1:01:57

Lorna Merle Bell

Gillian O’Mara

17/04/1995

E0109 - E0110

Disc 1 59:56 – Disc 2 38:28

Robyn Sutherlin

12/11/2015

City of Joondalup

GO: An interview on the 17 April 1995 with Mrs Lorna Bell regarding her experiences during

war time.

LB: I’m Lorna Merle Bell and I was born on the 6th of the 4th 1927.

GO: Lorna how old were you when war was announced?

LB: 12 years of age.

GO: And can you recollect that time period and explain it to us?

LB: Yeah vividly. I was at school, it was August we were due to have holidays and my

girlfriend Dorothy Archer her parents had asked mum if I could go down there and stay for

the fortnight of the holidays and it was our my first day down there I think, I might have been

there even a couple of days. One night were sitting in Dorothy’s bedroom and we heard all

this rumpus outside and it was funny noise like never heard it before it was a young voices

singing out read all about read all about it Extra, Extra read all about it and we wondered

what on earth was going on. We threw the window open and we listened to it and you hear

this yelling and peoples feet running and we went out to see Mrs Archer and we said ‘What’s

the matter?’ and they were sitting very sadly looking at the wireless and they were looking at

each other and just about howling cause they had a lot of sons and Dorothy said ‘What’s the

matter mum?’ and she said ‘They’ve just declared war.’ and we said ‘What’s that mean?’ and

then she told us that people would probably have to go away to fight and it was all

excitement to us. I remember we were so excited we went back into the bedroom and

Dorothy said ‘I’ve got to get one of those papers.’ And she had a penny and one of us or

both of us I’m not sure I think one of us climbed out the window and ran down the street and

brought the Extra and cause that was only about a penny a paper. It was only sort of the

headlines was to come into the newspaper later on that day but they anything so exciting as

that they used to throw out Extras, it was just one or two sheets explaining what had

happened. So that was the first thing that happened. Yeah well after all this excitement the

school days were over, school holidays were over. We just went back to school and I

suppose we used to say prayers for all the people that were going to be involved in war but

other than that we had. It was just nothing but excitement for kids and it was something that

stayed on Australia, Australia who only had about roughly about 4 or 5 million people in the

whole of Australia had no way of contacting. Wireless was difficult and news was difficult to

come through wireless overseas you only got that on rare occasion and then you could

never understand it. Telephone was non-existent even to Sydney it was difficult to get

telephone through, so we were just in this little world of our own in Australia beautiful place it

was and, and it was just a whole lot of excitement. Even with the movies we always had to

wait about 2 years before you got any movies, current movies will always be 2 years old

before you went and saw them so this is how far away Australia was. And anyway mum and

dad used to be worried about the kids that lived up in our area because we lived in a little in

a group where everybody intermarried one another and no one dared come out and marry

outsiders. The first people to ever marry outsiders was Rose Gordon and Shirley McGarry

and they were outside by about 2 miles out of the sort of inner group boundary and I lived on

the outer boundary of the inner group boundary but these, these poor kids were very poor

and mum and dad felt sorry for them. So they start up a thing called the Northern, Northern

Star Boys and Girls Club of which I’ve still got the silver star here today and dad took over

the running of the Boys club and mum took over the running of the Girls club, consequently I

was brought into it just by the fact that I went with them and I got to know all this inner group

because they never liked talking to me. They used to think I was a bit of a snob because I

went to a college whereas all I wanted to do was to get in with this inner group because they

were my neighbours and my friends but they didn’t want me in because they thought I was a

snob. So mum and dad fixed this by having this club so I was able to get in with the group

and it was great because I enjoyed everyone of them I, there was only ever one person that I

never ever liked and other than that we had great times and they started dances and in the

dances we used to have we’d we had a hall, just this community hall and we used to have

our dances there and then some times we would get all get in the bus which was only an

hourly bus and we’d go to Coburg Concert Hall and we’d they had a dance there every week

and we used to go over there. Now some of the boys once the war was on and the war was

on at this time some of the boys would come up and then when their cousins would be from

North Melbourne or any of the inner suburbs were be out visiting they’d come to the dances

to and this is what happened with me, because Frank the Riley’s, Riley boys they used to

come to all the dances and they brought their cousin one day. Their cousin was Bill Bell and

he lived in North Melbourne; he’d come up to stay with Aunty Edie and all the big family of

Riley’s and they brought him up to the dance and he actually went to the concert hall dance

and my girlfriend and I were sitting there and he come up and asked us both to dance and

sat in the middle of us and skited and showed off and did his usual funny stuff that he always

is and has been and will be and he said he was going to take us both home in the bus, so he

did because we never ever we all always got in the bus there was never anyone that would

go off with some fella or anything. We always did exactly what we had to do, mum and dad

were strict like that and they liked it so we came home in the bus and when Dorothy had to

get off she thought Bill would get off with her and so did I and shock of shocks I said

‘Dorothy’s getting off, aren’t you getting off? He said, ‘No I’m taking you home.’ Cause that

really that really floored me so he took me home and then he walked about 3 or 4 miles

home over hills and dales and paddocks and I don’t know how he ever found his way home

that night but he did and his cousins were waiting for him down at the Railway Station which

was at least 10 miles away and then they still had a hike to walk home to Carnarvon Road

where which is right opposite the old Essendon Aerodrome and that’s where I first met Bill.

And he used to come to the dances until the day that he came and told us that he was he

had to go to Singleton on his way out of Australia and he used to play between both of us

you know he, he was as nice to Dorothy so you never ever really knew. And I remember one

good thing about that day that time when he said he was going we were very sad that was

the first time I think where we were it really hit us and he said to Dorothy when he was going

and they always had the army the soldiers always had their watches and they were made to

cover them up with a leather band and the leather band had a round shape of a watch and

you could unclip it and you could lay it over and have a look and this cover on the watch had

to be because the sun or the moon or anything like that could shine and give away their

place of hiding in bushes. So he didn’t have one and we, we didn’t have any money like as

kids we didn’t have any money at all so we didn’t know how we were ever going to give him

a present when they were going away and we decided we’d try and find the most

appropriate thing we could for nothing so couldn’t find anything for nothing but we found in

the shop one of these leather bands for 3 and 11 pence. So Dorothy got in touch with me

she said ‘What do we do?’ and I said ‘If we can get a loan of the money we can pay for it or

pay them back.’ So I’m not sure if my parents gave us a loan of the money or if her parents

gave a loan of the money but one of them did and we paid them back a penny a week each

until in other words we went away we’d without a penny worth of lollies to, to pay this back

and we paid it between us we paid this 3 and 11 pence back and we wrapped it up and we

gave Bill this, this little thing for going away and which I think he lost while he was a prisoner

and they took it off him or something. And so that was one of the, the remembrances we

have of when I was 14 and Bill was going away. Yeah Bill was he couldn’t ring me although

we had a phone, not many people in the in Australia in those days private people had

phones but dad was a technician or a mechanic as they called them then in the PMG and he

had to have a phone because he’s, he had to get recall for faults. So he we had a phone but

Bill couldn’t ring but he did write but he went away in February and then he wrote the letter I

think on board ship to say that he was having a wonderful time and they hadn’t got to their

destination, this was on the Aquitania and that they were really bored and they were looking

forward to getting to Singapore cause not knowing what was happening cause they, they

couldn’t get any news and all the time they were on the water. So I received one letter and it

was had a censors that the censor had marked it to say that he had read it which didn’t

worry me but I in those days cause I didn’t understand the how important it was to me it was

just a bit of fun. I never I used to and write to Bill but we really didn’t have any address I

knew where his father lived and but I, I did not contact him because I didn’t really know Bill

all that well that I could intrude cause you didn’t intrude on people in those days with, without

proper introduction, introduction and things so I virtually went on with my life. I left school

after Bill had gone to war and I started off in the Munitions Supply Laboratories in

