No One Left Behind - An Exclusive Sneak Peek

SNEAK PREVIEW

© MACMILLAN AUSTRALIA Under no circumstances may this chapter sampler be resold, published elsewhere or copied.

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About the book From the battlefields of Korea, Malaya and Vietnam to the struggle for veterans’ welfare, Keith Payne has never shied away from a fight. More than 50 years ago, this bravery saw him receive the Commonwealth’s highest military honour - the Victoria Cross.

Keith grew up one of thirteen children in the shadow of the Great Depression and the Second World War. After seeing his father come home wounded from war, Keith joined the army. He was sent to fight in Korea at just 18 years old, the bloody beginning to decades of military service across the world.

Keith’s life was defined by one night in 1969. In the dark jungle of Vietnam, under heavy enemy fire, Keith returned to a fled battlefield to rescue 40 of his soldiers. For his extreme act of bravery in leading his men to safety, Keith became the last Australian to earn the VC for 40 years.

Keith spent decades in the public spotlight while struggling with his own demons, then found new purpose as an advocate for others. In a lifetime of service, he has helped not only veterans of foreign wars, but also Indigenous diggers and communities left behind by civilian and military bureaucracy.

No One Left Behind tells, for the first time in his words, of Keith Payne’s remarkable life. His definitive autobiography reveals the story of a bighearted, iconic Australian and the heart and heartaches of a man who continues to fight for his mates.

About the AUTHOR Keith Payne VC, AM was born in Ingham, Queensland, in 1933. He joined the Australian Army in 1951 and served in a variety of conflicts, including the Korean and Vietnam wars. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry under fire, in Vietnam in 1969. Keith and his wife raised five sons, and today they live in Mackay.

Praise for the book ‘I first met Keith Payne in Vietnam and was in awe of this understated hero whose lifesaving actions in combat became a treasured Australian legend. This book shows over time how that legend became the man. In my long military career, it may be said that my friendship with Keith and Flo was part of my firmament as an Australian General.’

- General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK, AC(Mil), CVO, MC (Ret’d) ‘No One Left Behind is a compelling read about a genuine, rolled-gold Aussie hero. Always the larrikin, Keith Payne VC’s memoir will make you smile and feel good about life, I promise.’ - Ray Martin AM ‘Keith doesn’t beat around the bush with his honest account of the highs and lows he has gone through in the service of his country. No One Left Behind is so much more than a military memoir. Keith’s larrikin behaviour and ability to spin a yarn leaves you wanting to know more. His story of soldier, hero and then returned servicemen delves into the unseen wounds of post-traumatic stress disorder, a result of his service in Korea and Vietnam. His advocacy in pursuing better conditions for future generations of servicemen and women sends a strong message to the government of today: “What more could be done?”’ - Daniel Keighran VC ‘To stand in the battlefield wreckage of the Vietnam war, to smell the napalm, taste the blood from your own forehead and to hide from enemy soldiers sweeping over the battlefield - this is Keith Payne’s journey. As I read No One Left Behind, I crouch beside him on the windswept frozen bluffs of Korea, and duck with him in the napalmed jungles of Vietnam. We plunge into the hellscape of Ben Het, walking time and again into the black jungle, wounded and terrified, to look for his fallen mates. Keith Payne is the last of a great generation - accompany him on these battles, and come full circle with him to experience the staid return to civilian order and employment. This soldier shows us a timeless lesson, in both word and in deed - leave no one behind.’ - Mark Wales ‘The power is in the story. Keith Payne’s life and story is a gift to our nation and the next generation. Born of hardship, a man shaped by the best and worst of human behaviour, who has loved and been loved by one woman. He fought wars for us, then in peace, the lived traumas he brought back with him. A life given ultimately for others. To read No One Left Behind is to accept the challenge to be a better person.’ - Hon Dr Brendan Nelson AO ‘In his own words Keith tells, humbly, how he not only saved 40 of his soldiers in Vietnam, but how he went on to help many, many more veterans in the years to come, while also striving to get on top of his own problems. I can’t think of a better example to set ... take care of yourself, but never forget to look after your mates.’ - Mark Donaldson VC

FOREWORD

BY MARK DONALDSON VC

A

s a boy and even as a young digger I was never a student of military history, so the first I learned of Keith Payne’s military career was just before my investiture, when I received the Victoria Cross for Australia.

