I Was Only Doing My Job: Australia's Military History

9-AUGUST-1942. While serving as a Surgical Officer aboard the Royal Australian Navy Heavy Cruiser HMAS Canberra, Surgeon Lieutenant Kenneth Newman Morris MID participated in the first American counter-attack during the Pacific Campaign, the Battle of Guadalcanal and the disastrous Battle of Savo Island.

In the Second World War chaos, one man apart out for his courage and resilience - Surgeon Lieutenant Kenneth Newman Morris. Morris exhibited unwavering dedication as he tended to wounded sailors amidst relentless enemy fire and blazing flames. As the ship's fate hung in the balance, Morris defied danger, his head torch illuminating the way as he saved lives and provided comfort. His actions in that fiery inferno earned him a mention in dispatches. After the battle, Morris continued to serve, training in cardiac and thoracic surgery. With his wife, Dr Fay Kinross, he pioneered advancements in heart surgery, impacting countless lives.

This Episode marks Two years since the launch of the podcast.

1-JULY-1942. While serving as Chief Yeoman of Signals as part of the Royal Australian Navy, Chief Yeoman of Signals Stephen Lamont was selected as part of the network of observers stationed across strategic locations in Northern Australia and neighbouring territories known as the Coastwatchers. Initially stationed on Anir Island off the coast of New Britain, Lamont was in Rabaul when it fell to the Japanese.

Lamont's selfless actions and dedication to his comrades stand out as he bravely chose to stay behind and care for two sick sailors, knowing the dangers that awaited him as he was captured by the Japanese and ended up being on board the MV Montevideo Maru that was sunk by the USS Sturgeon, claiming the lives of over 1000 allied Prisoners of War and civilians in what is still considered Australia's worst maritime disaster.

20-MAY-1941. While serving as a Company Commander within the 2/11th Australian Infantry Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, participated in the first major engagements of the Australian Imperial Force during the Second World War including the capture of Bardia, Tobruk and the disastrous campaign in Greece before making a name of himself during the Kokoda Campaign. In this episode, we focus on the Australian operations around the Japanese strongholds of Buna, Gona and Sanananda

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16-FEBRUARY-1942. Serving as a Staff Nurse in the 2/13th Australian General Hospital, Second Australian Imperial Force, Sister Florence Casson was one of the 21 nurses executed as part of the Bangka Island Massacre at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.

20-MAY-1941. While serving as a Company Commander within the 2/11th Australian Infantry Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, participated in the first major engagements of the Australian Imperial Force during the Second World War including the capture of Bardia, Tobruk and the disastrous campaign in Greece before making a name of himself during the Kokoda Campaign. In this episode, we focus on the Australian defensive operations along the Kokoda Trail in the Pacific.

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20-MAY-1941. While serving as a Company Commander within the 2/11th Australian Infantry Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, participated in the first major engagements of the Australian Imperial Force during the Second World War including the capture of Bardia, Tobruk and the disastrous campaign in Greece before making a name of himself during the Kokoda Campaign. In this episode, we focus on the disastrous defence of Crete and the prelude to the Kokoda Campaign in the Pacific.

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3-JANUARY-1941. While serving as a Company Commander within the 2/11th Australian Infantry Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, participated in the first major engagements of the Australian Imperial Force during the Second World War including the capture of Bardia, Tobruk and the disastrous campaign in Greece before making a name of himself during the Kokoda Campaign. In this episode, we focus on the rapid advance of the Australian Imperial Force across North Africa, and the disastrous Operation Lusture, or the Allied involvement in the Greece Campaign.

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3-JANUARY-1941. While serving as a Company Commander within the 2/11th Australian Infantry Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, participated in the first major engagements of the Australian Imperial Force during the Second World War including the capture of Bardia, Tobruk and the disastrous campaign in Greece before making a name of himself during the Kokoda Campaign. In this episode, we focus on the first involvement of the Australian Imperial Force during the Second World War, the Capture of Bardia during Operation Compass.