Maribyrnong as a typist and I was in the main office there and then later on I went into the

stores office and that’s when the war start to still exciting cause I was still very young and I

had a girlfriend I went to school with still my friend and she started there the same time as

me and in the MSL, we used to call it in Maribyrnong, we firstly we visited we one thing that

happened to us is Mrs Roosevelt came to Australia during the war because all the troops

were over here. Mr Roosevelt was the President so the President’s wife came out to see all

her boys out here so while she was there they brought her over. One of the places that she

visited was the explosives factory and we you had to go past the MSL to get into the

explosives factory we were the main gate where that’s where the laboratories were so she

went down and had a look over the explosives factory and then she came back and she

called into the MSL and we were all lined up under the carport as she came through. And I

stood with my nose pressed cause the car stopped and she got out on the other side to

where I was standing and she met the bosses and she thanked them for the good work that

they were all doing for the war effort and I sat there and she got I stood there with my nose

right pressed up against the window of the car with others and she was waving to us and we

thought that was very exciting cause she was someone from overseas that very rarely

visited a country like ours. So we met her and then it was during the time in the main office

that Bill’s father somehow or other I don’t know he that’s right he either his sister or his father

got in contact with me to say that Bill had said to keep in contact but because they’d never

had any word as to where he was after he landed in Singapore they had nothing they could

tell me. Anyway so it wasn’t until a year or two later I suppose that they actually contacted

me and said, I’ve still got the little envelope where they wrote on it, and just sent this little

envelope and said if you want to contact Bill this is the address you, you send to. But before

that I’m jumping the gun a bit because before that they were told that he was missing and

believed dead just because they couldn’t find him as they believed a lot of the fellas were

dead because the Singapore was just a mess, a mess of bombing and things like that and

they had no idea, the government had no idea so they sent a letter a message or a tape, not

a tape a telegram to Mr Bell to say that your son is missing believed dead. Now they

believed this all the way through till the Vatican started to come into it and they started to get

in and find and try and find people because other people couldn’t get in where they could

because they were neutral because the Vatican, Vatican is actually country of its own in its

own right so they weren’t involved in any of the wars so they were able to get into these

countries I suppose through telephone or through diplomats or whoever and it was through

them that his name came out eventually. But there was quite a few years; I don’t know how

long, I’ve forgotten it was quite a time before they were able to find out and that’s when they

sent me this letter to say that he was in a prison camp and that you could write but you were

only allowed to write 25 words and these 25 words had to include your address and his

address and just said nurture and everything. So what I used to do is I’d do 12 months of

letters in other words 12 letters and I would type them all out because they asked you to type

them because the Japanese were supposed to be going to read them and they had to be

able to understand the hand writing so they could interpret them cause little knows to us they

weren’t going to get anywhere anyhow. But every month I would send one of these “Dear Bill

hope you are well your father is alright. Love Lorna” because that was as far as you could

say. Anyhow later on Bill got in the last month before the finish of the war the Japanese

knew that things were coming to an end and they opened up and did some of the mail bags

they had stored and they gave him I think he I think he said 5 letters all at once from me and

he got a couple from his father and one from his sister. But going back to the to that all the

time that as you realize I was only young so all the time that I was still going out still enjoying

myself we used to have balls. MSL would run a ball and I’d go to it and I was always treated

as the young kid in the in the office and there was an office boy there and the office boy

knew that this, this boy that I had known was probably missing and maybe dead and he took

a liking to me very much so and he start to ask me out. And cause you couldn’t really go out

much in those days to because I lived way up in the country and it took it was a 2 mile walk

to get to my transport so and I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t walk down in the dark to catch a train

so and he couldn’t come up and so all our getting together would be at work or on a Friday

night. We went down to the shopping centre at Mooney Ponds and they had night shopping

and maybe I could meet him down there but so it was a very gentle sort of a thing that was

happening. But he used to write me love poems, great sheets and of all these beautiful

poems about how I was his goddess and all the rest of it and he was going to join the Air

Force and he was going to become a great pilot and he was going to go to England and he

was going to pick up all laces and jewels and bring them back to me and this was the way he

was. His name was Eric Holt and Eric went over to, he was sent to Sale because he was

very clever boy and he the Air Force knew this and he wanted to be a pilot right or wrong he

wanted to be a pilot and it was quite easy for him because he could pass everything. So they

rang me to say that he had passed because he’d been in the, in the cadets in the Air Force

Cadets, Air Cadets and when he went up into the Air Force he rang and said to me, ‘I’ve

passed all my first 6 weeks,’ he said ‘Now I’ve got the choice,’ he said. ‘What do you want

me to be?’ And of course you know, young kid I wanted him to be an airman. I wanted him to

have wings, not half wings cause a half a wing is a navigator, the most important person on

the plane I might tell you, not the driver the navigator is the most important. But I wanted him

to have two wings on so he said ‘Okay he’d be a pilot.’ To this day I regret ever saying that

because he went to Sale and then he got through everything there and then he went off to

Launceston. But because he had been in the cadets he’d already done a few, several hours

in the air as a cadet flying a plane either by somebody else flying the plane or him sitting

there and different training things and by the time he’d been through Sale he’d already been

up in a plane. So he had his time up, they had to get a certain amount of hours up before

they could become an actual pilot even though he’d passed the exams so all the others in

his, in his crew except or in his class except two, him and another fella same name Frank

they still had to get hours up in Launceston and Eric and Frank didn’t have to do this. So the

pilot, the boss said to them, you two take one of the aircraft up and they were the old I’ve

forgotten the name of them the two, two wing planes, the old Tiger Moth and they no

wireless or anything in them and they took them up. Now there had been bush fires, very

bad bush fires over in Melbourne and when bush fires come in Melbourne all the bad smoke

goes over towards Tasmania and they thought they were going into cloud and instead of

going into cloud they were actually going into smoke and the two of them are going along

and they decided they were in this what they thought a cloud and they’d signalled to they

turn out of the cloud and instead of them both turning the same way one turned one way and

one turned the same like into one another and they crashed head on and Frank was killed.

His neck was broken through a the wing somehow or other clipped him and Eric was still

alive when they got him on the ground but he died a few hours later. And I was 16 then and I

still didn’t know where Bill was, but Eric had got killed and I remember going very hysterical

over that cause I didn’t get my, my laces and my jewellery, no that wasn’t the reason really.

It was just that it was a tragic thing to happen to a person 16 years of age and thinking that

they caused this boy to die he I didn’t, but that’s what I thought. So then I had to one, one

dead and one missing. I was about to go into the convent I think I was going to give up at an

early age. But from MSL in MSL I then went on to still posting all these letters I went on to

the stores office. In the stores office was very interesting we used to do some terrible things

to people in the stores office. I was growing up by that time getting gamer and we always

had to work every Wednesday night and it was an overtime thing it was compulsory overtime

thing because the war it was just getting on top of it we were losing the war at that point of

time and, and it was getting bad and so we had to put more hours into work typing and

things like that and they had the most ingenious things for typing in those days because they

wanted to do in a hurry. They wanted to do six carbons and there was no way you could do

six carbons on the old Underwood’s or the other things that we Royals and that but they

made this funny machine and they created it down there and it was when I think of it now it

was real strange. A machine built over every typewriter and the carbon sort of all filled in all

came down in rolls the paper and carbon all came down in six copies in rolls through your

machine and somehow or other they had it all working. It was great it really worked wonders.

