Interviewed  by  George  Dick  and  tape-recorded  at 19  Henry  Lawson  Dr,  Peakhurst on 27th  August  1990

Not long after joining up I was sent to No 1 Engineering School at Ascot Vale, in Melbourne, where I did a trade course, at the end of which I was remustered as a Flight Rigger. From there I went direct to No 30 Beaufighter Squadron which was being formed at Richmond, arriving there on 17 June 1942 with three other FLight Riggers from Ascot Vale — J P Ryan, Lawrence C Webster, J A O'Donnell, and L R Nott. Two Flight Mechanics from Ascot Vale came with us to the Squadron — J W Reynolds and J G Selleck.

Other squadrons which were being formed there included No 4 Squadron (Wirraways), No 22 Squadron (Bostons), No 6 Squadron (Hudsons), and 100 Squadron (Beauforts)  The Beauforts went up north for a short time but came back to Richmond for aircraft modifications.

Some of the men did a conversion course on Beaufighters at No 2 Aircraft Depot, but that didn't include me: I did on-the-job training within the Squadron, and studied the one or two servicing manuals that had been produced in England. There were no Beaufighters at Richmond when I arrived, and while I was wandering around the station looking for the Orderly Room to report in on posting I was intercepted by Warrant Officer Leach — the Station WOD. "I'll show you how to find 30 Squadron", he said, giving me a broom. He made us sweep the parade ground, and do an emu parade, and, when we had done that and reported to him that we hadn't found the unit, he told us that the Squadron didn't exist yet. However, he gave me a leave pass for the afternoon and evening and told me to report to him the next morning. And that kind of thing went on for over a week or so — his main concern being that we didn't spend out time in the Clarendon Hotel since it was often visited during working hours by the Service Police. During those first couple of weeks I doubt if there were more than a dozen fellows in 30 Squadron, but

all of a sudden they dropped in out of the clouds. And when the Adjutant (Curly Wearne) arrived on posting and he got an Orderly Room going, things got a bit more organized and I was allotted to 'B' Flight, under Squadron Leader Charles Read. However, he didn't stay long with us;  When the Squadron went up to New Guinea, he and Len Greenhill left us at Townsville.

I think the first Beaufighter to arrive at Richmond was A19-2, and that it was ferried up for the Squadron by Bruce Rose.  We lost one aircraft and crew during that training period at Richmond: they crashed near Whittlesea, in Victoria.

Corporal Bill Madden was a clerk in the Orderly room, and was one of the very early arrivals at Richmond: he had a phenomenal memory, and could quote everyone's number, rank and name. Ted Good also had a very good memory and knew everyone in the Squadron. After the war he and his mother ran a wine bar on Princes Highway at St Peters. Anybody from the Squadron was always welcome there no matter what their rank.

I looked after A19-50, the aircraft flown by Desmond James Moran-Hilford, and Sergeant Eric Richardson. I'm pretty sure that Des had been a flying instructor at a Service Flying Training School, and had done a course at No 1 OTU at East Sale before coming to Richmond.

Some of the pilots at Richmond had been flying Beaufighters in England, but most of the others had had no experience on anything other than Avro Ansons or Airspeed Oxfords. Flying the heavier, faster, and more complex Beaufighter was a major step-up for them, and I'm not telling any lies when I say that I saw a number of white-faced and shaking aircrew when they landed after their first couple of flights.

It's possible that 'B' Flight went on a deployment exercise to a nearby airfield. I was standing in the well behind Des Moran-Hilford when we took off from a grassed airfield — maybe it was Mulgrave — and we not only swung badly on take-off but didn't climb as much as we should have and we very nearly went into a clump of trees. Des was absolutely white.