It’s never a good idea to compare actions, but it’s hard not to. When I read of what Keith had done, not just in the fighting that led to him receiving his Victoria Cross, but in the engagements leading up to that battle, and his prior service, it made me feel almost as if I was not worthy to receive the same award.

I remember being amazed when he told me about Korea, often dubbed the ‘forgotten war’, where diggers fought not only the enemy, but also an environment for which they were ill-equipped. He said digging into the frozen dirt in Korea was like digging into concrete. xiii © Macmillan Australia

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In No One Left Behind, Keith expands, in his own words, on his childhood, his whole military career and his other battles, failures and triumphs since Vietnam. It describes and highlights how a person can be defined by so much more than just one action.

I clearly remember our first meeting, at my investiture, when I saw a look of pride on his face and heard the same emotion in his voice. Keith had been in the spotlight as the last Australian to receive a VC for nearly 40 years. It was as if he was happy that there was finally someone new there behind him to back him up.

In Australia, of course, we have the Tall Poppy Syndrome, and people – usually those who had never met him – told me stories about Keith that were probably laced with jealousy or resentment. The man I met and got to know never deserved that sort of sniping.

Keith made it clear to me from the start that he would be there for me as a friend and a mentor, just as those who had gone before him. Men such as Ted Kenna VC and Sir Arthur Roden Cutler VC, had helped him.

He lived up to that promise and I was often able to call him up and have a chat to him. I could bounce things off him – such as how I was handling things – and get his advice. As more VC recipients came along, Keith helped us form a team, where new members or old could share their experiences and stories.

Keith has probably been our hardest working holder of the medal in recent history.

I could not think of any other individual in Australia who has visited as many RSL branches, veterans’ groups, defence force units, cadet units, schools or remote and regional communities than Keith. I don’t think any of us more recent recipients of the VC could keep up with Keith xiv © Macmillan Australia No One Left Behind_TXT.indd 14

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and he continued his busy schedule until his health slowed him down in the last few years.

In the process of those countless visits he helped many people and inspired many more and it would be interesting to see the effect if he had not been around.

Whereas Keith’s mentor, Sir Arthur Roden Cutler VC, a diplomat and state governor, was probably used to a life in the public eye, Keith was a warrant officer thrust into it. He brought to the job a senior digger’s no-nonsense approach and an undying commitment to use his position to look after others, regardless of their backgrounds, but this, as you will see, has been a common theme in his life.

Keith had to do all this while facing the same problems that many people do after a life in the military. On one level, he was just another guy trying to figure out his life post-­ service, but he was also battling his own demons while in the public eye.

The account of how Keith, with help from his loving wife and family, struggled to overcome his problems makes for compelling reading. Throughout these difficult times, however, Keith never lost his love for the military, nor his commitment to looking after his extended group of mates in the Australian Defence Force.

Keith is a man who has done so much for his country that his legacy will run deep and strong, both here in Australia and overseas; he forged strong links with the British holders of the Victoria Cross and George Cross, and across the ditch in New Zealand, where I know Willie Apiata VC holds Keith in the highest regard. It makes it almost impossible for those of us who have followed to live up to the standard that he has set.

As you’ll see in No One Left Behind, Keith is as rough as Australia can be, as honest as you would hope and expect the xv © Macmillan Australia No One Left Behind_TXT.indd 15

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people of this country to be, and he knows how and when to stand up and do his country and his mates proud.

In his own words Keith tells, humbly, how he not only saved 40 of his soldiers in Vietnam, but how he went on to help many, many more veterans in the years to come, while also striving to get on top of his own problems.

I can’t think of a better example to set for all of those Australians who are serving today, and, in fact, all of us – take care of yourself, but never forget to look after your mates.

I hope you enjoy Keith’s amazing life and, like me, draw courage and inspiration from it.

