Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Phil was the third of ten children of James (Jim) Nama (born 1898 in Punjab, India) and Daisy Jane Read (born 1903 in Bundaberg, QLD). Jim came to North QLD on horse boat and worked as a Cane Cutter. He married Daisy in Bundaberg, QLD in 1921 and they established a Cane and Dairy Farm at Mapleton. In an interview with Australians At War (http://australiansatwarfilm archive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1792-phyllis-cross) Phil talks about her childhood and Army service. Phil said her mother's parents did not support Daisy's marriage to Jim - and on the farm her mother operated the dairy and her father the cane farming (Jim would have nothing to do with cows because of his religion).

Phil grew up helping with chores on the farm, and enjoyed playing hockey. At school she and her siblings were taunted with terrible names, including chants of 'God made little niggers, he made them in the night, he made them in a hurry and forgot to paint them white' - Phil said they 'just had to take it, 'but we used to go home and cry'. Phil helped out in the Post Office when she left school at fifteen years of age, which is how she learned to operate the telephone exchange. By 1943 girls she knew were enlisting in the Military, so did also. 

Phil enlisted in May 1943 as a Signalman (Service No:QF270951) with 12 Lines of Communication Signals and served in Atherton and Cairns with 89 Lines of Communication Signals Coy until her Discharge in December 1946.

Phil was working as a Bar Attendant in Brisbane, QLD when she married James (Jimmy) Charles Cross (born 1924 at Moore in the Somerset Region in QLD). Jimmy had served as a Gunner (Service No:QX55779) and was a Labourer in Brisbane when they married in 1954. Phil and Jimmy settled in Brisbane, QLD - Phil worked as a Teletype Operator and Jimmy as a Linesman. Phil died in 2011 and Jimmy in 2019.