Peter’s Wars

Dad and Alan were swaying in the doorway, grinning their stupid heads off. They hadn’t come straight home from the football.

‘We’re going to save you from the dreaded Hun. We’re going to bring peace and order back to the world.’

Mum was stunned, and I was pretty surprised myself. But our gallants had beer with them which helped mollify Mum. They’d been to Victoria Park and were glowing with the excitement of Collingwood beating Carlton by 15 points following two late goals by Phonse Kyne. Phonsie had been to the same school as Dad. In sober moments he had been several classes ahead, but in less rational times they were mates. My dad worshipped Collingwood and Phonse was a hero. After consuming four bottles of beer and a couple of pies at the game, joining the RAAF had seemed a good idea.

‘Let’s celebrate. To the King. Long live the Empire.’ There was no sense of danger; joining the air force was a bit of a lark, something you did after a few beers at the footy. Dad would trade in his bike for a flying machine. Dear God, he’d never even seen an aeroplane up close before his first flying lesson, let alone flown in one. Now, he would be flying out of our lives with me and Mum left home together. ‘To worry ourselves sick,’ Mum said.

Mum was pretty crook at Menzies because after barely winning the election that spring, he went off to London and stayed four months. ‘Bloody Ming loves it over there with the Poms. Just suits his plummy voice.’

Grandpa took the war seriously and started reading the death notices in the newspaper. First the ‘dead’ column, then the ‘missing presumed dead’, then the ‘missing’. He scoured the columns daily, relieved not to know any of the poor unfortunates. Just the look of the columns was too much for my mum. ‘It’s too morbid.’ Besides, Dad was still in Australia. If someone was killed in your family, a telegram boy would deliver the news; his red bicycle coming up the street would send dread through the neighbourhood. Who was the telegram for? It would simply say, ‘It is with deep regret your son/ husband was killed in action.’

Dad came home on leave telling us he had flunked the pilot’s training course for flying too low. ‘I knocked a couple of chimney pots off a house and scared my instructor half to death,’ he said. It was good that he could laugh because deep down I was very disappointed, and I suspected he was too. I had wanted my father to be a fighter pilot who everybody would look up to. I wanted to be proud of my father.

Dad went back to flying a desk for the RAAF. He was a clerk again, just like he’d been at Ford. His mate, Alan, failed pilot training also. Apparently, his maths wasn’t too hot. Now, they both had desk jobs again. But the planes were going down like flies in Europe and he and Alan were soon commandeered back into air crew: Dad, as a navigator and bombardier, was assigned to Air Transport, and Alan became a wireless operator. The big bombers were just coming on line overseas, so it would be a while before Dad faced the music in Europe.

My dad, who had only been out of Victoria once in his life, was now navigating a plane all over Australia. They delivered spare parts, supplies, mail, cases of beer and sometimes a VIP passenger. Dad said our servicemen and women needed looking after and he was supplying them behind the lines.

He slept between clean sheets every night after an evening of drinking and piano playing and billiards in the officers’ mess. There was a batman to clean and press his uniform, his meals were served. I overheard Dad tell Alan it was like being married without the nagging wife and demanding brat. During the day there was a nice aeroplane that a crew of mechanics had adjusted, tuned and polished until it gleamed. And should I mention the service women? The wonderful WAAFS. The sing-a-longs around the piano. The impromptu plays, skits, charades, cross-dressing and infidelities. How about:

Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun

Roll out the barrel, we’ve got the blues on the run

Dad was back in his element playing the piano in the mess. Admirers refilled his beer glass sitting conveniently on the end of the keyboard. ‘Want a ciggie, Vin? Can you play “You Are My Sunshine”? What about “Moonlight Serenade”?’

Mum gave me a beaut little scooter for my third birthday, but she wouldn’t let me ride it in our flat because it made too much noise, and I wasn’t allowed to take it outside by myself. But it looked nice. Nana knitted me a sweater that was the same as Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret’s. It had a chocolate brown collar and cuffs with lots of pretty stripes that Nana made from unpicking old knitting. The pattern had been in the Women’s Weekly with a picture of the princesses, but theirs didn’t have colourful stripes like mine. I loved my sweater and wore it all the time, even when I was hot.

Mum had never cut my hair and everyone admired my curls and wanted to touch them. She told them my hair was not red, it was auburn, and everybody agreed. She insisted that they did. One day on the tram with Dad who was home on leave, a lady exclaimed what a beautiful girl I was. Dad took me straight to a barber. ‘Cut them off,’ he said and as the curls fell in my eyes, I kept muttering ‘bluggy, bluggy, bluggy’. My father was amused that the barber didn’t realise I was actually saying ‘bloody, bloody, bloody’. The event became a family anecdote. And I ended up with a stupid basin cut.