My Place (46 page)

As soon as I was introduced to Bill, I knew my carefree days were over. I wasn't ready to settle down and get married, but I knew I didn't have any choice, this was meant to be.

Bill was different from other men I'd gone out with, he was older, more worldly. I knew he'd been a POW in Germany, but I didn't realise then what a terrible time he'd had.

None of my friends liked Bill and Mum disapproved of him too. ‘He drinks too much,' she told me, ‘you don't want to marry a drinker.' My friends tried to warn me about him. They said he was wild, sometimes crazy, but I didn't listen.

The day after I'd met Bill, he said, ‘You're going to marry me.'

‘No, I'm not,' I said.

‘Yes, you are.'

I was going with someone else at the time, so I thought, well, I might be able to hold him off for a while, but it wasn't to be. We went out for a year before we married. Mum never changed her mind about him. I told him I was Aboriginal, but he said he didn't care. And I don't think he did then, it was later that he changed.

His parents disapproved of me, they didn't want him marrying a coloured person. At the same time, they were glad to get him off their hands, because they hadn't been able to control him. They were sick of him wrapping trucks around telephone poles.

I managed to get Bill to cut down on his drinking. I hoped it was a change for the better that would last. Mum didn't want to
come to the wedding and neither did Bill's family, so we went and got married in a registry office. I was twenty-one. I think Mum had hoped it would all blow over and I'd get interested in someone else. I never told her when I was going to get married. I just went and did it. We'd talked about it before and it had only led to arguments. She had always been very jealous of anyone who took my attention away from her. She wanted me to stay home for the rest of my life and look after her.

***

After we were married, we lived with Mum. I was very happy. I continued to work at the florist shop. Mrs Sales sold out to a Mrs Richardson and she kept me on because I was good at my job. Richie, as we called her, was a real character, she would lie out the back on a small settee and drink wine all day. She left the running of the shop completely to me. At the end of the day, I'd wake her up and then I would catch the bus home.

Things didn't improve with Bill's family. They were very disappointed that he had actually gone ahead and married me. Bill's mother was very narrow-minded, she used to say things to Bill behind my back. I knew she would never accept me as an equal. I don't know how much Bill's father worried about me being coloured. He was always under the weather. Sometimes, he'd make a big fuss of me because I'd slip him a bit of money. I think he liked anybody who'd give him a few bob.

I knew Bill had had a funny upbringing. I was a real innocent compared to him.

Grandpa Milroy used to travel around putting in petrol bowsers for the Shell Oil Company, and Bill's mother was always sending Bill off to the Goldfields to haul his father out of the pubs and bring him home. Bill's father gambled away a fortune, and had Bill drinking beer from his early teenage years.

When Bill was fourteen, he had run away from home and got a job up North as a stockman. He told everyone he was sixteen, he
could pass for that because he was tall. He loved the life up there and was very upset when his father found him and made him return to Perth.

I found it difficult mixing with Bill's brothers and their friends. I'd been brought up strictly, whereas they lived in a brave new world. It was becoming a permissive society, even then.

Bill was different to his brothers. He had strong ideas and a kind heart. He had religious beliefs. When he was younger, he had wanted to become a priest, his mother was a strict Catholic. Bill had what you'd call a more universal outlook on life. I think that was because he'd seen a lot that other people hadn't. He never talked about his religious beliefs, but I knew they were there, deep inside him. Sometimes, when he talked about the war, I felt that there was a spiritual force that helped him get through. There were many times when he should have died, but didn't. He was meant to come back.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was really excited. Bill was overjoyed, expecting it to be a son, but it was Sally. I couldn't believe that I finally had a family of my own. Mum was really pleased too. In a strange way, I think it made her feel more secure, she was a grandmother now.

It wasn't long after that that Bill applied for a tradesman's flat down at Beaconsfield, where he was working as a plumber.