Mark Donaldson VC

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PROLOGUE

‘S

top, nigger!’ The white American military policeman drew his Colt .45 pistol from his holster as he stood on the railway platform.

I’d never use that ‘N’ word myself, but this is a story not just about me, but the world and the times in which I have lived. I have seen incredible bravery, and terrible cowardice; the best of mankind and unforgiveable intolerance.

The man the MP was aiming at was also a US soldier in uniform, from the same army; he was an African-­American man in his early twenties. He jumped the station fence and was heading for the little corner shop, on the other side of Lynch Street.

I was standing in the Ingham Railway Station car park, barefoot under the hot north Queensland sun and dressed in an old pair of shorts and shirt that Mum had got from the Salvation Army. I’d watched the troop train come in. It was late 1942: the Americans had entered the war the previous December after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Darwin had been 1 © Macmillan Australia

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attacked in the February, and plenty of people had left our little town and the surrounding farms, thinking the enemy was going to invade Australia any day now.

At one end of the station, where the office was, with its timber veranda and hanging baskets of flowers, there was a refreshment room, where the troops could get a cup of tea or a cold drink. White soldiers only, that is.

At the age of nine, I knew there were Black people in America, but, so far, I hadn’t seen any. Now I’d just seen my first, and he kept walking across the street as I watched on.

Other soldiers had heard the commotion and were piling off the train.

‘Stop!’ The MP took aim, and: pow, pow.

He shot the bloke in the arm and the African-­American went down on the ground. In the street. In Ingham.

A couple of the GIs jumped the fence and they ran to the wounded fellow and picked him up. I knew the African-­ American soldier would bleed red, like any other man, but the contrast of the blood against his dark skin made it look almost purple.

The incident was shocking. Mystifying. I stood there staring and wondering about what had just gone on, and why. I felt terribly upset; not only had I just seen a man shot, for the first time in my life, but I just couldn’t understand why there were soldiers shooting someone who was wearing the same uniform as them.

I knew he wasn’t allowed to go to the refreshment room, but he was just going to the shop, to buy something. Over the years I learned more, about the problems between white people and Black people in America, and about the beltings and the hangings and the Ku Klux Klan. But even as a little boy, I knew it was not on.

Racism. Injustice. Intolerance, just because someone was different.

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The commotion died down and the soldiers got on the train. The locomotive got up a head of steam and chuffed away.

Now they were short one man for the war; the African-­ American might have been different to the majority, but he dressed the same and he bled, just as many of them would in the war. He was still one of them, or at least he should have been.

I have fought in many battles throughout my life. A few have been against enemies, who I came to respect. Too many of the fights, however, have been about soldiers being deserted by the very people who should have been looking after them; people being hung out to dry, when they were suffering wounds to their bodies, their minds and their pride.

I’m sorry to say, but that sort of thing is happening today, as I write this book, here in Australia.

On that day in 1942, at the train station in sleepy little Ingham, the Americans did the worst thing a military officer or a soldier can do to another living human being.

They left him behind.

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here are two versions of my life story, especially what I did to be nominated for the Victoria Cross in Vietnam in 1969. There is the public story, which I’ve been telling for more than 50 years, and the true story. This will be the real one.

For example, my grandfather, Charles, was an old bastard.

He’d clip you under the ear just for standing there.

My grandmother, Maria, on my mother’s side, was Italian. She was working in a pub in Halifax, in Far North Queensland as a laundress and the publican had his way with her. My nonna, which was what we called her, fell pregnant.

It was a family secret, though not much of one, because we all knew about it. All the same, it wasn’t spoken about openly for years, but it’s all part of our history now, the good and the bad.

The child of the union of the publican and Nonna, a boy, was taken to another family in Innisfail and adopted. We later learned we had this other uncle up there.

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Grandfather Charles was a Pom, a horse driver and labourer who had come out to Australia and he liked his beer – too much. He used to get pissed every day; from his house all he had to do was walk through the fowl yard and he’d be in the bar of the pub in Halifax.

The publican put a proposition to him: ‘You marry this girl, and you can drink all the beer you like, on me.’