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Earlier this month I sat down with Melissa Ratliff from God's Favorites: A History Podcast to discuss her current project, saving the Sundowner a motor yacht formerly owned by Charles Lightoller, who was Second Officer aboard the RMS Titanic for her ill-fated maiden voyage in April, 1912. She participated in the Dunkirk evacuation as one of the Little ships of Dunkirk before falling on hard times more recently. 

9-JUNE-1928. While serving as a despatch rider as part of the 4th Division Signals Company during the First World War, Sergeant Charles Edward Kingsford Smith sought a greater adrenaline rush and joined the Australian Flying Corps. Later serving in the Royal Flying Corps; British Expeditionary Force, he shot down four German aircraft before he was shot down and grounded due to injury. 

Not to be stopped, "Smithy" after the war became an aviation pioneer and held the record for having the most aviation records including being the only person at the time to cross the Pacific Ocean from the USA to Australia in both directions and the first person to complete a cross-equator circumnavigation of the globe. 

IWODMJ Discord Server member AyoshiStar requested this episode and is guest director.

31-JULY-1969. While serving as a Door Gunner on an American Crewed UH-1C Iroquois Helicopter Gunship as part of the Royal Australian Navy Helicopter Flight Vietnam, attached to the 135th Assault Helicopter Company, US Army, Leading Aircraftman Noel Ervin Shipp was killed in action while providing gunfire to support the evacuation of troops on the ground and was observed to be continuing to fire even as the helicopter he was in plummeted to the ground

My Silent Hero is a project to honour and preserve the memory of those who have served Australia during times of war. Each of these servicemen and women had lives before they enlisted and, if they survived, after the war. They were, or are, humble human beings who, for a great many current Australians, are family. Yet now for many, their memory is just a name on a plaque, an initial or two and a surname.  My Silent Hero will help you remember them as people and as family.

8-February-1917. While serving as a Stretcher Bearer as part of 55th Australian Infantry Battalion, Australian Imperial Force during the First World War. Corporal Ernest Albert "Ernie" Corey, was awarded an unprecdendent four Military Medals, the third highest award for gallantry in the British System of Awards for his tireless and continual devotion to rescuing wounded soldiers during the war on the Western Front. Despite the claim of being the Highest Decorated Australian Soldier, Corey was a timid man who took great pride in the knowledge that he received four Military Medals for saving people and never fired a shot in anger.

28-OCTOBER-1950, This is the conclusion of the life service and Legacy of Professional Soldier Lieutenant GeneralRobert Harold Nimmo, who served in both the First and Second World Wars in Brigade and General Staff Roles before his retirement in 1950. He would then go on to serve as the longest continuously serving Chief Military Observer in United Nations History when he took command of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) becoming the first Australian to command a UN Peacekeeping Mission and at 15 years and 2 months the longest serving UN Commander

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29-SEPTEMBER-1946, This is part two of the life service and Legacy of Professional Soldier Major General Robert Harold Nimmo CBE, who at the commencement of the Second World War was a Staff Officer of the 1st Cavalry Division. An officer tasked with introducing armoured warfare into the Australian Army, Nimmo would continue to serve in staff positions at Brigade, Division, Corps and Army Levels to whom the end of the war in command of the first unit of the Australian Regular Army the 38th Infantry Brigade and command Australia's contingent to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force on a career that would span 52 years.

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21-DECEMBER-1914, This is part one of the life service and Legacy of Professional Soldier Major Robert Harold Nimmo, who at the commencement of the First World War was an Officer Cadet at the Royal Military College Duntroon. Enlisting upon accelerated graduation he was posted to the 5th Australian Light Horse Regiment at the rank of Lieutenant and would sail to Egypt, eventually reaching Gallipoli on May 16. Possessing both front-line combat experience and administrative organisational skills, Nimmo would quickly progress through the ranks of the ANZAC Mounted Division, finishing the war as a Brigade Major in the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade to whom the end of the war would only mean a continuation of a career that would span 52 years.