After the war there was a housing shortage and a lot of these weatherboard clusters had been built, they were mainly tenanted by English people who migrated out here in the hope of a better life. We were pleased to be moving into our own place. The surroundings were very pretty, it had originally been a farm and everyone still called it Mulberry Farm. There was a huge mulberry tree opposite our flat and olive trees dotted all over the place.

When we first moved in, we were always broke; it made a difference, having to pay rent. I had to give up work when I became pregnant. Also, people were always coming around, wanting to borrow money. I felt sorry for them and would give
them what I had, but they never paid any of it back. Apparently, this was the norm, but I didn't know. I had to cut down on my lending.

There was plenty of action at Mulberry Farm, domestic fights all the time and some funny things going on. It always gave me a good laugh.

Sally was very sick when she was small, we nearly lost her a couple of times. Sometimes during the night, I'd awake to see the figure of a nun standing next to her cot. It didn't frighten me, I knew she was being watched over, the way I had been when I was a child. I knew that she would never be a strong person, but she wouldn't die young.

Bill began having nightmares again. He'd suffered from them ever since he'd come back from the war. He'd scream and scream at night. I used to feel so sorry for him. Before we married, I had thought that the idea of being a POW was something very heroic and romantic, now I thought differently.

I used to try and get him to talk about his nightmares, it helped him a little, but he'd never go really deeply into what had happened to him. I think there were some things that were too degrading for him to share. I knew there had been one German commandant that had treated him really badly. Bill absolutely hated him, I think if he'd had the opportunity, he would have killed him. Bill would never tell me what had happened. A lot of his nightmares were about this chap. He would dream he couldn't get away.

One time, Bill's mother came around, she said she wanted to ask Bill something. She worked quite a few nights at the trots and she told him that a tall man with an accent had come up to her and said, ‘Did you have a son who was a POW during the war in Germany?'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘how did you know?'

‘It's the eyes,' he said, ‘you have the same eyes. I would recognise those eyes anywhere.' Then, apparently, he disappeared into the crowd.

I'll never forget the look on Bill's face when she asked him who
the chap could be. He went as white as a sheet. He knew who it was, but he wouldn't tell us, he just locked himself in his room and wouldn't come out.

There was a real mess after the war, I think a lot of Germans came out to Australia, passing themselves off as different nationalities. This chap was German. I think he was the man Bill hated, I'm sure of it.

It was that episode that precipitated his drinking again. He'd been good since he'd married me, he'd settled down a lot, but now, all he was interested in was forgetting the past in a bottle. He hardly ate, he just drank. Mum had to bring me food from the restaurant, I never had any money. Sometimes, he'd disappear for days and I wouldn't see him. I was worried sick, anything could have happened to him. I knew he had blackouts. I sometimes wondered if he even knew where he'd been all that time.

It got so bad that, in the end, I couldn't stand it, I took Sally and moved back in with Mum. She was pleased to have me there, I think she'd been worried about what Bill might do.

I'd been at Mum's about ten days and I still hadn't seen him. I couldn't help thinking about all the things he'd told me about the war, and I wondered about what he hadn't told me. I started to worry and felt so sad about what they'd done to him. I still loved him. I've never told anyone Bill's war experiences, but perhaps it will help you to understand if I write it down.

Bill fought in the desert with the 2/16th Battalion.

He said he found it so hard to kill other people. I remember him telling me about one time when there were Germans in the sandhills and he could see them, they were outlined like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery. Bill was on the machine-gun and the others called to him, ‘Shoot you bastard while you've got the chance!' He said he couldn't, it was too easy. Someone shoved him aside, grabbed the gun and mowed them down. It made him feel sick.

Bill was wounded during a battle for a town and he was placed in the army hospital. That was how he got left behind in the Middle East, because the rest of his battalion was shipped back to fight in New Guinea.

After he recovered, he was placed in the 2/28th and continued to fight in the desert. I remember asking him about the desert, I thought it would be like the beach, but Bill said that the ground was so hard you could only dig shallow trenches.