Anyhow, just like that, the deal was done. They had two sons and three girls of their own. The two brothers took up cane farming after the First World War, around ­Innisfail; one of my aunts married a jockey – I had a cousin who won the Melbourne Cup; and my Aunty Thelma married an Italian sawmiller, Joe Parris. Their other daughter, Remilda – Millie – was my mother.

My father’s parents were also from the UK. My grandfather on that side, Frank, was Welsh and he had served in the First World War as a coachman, making wheels for the British Army’s horse-­ drawn artillery. He and my grandmother, Ruth, had two children – a girl, Rowita, who was born in Wales, and my father, Henry, who came along in 1908 after the family had moved to Australia.

Henry was a grocer; he ran the general store in Ingham, which at that time was a bush town, with dirt roads and Palm Creek, a tributary of the Herbert River, running through the little borough. The railway was our connection to the outside world and it serviced not only the population, but also the sugarcane farms that surrounded the town. With its warm tropical climate and good rainfall Ingham was perfect country for growing cane.

Mother and Father were married in Ingham in 1929 – he was 21 and she was 17 – and they’d already had three children, Gwenda, Merle and Ronald, who was known to everyone, for some reason, as Toby, before I came along in 1933. I was born during the Great Depression and things were tight, even 6 © Macmillan Australia No One Left Behind_TXT.indd 6

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before the war came along. Father was always working, which was pretty damn fortunate. In some ways we were isolated from the world and its problems. When things were tough, we could find food by fishing in the river – Father had his own nets – and there were feral pigs, scrub turkey and wild pigeons in the bush, so we didn’t have far to go to forage. We also had a large vegetable garden.

Before we acquired rifles, my brothers and I used to go hunting with our shanghaies – slingshot catapults, made from a forked stick and a bit of rubber. We used to practise on anything we could see – our favourite targets other than birds were the ceramic cups on the electric telegraph poles, and I’m sorry to say the linesmen got plenty of work out of the Payne boys.

We went into the bush and bagged a few doves for dinner. The family was big, and growing, so there were many mouths to feed in the Payne household. My brother Alan was two years younger than me and even before the war had started he had been followed by Pam, John and Frank, though poor little John didn’t make it. After our hunting we headed home and I ducked under the bridge, about a kilometre out of town.

‘G’day, nipper,’ said the swagman, camping rough in the shade and shelter of the structure, his mate tending to a small fire. ‘What have you got for us?’

‘G’day, Andy.’ I handed him a dove. It was a very different time, back then, when a five-­or six-­­year-­old kid would be out with his brothers hunting, talking to homeless men.

‘Good on you, nipper,’ Andy said.

Andy and his mate, and other swaggies, would jump the trains during the Depression years to head north, chasing cane-­cutting jobs around towns like ours, and go fruit picking on the Atherton Tablelands, inland from the coast north of us. Andy had a big beard, and old clothes, and we got to 7 © Macmillan Australia No One Left Behind_TXT.indd 7

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know him pretty well as he passed through town every year, looking for odd jobs or work during the harvest.

As boys we lived a wild life, living off the land, and grew up tough, not thinking about dangers around every corner.

A good deal of what I learned back then would help me later in life. ✽

My earliest memories are of war, even before seeing the African-­A merican man being shot. I turned six in August 1939, and although I can’t recall the day, we would have all heard the news the following month on the old Stromberg-­ Carlson radio, a sizeable piece of equipment in a Bakelite casing, when the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, addressed the nation.

Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of the persistence of Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result, Australia is also at war.

The radio was set up high on a shelf where only Father could work the knobs on it. Mother was a short, solid-­looking woman and she couldn’t reach the magic piece of gear; even if she could, she wasn’t hi-­tech enough to know how to turn it on. Of course, that changed, like so much else when the war came along.

‘Atten-­shun! Stand at . . . ease.’

A couple of my uncles and one or two of Father’s mates were in the shed out the back of the house, having a drink, only now they were in uniform, and using broomsticks for rifles as they practised their drill, teaching each other the correct way to stand to attention and at ease, and practising ‘slope arms’ with their ‘weapons’.

