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Name: Oxlade L.M.
Service No: QX5730
Rank: Lieut.M.M.
Unit: 9

Brief History Sometimes known as "Buff".

Lionel came to "A" Troop 9 Squadron from Seventh Division Cavalry Regiment, which he had joined in May 1940 after service with the 11th Light horse Regiment.
His service stretched through  Palestine Cyprus Syria Turkey and Arabia before his return to Australia with the Seventh division for the battle for Sanananda in Papua New Guinea   where he won an immediate  Military Medal and was later wounded in action.
QX5730.  Sergeant Lionel Martindale Oxlade 2/7 Australian Division Cavalry Regiment.  Approved for the award of the Military Medal, {immediate}.
Following which, on the 11th of January 1943 he was Commissioned in the field.

The citation reads:
During  an attack on enemy positions on the Sanananda Point Road, at 191268 on the 19th of December 1942.  Sergeant Oxlade’s Troop came under very heavy machine-gun fire which killed his Troop leader, caused a number of other casualties and forced the remainder to ground.
Oxlade at once took command, and whilst under  heavy fire succeeded in locating each surviving member of the dispersed Troop and directed them to some shallow trenches where he formed a small perimeter.  He personally assisted several wounded men to reach this position, from which he maintained a vigorous defence and encouraged his men by his fine example.
That night at great personal risk Sergeant Oxlade set out to locate the main body of his unit at 189268, from which he was separated by some 220 yards of enemy occupied ground.  He found the perimeter of the main body and made arrangements to withdraw his Troop, which at that stage included seven wounded men.  He then returned to his Troop and led them from their dangerously exposed position to the comparative safety of the main perimeter.
Throughout the day and night he had shown qualities of courage and leadership which were an inspiration to his men.
Source: 2/6 Cavalry Commando Unit Site

VALE: 14/07/2005 AT TOOWOOMBA Q.
 

