97. He was also one of Australia’s greats. He was also my
uncle.
Kindly written and delivered by Ian Whttaker. Anzac Day 2025
Dave and Bill, Sydney, 1942 Dave speaking at Bill’s 80th birthday, Cairns, 1997
oooOooo

Most Respected Friend Tribute by Bill Jackson
Printed in Residents Varied Experiences. David Beattie & Bill Jackson
Carinya Home for the Aged sometime during David’s residence. RAAF 463-467 Squadron

David’s family would like to thank Bill enormously for this generous tribute.



David Nye Beattie, DFM, was born in Atherton in 1919. He was the sixth child of 7, born to pioneering couple Alf & Hannah Beattie, who took up a raw bush selection on Gwynne Creek. David worked on the family farm and in 1939, when his father died from a heart attack, his mother and the children carried on the farm. They purchased a McCormack T20-tractor to do the ploughing, to take the place of horses.
In 1941 he was called up for military service in the 51st Battalion with several other Tablelanders, including myself. It was in that organisation that I first met David and after 56 years, he is still my most respected friend.
After completing bombing and gunnery courses and then a navigation course, we were given our wings and posted across the Atlantic to the UK. David’s crew was posted to 467 Australian Lancaster Squadron. The crew operated with distinction, completing 25 operations without mishap: On 4th November 1944 they were assigned to an operation to breach the Dortmund-Emms Canal and on the run into the target they were attacked by a German fighter, which put 97 bullets into their aircraft. Only 1 bullet hit a crew member --- and that was David. It struck him in the forehead rendering him unconscious and fighting for his life. The crew reached the east coast of England and landed on an emergency strip on one engine. With ambulances standing by to take charge, he was rushed to hospital where eye specialists and surgeons carried out surgery. David’s brain was not affected, but the retina behind his eyes was so badly damaged it was quickly ascertained he would be blinded for life. After leaving hospital David was taken to St Dunstan’s Institute for the Blind, where he learned to read and type Braille. He started to do a masseur’s course, but found it too difficult because all the body parts had to be learned in Latin.
David became very homesick towards the end of the 10 months between November 1944 and October 1945, so left England for home with two RAAF escorts. Arriving back in Australia, and then the Atherton Tableland. He was given a hero’s welcome. One of the most prominent people on the welcoming party was a close school friend from the adjoining farm, Mary Coleman. While David was overseas, she wrote to him constantly and sent him parcels. She had now completed her nursing training. It was a quick romance and they were married in 1946.
David and Mary returned to St Dunstan’s in the UK to do a course in animal husbandry. David believed he could run a dairy farm with the aid of
Mary. Returning from the UK, they acquired a dairy farm near Ravenshoe. David set about fencing and subdividing the property, with electric fences, establishing new pastures, clearing rubbish and putting in a good water supply. They doubled production from the dairy and were able to install electricity.
David was a Director of the local butter and milk factory and a member of the local RSL.
At that time David and Mary had one son, Neville. A second son, Stanley was born about a year after they moved to the farm. A third child, Eleanor was born and they had to hire labour to help Mary in the house. David got the yard and milking so well organised he could do it and all the ancillary yard work without help – he just needed someone to put the cows in the bails. They continued this operation for 8 years. A fourth child, Virginia, was born and the pressure on Mary became too great, so they sold the farm and moved to Atherton.
Mary had a brother who was a chiropractor and bone manipulator. They formed a working relationship and the Beatties moved again, this time to Cairns. David studied chiropractic with talking books, seminars, and from any other source or way he could and soon became very proficient and enjoyed meeting and helping people in trouble with bad backs, etc. There was no shortage of patients! After some time, he and Mary decided to branch out on their own and bought a building close to their home. He imported a special table from America ( the only one in Australia at that time), requiring a special permit to import it. The business flourished.
The children grew up and started looking for careers after finishing school. Neville trained as a chiropractor and went in the business and soon took over, so David and Mary moved to Malanda and started another business. Stanley the second son, also learned the trade and went into the Malanda business.
However, he did not care for the indoors and left to go into the building industry.
It was now time for David and Mary to have a rest, so they sold out and semi-retired to Second Beach, near Cairns. Before long, they found this location too lonely and isolated, so again moved back to Atherton. This was closer to family members and friends they had known from early childhood.
The Beatties now reside at Carinya Home for the Aged in Atherton. David moved here in March 2000 and Mary joined her husband later that year.