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Father was watching over them, correcting them, here and there. Henry had joined the militia, the part-­time army.

He’d tried to enlist in the AIF, the regular army, and had volunteered for overseas service, but he’d been knocked back, because he was a family man.

‘Concentration’ was a new word I was learning, short for concentration camp, which was how the Italians around town referred to the internment camps which were springing up around the country to house enemy aliens. Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, had sided with Adolf Hitler and we were at war with Italy, as well as Germany and later Japan. Australians who had come from those countries were being rounded up and shipped off to the camps.

Ingham was like little Italy – we had lots of Italians, who had come out in the 1920s to cut cane, and even by this time, at the start of the war, many of them were now successful farm owners, or ran other businesses. For a small town, Ingham was a real mixed bag; as well as the Italians we had other Europeans who had come out as refugees after the First World War, seeking a new and better life, and Chinese people who’d come in the old days, for the gold rush.

The whole thing was a bit of a mess. You had some Italians, including a couple of uncles on my Mum’s family’s side, who ended up in camps, and others who enlisted in the Australian Army and served.

Like Gino Messina, for example, who was quite a few years older than me. His father ran the sawmill and furniture factory in town. Gino was as Italian as any of the others, but because he was born in Australia he was allowed to enlist and was made a sergeant-­interpreter. Ironically, he ended up serving at one of the internment camps down in Victoria as the jailer of his own people.

Of course, as well as the Italians and the other nationalities, there was a big Indigenous population around Ingham, and 9 © Macmillan Australia No One Left Behind_TXT.indd 9

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we all got on. Colour never meant a thing to me; it was just something I never thought of. I was friends with the Braikenridges, an Aboriginal family, and I used to go fishing with the boys sometimes. Their sister, Sylvia, was pretty easy on the eye as well.

For a while the war stayed far away, something happening in some far-­off part of the world. We went to school and of an evening we’d listen to the radio when Father came home from work and turned it on – though in time my sisters learned how to work it and would pull a stool up to the shelf so they could reach it when Mum and Father weren’t around. We’d listen to Don Bradman playing cricket, and to soap operas, such as Portia Faces Life, and Dad and Dave.

In between school, the boys would go out fishing and hunting in the bush, and tending to the veggie garden, and the girls would help Mum doing the chores around the house. She had another baby, Neville, in April of ’41.

By 1942, the year I turned nine, we could see the impact of the war around our town. All these strange faces had started arriving – Americans. There was a good deal of training happening on the Atherton Tablelands, and Townsville had become a base for American and Australian warplanes. Like Darwin, Townsville had also been bombed by the Japanese and it was south of us.

It was around this time that I saw the African-­American man get shot. He was treated for his wound in the little hospital in Ingham and when he was released he spent time in a transit camp for Australian troops, at the showground.

While he was recuperating, he was allowed leave, and the local townspeople in Ingham were quite interested in him and took care of him; he had a pretty good time for a couple of months.

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him having a beer. When there were white American soldiers in the pub, the African-­American couldn’t drink at the same bar as them – he had to go to the other side, but the Italians, more often than not, would go and drink with him. The Braikenridges, the Indigenous family, took him under their wing and he’d sometimes go to their place for a barbeque.

What happened to that bloke might sound unbelievable, but in 2012 news surfaced that there had been a mutiny by African-­American troops from a US Army engineer battalion at Kelso, west of Townsville, in May 1942. As a result of a Black sergeant being killed by a white superior officer, some of the soldiers fired machine-­guns at their white officers’ tents in a siege that lasted for eight hours. At least one person was killed, but the whole thing was hushed up at the time.

The bloke I saw was eventually taken away to the American Army again, where I imagine they gave him a hard time, though I don’t know for sure. The injustice of the whole thing never left me. ✽

Toby and I sang away as our skinny but muscly arms slid back and forth, working each end of the cross-­ cut saw in the backyard, as we showered ourselves with sawdust from the log we were attacking. We made up our own words to the Labor Party’s song, ‘Solidarity Forever’: ‘We’ll hang old Henry out, on a sour apple bush; when the red revolution comes along . . .’