He flew A19-50 when the Squadron moved to its operational area, with myself and Les Bromilow (an electrician from Adelaide) as passengers, and going direct to Garbutt. It was a very cold morning when we took-off from Richmond, landing at Townsville about 1300, where the temperature was 78 degrees Fahrenheit

Sergeant Ralph Nelson — the navigator for  Sergeant Lenny Vial — suggested that I take off my shirt and put one of his, so that we could all go into the Sergeants' Mess. I was only an AC1 at the time, and was thus odd man out.

A day or so after the main party got off their troop train, the Squadron moved out to Bohle River where we spent a most uncomfortable few weeks because of the suffocating red dust and the myriads of flies. I became friendly with a fellow called Joe Green whom I met in the Great Northern Hotel in Townsville who told me that our aerodrome was pretty close to the hollow where the town's dunny-man emptied the night carts, and this was a breeding place for flies because the stuff wasn't covered

regularly. If you left your meal on the mess table at Bohle River while you went to get a cup of tea, the meat would be fly-blown when you got back. This may have been the cause of a lot of the sickness among the men at that time.

That red dust was a pain in the neck. It got in your nose, your eyes, and your mouth. You couldn't keep anything clean:  Your blankets would be impregnated with the damned stuff. All-in-all, Bohle River was a dreadful place.

There wasn't a great deal to do at Bohle River except that a couple of the Beaufighters were kept at the ready in case any more Japanese flying boats came over. Curly Wearne would often come round the tent lines and say "Right. We're on standby, so there's no leave tonight. But the tenders going into town will leave from outside the Orderly Room at 1830 hours".

There were many times when some of the fellows missed the tender coming back to camp at night, so they would pinch an America jeep or an Army vehicle, or a civilian car, drive it out towards Bohle River, hide it in the scrub, and take it back the next night. The day the main party of ground staff embarked on the ship for Moresby, some of the boys from Transport Section lifted an American jeep, which became a 'spare' vehicle in New Guinea. Of course they removed all the American identification and otherwise altered it so that it wouldn't be recognised.  And when the American Military Police did come sniffing around our unit at Moresby, the vehicle was taken up to our bomb dump at June valley and walled in behind bomb crates and ammunition boxes.

I was probably the last on board the Taroona — the Union Steamship vessel brought up from Tasmania. We had a pair of naval frigates as escorts on the trip to Moresby through the Coral Sea, and as we had a bit of a submarine scare , the Taroona ducked into a little cove somewhere along the Queensland coast. There were quite a few sharks about, but we weren't allowed to throw a grenade at them or shoot at them in case the noise attracted the submarine.

One of the Flight Mechanics — Harry Cotton by name — had sunk a few bottles before leaving Townsville and when he was heaving his guts out over the side the next morning, he lost his false top plate. It took three or four fellows to stop him from humping off the rail into the water to get them; he had to watch them sink slowly down through the clear water. It was many months before he got a replacement set of teeth in New Guinea, so he had to soak those hard dog-biscuits we got served for every meal in boiling water; he had no chance of biting through them without his choppers.

When we disembarked at Moresby we were taken by truck to the campsite a mile or so past the end of Wards Strip that Ted Good and the advance party had got ready. For the first couple of nights most of us slept on our rubber capes laid out on the ground; six men to a tent. However, we moved to a new site about 5 miles to the west of the strip in 'Goon Valley'.

Owen Fenwick, a Fitter IIE who had joined the Squadron in its early days at Richmond, was wont to play his piccolo during an air raid. The men in the unit on the other side of the road -

possibly 22 Squadron — took the blackout as an opportunity to make catcalls about one of their officers, and made rude comments about "lemon and Barlow water" instead of lemon and barley water.

I was one of the  Emergency MT Drivers in the Squadron, and one day took our blue Maple-Leaf table-top truck into town. Coming back past the old Moresby Hotel, I saw a big generator laying on its side in the sand. When I got back to June Valley I told Walter Edwards (a Sergeant Fitter IIE known as 'Master Mind') about it. He told me to get a couple of fellows and go back to grab it, which we did. Later, we went to the compound where the civilians had left their vehicles, and brought back a Ford V8 chasis on which to mount the generator. Wally next sent me to an American Supply outfit to get a V8 Motor. If they asked, I was to tell them that ours had blown; and they gave us a brand-new one in its crate. And then we were sent back to the Moresby Hotel for an insulated switch board. And that's how 30 Squadron came to have electric lamps in their tents; but you had to have them all on or none at all, because of the shunt switch which Wally had installed on the board.