I could never forget that and then we used to do things like pining the tail on one of the office

staff members and one of the men Mr Callaghan his name was, didn’t realize they had family

members of that name then and he had six children ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Six children.’ then landed

up and having nine myself and we stuck a tail on him on April Fool’s day and poor man

walked around half the day without ever realizing he had a tail tied to him. And we used to fill

up the boys the office boys cups with Epsom salts and coffee and we used to do all sorts of

things but I often had to go down to the Explosives Factory and, and to take in some

different papers that we’d typed up and they needed immediately and when I get down there

I’d have to go through all this rigmarole. I had to show me pass go in they had to ring first to

know who was coming down and what I looked like then I had to show me pass go in and I

had to go into a room and I had to go into a shower take all me clothes off put them in a bag

have a shower get into all white stuff boots and everything walk into this room hand over the

paper come out have a shower come back and then, and then come back and then. I would

have to put the my clothes back on and then walk back up to the, to the thing the reason was

that there was all sorts of things on the floor in this room that I had to go into everyone that

went in the explosive had to have a shower and put on these clothes before they could go to

work. And anyone that visited it didn’t matter even if it had been Mrs Roosevelt she would

have still if she was going into certain areas I don’t suppose they’d let her have a shower. I

don’t know but that’s how strict it was because the sort of stuff and they couldn’t that was on

the floor and they couldn’t afford to have any mishaps because the war effort was just so

important. So we there the sort of things that happened down at there and we had dugouts

everywhere at the Pascoe Vale Station we had a dugout it was always full of water. I could

never understand why this and it was a thing like the shape of an L and you’d go past it, it

was always full of water and I used to think I hope that aeroplane that’s coming around

Australia that could be a Japanese I hope that’s not going to drop a bomb because I’m not

going into that water. And then we had in MSL we had these, these water these air raid

shelters and they were big holes in the ground and they were everywhere and every so often

they’d let the alarm go, the siren the air raid siren go and as the air raid siren went you had

to grab a parcel out of your draw that everyone was given and it was a packet of Granita

biscuits and dark chocolate. Now you could not buy dark chocolate anywhere in Australia it

was all go everything went to the troops so you couldn’t buy dark chocolate. Yet we were

given because we were defence service defence people or something we used to call we

were very important. Anyway we used to get Granita biscuits; I think a block of cheese and

this chocolate. This is in case we’re kept in this air raid shelter for any length of time we

would have food to eat so, so the young ones like Eileen and myself and a few others we

used to be nicking the chocolate all the time. They were always threatening that they would

never give us anymore and we would starve if we ever had to go into an air raid shelter but

they’d put the alarm on and we’d all have to get up and like a drill get up and all follow each

other out to this air raid shelter and get in it with our meal and then we’d have to stay there

say 5 minutes and then the alarm would go off again to say it was all clear and we could go

back to work we loved that, that was exciting.

GO: Did you have a drink bottle at all?

LB: I can’t remember a drink bottle, no, no all I can remember is Granita biscuits and they’re

all packed up and everyone had to have one and they used to come around to make sure

you had them and of course Eileen and I were always nibbling at this chocolate. The other

two little things about the MSL was that when we worked at nine o’clock up to nine o’clock

on a Wednesday they suddenly stopped the women from doing it because we had a mass

murderer running the streets and nobody knew where he was and it was Leonski I think his

name was or a name like that. It was a American soldier who was based at Royal Park and

they didn’t know it was a soldier at that time when these three women were murdered on

separate nights and so they had to stop the women from been able to go to work on the

Wednesday nights till they found it and it turned out to be him and he was psycho. He was

hung but when they did something to his brain I believe many years later I think the

Americans took the body home but they did do something with the brain and found that there

was something wrong with his brain and he’d killed these, murdered these women just

walking down the street. Right opposite where the children’s hospital is now and cause the

children’s hospitals built inside the Royal Park and the American army had taken over the

Royal Park and built all these Nissan huts and that’s where all the fellas used to stay so that

it was him that murdered. Anyway it was getting near the end of the war and dad had found

a place for me in the PMG and this is where I had always wanted to work. I had never really

wanted to be a typist it was just a thing that most girls did in those days but I always wanted

to be actually I always wanted to be a technician. I always wanted to be a mechanic in the

PMG and they wouldn’t employ women as mechanics they were inferior people. But in the

end the cause dad I have a cousin on mums side who was a telephonist, one of the first

telephonist in Geelong and I knew Nancy and I knew her well and I thought she was great

and she worked as a telephonist and I knew dad would love to be me to be in there cause he

loved his PMG and so I went in there. I really wanted that was my life I wanted to be a

telephonist and I became a telephonist and the first job I got after I was interviewed and I, I

was trained and I went on to Central first and Central in those days was very, very primitive.

They can look at the pictures of Central in the 1888 when they first started the American

company came over here and started the telephone system and I can look at those photos

and it didn’t change from then to when I was working there in 1944 something like that. It

was still the same primitive place, great place to work I loved it. I loved every bit of it hard,

hard work everyone used to call all the shops in Melbourne used to go through all the

businesses in Melbourne used to go through that exchange and they had a 10,000 I can

remember the electricity company was 10 Central 10,000 and there would be 50, 100 girls

working on the boards. And we stood up the whole time we were working and we used to be

flat out and we had supervisors listening to us and we’d never know and they were always

listening to us so you, you had to work. We had one woman, her name was Miss Harvey,

Dot Harvey and she was a dreadful woman and she was so, she used to tell us off for

anything, but I still loved the job it was great all shift work. So I went into there and then I

went from Central to Country Trunks which was handling places like Geelong and Ballarat,

were all Country Trunks and then and that’s where I was first molested. I was no I wasn’t it

was my second molest I was molested by my uncle when I was a small child 3, 4 year old. I

was molested by this fella but I wasn’t the only one with this fella probably wasn’t the only

one with my uncle either. This fella his name was Roy Stewart and he was a, he was a

horrible man and he used to pick us girls and he’d on all nights he’d say to us ‘You and you,

you go upstairs and you test our boards,’ and if we they didn’t like the country girls, Country

Trunk girls because they thought we were a little above them which we weren’t we just got

on a bit better that’s all. So we were sent back to Central to test the boards on all nights and

he used to get his big fat stomach and he used to wait till we were together, two girls

standing together and then he’d wriggle his way in with his stomach and then he’d run his

hand all over us and because he was the boss we’d be sacked if we complained and we

used to get we used to say the each other when we’d get down stairs again we’d say ‘Awe

that Roy Stewart he is the most horrible man,’ and we’d complain to the supervisor and

she’d say ‘What can I do? We’ll all get the sack if, if anything if we say anything and he’ll

only say it didn’t happen.’ So in the end we all got together one day 12 months later and we

all said we went to Dot Harvey of all people, the lady we didn’t like and we said to her

‘You’ve got to do something because none of us we all refuse in a block to go back up there

when Mr Stewart is on and test.’ And Mr Stewart eventually was caught and threw himself

over the balcony at the exchange, committed suicide and all we could say was ‘Good

riddance,’ because I don’t know what he did to other girls but he made us sick any way that

was Mr Stewart. And then we had we went on to then I went on to trunks what they called

demand in which was interstate, no it was country like Mildura and all those and we had

delay boards and awe that was great that what was great working and that was working with

we were even better than England in those days we had the most modern trunk boards in

the world in those days, England sent some people over cause I’ve got photos here of these

photos of the people all the photos were taken of our trunk boards and I’m in it with many

other people. And then from there I went on to interstate and that was very interesting

because I mean interstate is only Sydney and you, and you can ring Sydney you can talk to