We still loved and respected Henry, our father, but the rules for enlistment for fighting overseas had been relaxed in mid-­1942 and by 1943 he was now off at the war, taking part in the campaigns in the Pacific Islands, so that meant it was more hard work for us at home.

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Ingham was changing. Most of the local able-­bodied men were gone and while the Americans and Aussie diggers were flooding into north Queensland, the town and many of the surrounding farms were emptying out. Australia had stopped the Japanese on the Kokoda Track and at Milne Bay, in New Guinea, but there was still a very real fear of a Japanese invasion. The gossip around town was that the Japanese would land at Townsville, and the government wasn’t doing much to reassure us otherwise. They had said everything north of Brisbane would be left to the Japanese in the event of invasion, and the defence of Australia would begin at the Brisbane Line, as they called it.

My brothers and I stopped by a fruit farm, where the owners were packing up.

‘Mind if we have some of your chicken wire?’ I asked.

I had something in mind.

‘Take what you want,’ said the farmer, ‘we’re shooting through.’

We would roam the farms and orchards, taking what we wanted. We picked custard apples and mandarins and took them in buckets to the railway station in town.

When a troop train pulled in we’d start our pitch. If it was Aussies, we’d give them the fruit for free, but if they were Yanks, we’d charge them. The dollar was king in those days, and there were plenty of them to be had.

A train chuffed up to the platform and I could see the slouch hats on the heads sticking out of the windows. No cash, this time, but Toby and I took the fruit up the carriages and started handing it out to the grateful soldiers.

‘Hey, nipper!’

I turned around.

‘Over here, nipper, how are you goin’?’

I was looking around and I thought, who the bloody hell?

And then he smiled and I recognised him. ‘That’s Andy!’

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This was the bloke who used to lie under trains when they were stopped and then jump on at the last minute, as they set off, and now here he was riding inside one. We’d always thought of him as ‘old Andy’ the swaggie, with his big beard and dirty clothes, but here he was, clean-­shaven, and clean, in the uniform of an Australian soldier and he looked his real age, about twenty-five.

‘Where’ve you been, Andy?’ I asked him, as he peeled a mandarin. I hadn’t seen him for three or four years.

‘Joined up early, AIF,’ he said. ‘Went to the Middle East and I’ve just been home on leave, to the Atherton Tablelands. We’re off to somewhere else, now.’

It was great to see him and we chatted a while, but then his train was gone. I still get a bit emotional when I think of Andy, and wonder what happened to him. I never saw him again. ✽

For the Payne boys, the bush and the deserted farms and ­properties in and around Ingham were our playground. To tell the truth, growing up during the war was a ball, even if it was hard work.

When Father left, he locked his two rifles, a Besa – an old British Small Arms, or BSA, .22 – and a .303 that dated back to the Boer War, in a cupboard. By rights, the rifles should have been surrendered to the government back then, but somehow they went missing. He also stashed away his prized fishing nets, wrapped up with naphthalene so they’d be safe and sound until he returned home from the war.

We waved him off when he left and he wasn’t at the end of the driveway before we’d broken the lock on the cupboard.

I’d been out shooting with the smaller calibre Besa since I was six years old, so I was already pretty handy with a rifle.

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‘We going to school today or not?’ Toby, Alan and I would discuss with each other of a morning. More often than not, the answer was no, as we had ‘work’ to do, especially as the war carried on and I got older. Ingham had become a town of women and girls, very old men, and young boys – we three older Payne lads were filling the roles of our fathers, uncles and older brothers who were away at war.

One of the many effects of so many people fleeing south, in fear of the Japanese, was that the bottom fell out of the Ingham property market. Mum did a deal with the lady next door to us, Mrs Kemp, who was leaving, and bought her house for a bargain – 600 pounds. It was an old Queenslander, timber-­ framed and up on stilts to allow air to circulate underneath, and it was much bigger than ours. Prior to the war there was no way Father could have afforded a house like that, given his wages and the size of our growing family.