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7-JANUARY-1945 While Serving with No 619 Squadron Royal Air Force, Flying Officer Colin Kelvin Flockhart, was the pilot of a four-engine Avro Lancaster Heavy Bomber tasked with a raid over Munich Germany when for unknown reasons his plane disintegrated over the French countryside during poor weather.
This episode is dedicated to Alison Aitken, the Queen of the Australian War Memorial, and Colin's sister, who passed away on 9-9-2022.

The I Was Only Doing My Job Podcast now has a Discord Server, the link to it is in the linktree.

27-AUGUST-1942 While Serving with No. 3 (Army Cooperation) Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, Flying Officer Peter St George Bruce Turnbull, in North Africa became one of the first Australian Fighter Aces of the Second World War, with downing eight enemy aircraft, an act that would award him the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He would go on to serve in No 76 Squadron RAAF in the Pacific, serving the defence of Milne Bay from Japanese invasion. While he would be killed in action, his devotion to his duty would be an inspiration to all he flew with.

14-JULY-1918. The 30-ton German Heavy Tank was set to participate in the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonnaeux until it drove into a shell crater outside Monument Wood, becoming stranded, three months later it would be captured by the 26th Australian Infantry Battalion in the Allied counter-attack, in an action that has captured the imaginations of the Internet Age as one of those actions where the fiction is better known than the facts.

19-OCTOBER-1917. While serving within the Australian Remount Depot, Australian Imperial Force as a Squadron Commander, Major Andrew Barton "The Banjo" Paterson served with distinction as part of the Desert Mounted Corps during the First World War. He is also widely known as the most famous Bush Balladist of the 20th Century, having penned the iconic Waltzing Matilda. Prior to his service in the First World War, he was an official Correspondent in the Second Anglo-Boer War, the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion. While he served the duration of the war, this is one aspect of the Banjo's life that is not known.

My Silent Hero is a project to honour and preserve the memory of those who have served Australia during times of war. Each of these servicemen and women had lives before they enlisted and, if they survived, after the war. They were, or are, humble human beings who, for a great many current Australians, are family. Yet now for many, their memory is just a name on a plaque, an initial or two and a surname.  My Silent Hero will help you remember them as people and as family.

1-MARCH-1942. While serving within the Royal Australian Navy as a Signals Officer, Captain Hector MacDonald Laws Waller served with distinction aboard several warships of the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Navy during both the First World War and the Second World War. 

Having graduated from the fledgling Royal Australian Naval College during the First World War, his posting would be to the Royal Navy Battleship HMS Agincourt, and would predominately perform escort duties for the duration of the war. 

As a career sailor, he would progress through the ranks until he was in command of the 19th Destroyer Division at the start of the Second World War. He would be in direct command of two vessels during the Second World war, the Destroyer HMAS Stuart I where he led the ‘Scrap Iron Flotilla’ and the Cruiser HMAS Perth I. He would go down with the HMAS Perth when it was sunk during the one-sided Battle of Sunda Strait alongside 356 fellow personnel of Perth.

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24-MAY-1966. While serving with B Company 5th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, Australian Regular Army, National Serviceman Private Errol Wayne Noack served as a section machine gunner during the Vietnam War. He was killed during his first military operation two weeks after arriving in-country and would go into the history books as the first Australian National Serviceman killed in Vietnam.

His death would go to polarise Australian society about a war that was increasingly becoming unpopular, and his position as the first conscript killed in that war would serve as a rallying cry for those against mandatory military service.

24-OCTOBER-1943 While Serving with M Special Unit, Special Operations Australia, 2 Australian Imperial Force, Sergeant Leonard George Siffleet was part of a multi-national team trekking through Japanese-occupied New Guinea to set up a Coastwatch position over the recently captured town of Hollandia when his team would be ambushed and captured by a party of Japanese troops and local New Guineans sympathetic to the Imperial Japanese Navy. After two weeks of interrogation, Lenoard would be executed at the hands of the Japanese in potentially the only execution of a western soldier at the hands of the Japanese to be photographed in the act. The subsequent war crimes investigations after the war would be all the surviving Japanese sailors involved to justice, though the man who delivered the killing stroke on Leonard would be killed during the closing stages of the New Guinea Campaign. Len's body would never be recovered.