Sydney many ways now but in those days we’d have about well I remember plainly having

two boards that we worked on for Sydney flat out absolutely flat out, dockets absolutely piled

high and just staff were forever on those boards working to Sydney and that was the only

way you got Sydney was going through a trunk board you just couldn’t dial Sydney. This

happened to them all and to get on all nights in the, in the interstate we to put a call on to

England all of us would have something to do with that call, it was so unique and I can

remember plainly once a man was dying in Victoria and his daughter was over in England

and she wanted to speak to him and they dragged the bed to the door of the bedroom and

they stretched the phone out and she was screaming out at her father ‘I love you dad,’ and

the tears, cause we had to stay on the line all overseas calls operators had to sit on the line

at all time because they were so valuable and that the line and it could drop out and the

people paid such big money that they had if they dropped out the operator had to know

immediately so they could stop the charging till they relocated the call you see. So we were

online if we and I was on the line this night tears pouring down my face tears pouring down

every body’s face as I was relaying this terrible sad message as this girl was saying good

bye to her dad because he was dying. And then after that we went on to, during that near

the end of the war I was yes I’ve gone ahead the war was over by then but just at the end of

the war when I was still down in, in country trunks we had this word to say that “’The war

was over, the war was over,’ and I was working until 9.30 that night and Dawn Berridge and I

who, she was my girlfriend there, we were both working that night and we said come on as

soon as 9.30 came and we went come on and we got out and we were going down we had

no idea what we were going to meet and when we got into Melbourne itself cause we were

just about 4 streets up in Lonsdale Street and but when we got down into Golden Square

proper and people were absolutely everywhere it was chock a block no transport was going

everyone was on the lines it was trains, trams, buses anything people had blocked them all

off you couldn’t get home. I was able to ring mum and say ‘I can’t get home,’ and she was

crying cause the war was over and she was happy and says ‘Just be careful,’ and you’re

walking along this street and then suddenly fellas coming running towards you and he just

picks you up in his arms flings you around in the air and he gives you a big kiss and says

‘The wars over,’ and drops you down and walks off or runs off and this is what people were

doing and just going up and running up to everyone and kissing them and hugging them and

crying and, and it was just the most exciting thing and I was so grateful for that point in time,

I was so grateful for that point of time that I was able to, to experience that because it is

something you don’t experience too often but to be right there at that time.

GO: Was that VE Day or VJ Day?

LB: That was VJ Day it was actually I do agree with the little cons what’s the word the, the

little discussion there having. I can remember something about VP Day being mentioned but

officially or unofficially I don’t care and neither, neither do any of the Australians of that

period of time care what they say VJ was what we wanted to be because the Japanese did

invade our country. Mr Menzies was going to give half our country up and that’s proven

today and therefore it is VJ Day and that’s what it will stay in my children’s mind and I hope

my grandchildren’s forever.

GO: So, so how late were you getting home after the celebrations?

LB: I couldn’t tell you, well I don’t even know how I got home it was blank, blank, blank

because where I lived was so far out in the country that you had to get connection buses,

connecting buses or else walk and I mean I’ve walked, I walked that distance quite a few

times through missing a bus even around 9.30. So I don’t know if dad brought his little old

jalopy to a certain point and picked me up, I suppose I got a tram home. Dawn went in a

different direction altogether to me so I don’t know how I must have got a tram home to

Coburg and dad probably came and picked me up from there it’s only a guess. But after that

I, another thing I remember about the war was it was just after the war was over and I was

working in the GPO as a telephonist and I was doing some switch overing for something or

other and I remember Mr Roosevelt dying and that was the period of time when Mr

Roosevelt died that I remember so vividly. It was very sad because he was a very popular

President especially after meeting Mrs and so that was a very sad time.

GO: With one thing that you mentioned was that Bill had been, you’d been notified that he

was missing possibly dead. I believe at some stage he was identified as been dead?

LB: Yeah.

GO: Can you tell us about that?

LB: Yes Bill was to tell us later on when he came home and he didn’t realize until he went to

they for the prisoners of war they had a big reception at the Government House Gardens

inside Government House.

GO: So this would be how long after the end of the war?

LB: Months, a couple of months, 3 months 4 months something like that might have still

been in 45 or just flowing over into 46 and he went to this cause he lived at our place right

from the start when he came home.

GO: And when did he come home?

LB: He came home in 19; he came home on the 15 October 1945. He was released on the

15 August 1945 he was taken out of the prison camp in 1940, in 15 September 1945 and he

arrived home on the 15 October 1945. And Bill had gone to this garden party and he said he

was walking past he saw a man coming and he thought that’s Lieutenant McFarlane, I know

him and he walked over and he said ‘G’day sir,’ and McFarlane said ‘Hello thought I knew

your face, you’d be but you can’t be you’re dead.’ And Bill said ‘No I am very much alive sir.’

And he said ‘No you’re dead,’ he said ‘I identified you, how on earth can you be alive?’ It

turned out that Frank Bell who lived in Geelong was in the same whatever as him I don’t

know section group or whatever and Frank was the one who had died but Lieutenant

McFarlane identified he was the one who identified the body and identified it as William

Laurence George Bell, consequently Frank was buried under the name of Bill. It wasn’t until

Bill realized all this that everything got sorted out and then the family of Bill himself went

down to visit the family of Frank Bell and had a talk to them about it because he would have

been one of the last to see the. Mr Bell rang I think he rang me or his sister or somebody

rang and they said that Bill was alive and that who’d found him and where he was and I got

this thing and I’d sent off these letters and I went to work one day and I think mum and dad

must have got the first part of the phone call cause they used to think it was great to, to not

tell me things and let it happen so that then they lived the excitement with me but I think they

must have got the phone call from Bill finding out when he came home like he’d been writing

me all these letters he wrote all these letters on, on cheese paper, rice paper and other sorts

of paper but and even the rice paper one, had writing on both sides and it’s so faded now

but I’ve still got them and I’ve got all these letters and there still wrapped up in the same

Manila envelope that he sent me and that in itself is exciting getting those letters because

during the war I gave my push bike to our friend who became the Post, Post Lady because

all the boys had gone to war and there was no one to Post to be a Postman. So Nancy

Stewart went over to the PMG and said ‘Well I can be a Postman,’ ‘Ladies can’t do that.’

‘Well I can so,’ and she’d fight for her right so she didn’t have a bike so dad said ‘Would you

lend her your bike for your war effort? So I lent her my push bike for the war effort and

Nancy used my bike to go around. One day Nancy knowing Bill was had been found and

was going to be coming home, Nancy rang me about 5 o’clock in the morning because she

was over at the Post Office, Pascoe Vale Post Office sorting out the mail to put it in order to

put it in her bag to deliver and she sees Lorna Bell, Lorna Ploog, Lorna Ploog, Lorna Ploog

censors on them and from, from Manila or somewhere, where the depot was where all the

POW mail was going to and she all those letters coming through so she rang me and I fell

out of bed and answered the phone and she said ‘Lorna can you get over here straight

away? You don’t want to wait till I, I deliver your letters this afternoon.’ ‘Awe,’ she said

‘Here’s a whole lot of letters for you from Bill.’ Well I didn’t even have any pants on. I ran for

me life I just had me dress right over me head still in my nightie and I went down the hill and

up and over the creek and up the other hill all in paddocks and prickles and everything with

an old pair of shoes on, not me hair not done or anything and I raced over and I sat at Nanna

Stewarts, cause Nancy said she’d bring the letters for her morning tea. She would bring

them to Nanna Stewarts so I brought I got to Nanna Stewarts and I half going and Nanna

says ‘What’s the matter, what’s the matter with your mother?’ and I said ‘Nothing, nothing.