I decided to skip school and went out to the bush instead.

I was becoming a good shot – I had to be, as ammunition was in short supply, so I couldn’t afford to waste rounds.

I managed to get a wallaby, to feed our dogs, and as I was carrying it home on my back I ran into some American soldiers.

The Americans were very keen to explore as much of Australia as they could when they were on leave. They would get on the train and travel to towns such as ours and then rent bicycles to look around. There were dances in the town hall every weekend and word of north Queensland’s pretty young Italian girls soon reached the homesick GIs. The Americans were also fascinated with the countryside and from what I could tell, the ones from the big city wanted to see our countryside and farmlands.

‘Hey kid, where’d you get that?’ one of the soldiers said, pointing to my wallaby.

‘Newton Plains,’ I said, ‘about five miles out of town.’

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He looked to his mates. ‘We want to go huntin’. We’ll pay you.’

‘Got any spare ammo? .22? .303?’ I said.

‘Sure. We can find it. You got a sister?’

That was the most common question the American soldiers asked. I said no to the sister, but I organised to take them out the next weekend, with my brothers.

We all rode bicycles out of town on the Saturday afternoon. Newton Plains was an old cattle station and the wide, open grasslands were perfect country for wallabies. We saw plenty of them, grazing in the golden afternoon light.

The Americans formed up, line abreast, like they were about to assault a Japanese position, with us boys behind them, out of the way. They were dressed in their jungle uniforms and carrying their M1 .30 calibre rifles.

One gave the command and the next minute they all opened up. It was deafening and there were bullets flying everywhere. Startled wallabies bounded away in panic. The Americans were good at making a lot of noise, but their marksmanship wasn’t great.

‘I hope they at least hit one,’ I said to Toby over the racket of bullets and whooping American soldiers. The deal was that we would be paid for the wallaby skins, for them to take home as souvenirs. We couldn’t let anything go to waste, so the meat would be used to feed our dogs. ✽

As well as our fruit, wallabies, farms and sisters, the Americans liked our beer. They’d park their bicycles outside the pub and spend plenty of time at the bar.

Mr Benedetto had a good business going, renting bicycles to the Yanks. Rubber was required for the war effort, so he was not allowed to sell tyres or tubes to us, but he was 15 © Macmillan Australia No One Left Behind_TXT.indd 15

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making a killing with his rental business and he was allowed to stock enough rubber to keep his bikes on the road.

My job, while the Americans were inside drinking, was to scout the rows of bicycles outside Ingham’s many pubs to find suitable targets – the ones with the same-coloured wheels as our bikes. Once I found a target, Toby would be working the spanners while Alan kept lookout.

Toby always went for the front wheels – less mucking about with the sprockets. He finished his work and looked up at us. ‘Right-­o, we’re good. Let’s go!’

We would have a new wheel each within minutes. The hardest thing was making a quick getaway with a new bicycle wheel, complete with nice, new tyre, under our arms as we rode off.

No one ever caught us ‘liberating’ wheels and no one knew except Mr Benedetto, and he was making more money and getting more supplies, in order to keep his rental business going. The American soldiers had more than enough cash to pay for their missing wheels, so it was a good example of the circular economy in action.

The ammo we’d traded with the Americans was doing the job. Wild pork and turkey were on the menu most nights, along with fish from the river. I don’t think I actually ate farm-­raised pork for the first time in my life until well after the war was over.

Foraging around the abandoned properties we found chicken wire netting from people’s abandoned fowl houses, and rope to make fish traps. Father’s precious fish nets were big, so we made a cart out of an old tea chest with some pram wheels underneath, to move the nets about.

Long before any of us was old enough to get a licence we taught ourselves to drive, in Henry’s old Model T Ford, which had been standing idle since he went off to basic training in Brisbane. Father had joined the Royal 16 © Macmillan Australia No One Left Behind_TXT.indd 16

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Australian Engineers and had been sent to the islands to the north.