1-JANUARY 1916 While Serving with 3 Australian General Hospital Squadron Principal Matron Grace Margaret Wilson in Lemnos, Greece would coordinate the nursing care of wounded Australian Soldiers from the Gallipoli Campaign and in doing so would also fight for recognition and proper treatment of the nurses under her charge. a Professional Nurse before the Great War, she would go on to be Matron-in-Chief of the Australian Imperial Force in both the First and Second World Wars, These acts would result in him being awarded the Royal Red Cross First class and the Nightingale Medal, four Mentions in Dispatches and her appointment to the Commander of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

She would go on to pioneer Nursing Education in civilian life, particularly around Victoria.

16-OCTOBER-1942 While Serving with No. 452 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, Squadron Leader Keith William "Bluey" Truscott in Europe would lead an attack on an evacuating Kreigsmarine Fleet and successfully damaged a German Destroyer. A famous athlete, before the war he played VFL for the Melbourne Demons, and deciding to forgo a successful sporting career decided to fly for King and Country, and in doing so became one of Australia's highest ranked Fighter Aces with 15/16 confirmed enemy aircraft shot down. These acts would result in him being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross twice.

23-OCTOBER-1915. While serving as a trooper in the 5th Australian Light Horse Regiment, Australian Imperial Force, Chinese-Australian Trooper William Edward "Billy" Sing DCM has been picked to take the solitary role as being a sniper on Gallipoli where he has a unique record of between 150 and 300 confirmed Ottoman kills during the eight-month campaign. Even with that legacy he also grew up in a time where his heritage was met with prejudice and racism. 

17-AUGUST-1917. While serving as one of the Australian Official War Photographers, Honorary Captain James Francis "Frank" Hurley OBE was an Australian photographer and adventurer. He participated in a number of expeditions to Antarctica, under Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton and served as an official photographer with Australian forces during both world wars. His artistic style produced many memorable images, but his predilection to use composite imagery in a time before photoshop gained him a number of detractors, in particular Charles Bean, Australia's First World War Official Historian, and the Department of Information that he worked for in the Second World War. But even with that, he is still Australia's most famous photographer

I sat down with Preston Stewart and Seyer Payne of War Stories to talk about Australia's involvement in the Pacific Campaign of the Second World War. This was recorded over Zoom, and the video version of this episode is available on the I Was Only Doing My Job Youtube Channel. 

The conversation starts with the Fall of Singapore and ends with the Japanese surrender and even the start of the Korean Campaign. 

To find more content from Preston and Seyer click on the below links 

7-MAY-1915. While serving as an engineer with the 3rd Field Company Engineers, Australian Imperial Force, Captain Edward Bage was instructed to map out new trench locations on Gallipoli, and as a result would be killed 14 days after landing on the Pennisula, but his legacy is not one of the battlefield, but of Antarctic Exploration, when he spent two years mapping Antarctica alongside Sir Douglas Mawson

CW: Sexual Assault- This episode contains a discussion of the murder of women and allegations of sexual assault in war. The sexual assault is isolated to the end of the episode, with a warning just prior. the discussion of the Bangka Island Massacre will begin at 5:16 to 8:06

This is a Special reupload to mark the 80th Anniversary of the Bangka Island Massacre

16-FEBRUARY-1942. Serving as a Staff Nurse in the 2/13th Australian General Hospital, Second Australian Imperial Force, Sister Vivian Bullwinkel would be the sole survivor of the Bangka Island Massacre at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army. She would go on to be a Prisoner of War for three and a half years, but would never abandon her courage or resolve.  Her career didn't end in captivity, and she would go on to serve until 1947 when she would resume her nursing duties, up until the Vietnam War, when she would once again enter the battlespace to help the disadvantaged.  She would receive honours and decorations for her service to the cause of nursing and would uphold those tenents until her death in 2000. She did more than just her job, and for that, we are immensely proud of her. 