Nancy’s bringing some mail for me,’ so I sat there and had a cup of tea with them while

Nancy came over and she gave me these letters and I opened them up and they were from

Manchuria and they were from Manila and then the letters start coming in and I just kept

them all. And so then I heard somehow or other that the, the it was his uncle, his uncle, his

uncle rang, his uncle eventually turned out to be a rat but his uncle rang and he was very

nice to me and he said ‘We’re going in, we have permission as a family to come in and Bill’s

coming home and we have permission to go in and there’s so many tickets we can get one

for you. Would you like one?’ And I said ‘Well um, um yes thank you,’ feeling a bit you know,

he was only a boyfriend. I mean there was no attachment to being married or anything but

they thought it was significant enough so they said they’d get it. So I had to go over and

have lunch or tea or something with them one day, wore this great big hat oh dear me when

I imagine now what I look like and I went over to his uncles and they made arrangements

that I was to be at a certain place and they would pick me up and they would take me to the

Show Grounds when Bill was coming in. So we all went down to the Show Grounds his poor

old dad he was full of arthritis and he, he lived on his own it was just he was the most

gorgeous man his father and he was an alcoholic but he was a gorgeous gentle man and I

visited him before Bill came and I’d seen him and anyway he, he came and we waited and

waited and each we had to go into the big cattle pavilion and all the fellas were brought in

there and as they came through the doors all the, all the families were all there in the cattle

pavilion and all the men came through the doors and men came through with great big fat

stomachs like pregnant men and, awe the, the sight of some of those men were absolutely

horrific. The bone had just skin and bone you wouldn’t you’d wonder how they could even

walk on their legs they were so thin and, and, and in came Bill and I hardly recognised him

and I just stood back cause I was so shy, I just stood back and he came in and he, he gave

his father a hug and he hugged his sister and he shook hands with Uncle Cliff and he walked

over and he just put his two great big huge arms around me and gave me a great big hug. I

didn’t know what to say I was just so awed, what was I 17, 17, I suppose 17 ½ and I was just

so awed by all this, this business and any way then we had to take him home. So we took

him home to his father’s place in the car and they had a bit of a beer up there and different

cousins I didn’t know any of them in those days yes I did I knew Joyce. I had always known

Joyce from Joyce came from the Carnarvon group that that originally introduced me to Bill

and Frank was there. Any way then they had a parade down the street so Bill had to go back

in to have this parade in buses no that’s right that came before the, the cattle shed the

parade came first as they came off the trains from Sydney they had to get on to buses and

then they went through the city and we were in the city with I was with Joyce and we were

his cousin and we were all waiting but we never did see Bill in the bus. And then they were

driven from there over to the Show Grounds and we get got in the car and raced over to the

Show Grounds and that’s where it all fitted in and then we went back to his place and he was

only living there for about two or three weeks and one of his cousins his cousin Georgie, not

Georgie any way one of his Parker cousins it’s the one who married the Aboriginal lass, had

5 children that he, he actually stole all Bills uniforms one day when he was out. He because

Bill had the American fur coats you know those when they came out the Americans gave

him, gave all at camp cause it was cold they gave them the American leather jackets were

full of lamb’s wool and so they he pinched all that and he walked down the street to

Melbourne as a soldier and I think he got picked up but so any way Bill came to our place to

live because things weren’t too good down there. He just couldn’t settle into life down there

so mum said ‘Come up and live with us if you like,’ so he did and remember the first night he

sat down to eat a meal and mum had this beautiful steak. Prisoner of war and he hadn’t

eaten anything for so long and this poor man I’m going to fill him up and mum had all this

food on the table and Bill had about two mouthfuls of steak that would be all and he said ‘I’m

sorry I can’t eat anything else,’ he said. Just the fact of looking at the food made him so full

that he just couldn’t eat; his stomach just couldn’t take it. And so he lived there at our place

until we were married and I remember mum he used to live in our sleep in our dining room

she had a spare bed in there and I remember mum who’d go in and wake him up of a

morning cause we got him a job in the he was one of the first he was in the first group of

men to go into the PMG as a telephonist. We got I got him in there and there were about

eight men and they were all chosen and he was one that was chosen and he was a

telephonist for 11 months and then he got the Government gave the boys, he wanted to be a

carpenter so they put him through a carpentry course. But one night one many a time mum

would go in and he would be sound asleep and for a long while he couldn’t sleep in a bed

properly cause he’d always slept on concrete you see and mum would go in she would say

‘Bill wake up,’ and he would immediately, immediately sit up to attention just come straight

up like a wooden doll and sit up to attention and salute and go slurp because you always

had to suck the air from the ground, you see the Japanese always go slurp like because that

is sucking the air, the dirty air from your feet, that’s them being honourable so the prisoners

always had to go slurp and then answer there number, 12 1217 so immediately mum would

touch him to wake him up he would go slurp1217 like that and salute and it took a long while

for him to get used to not doing it. It took a long while for us to get used to it and he, he was

he was alright you didn’t notice anything wrong with him, he had to go he had to go into

Heidelberg cause he had things wrong with him. He had dengue fever he had sebaceous

cysts he had beriberi he, he was diagnosed with eight different complaints which he got a

small war pension for. Didn’t ever it wasn’t until he was living in Western Australia that he

even got a TPI pension and he a lot of the prisoners and Bill was one of them many, many

prisoners of the Second World War were treated very badly by the Government after they

came back. They were given no treatment at all outside of what the original check-up was.

Oh your beriberi will go, oh your dysentery will go, amoebic dysentery was another one, oh

you’re just got to put up with that, just get on with your life. This was the just the thing and

they never got they never got any psychological help much to our families stress. I mean our

family as children our children and that have gone through hell with their father only because

his, his problems with the Japanese and how he was treated and he, he has never been

able to sort of express himself and he’s lived through some very dramatic things and those

kids some of our children have had because the Japs did it to him he felt he, he didn’t know

he was doing it but he would slash out the same way as the Japs had slashed out to him

when he was 18 and 19 year old. And they didn’t have any of the do gooders to come along

and say ‘Well you don’t do that in these days you know.’ So the war had ended and he

came back and every one as with all the others all his mates we were very friendly with all

his mates and had a lot to do with them and every one of them had very bad psychological

problems. Jim Clancy and George Harris he had very bad psychological problems and so in

the end with none of them being treated the all the wives and we’ve all most of the wives

have since met at various times, not often and these wives all say the same story as I do, it’s

a real it’s been a real hard time having to live with these ex POWs of the Japanese.

