A Tale of Two Anzacs

The following story has been given to us by Rod Chellas who has compiled information about the World War Two service of his father-in-law, Cudal local William Harry “Bill” Dean.

Bill was always very reticent to speak of his years in the Army and it was only after his death, that his daughter Joy and her husband Rod spoke to Bill’s army mate Roy Shean and Roy’s wife Freda and they were able to get some idea of his years spent in the service of his country. The following narrative is from a recording of that meeting with Roy and Freda just a year or two prior to Roy’s death on June 19th, 2010.

William Harry “Bill” Dean was ‘called up’ into the Army in August 1942 at the age of 23. It was there that Bill was to meet the man who would be by his side through almost all their years fighting for Australia; Roy Shean from the nearby town of Manildra. The two became very good mates.

Roy Shean and Bill Dean met on the Mail Train from Manildra to Bathurst where they were to go into camp for three months training in 1942. Being a couple of young bush boys, with not much experience of the world, and coming from nearby villages, they soon struck up a lasting friendship. After their training was completed, they were sent by rail to Melbourne, and from there they sailed to Fremantle.  In Roy’s words “There had been about 1200 refugees on the ship before us and the smell below was dreadful. We spent most of our time on deck to get away from the stench.” The crossing was very rough around the Great Australian Bight and there was a lot of seasickness amongst the men aboard.

Upon docking at Fremantle, they were transported to Midlands, between Perth and Fremantle. They spent another three months in camp there before being sent to Geraldton.

At Geraldton the recruits were split into groups of “about a dozen or so” and the groups were set up in tents on the coast between Geraldton and Broome “about 10 miles apart.” They were to spend “the best part of two years there” watching for any enemy activity around their section of coastline. They were fed “watery soup and dry bread once a day.” It was very windy on the coast and almost every night their bedding was “covered in sand.” In those 20 plus months they had no leave. Research shows that whilst there, Bill and Roy served with the 13th Brigade, Australian Army.

After their stint guarding the coast they were sent by train, from Geraldton, Western Australia to the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland. The rail journey took a fortnight, with two and a half days being spent crossing the Nullarbor “in a Dog-Box train.” The only times they left the train were for a one-night stopover in Melbourne, then being granted a ‘little bit of leave in Sydney’ and then continuing on to the Atherton. Once they had arrived there they were put into “Jungle training” in preparation for going to New Guinea. They trained there for a few months then were transported to Cairns. By then it was late 1944.

When the ship was leaving Cairns for New Guinea a band on the docks played “Now is the Hour when we must say Goodbye” and it was very emotional for all the troops! They docked at Aitape, on the North Coast of New Guinea on Christmas Day 1944.

The troops, on arrival at Aitape, stayed on board the ship for about a week before disembarking in barges. When the water got too shallow for the barges, they had to wade ashore. Here they were set up in a “rough camp for a month or so.” Then they began their mission to clear the Japanese from between their current camp position and Weewak, about 150 miles away. Their first objective was to take over an airstrip so the Japanese couldn’t land their planes. “We were there for a month or two” before accomplishing that task.

Roy then spoke of Lieutenant Albert Chowne his and Bill’s commanding officer. He said if they were out on patrol and killed any enemy soldiers Chowne “cut their ears off.” On one particular afternoon Lt. Chowne decided to go out on reconnaissance and chose Roy and Bill to go with him. He took them behind enemy lines and while Lt. Chowne was in the enemy huts looking for any records that may have been there, Bill and Roy were posted on either side of the enemy camp “watching out.”  While they were in the enemy camp shells were dropping between their current position and their home camp. When their mission was complete and they were returning to their base, they came upon “lots of dead Japs in a foxhole. They had been killed by the mortars while we were at their huts!” Thankfully Roy added it was the only time he and Bill were ordered to go behind the enemy lines with Lt. Chowne.

