Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

But the fellow, I loved this bloke, he’s the best officer I’ve ever seen, the best man I’ve ever ran into - in that regard. Not the fellow walking around in the street, but for what he was, and what he could do. How he treated his men, he was a marvellous man. I’ve seen some of the things he did in action. He always used to look round for me, where’s Mac? I liked that, him looking around for ‘Mac’. His name was Bob Menzies, in the war; it’s in the front of that book. No relation, I asked him, “Are you a relation to Bob?” He said, “No, I’m no relation to that bastard,” he’d say. But one night we were getting over run, there were fellows down the front of us, put their rifles aside stacked them and started digging in, it was coming on dusk and we didn’t think they were there, they shouldn’t have been there, they should have been back on the edge of the scrub getting a bit of a sight, on to the little valley down there. But they hadn’t, because all of a sudden this firing broke out, just as we wanted to lay down a bit, and back behind us is a great big steep ridge and in front is a sloping away like that, and down hill towards where they were. And it came right up and finished right in front where I was scratched a bit of a hole. You couldn’t scratch much because it’s too hard. I’ve got me old bayonet, trying to scratch a bit of a hole. So they were banging and shooting away, banging and hitting. And there’s the oil tanker which we knocked out before, out of action; and we’re hitting against the oil tank, clatter clatter. bang boom boom. Hideous noise. And anyway, then they got up, nearly up to us and somebody went ‘bang’ about ten yards beside the cliff where I was, and it stopped, the noise stopped, the firing stopped. I thought hello, they’ve blown our line out. Our line carried my voice right back to the guns. And I said to Bob Menzies, “You’d better come have a look at this, the guns are out of commission, I can’t get anybody.” “Well he said, that’s right,” he’s had what they call a ‘click and blow’ test to find out if it’s alive or dead, he said, “No that’s dead, that’s gone out of action, they’ve knocked out the wire.” I said, “Do you want me to go down take a look,” he said, “Not now, those buggers down there they’ve been bloody asleep, they wouldn’t know what we’re talking about up here,” he said. This happened in Jakarta, I’m only talking about him because of when he got the MC [Military Cross] at El Alamein you see.

...but the number one officer was Menzies. A brave man and an officer who knew it all, he’d done it all as well. He was the type of fellow, he’d just get off the jeep and say, “Come on Mac, come up and we’ll have a bit of a shoot up the top here.” So away we’d go, I’m right behind him. I used to like that.

Vincent McNamara on March 30th, 2004