Darwin's crusading editor, Jim Bowditch , in action on the phone compiling North News ,a subscription business newsletter, in October 1974. Photo taken at Graphic Systems, Stuart Park, by Kerry Byrnes , proprietor of Darwin's independent newspaper, The Star, now of Arnhem Nursery, regularly heard on the ABC gardening program on Saturday mornings .
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On the very first day in the army, Private James Bowditch , QX 13703, after having been put through the quartermaster’s store and shouted at from all sides, was lined up with the other raw recruits and inspected by a sergeant major. This man passed uncomplimentary remarks to his aides as he inspected the intake . When he came to Jim, who had a mop of hair as he had let it grow wild , he said , “ First thing, haircut for you.”
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On the very first day in the army, Private James Bowditch , QX 13703, after having been put through the quartermaster’s store and shouted at from all sides, was lined up with the other raw recruits and inspected by a sergeant major. This man passed uncomplimentary remarks to his aides as he inspected the intake . When he came to Jim, who had a mop of hair as he had let it grow wild , he said , “ First thing, haircut for you.”
Jim responded by saying he had not joined the army to get a haircut. The SM pulled up with a jerk and delivered a fierce lecture . Jim ’s account of what followed went this way : “While I did not use words like get stuffed or up your arse , I used terms which amounted to that. ” This resulted in him being confined to barracks for seven days. Paraded before an officer, he was told that he had to do as he was told from then on. Disregarding the confinement order, he slipped out of the camp , and was caught. His clash with the Army brass began right at the beginning and continued throughout the hostilities.
Monotonous was how Bowditch described early training . There was much guarding of flagpoles and marching, marching, marching. Because of his fitness he was made a bren gunner , a bren being a light machine gun . On leave , he and mates lived it up in Brisbane. He was introduced to beer which filled him up with gas and made him belch , so he bought creme de menthe and creme de cacao for one shilling a nip . He had an affair with a skinny young woman who had a young child . With the likelihood of him soon being sent overseas on active duty, she suggested they marry .
Jim agreed and , because regulations required authority from his superiors for marriage, applied for approval. An officer said the woman had to come to the camp for an interview and discuss the marriage proposal. After the interview, the officer called Bowditch in and told him the marriage could not be approved because she was a camp follower. The officer said he had seen the woman before hanging around the camp and believed she had had affairs with other soldiers. She was just a good- time girl .
Monotonous was how Bowditch described early training . There was much guarding of flagpoles and marching, marching, marching. Because of his fitness he was made a bren gunner , a bren being a light machine gun . On leave , he and mates lived it up in Brisbane. He was introduced to beer which filled him up with gas and made him belch , so he bought creme de menthe and creme de cacao for one shilling a nip . He had an affair with a skinny young woman who had a young child . With the likelihood of him soon being sent overseas on active duty, she suggested they marry .
Jim agreed and , because regulations required authority from his superiors for marriage, applied for approval. An officer said the woman had to come to the camp for an interview and discuss the marriage proposal. After the interview, the officer called Bowditch in and told him the marriage could not be approved because she was a camp follower. The officer said he had seen the woman before hanging around the camp and believed she had had affairs with other soldiers. She was just a good- time girl .
Furthermore, the officer said he would not be surprised to learn that she had been “ hitched ” to a number of troops. So shocked was Bowditch that he wanted to fight the officer and refused to accept what he had said about her.
Bowditch then went out and began asking questions about the woman and discovered that what he had been told by the officer had been true . After this disturbing disclosure he was keen to get away and fight . This was not to be because just when it appeared he was about to be sent overseas it was discovered he was suffering from non - specific urethritis . Many of the troops departed but he was left behind . What annoyed him was that the troopship he should have sailed on went via England and he was denied the opportunity to see his family.
Placed in a pool of troops, he was eventually assigned to the 2/9th Battalion of the AIF led by Major-General George “ Piggy ” Wootten . He was sent to Sydney and boarded the Queen Mary which had been stripped below decks except for a section allocated to officers. His deep antipathy to authority grew when he saw the special privileges and conditions that officers enjoyed . He reasoned that when “ the shit hit the fan ” and they faced death they were all equal , so why should any section be treated differently ? The troops were packed in hammock to hammock . As the big ship rolled the stench from vomiting was overpowering . Seasickness once more claimed him .
They were disembarked in the Middle East in 1941 and quickly went into action . He was in two companies diverted to the fort at Giarabub, Libya, which was held by about 1200 Italians. It was a bloody and unpleasant action. Contrary to popular myth, Bowditch said the Italians fought very bravely , but after a while realised they could not win and surrendered. Between 50 and 100 had been captured . When the troops were told to quickly move to another area where fierce fighting was going on they were told to shoot the Italians. This would be denied by authorities , Bowditch said , but it definitely took place “ We were instructed to mow down these prisoners and that, in fact, is what was done . It was contrary to conventions and all the rules governing war .’’
The troops then moved to Tobruk which was caught up in what was the longest siege in modern warfare up to that time. Tobruk had been held by Italians before it was seized by Australians in January 1941 . The Allies were keen to keep Tobruk at all costs to protect the important naval base at Alexandria in Egypt and , of course , the Suez Canal .
Placed in a pool of troops, he was eventually assigned to the 2/9th Battalion of the AIF led by Major-General George “ Piggy ” Wootten . He was sent to Sydney and boarded the Queen Mary which had been stripped below decks except for a section allocated to officers. His deep antipathy to authority grew when he saw the special privileges and conditions that officers enjoyed . He reasoned that when “ the shit hit the fan ” and they faced death they were all equal , so why should any section be treated differently ? The troops were packed in hammock to hammock . As the big ship rolled the stench from vomiting was overpowering . Seasickness once more claimed him .