17-AUGUST-1915. While serving as a soldier with the 17th Australian Infantry Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, Lieutenant Leslie George Fussell, unimpressed with the quality of the bomb-throwing of the men under his command, took a tin of Bully Beef and threw it into the Turkish Trenches. This act resulted in a temporary cease-fire on Gallipoli. He would go on to serve on the Western Front and serve again in the Second World War.

2-NOVEMBER-1932.  While serving as a professional soldier in the post-war Permanent  Military Force of the Commonwealth Military Forces Honourary Brigadier  General Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith served for 47 years  continuously, and in doing so served in the Permanent Military Force,  the First World War, the Second War and the Korean War, but he is most  known as Major G P W Meredith, the Officer Commanding of the 7th Heavy  Artillery Battery who oversaw an ill-advised nuisance wildlife  management military operation that has become more a meme than a  historical event, known comically as the Great Emu War

2-NOVEMBER-1932.  While serving as a professional soldier in the post-war Permanent  Military Force of the Commonwealth Military Forces Honourary Brigadier  General Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith served for 47 years  continuously, and in doing so served in the Permanent Military Force,  the First World War, the Second War and the Korean War, but he is most  known as Major G P W Meredith, the Officer Commanding of the 7th Heavy  Artillery Battery who oversaw an ill-advised nuisance wildlife  management military operation that has become more a meme than a  historical event, known comically as the Great Emu War

2-NOVEMBER-1932. While serving as a professional soldier in the post-war Permanent Military Force of the Commonwealth Military Forces Honourary Brigadier General Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith served for 47 years continuously, and in doing so served in the Permanent Military Force, the First World War, the Second War and the Korean War, but he is most known as Major G P W Meredith, the Officer Commanding of the 7th Heavy Artillery Battery who oversaw an ill-advised nuisance wildlife management military operation that has become more a meme than a historical event, known comically as the Great Emu War 

19-NOVEMBER-1941, While serving in the Royal Australian Navy as a submarine detector, Able Seamen Thomas Welsby Clark served aboard the Light Cruiser HMAS Sydney II in the Second World War, when the Sydney was sunk by the German commerce raider HSK Kormoran with the loss of all hands. three months later, the unidentified remains of an Australian sailor in a Carley Float would wash ashore on Christmas Island and would be buried with full honours. it would take 80 years for those remains to be identified. 

17-AUGUST-1915, while serving as a signaller with C Company,  16th Infantry Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, Signaller Ellis Luciano Silas worked diligently at his telegraph set, until he fell ill with what we would now call PTSD. but what he is more famously known for is the detailed and elaborate sketches and artworks he created of the troops on Gallipoli and became an unofficial Australian War Artist. 

8-AUGUST-1918.  On the 8th August 1918, the British Fourth Army under General Rawlinson launched a major attack with French and American units in support agaisnt German positions to the east of the strategic Railway junction of Amiens in the Picardie region of Northern France in an attack known as the Third Battle of Picardy. It was the opening phase of what would become the Allied Hundred Days Offensive that would bring on the end of the First World War.

It would be supported by over 2000 guns and more than a thousand British and French Aircraft and would be the largest tank assault of the war with over 500 British Tanks being committed to the battle across 16 kilometres.

And in the midst of this display of the industrialisation of war, a platoon of B Company, 29th Australian Infantry Battalion, moved into positions near the recently captured village of Warfusee-Abancourt, ready to participate in the second stage of the advance

This Episode was Re-recorded 25-08-2022

10-OCTOBER-1941. While Serving with No. 3 (Army Cooperation) Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, Flying Officer Peter St George Bruce Turnbull, in North Africa became one of the first Australian Fighter Aces of the Second World War, with downing eight enemy aircraft, an act that would award him the Distinguished Flying Cross. 

He would go on to serve in No 76 Squadron RAAF in the Pacific, serving the defence of Milne Bay from Japanese invasion. While he would be killed in action, his devotion to his duty would be an inspiration to all he flew with.