End of Disc 1

Start of Disc 2

LB: We got married on the 18 of January 1947 and beautiful day. We’d already had conflict

with the uncle, Bills uncle who had written a letter, nasty letter and said he wouldn’t be at the

wedding because he didn’t approve of the marriage, religion wise of course and told a few

lies about his father because Bill’s father had already died but Bill’s father died five, four or

five months after Bill came home and so he, his mother had died just before he joined up

and he joined up in the army and he was taken prisoner of war straight away and then his

father died five months after he came back. So I think he’d had enough on his plate by this

time, so the uncle start to cause a bit of problems and so he was very quickly dropped while

he was in his funny moods and then we got on with our married life and we lived at mums

place for a while and then Bill being a carpenter we built a 30ft bungalow in mums back yard,

mum and dad’s back yard on his dads beautiful garden patch. He gave up his garden patch

for us so we could put this bungalow on there and with four Naco windows in it and a door

and a bed, a kitchen dining, kitchen it was two rooms and it was divided by canvas, a canvas

wall and we had our bedroom and the eldest girl in a cot and she was the only one we had at

that point of time but we’d had twins and they died and so we only. After we did get married

I better clarify a bit of that after we did get married, Laurie was born exactly 12 months later

on the 5 January in 48 and on the 1 December in 48 twins were born, two boys and they

died and there was even a trauma there because after they died the Women’s Hospital in

Melbourne said that they would do all the registration etc because we were in trauma over it

and we were young and didn’t know what we were doing in those days and they said they

would register them and Bill said what about the funeral and he, they said we will arrange

that and we never heard any more of it and of course being so young you don’t think of

things like that. So we just trusted the Women’s Hospital and it was 40 years later only

recently that my eldest daughter had decided that she’d had enough of nonsense of the

Women’s Hospital for all the times I questioned it, where they were buried and why didn’t

they have a birth certificate etc and they came up with all sorts of excuses like fictitious

cemeteries that didn’t exist that they were buried in and things like that and it started to get

very suspicious so Laurie decided to do something about that and we’ve now found out that

they weren’t buried at all that the hospital burnt them in the incinerator and that they’ve just

recently given me a letter telling me that they recognized that found a card to say that I had

given birth to the twins on the 1 December 1948 so I have got some proof now. And so after

they were born and died we had still living in this bungalow in the back yard and then we

brought a block of land in Broadmeadows and we decided to, to move the bungalow up to

Broadmeadows we wanted to be independent of mum and dad. We were starting to grow up

now and having family and we realized we wanted to get away on our own so went up to

Broadmeadows it was all paddocks and we’d originally gone up there after we’d brought the

block of land right near the station 50 pound paid for it on the corner of Langdon Street and

Camp Road the was known then it’s now known as Johnson Street and while we were in we

dug one Cup Day in the November we dug something like 30 stump holes in very solid clay

black soil, black and clay soil with crowbars and we had a little toilet Bill had built and we left

all our tools in there locked up and we used to call it Petunia in the onion patch cause you

could see it for miles sitting in the paddock and we’d go up there and if it rained we, we

would sit, sit in the toilet cause there’s no pan there we’d sit in the toilet and with all the tools

and everything until it finished raining. We’d often ride our bike up there and take the eldest

the only daughter we had then on the front of the bike and then we’d she’d play around in

the paddock while, we, we dug all these holes and, and then when we got the stumps down

we got the bungalow and had somebody brought it up and it cost us 15 pound, we had 17

pound in our bank that’s all we had to our name and we paid 15 pound for the carrier to

come and dump the 30ft bungalow on our block of land and then we, we did it on a Friday

night and, and we paid him the 15 pound and we had 2 pound to live with till Bill’s next pay

and on the Monday morning the building inspector came over cause we were right opposite

the Town Hall, the Shire Offices actually it was only one big, one small building the Shire

Offices at Broadie at the time we sat there and he knocked on the door and he said to me

‘You’ve got no right to be here, you haven’t got a building permit.’ I said ‘We’ve got a building

permit for the, the house,’ and he said ‘But you can’t live in the bungalow on here you’ll have

to move it.’ And I said ‘Well you’ll have to pay for the movement cause we don’t have any

money and what’s more all the displaced people that you’ve got in camp in on the other side

of Camp Road were full of them absolutely full of them living in chicken sheds and

everywhere and you’re not stopping them so why should you stop us. But it was different you

see we were Australians so we, we had to we were supposed to pack up and take our

bungalow somewhere else.

GO: What do you mean by displaced persons?

LB: Well displaced persons is the original name called for any settlers that came from other

countries like, what they call today what’s the name there migrants like the boat people and

but not the boat people, no there like the migrants that come in here there the same as

refugees today but they were displaced persons through the war and there were lots of

people, Lithuania and all those areas and these people came over and they did live in

chicken sheds, chicken runs they had little humpies. I remember one women, one women

was feeding her new born baby with John Bull rolled oats, she didn’t know any different and

the health centre sister went down to see her and cause the hospital had notified that she

was there and found this 14 day old baby was getting fed every meal with John Bull rolled

oats. I mean these, these poor people were you know in a terrible way but they wouldn’t

allow us to live on our land in a decent bungalow so we could be on spot to build all the time

build our house up yet they’d let these people live there for as long as they like in filth and

everything and yet it didn’t worry them. So that threat was enough to stop them from sending

us off on our way and we were already paying rates so but we had no water so we found

that there was a water main, we used to climb the fence after the Shire Council officers went

home we used to climb the locked fence Bill did with buckets and he’d fill the buckets up and

then he’d bring the buckets back and we that’s how we used to have our drinking water and

our wash up water and that and then from there we I used to, to boil my clothes in a, in a

kerosene tin on two bricks out in the in the paddock. And I had another child there Sally

Anne and so the four of us were in the bungalow and it was good living in the bungalow it

was we saw our first snow in Broadmeadows from the bungalow one morning and that was

when I was having Sally Anne and then, then from there we built our house we shifted into

this great big home it was a very big place it was about 20 squares and Bill had built the

whole lot oh, Bill and me I used to help him push all the walls up and I used to chop out all

the joints to fit the different walls together and I used a chisel and hammer and I’d sit there

and chop them all out and I used to have to walk Laurie to two miles to school up and down

hills down to the Broadmeadows State School and it was a good life hard but really

rewarding we had a goat and a sheep Margie, Margie turned out, Margie was our goat and

Judy was our lamb but turned out to be a boy once we had it shorn. That took 3 years to

finds that out and so and we had 40 guinea pigs and had lots of bush fires we had to fight

but it was a great life and that’s where we started up there we started up the Broadmeadows

Progress Association we brought we started up the Women’s Welfare Organisation there

was only 22 houses in the whole of Broadmeadows in those days, now it is a Metropolis it’s

like Joondalup’s going to be a second city and it’s all Housing Commission and they took the

old Broadies name away anyway we cause getting off the subject. We, we started up all

these organisations and we assisted the Baby’s Home, Bill was secretary to the Baby’s

Home in Broadmeadows, St Joseph’s, for quite a while and I started up the Scouts and the

Guides and Brownies and we were involved with everything in Broadmeadows before it

became a big place and then suddenly the Country Roads Board one morning I was sitting, I

went up the shop you had to go up to the shop for everything it was just one shop old Mrs

White who lived there and she had, had this shop in Broadie for years right outside the

station and I had to go up there one morning and I came back and I hadn’t read the

headlines until I got back and I sat on the steps of the bungalow and I opened up the paper

to read the headlines and right across the front it had ‘Broadmeadows blanketed for Housing

Commission redevelopment’ and I thought I wonder what that means blanketing, anyhow I

find out later that any one that had land or homes or anyone privately in Broadmeadows no

longer really owned their homes they would all be brought back from the government, by the

government and that you could never sell your home and that was blanketing. So for about

oh it must be 10 years I suppose at a guess I we lived in our home knowing that our home

wasn’t really our home even though it was our home, but it didn’t matter what we did to

improve it or anything it would eventually go because the Housing Commission was just

going to take us over. So eventually they did take us over to the detriment of my last baby

whom I claim died because of the stress because Bill couldn’t take the responsibility,

wouldn’t he, he, he was too frightened to fight bureaucracy, he was too frightened to face to

fight people who had power because he was taught by the Japanese at a very young age

not to fight people in governments, people with authority. So I was the one that had to fight

for even oh we didn’t get any compensation but I got $1,000 more than what they wanted to

pay us for our house and we just had to take and they gave us no compensation for our

house, no body assisted us nobody came and said well help you fight nobody really cared

that all our houses were disappearing. 22 houses all disappeared eventually from

Broadmeadows.