Talk about bower birds! We were known as the greatest lot of 'lifters' on the Island. Somehow we 'acquired' the electricity wiring to go round the camp, the fittings, and the globes.

On another occasion I was at a Liberator squadron and saw that they had a set of hydraulic aircraft jacks, while we were still using the hand-operated wind-up jacks, with all their problems. I managed to get a couple of them from the Yanks. If one of the operators wound up a bit further or faster than the man on the other one, the things would jam and you had to practically go back to start all over again. The hydraulic jacks made our work a hell of a lot easier and faster.

The Moresby Hotel was the source of another useful item for 30 Squadron. I had seen a large kerosene-operated refrigerator among its ruins, but on inspection it turned out to be far too damaged to be worth taking back to June Valley for our use.

When I went down to the wharf I found a large crate which had been sitting there unclaimed for about two weeks, and I thought that was looking into. So I broke a piece of timber from one of the corners, and lo, there was a brand new frig!  I quickly got a pot of white paint and a brush and painted a white square on the crate — this was our Squadron's identifier. Next day I drove boldly onto the wharf waving a collection of out-of-date dockets, and claimed the crate. Two American military policemen were obliging enough to help me load the crate on to the back of the tender.

When we opened the crate, the docket inside showed that the frig had been destined dor the American Base Headquarters, Phillip. Kitch Morris — a Fitter IIE who had been refrigeration mechanic in civvy life — got it going and we put it in the Airmens' Mess. Of course there wasn't much for the fellows to keep in it — except that bully beef tasted much better when it was cold. The fridge hadn't been there very long when I was sent for by the CO, to whom I told the story. He asked me who had helped me and when I told him he told me to bring them to his tent. "What for?", I asked. "To shift it into the Officers' Mess".

Out near the 9 Mile the Army had a camp, and the Americans had a Supply Squadron, and when I went up there I asked a fellow what chance there was of getting a motor bike. He said they had plenty of them, but he would need some requisition papers. However, I sweet-talked him and came away with a brand-new Indian bike in a case. And its possible that when others heard about this easy-going, good hearted American, they went up there too and got themselves a set of wheels.

'Shagger' Don Bain didn't get his machine from that outfit. He rescued it from the water when he was on detachment at Milne Bay, dismantled it, put it in a crate, and sent it back to Moresby in an American Douglas as aircraft spares. Curly Wearne made me relinquish the machine that I acquired from the Americans, but it wasn't long before I got another one — quite legitimately, this time. I had a cousin who worked for the forces newspaper, "Guinea Gold", and he was looking after a 350cc BSA for serviceman who had bought it from a civilian when they were evacuated in 1941. The machine's sprocket had been thrown into the sea by the civilian owner to prevent the Japs being able to use it. However, I 'acquired' another sprocket from an Army machine, but as this was not quite the right size, Don Bain modified it, and I had a perfectly good and legitimate pair of wheels while I was in Moresby. I had to leave it there when we moved, of course.

I though the Adjutant was a hard man, but a pretty just fellow for all that.

Blackjack was a pilot and a half. I was beside him one day when an American Aircobra unit landed. He found the American bird-colonel aviator, who consented to Blackjack's request to 'have a go'. And he did. He buzzed the strip so low that the colonel hit the ground when he saw the Aircobra coming at him.

There were quite a number of dummy aircraft made out of wood and sacking distributed around Wards strip. They were just simple shapes and weren't made to represent any particular type of plane and I don't think that they fooled the Japs for one minute.