I could barely reach the pedals of the Ford; it had a clutch, brake and accelerator and a gear stick, and a lever like a handbrake, which was actually top gear. The boys and I would take her out into the scrub, with the cross-­cut saw, and bring back timber to the house, which we’d then cut up in the yard, while cursing Henry. After that we’d cart the wood to our sisters, who’d use it to fire up the stove and the ‘copper’, an old 44-­gallon drum set in a fireplace, which provided hot water for the house.

‘Slow down!’ I said to my sister, Pam, as I dropped off another load. ‘You’re burning too much wood.’

At dinner time we’d all sit down at the long table, on narrow stools made from rough-­cut timber – there were already too many of us kids for us to have full-­sized dining chairs. There were two proper chairs, one at each end of the table, for Mother and Father. Mother sat at the end closest to the stove and serving bench. There was no talking at the table, unless you were spoken to, and you watched your manners and sat up straight. After the meal it was clean-­up, wash-­up, wipe-­up. That was our routine and we were a pretty happy bunch. Of course, there were fights between the individual kids now and then, but if any outsider tried to pick on one of ours, then it was all in. You tried to touch a Payne kid, and you’d get a hiding – end of lesson.

Mum went through who had to do what chores the next day. However, we’d all become accustomed to the routine of looking after ourselves and the family while Father was away at the war. We older ones would kill pigs, fish and fowls and pluck and prepare them, and our sisters would help Mum cook them, and we’d all help feed and care for the younger ones.

We did it all not because we were ordered to, but because it had to be done. Those years during the war taught us firstly 17 © Macmillan Australia No One Left Behind_TXT.indd 17

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what it meant to be part of a family; secondly, the need to support one another; and thirdly, it really helped if you could enjoy what you were doing in life at the same time. And we did enjoy ourselves, in our own silly ways.

Being left to our own devices a lot of the time meant we had to learn a bit of common sense as well, particularly being out in the bush by ourselves. Alan and I went fishing one time, planning on staying out overnight, which was not unusual for us. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon as night began to fall and big storms started brewing up. The wind was blowing and the trees were shaking as the rain started to come in. I stood up and had a look down the creek.

‘I can see a light, a long way off,’ I said to Alan. ‘I’m gonna go have a look.’

‘I’m staying here,’ said Alan.

I set off along the muddy creek bank, slipping and sliding in the rain, heading for the light. When I got there, I found it was some people we knew, friends of our family. They’d also been out fishing and were packing up to go home.

‘Can you give us a lift?’ I asked them.

‘Yeah, no worries.’

I asked them to wait and made my way back to Alan.

‘Come on, grab your gear and get ready, we’re going home.’

It was moments like this that taught me a valuable lesson for later in life. If you’re in a scary situation then sometimes it’s best not to sit still and hope for the best, but to get up and move, and take some control of your fate.

Mostly, we enjoyed just ‘being’. We didn’t need a lot of direction; it was just doing what had to be done, and knowing our responsibility.

At my age I’m often asked if I have any advice for young people. What I say to that question comes partly from my time in the army, but also from those days during the war.

‘Responsibility,’ I say.

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I learned as a kid that within myself I could do all of the things that were expected of me and that acceptance of responsibility was part of my upbringing. I knew I was not just an individual, I was part of a family unit and I could not let the family – the team – down. We were adventurous kids, hunting game, driving cars and skipping school, but underneath all of that was an understanding of our personal responsibilities, to each other and the family.

Now, if everybody in the nation, or just one person, read that and said to themselves, ‘What is my responsibility?’, that would be a good start.

When I say that to children, they look at me funny, perhaps thinking that as kids, rather than adults, they don’t have any responsibility, to which I say: ‘Well, your responsibility right now is to your family, isn’t it? It’s to your mum and your dad, to your school, to the citizens in your home town, and to your friends, right? You want to do your best by all of them, even by your nation.’

It starts them thinking, and then, hopefully, they say: ‘Hey, I’ve got a part to play in this society’. I tell kids to take a good look at the mistakes of the past, like maybe how Indigenous people were poorly treated, and ask themselves if, maybe one day, they could do a better job.

We all want something to grab on to, but maybe that starts with us taking responsibility for our part in life right now.

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