Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

War broke out in 1939, James was 17. Persuasive posters and radio broadcasts stirred the feeling of national pride. James tried to get into the Navy for Basic training (he wanted Submarines). Needed a fourth Grade Pass, he was 18 years and there were no vacancies, so he had to wait. James applied to the Australian Volunteer Army.
James secured a place in the 31st Battalion which went straight into training for the Mortar Platoon Headquarter Company.
Infantry training began in Hughenden, Western Queensland. Training on mortars (a cannon very short in proportion to its bore, for throwing ten-pound bombs up to 3000yards) day and night. Practicing rifle and grenade tactics which proved invaluable skills in years to come. 6 weeks after training they were shifted to Townsville.
Early 1942, James and the 31st Battalion in Townsville got orders to pack up. The Battalion amalgamated with the 51st Battalion and set off to undertake garrison duties in Dutch New Guinea in 1943–44 before taking part in the Bougainville Campaign in 1944–45.
The Battalion arrived at the Island of Merwalki. It was the Mortar Platoons job to work on patrols, regressing down the coast and picking off the Japanese barges. Japanese Ferries were being sunk while Aussie troops were shot down the slopes. James spent some time with Platoon 12 in ‘B’ company with George Roberts before coming back to the Mortars and going to Post 6 with Roodakoff. (Stating Roodakoff should have been awarded a MC and the rest MM’s as they had nowhere to go, only into the swamps and certain death, if the Japanese had landed. James arrived just after the Barge fight, taking up mortars and sinking any barge within 3000 yards. On one instance there were 19 Australian troops on Post Six on the Orlando River who attempted to take 300 Japanese marines. They cleared most out, and the Kitty Hawks and Mitchells bombed the rest the next day. They took out the Senior Japanese Officer and the rest didn’t know what to do and took off down the river into poetry. The Battalion suffered but slowly they recaptured the territory which Japan had invaded.
For 14 & a half months they served in Dutch New Guinea and saw many detrimental clashes. They arrived in Cairns late one Saturday afternoon in tattered uniform, unbathed looking pretty bedraggled. They were proud of the 300 miles of territory they had regained. Thinking the threat was no longer significant, James took 39 days leave in Sydney only to regroup with the Battalion in Brisbane to train for the dismal warfare of trenches in the primitive jungle of Bougainville. Straight off the boats and down the nets into dense jungle. For the next two years, they viewed the most grueling episodes of war from the pits, a couple of yards wide and deep. Food was often rationed, and one James enjoyed was "tinned dog" (bully beef) and rice. Unable to light fires which would signal the enemy of their position all food was heated on canned heat.
There was not many uses for mortars in the jungle as the opposition was too close and impossible to pinpoint. The entire Mortar Company adapted to rifle warfare and exhausting fighting along the coast of Tsimber Ridge where the fanatical enemy never let up. James explained forcing yourself to stay awake for ten days and nights of fierce fighting with many casualties surrounding you, wondering if you were next. Night time was the worse with just a leaf moving got it shot. TSimba Ridge fell to Australian Troops after 20days of bitter fighting. It formed the most heroic chapter in the story of Australian actions in Bougainville.
Whilst fighting with their backs to the Ganger River, the high tide would fill their trenches with water. Soldiers would lay along the trenches until the Japanese attacked sometimes 3-4 times a day. Their feet would swell from standing in water daily. One dark Friday morning when landing on a Patrol at Porton Plantation, the barges got caught on the reefs and they were forced to charge through the water. Out of the 190 soldiers on that Patrol James was one of 32 who weren’t killed or seriously injured. In his later years he told some of the horror stories. He admitted that when they landed along the Rabaul coast in the wrong area as it was full of reef bombies and the craft were not able to land on the beach. The trays were dropped, and the men jumped off into water over their heads, James being injured as one fellow jumped on top of him. He eventually got back on the craft but not before witnessing soldiers being killed in the water around him and sharks attacking the bodies. The enemy mowed the soldiers down as they moved through the water and onto the beach.
James was forward scout but due to another member getting injured, Blue Reiter claimed James to be the best replacement and he was in the mortar division and blames his hearing loss from loading mortars. He recalls swimming the Fly River to a sand bank and filling bags to build the surround. They put them on a small tinny and took it back to the bank for the natives to carry them to where they wanted to be set up.
Running through the jungle, James was forward scout on mission at Tora Keena, New Guinea. The company was taking as much ground as possible before another attack. Suddenly they walked into an ambush. A Jap soldier took aim at the grenades on James’s shirt but instead shot straight through his rifle and into his abdomen and near loss of his right thumb. In the operating theatre he expressed his concern of losing the thumb as he was a butcher by trade. A Major Rose saved the thumb although stiff it still worked. He was carried down by the New Guinea natives and taken into Lai for transport to Australia. After two weeks, the war had finished, and he was flown to Townsville@ Garbutt hospital where he stayed for 2 days. John Baird and James came in on stretchers and James alighted to get them a coffee and biscuit. He never saw John again till years later at a reunion. He was then transported to Holland Park at Redbank in Brisbane where he recalls being cleaned up with metho.
James was discharged on 7th December 1945 and got home just in time for Christmas. He had been away for 4 years and was ecstatic that the war was over. There is no victory in war, defending what you know is right, but it only comes with lives sacrificed, division and destruction.