Name
OXLADE, LIONEL MARTINDALE 
Service
Australian Army 
Service Number
QX5730 (71600) 
Date of Birth
12 Jun 1918
Place of Birth
BRISBANE, QLD 
Date of Enlistment
28 May 1940 
Locality on Enlistment
CHINCHILLA 
Place of Enlistment
TOOWOOMBA, QLD 
Next of Kin
OXLADE, BEATRICE 
Date of Discharge
Unknown
Rank
Lieutenant 
Posting at Discharge
2/9 Cavalry Regiment 
WW2 Honours and Gallantry
Military Medal
A true legend, He was fondly known as Buffalo Bill because of his black moustache.
EULOGY  :  QX5730  LIONEL MARTINDALE OXLADE
Farewell to Lionel Martindale Oxlade, 2/9 Commando Squadron; born at New Farm, Brisbane, on 12 June 1918; passed away in Toowoomba on 14 September, 2005
Lionel came to 9 Squadron from 7 Div Cav Regiment, which he had joined in May 1940, aged 21, after service in 11th Light Horse Regiment.  His eldest brother, Boyd, also came over to 6 Div Cav, a large fellow (he had represented Australia in Rugby) with a big Colonel William Cody moustache, which earned him the title of "Buffalo Bill".  Lionel, smaller, nuggety, pugnacious and also a representative footballer had an appropriately smaller handlebar, which landed him the sobriquet of "Little Buff".
Lionel's service stretched through Ceylon, Palestine, Cyprus, Syria, Turkey and Arabia before his return to Australia with 7 Div for the battle of Sanananda, in Papua.  Here Sergeant Oxlade won an immediate Military Medal following which, on 11 January 1943, he was commissioned in the field.  See citation above. Lionel recalled Brigadier Dougherty handing him his pips, saying: "You have to be an Officer on the field - but be a gentleman at all times."  Lionel, unwashed, unshaven and thoroughly ungentlemanly in appearance, had difficulty in keeping a straight face!
Another of his reminiscences concerned one Ham Morton of 7 div Cav (he married Helen, the sister of Dr David Leitch, 2/3, 2/8.  Ham and Helen were both killed post war in an airliner that blew up on its way to London.)
According to Lionel, he was sending Ham on a risky trip back to HQ and he said: "Give us your toothbrush Ham; I've lost mine.  If you make it, you won't need it,  If you don't make it, you won't need it!"
Lionel still had that cut-down toothbrush in a Bren firing-pin tin, till the day he died.
At Sanananda, Lionel said, sentries on listenening post were so exhausted that they resorted to holding a grenade in their hands, with the pin removed, just to keep them alert.  And somewhat alarmed, I expect.  It must have concentrated the mind greatly.
After Sanananda, 7 Div Cav ceased to exist in its original form.  2/7 Cav Commando Regiment was made up of three former Independent Companies, 2/3, 2/5 and 2/6.  6 Div Cav, in contrast, had enough "old" Cav survivors to form the core of the two  new Commando Squadrons, 2/9 and 2/10, helped out by 2/7 Squadron, much as did 9 div Cav where 2/4 came in alongside 2/11 and 2/12.
Thus it was that Lt. Oxlade MM, having volunteered for the Commandos, came to A Troop, 2/9 in January 1944.
Bill (Snowy Williams recalls)  At Trinity Beach, doing amphibious training).  The men got fed first - we were out in the open.  The stew was very short, so we only got small helpings.  Lionel was last in the queue and all the cook could scrape up for him was about a spoonful, so he gave him an extra slice of bread.  A big Canungra Cannibal, seeing the two slices of bread but not the tiny helping of stew, said:  "It's good to be an officer."  Lionel shoved the dixie under his nose, saying:  "Look how much bloody stew I got!"  But the Cannibal didn't give up and had another go, something along the lines of: "I'd have a go at you, only you've got pips up!"
Lionel put down his dixie and took off his shirt and into this bloke, with his crook arm behind his back (he'd been woulded at Sanananda, while on patrol after the action for which he was decorated) and he gave this bloke a hiding he wouldn't forget in a hurry.
Snowy describes another incident which, as he says, "made Lionel stand out".
We were a fighting patrol of 17 men and had been patrolling into the south-east for some time and were running out of tucker.  We were returning and heading in towards the coast, ran into a small bunch of Nips and did them over, after which we had to get off the track and scrub bash.  Next day, we came up to a lot of firing, with mortars going off in front of us.  Lionel got talking to some infantry bloke on the other side of the Japs; he suggested we give them a blast from their rear.  The infantry bloke asked how many of us there were and when told, he reckoned they'd estimated that there were over a thousand Nips in front of us and advised a smart detour to the south.  This didn't deter Lionel; he said that we were very heavily armed and could give them a real fright, but he was ordered to go round.
That is the type of soldier Lionel was; no matter how many, he wouldn't have been frightened.  He would have a go and every one in the section would have been proud to follow him.
He was demobbed on 15 Sept 1945, 60 years before his death, almost to the day.  He found civvy life hard to handle and re-enlisted on 18 August 1948.  He spent some time in Sydney and I recall his presence at a number of unofficial 9 Squadron get-togethers, Kevin McManus's bucks' party was one and then in 1952 he was posted to PNG with the Pacific Islands Regiment, taking discharge in 1957.  He then managed and later owned cattle stations in the Highlands, growing peanuts and breeding racehorses.  All these operations were successful but eventually his property was resumed by the PNG Administration and he returned to Queensland where he bred Brahman cattle and raced his horses.
His later years were less happy.  He had injured his back on active service and damaged an eye in a training accident.  He became almost totally blind and suffered from severe emphysema, but never lost his sense of humour.  He was devotedly cared for during his later years by Libby Norris, who provided most of the material for this Obituary.  Joe Byrne collected the material from Libby and Snowy forwarded it to Harry Bell to put together.  Joe had intended writing it himself, but, sadly, his own grave illness had prevented him from doing.

Cobb Force's Trek to the Cape

Leonard Ward

Canberra Times

Sunday 4 Jan 1981

Page 7

THE Cape York wilderness is the second largest tract of undeveloped land on earth. It is remote, wild, beau tiful country, still untouched, uncharted, unexplored".

This the opening paragraph of a current glossy colour brochure extolling the peninsula as a place , for adventrue holidays. When I read it my mind leapt back 38 years to the evening of August 22, 1942, when with fellow corporal Malcolm Arnott I stood on the very northermost tip of mainland Australia and looked out over the sparkling waters of Endeavour Strait.

With almost exactly what the modern brochure says in mind, I said to him: "Mal, this is a real occasion. Damn shame we have nothing to celebrate it with". .

Whereat he, pulled a slim-silver flask from his hip pocket and we drank to the occasion in pure, unadulterated, imported Scotch, at that time worth its weight in gold. I accepted the miracle and enjoyed it, and did not ask him where he got it.

It was a real occasion, for behind us lay three-and-half weeks of hard driving in some of the roughest country that exists. Scattered in the scrub around,the nearby Somerset telegraph booster station were the 12 Ford four-wheel-drive Army three tonners we had managed to get to the top., We had started with 20 vehicles from Landsborough, near Brisbane. Another three and-a-half weeks were to elapse before the job was over.

