I learned this morning that Terry died overnight.
As he got older he seemed to think that my father had been involved in arranging his medical evacuation from the nightmarish conditions he and the rest of the 2/5th Independent Commando Company had ended up in. They had put up a good fight. The 2/5th was the first of the Allied forces to make a land attack on the Japanese. Terry told me that he had been involved in an attack on a well dug in Japanese position and while charging forward, his commander was suddenly blown into the air. I have read that one trick the Japanese defenders used was to mount naval guns with their barrels parrallel to the ground. They would remove the projectile from the ammunition and simply fire a huge blast of air at attacking troops; knocking out more than a single projectile landing miles away would do.
For those who are interested in such things Wikipedia has an entry on the 2/5th here .
In December 2006 I wrote a blog article on Terry; and luckily I saved it and have reproduced it below.
Many of my previous blog posts do not exist, even in cyberspace, but the following post survived.
At the time I titled it "Independent Company Commando".
The bloke in this picture is 86. He is/was a bit younger than my Dad who would have been 88 had his heart not given out.
You can see Dad's heart on the Xray Viewing Box. I brought that Xray from Maryborough after Dad died. I use it as a teaching aid when I am explaining things about hearts/lungs/ribs/etc to my patients.
By careful questioning I have worked out that Dad and Terry walked on the same ground, although at different times.
Terry was a Commando in the 2nd/5th Independent Company deployed on the north coast of Papua New Guinea in WWII. Operating behind enemy lines he caused havoc before having to be extracted, suffering from malnutrition and with an enemy price on his head.
A bag of rice or a pig were the rewards offered to the locals should anyone tell the whereabouts of "Masta Terry".
Terry tells tales of eating frogs in order to survive, and grins when he talks of stealthily killing enemy soldiers with a shortened but very sharp .303 bayonet. He says that at that time he was doing a job which had to be done but, to this day, he feels sorry for the frogs.
Terry dotes on his carer who tried to escape the camera and leaned away when I took this shot.
I'm not sure why I have such a keen interest in things concerning the Australian Military; but I know my interest is not unique. Being born just after WWII has to have had its effect, and working out how, or if, to dodge the draft for Vietnam was another influence.
Last week an Australian Viet Nam Vet came to see me. He is on a TPI Pension for PTSD. [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder].
I talked to him about Terry. He talked to me about his father and he also talked about his father's mate who was also in Papua New Guinea during WWII.
His father's mate was at Milne Bay when the Japanese invaded. It was at Milne Bay that the Japanese Army was defeated for the first time on land. The victory was won by Australian soldiers.
Aussie diggers often say: It wasn't the Yanks. We did it.
What I had not known, before the Viet Nam Vet told me, was that our blokes poured enough petrol from 44 gallon drums onto the beach to soak it and then let the run-off cover the sea.
When the Japanese alighted from their landing craft, our blokes opend up with Bren Guns loaded with tracer bullets to set the petrol alight.
Someone with an independent mind must have thought up that trick.
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