GO: Was Bill a member of the RSL?

LB: Bill was a member of the RSL didn’t do a damned thing for him so he gave up the RSL

but became we always have been members of the Prisoners of War Association, a great

mob very friendly great and still are were still life members of them but there hands were tied

we had a good Member of Parliament of course what I didn’t have you is that before we

were married and we were going and before we brought the block of land at Broadmeadows

we were going to buy we had already brought by off Joyce, I’ve mentioned before her Bill’s

cousin, we brought a block of land from her in York Street in Strathmore and the York Street

Strathmore one was taken over by the government for a freeway while we were still living in

the bungalow at mums and we had applied and received permission to build a brick home, 3

bedroom brick home in York Street and that’s where the bungalow was originally going to be

taken to and Mr, I’ve forgotten his name, anyway a member of Parliament who was our

member of State Parliament came to us one day and he, we’d applied for a loan through the

through the Coburg Building Society and this fella was one of the members of the board and

he came to us when he’d read our application and where our land was and he said ‘There’s

a reason why you won’t get this loan,’ and we said ‘Why?’ and he said ‘Because the

government is going to take this land over for a freeway,’ which eventually became the

Tullamarine Freeway and he said all homes would be demolished so we won’t give you were

not going to lend you the money for building a home there and this is how we found out so

we eventually had to sell that land virtually hand the land over. We got about $60 for it so

with that we brought the land at Broadmeadows so that was the first lot of land that was

taken over. But the strange part was that after we had sold the land and, and we’d brought

the land at Broadmeadows the tennis club, the health centre, health centre etc down in

Loman Street had complained because they and York Street were going to be taken, could

be a little wrong here but, but in streets but it was somewhere like that and because this

tennis and the kindergarten and them complained the health centre all complained about it,

they didn’t want all their buildings to be demolished the government eventually decided to

leave those two streets and move it over one street and take the other streets that didn’t

have anything in them so the other people lost out and we could’ve still been living in that

York Street house. It was right opposite the State School and beside the shops in

Strathmore so were now by this time up in Broadmeadows, so we built our house and

everything went fine there until we got this blanketing of the house and so we eventually as

time was going on we had to push, we could we got no help from the Council, Bill was

working for the Council at the time as a Council Clerk of Works and got no help from the

Council we got no help from anybody it didn’t matter who we turned to no one. So I had to do

it myself and it was very stressful fighting governments etc and then eventually I went to we,

we were brought out and then they didn’t get rid of the house for another four or five years

the people next door who also were moved out eventually they had it ready their eldest son

rented it out from the Housing Commission for quite a few years till one of their children

burnt the front room down and then the Housing Commission decided to move the house.

Now we wanted, we wanted to keep the own that house to keep it and we asked the

Housing Commission in Victoria would they relocate us on another block of land that’s all we

asked for, you can put us in the country you can put us anyone but let us keep our house

because the house, housed six children comfortably ‘Why can’t we just have it lifted and put

on the?’ ‘Oh we can’t do that, we don’t do things like that,’ so they sold the house eventually

for something like 5 or 6 hundred dollars but we by this time were in Boronia. So all this

trauma is no good for Bill, he’s in and out of hospital, he’s diagnosed with spondylitis which

is a crippling spinal disease, in those days not curable you’re going to be a complete never

walk again once it takes over. Saw many of the fellas that at the hospital, Heidelberg

Hospital that were in this condition and would never walk again and we moved to Boronia

and as the children got older Bill would, would hit them and he would scream at them and

now I can talk to him and he will not remember. I don’t bring up to much of it but I drop little

things and he doesn’t remember he doesn’t believe it, he doesn’t know that he’s ever done

these things because he had no help. In the end it got so bad I was speaking to a friend of

mine once and her son beg, I had all sorts of traumas this young fella and he was also a bad

bed wetter so his mother had got in touch with the Observatory Clinic which is a government

run thing and had psychologist and psychiatrists there and Dr McLean was the head

psychiatrist and Johnny was being seen by Dr McLean and Beryl was telling Dr McLean how

bad Bill was at times with his, with his traumas and his way his things he did sort of things

that would go on and his unexplainable sort of moods and things and the doctor knew

straight away what Bill, Beryl, Beryl had put him into he had been a prisoner of war etc ‘Oh

yes,’ he said ‘Those poor devils they never got any treatment at all.’ he said ‘They were just

thrown out and let get into the community.’ So he said ‘Send the wife in,’ so I went in for

quite a while without him knowing and mum and dad knew so they would mind the kids for

me and I used to go in and talk to him and he used to say to me ‘Do you think you can get

him in?’ Well I’d ask him ‘Oh no I’m not going see any shrink why should I see a shrink?

There’s nothing wrong with me.’ And I said, ‘I’d say to him, but he’s helping me to

understand you so why don’t you come in?’ Any way he wouldn’t he’d go in as far as

Eastwood even drive me all the way up to the building and he would back in to the building

beside where Dr McLean’s office was and I would go around and go in to the office and he

would sit in the car and wait for me but he would not go in and get treated he said ‘He’d gone

through life so far alright as he thought so why should he?’ and Dr McLean was absolutely

brilliant with me, he was able to explain why he was doing these things and then after he

would explain then he would tell me how to handle it and I went through a lot of my married

life by going into Dr McLean and Dr McLean saying ‘Yes now that is not the right way it

should happen so now what you do is go back now you handle it this way,’ and that’s how I

got through all my marriage. But I think one of the greatest things that helped me was that I

was able to meet sometimes meet the other wives not often might be years between, come

over here once when we were going around Australia and we looked up Jim Clancy and his

wife and one day we were all talking we had a meal together the three boys were with us

and, and everyone was very happy and we went out to do the washing up and there was

only her and I and things were very careful as to what each other said to the other and then

something came out about ‘Oh it’s been pretty hard,’ one of us said and she said ‘And have,

have you really handled it?’ she said ‘Not the best at times’ and then told her about going to

the psychiatrist and she said ‘Oh it’s been hell,’ and she said ‘You talk to any of the wives

and they’re all had a battle of what we’ve had to go through with these men,’ and still none of

them Jim never got TPI, George Harris never got TPI, Roy Menzies never got TPI. Now

Bill’s got TPI for deafness because a bomb dropped down beside him and ruined his hearing

and never for the other traumas he’s got never for the other illnesses he’s got and the only

thing that brought Bill out of the whole lot everything was while we were living in Boronia an

English man who I don’t know how he if he was he wasn’t a prisoner of war but he was very

interested in prisoners of war, Manchuria who were the English as Bill was the pom’s and

he’d been talking to a couple of these English people and he was wanting to write a book on

Manchurian prisoners of war basically on the English and they kept me talking about Dingle