Only once before in history had a motor vehicle managed the journey, and that was — of all things — a frail, minute Austin Seven which in 1928 was taken to the top by New Zealand journalist Hector Mac Quarrie and a companion. So light was the car that they were able to man-handle it across the dried creeks, float it across at least one river on a rowing boat and, I suppose, refuel from dumps laid down by packhorse, the only transport then feasible in that part of the world.

But we had to carry everything we needed, and that meant a full load on the most important of the vehicles we took, the Canadian-made Fords built to British War Department specifications. With their all steel bodies, they were heavy enough, in all conscience, without any load at all.

 Cobb Force was our title but we were drawn mainly from my own unit, 7 Division Cavalry Regiment, with attached people and vehicles from Signals, Medical, Engineers, Artillery — and even 7 Division Mobile Laundry.

That ludicrous association came abou because all the division's transport had been well and truly clapped out by hard Middle East service. The one exception was, the Laundry, and about a dozen of its vehicles in mint condition came to us complete with drivers. The other vehicles were a small Ford "battle buggy" for the officer commanding, two Ford tonners for the second in command and the Signals unit respectively, a Ford utility for the Regimental Aid Post, two four-by-fours for the Engineers, a wood-sided four-by-four used as one of the petrol trucks, a four-by four on which was 'portee' mounted an anti-tank gun, an elderly ex-Indian Army Marmon-Herrington of the Light Aid Detachment which gave a lot of trouble but had a large power winch which was to prove invaluable, and a water tank trailer.

All vehicles were powered by the side valve Ford V8 engine, and all had the four speed crash-type Ford truck gearbox except the utility, which had a car-type box with synchromesh and three speeds. About 80 men manned the vehicles.

Cobb Force left Landsborough near Brisbane on July 28, 1942, under the command of Captain Albert Cobb of Caboolture, Queensland, with Lieutenant Jack Cowdery of Lismore, NSW, as his second in command. A Lieutenant Roberts commanded the Engineer detachment. (A few months later Cobb was killed in action at Sanananda, New Guinea; Cowdery survived the war and died a few years ago in his home town).

The main reason for this elaborate long distance reconnaissance was to determine whether the cleared ribbon of country containing the overland telegraph line to Cape York could be traversed by motor vehicles, as the Government was anxious to treble the line to cope with the increasing flood of signals traffic from New Guinea.

A secondary reason was to discover whether the Japanese had established a secret base on the peninsula from which to launch the abortive raid on Townsville of a few weeks before. No sign of such a base was discovered, but just in case we were armed to the teeth, with about one Bren gun to each three men, apart from our personal weapons.

Progress north was slow. We started out with six 44 gallon drums of petrol on each three-tonner, apart from those carried by two petrol trucks, and followed a fearfully rough coastal track to Rockhamption which, however, gave us a good knowledge
of our vehicles.

We learnt that with the Ford three tonner you had to be absolutely spot-on with engine revolutions when double clutching for the change down, and that on rough ground when travelling slowly the steering wheel could lash back savagely and drive one's elbow painfully against the sharp steel edge of the door.

Subsequently, when crawling for mile after mile over the chassis-wracking 'melon hole' country further north, we found that the need to grip the wheel very tightly to avoid this contributed more than anything else to our weariness at day's end.

One hundred miles in a day was quite the exception. The day's run of 82 miles which ended at Sarina I described in the diary I kept in these terms: "Roads even worse. Winding in and out of timber, they are rutted, potholey", descend into creeks abruptly to inevitably rise out of them very steeply, and are criss-crossed by gutters. They place a premium on driving skill and physical endurance ... All four gears are in constant use and 200 yards in top gear is a good run!'.

At Cairns we took on extra rations and added three more 44-gallon drums of petrol, making a total of nine, to each vehicle. My rough reckoning was that we were then up to our maximum load of three tons, and out of Atherton, the Herberton Range brought the trucks down to first gear.

Heading for the old mining town of Chillagoe next day, we began to encounter the really rough conditions that were to become the norm. For the first time we temporarily abandoned two trucks, whose auxiliary gearboxes had been giving trou ble, in the care the the LAD Marmon Herrington and Trooper Munro, fitter. Jock Munro, from Gloucester, NSW, was normally a member of my crew and a tower of strength. He was to pay the penalty of being good by labouring unremittingly throughout the journey getting broken down trucks back into service, besides doing his share of driving. Most of the troubles, such as broken spring leaves, could be termed minor, but their rectification still was heavy work.

That day a foraging party went out with rifles and came back with a fine young steer to make a welcome change from our eternal bully beef and biscuits. Better still, when the LAD truck and the two troublesome vehicles caught up with us again, they brought several plain turkeys or bustards they had bagged. These fine birds are shy of men afoot but can be approached to point blank range by trucks, and on several subsequent occasions provided welcome additions to our diet.