The Japanese bombers came over one day when I was over near the hill that Bruce Stephens and Stewart Cameron hit with their Beaufighter and I stopped m y truck and went to ground. I saw this Yank driving a six by six truck loaded with bombs and when he saw the enemy bombs bursting on Wards strip, he just leapt out of the cab and let his truck roll slowly down the hill, where it ran into the embankment at the side and came to a stop without disturbing a single 500 pounder. He was in the air raid trench beside me, and when I asked why he'd let the truck go he said "Uncle Sam's got plenty of them, but I'm hard to replace"

Our midday meal was served down at the strip; we had a mobile kitchen and the messing staff prepared our lunch which we ate under a canvas slung under the trees near Servicing Flight in the dispersal area at the northern end of Wards.

We weren't made to take quinine in the early days in New Guinea: I got malaria while I was on detachment at Milne Bay and was sent back to 3 Medical Receiving Station just up from 30 Squadron's


camp at June Valley. Later, we all had to take atebrin — as well as salt tablets.

Not long after we set up camp at June Valley we sank a well — it was on the side road that led to our ammunition dump, and had a wooden cover.  At one stage somebody noticed a foul smell over in that direction, which turned out to be coming from the badly decomposed body of some animal. One of the men was lowered down to try and bring it out but all the skin came off and he couldn't do it. So they put a couple of sticks of gelignite down and blew the whole thing up to prevent contamination and disease.

I have the idea that the well was found by Wally Edwards — he was a water diviner. After the war he had a tune-up garage in East Sydney.

We had a couple of 'gays' in the Squadron's messing section, Lola and Brenda. I struck Lola (Bill Lane) in Glebe Point after the war: he was boarding with some woman there. The two fellow were easy to get along with in New Guinea and were very clean lads, as was the navigator, Bill Davis.

When I came  back from New Guinea, I took some film into the Kodak shop in Melbourne, and I expressed surprise when I saw a particular photograph lying on the counter. The woman beside me asked why I had made that remark and I told her that I had been in the Beaufighter Squadron with Bill Harding, and told her how he had bought it when he crashed into the wreck at Moresby. She broke down and cried, for it turned out she was his widow, and it was the first time that she had heard about how he was killed. All she'd been told that he'd died in a flying accident.

When Bruce Stephens and Stewart Cameron pranged into the hill at the end of Wards, that really affected me. I used to dream about them.

I thought Morry Ball was a goner when he made a crash-landing at Wards. I was on the crash crew at the control tower at the time. The aircraft had just come out of Service Flight and he was doing a test flight, but the control wires to the trim tabs on the elevators had been crossed, so that when he thought he was lifting the nose, the nose was in fact, going down.

We went from Moresby to Goodenough in an American cattle boat — the West Cactus, and it was an awful ship — rats everywhere.

At Kiriwina the Beaufighters operated from the North Strip, which had a crash runway parallel to the main strip.


PERSONAL  PARTICULARS

NAME            :    JAMES  CLAUDE  WILSON
BORN ON         :    12 May 1919
BORN AT         :    Newtown, NSW
FATHER          :    Claude Wilson
MOTHER (Maiden) :    Jessie May McInnes
EDUCATED AT     :    Newtown Tech
MARRIED TO      :    Dorothy May Carroll
MARRIED ON      :    8th November 1941
MARRIED AT      :    Golden Grove, Newtown
CHILDREN        :    Joseph James Wilson
                     Peter Patrick Wilson
ENLISTED AT     :    Martin Place, Sydney
ENLISTED AS     :    Trainee Flight Rigger    (AC1 - 61911)
ENLISTED ON     :     - December 1941
DISCHARGED ON   :      -  -  1946
RANK ON DISCHARGE    LAC
OCCUPATION THEN :    Motor Mechanic (at Yellow Cab Garage)
ADDRESS - 1990  :    19 Henry Lawson Drive, Peakhurst  (02) 534 1676