CHAPTER 11

Yanks Occupy Melbourne

America recognised Australia’s strategic value. Just a fortnight after Pearl Harbor, 5000 American troops arrived unannounced in Brisbane. They’d marched off their ships singing, ‘Australia, Australia we’ve come to help you fight, fight, fight.’

Then, on February 27, 1942, 10 days after my fourth birthday, Yankee soldiers marched through Melbourne. We had no idea they were coming or that they were even there until we saw them face to face. There had been a complete blackout on news but an early-morning fisherman saw six huge American troop transports steam up Port Phillip Bay. When they disembarked, a band provided a tremendous welcome. The crowd cheered to see US nurses in full pack marching down the gangplank with the men.

Grandpa wondered if it was a question of who would occupy us first – the Japanese or the Americans. But there was no doubt what everyone wanted. We were thrilled to have the Americans to fight for us.

At first the Yanks went to private billets until tent cities were erected. Camps were built on racetracks, showgrounds, cricket and football fields. The hallowed Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) was reinvented as Camp Murphy. People competed to invite Yanks home for a meal. ‘They’re so like us,’ exclaimed one matron. Fathers who wouldn’t have let their daughter near a serviceman were won over by the Americans’ good manners and charm. But Mum hoped they wouldn’t bring any black soldiers because of our White Australia policy.

Suddenly the foe was threatening our homeland and we were reliant on America. The government greeted the Americans generously and reserved Melbourne’s biggest and best hotels for their leaders. At the pictures they began playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ along with ‘God Save the King’. We all stood to attention, giving thanks that the mighty USA was going to save us.

There was no escaping the war, even for a little kid. We lived on the flight path to Essendon airport and were used to low-flying planes, but now it was different. Big four-engine air force jobs were thundering overhead, rattling our windowpanes. We had to observe a blackout at night by pasting special black paper on our windows so the light couldn’t get through. When we went outside to the lavatory at night, we were careful no light got out. The dirty Japs might have seen it and dropped a bomb on us. ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ was repeated over and over.

We were given a Home Security booklet with instructions to help everyone ‘hinder the enemy’. Mum heard road and railway signs were already being removed, confusing plenty of locals into the bargain. We read what to do if there was a battle. First, Mum and I should turn off the gas at the main. Mum didn’t know where the gas meter was, but I did – it was near where I stacked the empty beer bottles. I tried to turn it off for practice, but it was too stiff. I found Dad’s rusty old pliers and they did the trick. As ‘man of the house’, Mum had always expected me to be resourceful. Now I had turned four she had even higher expectations. She told friends that I was very advanced for my age. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without him.’

My next job would be to be fill the bath with water in case the main supply was bombed. Then we were instructed to build a shelter by dragging the kitchen table into the hallway which was reckoned to be the strongest part of the house, and pile mattresses on top and around it to keep us safe.

The popular Australian author Ion Idriess wrote a book, Shoot to Kill. ‘We should all be given guns so we could fight,’ he said. That sounded good to me. However, people like Grandpa were concerned that a people’s army might just shoot themselves in the foot.

Then Broome was bombed. Zeros destroyed Qantas and Dutch flying boats that had been evacuating Batavia and the harbour was left in flames with 40 dead. When Mum and I went into town after the bombing up north, we found big stores and buildings had removed their plate glass windows and boarded up the gaps. Sandbags were piled high along their frontages and gun emplacements were being built at main intersections.

There was talk about surrendering the north part of Australia to the Japs, but let the dirty bastards come down south and we’d be ready for them. The military agreed that we should defend the cities from Brisbane south; that Western Australia and Queensland were too difficult to protect and not worth defending. ‘That’s a laugh,’ Grandpa said. ‘The military don’t realise Prime Minister Curtin is from WA and his deputy’s from Queensland.’

And there was also the good news that despite Churchill’s objections, Curtin was bringing the Australian troops home from the Middle East. ‘You beauty, Curtin,’ Grandpa cheered. ‘Tell Churchill to stick that in his pipe and smoke it. The cheek of him saying Australia’s expendable.’ We had a lot of confidence in our boys. Uncle Max is in the Air Force and there is talk he’ll be sent up north soon. Mum and Aunty Roma are proud of their brother. He looks so handsome in his uniform.

Melbourne is suddenly at the centre of the war in the Pacific. General Douglas MacArthur has just set up his headquarters in Melbourne after having been driven out of the Philippines, and is the supreme commander of all allied forces. He smokes a corn cob pipe and likes publicity. Forty journalists accompany him and his wife everywhere. He is expecting Australia to be invaded. But the dirty Japs will be in for a surprise if they land in Australia now. The Yanks will be waiting.

My mum thinks he’s arrogant. ‘Bloody MacArthur. “We shall return” all right. What about all those nurses he left in the Philippines for the Japs?’ But MacArthur gave the Australian population confidence. MacArthur and the boatloads of US troops continue to arrive in Australia. Like Mum, people were feeling cheeky again. We were not alone.