We were now on the telegraph line and pressed on northward, sometimes having to diverge into the scrub to negotiate the numerous dry creeks, our bane to the end of the journey. If we were lucky they could be negotiated cautiously, but too often the banks were too steep and the troops would have to dig an entry and exit of about 45 degrees..

Then the fully laden truck was let down gently to the creek bed, low-ratio and front-wheel drive engaged, and the further bank rushed at full throttle in first gear. With the front wheels spinning madly and getting little, but sufficient, purchase, and the driver fighting the steering wheel to prevent the steeply tilted truck falling away sidways, there would usually be a triumphant arrival on level ground; but, too often, there would be an ominous crack as a rear axle shaft broke, and it was back to the creek bed.

The possibility had been forseen and spares were carried, but mostly the wrong drive vehicles the differential is carried to one side of the rear axle so that the half shafts are different lengths. On the assumption that the longer shafts were the frailer, they predominated among the spares: but in fact they were sufficiently flexible to absorb torsionally a sudden strain, whereas the shorter shafts were so rigid that they broke. Perforce, when spares ran out, several vehicles had to complete the journey on front-wheel drive alone, which they did successfully, covering something like 1000 miles before they got back to Army work shops at Charters Towers.

We pressed on northwards, periodically crossing rivers — Palmer, Hann, Archer, Macmillan, Dulhunty, Skardon and Jardine — whose water sparkled like champagne, and visiting the lonely telegraph booster stations at Fairview, Mus grave, and Moreton, with a stop at Coen township (15 inhabitants) to take on petrol from the small RAAF aerodrome there.

The two days before Moreton turned out to be the hardest so far: we covered only 54 and 58 miles respectively. They also introduced another hardship for the trucks. We were in the 'melon-hole' country, miles and miles of deep, eroded holes that were impossible to dodge.

In creeping in and out of these the chassis frames were twisted so cruelly that the simple cabs with which they were fitted were also distorted and a number of wind screen standards were strained and broken. Happily the cab tops were detachable, so we took them off to take the strain from the windscreens and left them at the side of the track to be picked up again on our return journey.

The We'nlock (or Batavia) River, just below Moreton, presented a challenge with its soft bottom. After a few trucks had successfully negotiated the stream others started to sink in the sand, so they were towed across by those which had reached hard ground the other side.

Moreton, under the command of a genial man called Scottie Laurenson, and where at lunchtime we were able to park most of the trucks in the shade of the largest mango tree I have ever seen, is only 110 miles from the top; but they are rough miles because at the many creek and river crossings, particularly the Jardine, close to the top.

Here it was that Hector MacQuarrie floated his Austin across on a boat. We were able to wade the fairly fast-flowing stream and lay army wire track. We got the Marmon-Herrington across under its own power and then pulled the others across with its strong winch, but did not bother with those that were in very bad mechanical shape, leaving them temporari ly where they were or sending them back
to Moreton.

Thereafter, travel was comparatively easy. At 1930 hours we triumphantly made camp at the telegraph station at Somerset, on the very tip of Cape York Peninsula.
The start the following day was delayed while everyone had a look around the station and signed the visitors' book.

After detouring slightly to an Anglican mission on the coast we came back to the
 Jardine and camped on the other side of the river after an uneventful crossing in the dark and a short day's run of 46 miles.

Some maintenance and washing was carried out at Moreton, where a vehicle
count showed four with broken half shafts. There were no more spares, and other trucks were deputed to help the semi cripples over the rough spots.

The journey resumed to Coen, where empty petrol drums were dropped off at the aerodrome. The local police sergeant gave us information about a track, not shown oni the maps, to the west coast.

Twenty-eight miles along this track we came to a real ghost town called Ebagoola, a deserted mining village which looked as though the inhabitants had walked out in a body, leaving furniture, harness and gear of all sorts behind them, and old correspondence, some of it rather intimate, scattered
about.

Two white-haired old fossickers still lived there, but clearly they had stopped the world long ago and stepped off. They were vague in their talk and astonished at our arrival, and I suspect they did not even know there was a war on. But they gave us information about a track to the coast marked by blazed trees, which we followed 'with some difficulty to make camp on the banks of a creek, 21 miles further on.
The next day was slow and rough, the point truck wasting a lot of time finding the blazed trees, and heavy sand forcing trucks with only front-wheel drive to be helped by towing.