Bell because Dingle Bell had the doll Freddie and how this Freddie was the great, the great

helper of all these fellas in the camps and how Fred would always come out at the right time

when everyone was terribly down. And so he would like to meet or write to Bill Bell so

somebody gave Bill oh I think he wrote to the POW Association in Victoria and they gave

him Bill’s address in Boronia. Bill got this letter one day from this English man said ‘Oh I

haven’t got the time to do that,’ cause by this time he’d had a car accident and he couldn’t

work anymore and he was real crook and he was only in his 50’s and that’s when I had to go

back and work to keep the family because he just couldn’t work he never did work again

after the bad car accident and then he was diddled out of his compensation there and the

car ran into him and the women killed herself but there was no way he was to blame and he

had 25 witnesses, only problem was they were all Italians who didn’t speak English and they

had a young boy Italian boy from the station masters office on the railways to do the

interpreting and because he didn’t he wasn’t too good as an interpreter either so you know it

didn’t work too good for Bill on the, on the compensation section of it. But Bill wrote to this,

this I’d, I’d talked him into writing to the fella I said ‘I think it would do you good’ and Dr

McLean had been behind that anyway and Bill used to write and he would lock himself up in

a room and he’d write, write and he’d write and he wrote all of his experiences in the

Japanese war camp to this fella he’s still got a copy of the letters here, but sadly we shifted

to Western Australia around the same time as he’d just about finished the story and we do

not know to this day if that fella ever wrote a book. I presume he did but for some reason or

other our letters never came no more letters came from him so I presume that he’s lost our

address and couldn’t find us. We lost contact with him but this man was the instigator of Bill

sort of settling down in life and realizing, he’s never realized but he’s able to work himself out

of it and become a quieter and calmer person. Thank god he’s, he never went to alcohol so I

didn’t have that problem it was just that he had been treated so badly that, that it left a

trauma and it’s, it’s still coming through with the children, but Bernard he’s so protective of us

that he can’t settle down because of it so there’s, there’s little things showing up in the

children over it and of course the children of today and the and our children and the children

of today that’s old hat war because war is something you just hear of, you don’t experience

and I know the feeling because I knew that before our war came up and I was old enough to

just to understand that oh their used to be a war 30 years before I was born but it wouldn’t

be 30 years, 15 years before I was born and that was old hat. There was nothing, nothing

much about that so I suppose that’s about, about all I can say.

GO: Lorna you talk about Bill and his Freddie, can you explain about that?

LB: Freddie, Freddie our other little boy, ugly little thing. Bill has probably told you he had

Freddie since he was 14 and when he went away of course he couldn’t take the real Freddie

so he was packed away. But on the boat he made another one he carved one out of wood

and then I think the Japs probably cons I think they took that and then when he got into the

Manchuria camp when they had the they tried to have these concerts and one or two that

they were able to get through, the Freddie was on there and but he was always with Bill in

his pocket and Bill’s very clever at words and he used to go around and cheer people up and

say ‘Oh well Mayfars,’ which is the Chinese expression meaning ‘Well to bad just keep

going, it’s life,’ and he, he through this doll was Bill’s doll was Freddie and he was and each

one of them was just so special to the men because the men enjoyed them, it was one of the

great enjoyments that Bill was able to keep, mainly keep from the Japs and, and when he

came home he used to do a lot of it and he never moved his mouth he, he was as good or

better than Ron Blaskett who used to be a ventriloquist with Gerry Gee and for years Ron

Blaskett was the ventriloquist all over Australia well known and we used to laugh cause

because his, his mouth used to move we could see that but Bill’s never did he was extremely

good. I suppose because he had done it so early and we brought the kids dolls the old Gerry

Gee dolls but they were never a success they were never as interested and but everywhere

we went we went to neighbours places and the doll always went with us, we always had the

doll in the case just when everyone it was just natural to take Freddie. If some we wouldn’t

push him on to people if somebody said ’Oh it’s a pity you didn’t bring Fred,’ ‘Oh Fred’s

outside if you want to see him,’ ‘Oh bring him in,’ and of course adults and all would fall over

backwards laughing I mean he, he’s just so hysterical when Bill gets going you could say the

funniest of things and of course Freddie can be so rude to people and he gets his ears

boxed and he gets told off by Bill and Freddie can call you all sorts of names that’s like you

can do these things today you can say you’re not allowed to say anything today but people

can get away with saying things by being funny and of course Freddie was Bill’s funny doll

and he, he would he would say ‘You don’t your dress doesn’t look to well does it why don’t

you put a better dress than that on?’ and of course Bill would say ‘Don’t be rude Freddie you

don’t talk like that,’ and of course the doll wouldn’t take any, any offence to that and the

boy’s the kids I can remember Ray Stewart, two Stewart grandchildren, Benny, Stuart and

Robert and there was another one and they would never drink milk and they wouldn’t eat

vegetables by golly when Freddie go over to visit ‘You drank your milk,’ ‘No, no,’ ‘Why

haven’t you drank your milk? I drink my milk and I expect every child to drink their milk all the

little children like me should drink milk. Look what it does to me?’ and he was the ugliest

thing and these kids would say ‘Freddie said I’ve got to drink my milk’ and he would they

would drink their milk up they would eat their vegetables and if they didn’t mum would be on

the phone, ‘Bill when can you come over and have another word? Freddie come over and

have another word with.’ it was and you know it’s only ever I suppose Laurie’s, and maybe

Kerry can remember Freddie and start to die away and the three boys hardly know him but

even the boys know him more than the grand children but he doesn’t bring him out now. I

think Freddie was part of his expression to the world, it was part of his way of expressing to

the world his hatred of things and, and the discipline that was bred into him and everything

but he, he was good he was really I love Freddie. So we decided only recently because our

grandchildren never see Freddie and what I think it’s a shame because it something they will

really remember their grandfather by once they get over the fear. All kids have got a fear of

him to start with but then they have a respect for him they still don’t come near him but they

have a respect for him and they will talk to him and they always like you going to bring him

out and I, I said to him only recently I really think that it’s a pity that your grandchildren don’t

see him. So he’s now been brought out and he’s now sitting on my grandfather’s chair that

I’ve got a tapestry of the house done on the base of the chair and nobody’s allowed to sit on

that unless it’s a direct family member and so Freddie is allowed to sit on my grandfather’s

chair and he sits there the ugly thing he is with his leg crossed and his hand on the, the arm

of the chair and now today he would be there our two grandchildren come in and they’re

terrified of him, one’s not as frightened as the other one. So I think as the time comes on

hopefully that they’ll we won’t push him on to him they will just have to wander around and

I’ve got to say a few words to Bill about not about stopping them from while he’s there, they

he should let them touch him as he doesn’t want to show the, the hole with his hand in it at

the back of the doll that’s all. So that’s our Freddie and we love him dearly. He’s name by

the way is Fred A Needle, Thread A Needle actually but it’s Fred A Needle that’s his

name.

GO: Well Lorna I would like to ask you is there anything else you would like to tell us about

the war or your experiences after the war living and married to a prisoner of war?

LB: Ah the other thing that I suppose need to clarify was that this Mrs Briggon Condon-

Russell that I was speaking about she was the one who sent me the white feather when I

was aged 16 this was during the war. Strangely she’s the lady whose third husband or

defacto as we found out later was an alien, a German alien in the country illegally. She had

six children to him she sends me a white feather because I had a German name and a

German great-grandfather, and the thing I really I suppose wanted to clarify was that my

great-grandfather was German came out here in 1836 and all he a lot of his brother’s or a lot

of his sisters came out and my nephew as well and my grandfather who was the first born of

this German, he and his wife were not allowed to vote during the Second World War, sorry

through the First World War and I really didn’t get much discrimination none at school and

very little except for this white feather that was sent to me so I was lucky being able to live in

this country with a very German name without a lot of discrimination against me.

GO: Thank you very much Lorna for spending the time to talk to me about not only your war

time experiences but the follow on after the war, we really appreciate it thank you.

End of recording

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