Bill was captured at El Alamein and, along with two thousand other Allied prisoners, was crammed into the hold of the
Nino Bixio
, an Italian freighter. It was very crowded, you couldn't stretch out. If you had somewhere to sit, you were lucky. They were only allowed to have the hatch cover open a little bit to allow access to the latrines. A lot of the men had dysentery, so you can imagine what it was like.

Second day out to sea, they were torpedoed by an Allied submarine.

Bill said he'd been sitting in his usual pose, legs apart, elbows on knees, having a joke with the bloke next to him, when a torpedo whizzed straight through, hit the other side of the hold, exploded and flung everyone back onto him..

When he came to, he was covered in blood and bodies, arms and legs, guts, fingers blown off, he didn't know what belonged to him and what didn't. The whole hold was covered with bits and pieces of human beings. He thought he'd had it. The ship started taking water, some of the men tried to get out through the hole in the side that the torpedo had made, but the swell washed them back in and they were cut to pieces on the torn edges. The steel ladders leading to the top part of the hold had been destroyed, so there was no way out.

Survivors from the top part of the hold threw down ropes and the Captain, who was a big, red-headed Italian, shouted, ‘If anyone's alive down there, climb up!'

By the time Bill got himself out from underneath all the bodies, he realised he was actually still in one piece. He had bits of
shrapnel embedded in his arms, legs and chest, but apart from that, he was all right.

He picked up the nearest bloke to him who looked like he might be in one piece and climbed the rope. That turned out to be Frank Potter. Bill said the Captain of the ship did the best he could, he ran round screaming and swearing in Italian, trying to help the wounded.

The next day, an Italian destroyer took them in tow. They beached on the Greek coast and the wounded were taken to shore and laid out along the beach. Bill said there'd been over five hundred men in their hold when they were hit, only seventy survived the torpedo and then a lot of them died on the beach.

Some of the men were terribly wounded, to make matters worse, there was no food or medical supplies. Orderlies were going along the beach, hacking off arms and legs that were only just hanging on. They were using tomahawks, and digging out shrapnel with daggers. Bill knew if they tried to dig the shrapnel out of him, he'd die for sure, he was a bleeder and he had a rare blood group.

Those that could walk were marched through the nearest town and put on show like some ruddy great prize. The men spat on them and the women threw their kitchen slops and pots full of excrement onto them.

They stayed in Corinth for a while, and then they were shipped back to Italy and sent to Campo 57.

Bill said the commandant there was a real Fascist, he wasn't like most Italians. He was very hard and liked to see them suffer. He had a sign up which read,
The English are cursed, but more cursed are those Italians who treat them well!

The Allies began bombing the area near the camp, that's when Bill escaped. The guards were so frightened they ran off leaving the gates wide open. All the prisoners followed. Bill said to Abercrombe, the bloke that was with him, ‘Not down the middle of the road, the Germans will realise we're being bombed and come to round us up. Down in the ditch.'

Sure enough, a few minutes later, along came the Germans and herded everyone back inside, Bill and Abercrombe hid in the ditch till nightfall.

Abercrombe wanted to head south in the hope of meeting up with the Yanks, but Bill talked him into going north to Switzerland. They travelled mainly at night, stealing food and sleeping in the fields.

The eventually came to a small town and hung around the well in the centre of the village, hoping someone friendly would notice them. They knew the Germans were around, but, so far, they hadn't seen any, so they hoped their luck would hold out.

An old bloke came along and looked them over, Bill had picked up a few Italian words, so he told him who they were. The old man fetched the head man, who took them home to his place and gave them some warm food and
vino
.

They thought he was a nice bloke, until he made a pass at them. Bill grabbed him by the collar and told him to put them in touch with the Resistance, or else. He said they'd have to let him make a phone call. Bill listened carefully and realised he was really phoning the Germans. They grabbed him, belted him up, pinched some food and nicked off before the Germans got there.