大象传媒

I was only fifteen when war broke out. My family were very patriotic. My dad, an ex Gallipoli veteran from W.W.1. rejoined the army and was sent to the Pacific Isles. My older brother lied about his age and also joined up. I was devastated when the Women鈥檚 Army wouldn鈥檛 take me until I was 18.
In Australia, we had no facilities for making lenses for binoculars etc. (I believe we used to import them from Germany.) So a factory was set up near Central Station in Sydney and I applied for a job. They taught me how to use the machines and use jeweller鈥檚 rouge to polish the lenses. It was dirty work but it was helping the war effort. We worked a six day week 7.30am until 5.30pm with half an hour for lunch. I don鈥檛 remember what the wage was but it wasn鈥檛 much.
Then the local church called for V.A.D. nurses to work voluntarily at Lewisham Hospital on Sundays, so along I went all togged out in my green uniform with a little veil and my C.U.S.A. badges. Occasionally, we worked Saturday night at the C.U.S.A. canteen near Circular Quay, serving tea and sandwiches and dancing with the servicemen. This was our entertainment really as we were too tired to do anything else. I kept working seven days a week until I was almost 18. Then a terrible thing happened to me which I will never forget.
I started work at a munitions factory, with a dear school friend who was also in C.U.S.A. However, nearly two and a half years of working seven days a week, I must have been over tired. I was certainly worried about my brother who had been sent to Malaya with the 2/15th field Regiment. Singapore had fallen and they were all taken prisoner. My supposed friend must have been listening to her brothers鈥� gossip (they were not in the services) and as I walked into the lunch room that day, I heard her say to the other girls.
鈥淲ell, I heard that the A.I.F. in Malaya just laid down their arms and surrendered to the Japs.鈥�
I went absolutely berserk. I rushed at her screaming and lashing out and, I鈥檓 ashamed to say, with my hands around her throat I tried to push her out of the window into the street below. (We were two or three storeys up). I was a gentle, shy girl I can assure you and not given to tantrums. Of course, the other girls pulled us apart. The Manager took us to his office by which time, I was in a state of shock and floods of tears.
He was very sympathetic when I told him I was only waiting for my 18th Birthday to join the Army. He broke it to me gently that I was in a 鈥榩rotected鈥� industry and could not leave. More tears, (and I would think, very real concern for my mental stability), finally convinced him that it was better to let me go; bless him. I could never have worked with that girl again or even spoken to her.
My fears for my beautiful big strapping brother, the Regimental Sergeant Major, were well founded. He was put to work on the Burma Railway, had a leg amputated, then sadly died of Cerebral Malaria before he鈥檇 turned 21.
I did join the Army and spent three years working in a searchlight battery on the coast of New South Wales.

Claire Robinson.
Hazelbrook. N.S.W. Australia.

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