Aussie diggers return to their theatre of war

BRISBANE – A group of Australian World War II veterans are on their way to Papua New Guinea to mark the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Pacific and the surrender of the Japanese forces in New Guinea.

Ernest ‘Jack’ Jeston, 91, is one of seven men who gathered in Brisbane this week for a wreath laying ceremony before they set off. It has been decades since Jeston served as a machine gunner and infantry man in the Pacific and he had not been back since.

“It was a big slog – you were knee-deep in mud all of the time and you had to be fit,” he said.

Jeston clearly remembers his first experience setting booby traps for Japanese soldiers in the field.

“My job was to lay out grenades, to let us know if the Japanese came during the night,” he said.

“I laid six grenades and in the morning nothing had happened so I went out to pick them up. I thought they were further than what they were and I tripped over them – with a grenade you’ve got a 10-second fuse.

“ I counted to seven and threw myself on the ground until they exploded.”

Jeston said he was looking forward to visiting the battlefields.

“It will be nice to go back and have a look at the crosses, the burial sites,” he said. “I might recognise some of the names of the people who were killed there. It’s a good experience I think, so I jumped at the chance to go.”

Ronald ‘Dixie’ Lee, 90 who is also making the trip, worked as a coastwatcher in the Pacific from 1943.

He remembers the dangers of the job.

“For some coastwatchers, some of the natives sold out to the Japanese and sometimes they were captured and beheaded because they were spies,” Lee said.

“But mostly the natives helped, especially those helping the Japanese to build airstrips and gun emplacements – they provided us with the information.

“In one instance, there was a gun emplacement the Japanese had put in a cave overlooking the sea, which you couldn’t see from the air.

“So the fighters zoomed in on it and blew it up – it was very valuable.”

Lee has not been back to the region for 50 years and was eager to return.

“It brings back memories that we’ve forgotten and I’m certainly looking forward to that,” he said.

Nearly 40,000 Australians were killed and 100,000 wounded in combat during WWII.

In total one million Australians helped with the war effort, with about 500,000 serving overseas.