Roy then told us of one very traumatic engagement… “We were taking hills one at a time advancing slowly on the Japs. Two other platoons had had a go at a particularly difficult hill, but the Japs had pushed them back. It was us that took that hill because we had ‘The Mad Fella’ (Lt. Chowne) as I called him, leading us, nothing would stop him. The poor bastard got killed taking that hill.”

Of the 30 Australians who fought in that mission only nine survived, of course Roy and Bill were two of those nine. As I think about that one particular battle, where they lost their ‘Boss’ and twenty other mates, I get an idea of why Bill and Roy were very reluctant to speak about their time in New Guinea.

Lieutenant Chowne was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery that day. It was the first VC awarded to a soldier from the 6th Division, which had also fought in Greece and Crete earlier in the war. Another of the soldiers was awarded The Military Medal. “We got ‘mentioned in dispatches’ but didn’t get no medals.” Roy added.

The 6th Division kept on advancing through the jungle and were not far from Weewak when Roy got a serious skin disease that covered his whole body. This happened about “one or two weeks before the War ended.” That was when he and Bill were finally separated. Roy was sent firstly to Lae then to “Pindi to a skin hospital.” He landed there “the day the war ended.” He spent “three or four months at the hospital” then was shipped back to Australia to Bogan Gate “as a guard.” During that time he had no idea where Bill was “or what he was doing.”

“Over there we played footy together. Bill and I were together from the day we got on the train in Manildra until my skin complaint took me away, like I said, a week or so before the war ended. He was a great mate. We had 9 or 10 months together in New Guinea.”

In actual fact they had been together from August 1942 until August 1945.

Roy went on to tell us of the terrible conditions they endured, apart from the fighting. They were continually wet as it rained often and was extremely humid, never allowing anything to dry out. Their boots and socks were continually wet and “half the time your boots were full of leeches.” Each man was provided with one ground sheet. It was used as a tent at night, leaving nothing to sleep on but the bare ground. The ground sheet was also used to wrap their clothes in, as they held them above their heads while they forded rivers. One hand held their wrapped clothes aloft while the other hung on to a rope that had been stretched across the river.

He told us “The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels” as the natives of New Guinea were known during the war “were on the side of whoever was winning. As soon as a bullet was fired, they would be gone. They would carry our gear but disappear at the first sign of trouble.”  One day some of the natives pointed down the track and said “Japan Man… Japan Man.” The troops carefully advanced and found about “A dozen Japs” some around a campfire, some clearing trees. “We shot the lot of them!” Roy said. Often, they were required to man a machine gun covering the track. If you were engaged in that activity it was two hours on, then four hours off to sleep.

Food for the troops was dropped in by parachute from low flying planes. On a number of occasions soldiers were killed when a crate landed on them as they stood signalling where to make the drop.

Joy asked this question of Roy. “Did you feel it was your job to be there, or that you didn’t want to be there?”

Roy answered “About half and half. We never got a decent meal the whole time we were on the move.” He said  the best meal they had on the six months they were advancing towards Weewak “was  a kind of porridge we made from condensed milk mixed with crushed ‘dog biscuits.’” They never saw a slice of bread the whole time they were there. But in the camp before they pushed towards Weewak they did get a “big old stew cooked in a copper pot, that they added water too, when it got a bit low to make it go further. And if you had a few bob you could buy a tin of fruit at the canteen.”

Roy returned to the subject of Lt. Chowne and said he was killed only 20 or 30 miles short of Weewak. He added that when he got back to Sydney, he visited Mrs Chowne (who herself was in the Army) at her home.

We thanked Roy very much for what he had told us that day. Telling him that Bill never spoke of his time in the Army, and that it was nice to have an insight into what they had endured especially in New Guinea. Roy told us he himself was very reluctant to talk on the subject at first and it wasn’t until his later years that he was able to speak with some ease about it. He added that he and Bill never socialised a lot after the war but always caught up at least once a year. More than likely on Anzac Day.