Then the fully laden truck was let down gently to the creek bed, low-ratio and front-wheel drive engaged, and the further bank rushed at full throttle in first gear. With the front wheels spinning madly and getting little, but sufficient, purchase, andFix this text the driver fighting the steering wheel to prevent the steeply tilted truck falling away sidways, there would usually be a trium phant arrival on level ground; but, too often, there would be an ominous crack as a rear axle shaft broke, and it was back to the creek bed.
The possibility had been forseen and spares were carried, but mostly the wrong
ones. In four-wheel-drive vehicles the dif ferential is carried to one side of the rear axle so that the half shafts are different lengths. On the assumption that the longer shafts were the frailer, they predominated among the spares: but in fact they were sufficiently flexible to absorb torsionally a sudden strain, whereas the shorter shafts were so rigid that they broke.

.
The next day was slow and rough, the point truck wasting a lot of time finding the blazed trees, and heavy sand forcing trucks with only front-wheel drive to be helped by towing.

 Two days later we came to the rough bark huts and yards of Strathgordon home stead, but no one was home. The door to the living quarters was secured by a large padlock and on it was this notice:

"Eanney one Trying to brake in or trying to enter this House is Libale to be Shot".

 Through the spaced pickets of the house's wall we saw a .22 rifle held in a vice attached to a table, its muzzle pointing at the door. From its trigger a cord ran round a pulley to the door, which opened outwards. The thought of a man dying miserably in the wilderness, so far from help, was abhorrent, so we cut a stick with a small fork at one end to serve as a hook, pushed it through the pickets and pulled the cord. Sure enough, the bullet hit the door at about breast height.

 The next day brought us to the Edward.  River Mission and a warm welcome from,the missionary, a Mr Chapman. He told ; us that an absconder from the Army had been causing trouble among local Aborigines and had raided Strathgordon Station — which explained the booby trap we had sprung. We left with him a shotgun and two boxes of shells as protection ' against an unwelcome visit and set off for . the Mitchell River, 40 miles away, with one his Aborigines as guide. We spent the whole of the next morning getting the trucks across the 200 yards of that river over Army wire track.

 Thereafter it was a matter of hard . slogging, with occasional mornings devoted ; to urgent maintenance. The track was mainly good except where cattle had been driven over it in the wet. The hardened hoof impressions gave our sorely tried vehicles a proper shaking. And we had our usual troubles with dried creeks, deep sand, and river crossings.

On September 4, we ran 178 miles, a record. We got to Normanton and then ran along a railway line to the little town, Croydon.

On September 8 the party divided: Captain Cobb in his 'battle buggy', three of the three-tonners — one of them mine — and one petrol truck set off across country to Townsville; the remainder under Lieutenant Cowdery headed for Rock hampton via Charters Towers, where our cripples could receive proper attention at Army workshops.

We reached Townsville on September 9, and then proceeded to journey's end at Rockhampton, arriving there six days later.

And 10 miles from the end, the steering of Captain Gobb's vehicle broke. It ran off: the road and into a ditch, causing con-. siderable damage to the vehicle but, happi ly, none to its occupants — the only accident in 4,000 miles of impossibly rough going. ;

From Rockhampton Sergeant Lionel Oxlade of Brisbane (later commissioned for his conduct in action in Sanananda)  and myself were ordered back to Towns ville and some weeks later we guided to the  top a truck mounted infantry battalion and ancillary troops, about 1000 men in all, under the command of the late Lieutenant-Colonel 'Shorty' Cardale, well known to many old Canberrans because of his pre war association with RMC, Duntroon.

I can faithfully describe North . Queensland as being like a truck manufac turer's proving ground gone mad. Even today, the Queensland Tourist Bureau told me, travel north of Coen is not recom mended for the private owner. It is im possible in the "wet", and in the "dry"should be attempted — if one insists — , with a four-wheel-drive vehicle. '

Source: Pacific islands monthly : PIM.
Vol. XXVI, No.2 ( Sep. 1, 1955)

Kokoda Trail Almost  Overgrown  

After Ten Years  NEW GUINEA’S Kokoda Trail, among the most famous of  Pacific War scenes, is almost  

over-grown to-day.  

Captain Lionel Oxlade, Quarter-master of the PIR, who recently crossed the trail from Popondetta to Port Moresby, found hard going most of the way. Some areas were  clear, but much of the trail had  disappeared under ten years’ jungle growth.  

Captain Oxlade said he saw few wartime relics along the route by which hundreds of Australians  

moved to meet the invading Japanese. In the four days’ trek he noted only the remains of Australian  

and Japanese boots, two tin-hats  and a rusty Bren gun.  

Accompanied by a native member of the PIR, Captain Oxlade  made the crossing to test the  

Army’s new 24-hour ration pack.  

He lost about 5 lb in weight.