They were disembarked in the Middle East in 1941 and quickly went into action . He was in two companies diverted to the fort at Giarabub, Libya, which was held by about 1200 Italians. It was a bloody and unpleasant action. Contrary to popular myth, Bowditch said the Italians fought very bravely , but after a while realised they could not win and surrendered. Between 50 and 100 had been captured . When the troops were told to quickly move to another area where fierce fighting was going on they were told to shoot the Italians. This would be denied by authorities , Bowditch said , but it definitely took place “ We were instructed to mow down these prisoners and that, in fact, is what was done . It was contrary to conventions and all the rules governing war .’’
The troops then moved to Tobruk which was caught up in what was the longest siege in modern warfare up to that time. Tobruk had been held by Italians before it was seized by Australians in January 1941 . The Allies were keen to keep Tobruk at all costs to protect the important naval base at Alexandria in Egypt and , of course , the Suez Canal .
During the eight month siege in which the German “ Desert Fox”, Field Marshall Rommel, did his utmost to dislodge the Allies, more than 47,000 men including wounded and prisoners were taken out of Tobruk while 43,000 men and 34,000 tons of supplies were brought in. A total of 34 warships and merchant ships were sunk and another 33 damaged.
Ringed by wire and minefields, Tobruk was a sun baked hellhole raked by enemy fire . The desert was alive with scorpions , fleas, lice , flies and other insect pests. There were underground dugouts where men could shelter from the relentless sun and bullets to have a smoke . Soldiers regularly poured petrol around the dugouts as an insecticide . While Jim was resting in a shelter somebody lit a cigarette which ignited petrol fumes and the place exploded in a ball of flame. He remembered with horror that as he scrambled to get out he was kicking the man behind him who was also frantic to escape. Several men died in the explosion and although his clothing was set alight, Jim escaped with minor burns. One man suffered severe burns from his feet to his waist.
There was not enough water to be drunk , and that supplied was salty. Because of the constant dust , all clothing was covered. Temperatures rose to 130 degrees fahrenheit and there was stunted vegetation in the surrounding country which troops called camel bush. The soil was rocky and sandy and the digging of trenches was hard work . Sand permeated footwear and clothing.
Frequent dive bombing by the Germans added to the hell of Tobruk . The British traitor William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw, who made radio propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis , said the Australians were like rats in a trap . This led to the Australians proudly boasting to be the Rats of Tobruk .
Naval ships running the gauntlet to Tobruk came at night with supplies of food and ammunition , quickly unloaded, took on wounded, and zig-zagged out to try and dodge aerial bombardment. The harbour became littered with wrecks.
The Germans stepped up the bombardment of Tobruk and poured in tanks. Bowditch used “ sticky bombs” to knock out several tanks. These bombs looked like toffee apples and were a round ball about twice the size of a baseball, filled with nitroglycerin . When the outside wrapping was torn from the bomb there was a sticky substance which enabled them to be attached to tanks. Many men got shot down running up to tanks with sticky bombs. Jim used to lay down in a trench and let the tanks run over the top . In a quick movement , he would apply the bomb , with a five second fuse once activated , to the bottom of the tank and it would pass on and explode.
Because of his skill with the bren gun, he was placed near the perimeter in the thick of fighting. An enemy machine gun caused havoc because it opened up on the barbed wire perimeter at night when men were stretching their legs and standing about. Jim suggested he and Tom Clark, an older Queenslander, should try and pinpoint the gun and have it put out of action. On a dark night they advanced into no-man’s land and took up a position in a bomb crater and waited for daylight. Such night time listening posts were a regular feature of the warfare and small groups would venture out and try and pick up noises from the enemy .
With the help of a periscope , Bowditch and his comrade spied out the land , located the machine gun and made other observations. Bowditch and Clark quiety discussed many things out there in no man’s land. The Queenslander spoke about his family and life in the bush; Jim told him about London and the way of life there. Sex was another topic of discussion .
Their periscope was obviously detected because late in the day their crater was mortared . For two terrifying hours they cringed in the hole as shells rained down around them. Like the sound of machine gun fire, Bowditch said being subjected to a constant mortar barrage was a frightening experience.
They were eventually able to sneak back to their own lines under the cover of darkness and the company commander congratulated them. As a result of their observations the sector containing the machine gun was heavily bombarded. Clark later trod on a booby trap and barbed wire was driven into his leg . He was evacuated and Jim never heard of him again .
Bowditch further tempted fate by raiding the well guarded food dumps at Tobruk . The troops were annoyed by the fact that officers received tinned fruit and they did not . Baked beans and biscuits seemed adequate for the common soldiers.
Raiding food dumps was every bit as dangerous as attacking machine gun nests because guards were ordered to shoot first and ask questions later. A number of guards had also been seriously injured by night-time raiders. Bowditch was in a party of about 10 men who raided the food supply one night with the officers’ tins of fruit the target. Jim incurred much derision by bringing back tins of baked beans as well as fruit. “ I used to have simple tastes, ” he explained, “ and I liked baked beans .”
As each month passed at Tobruk, he increasingly began to wonder when his number would come up, “ Something in your brain tells you the numbers game is being played and it is only a matter of time before you get killed .”
For a month he was ill -vomiting and feeling poorly. He did not eat much . When he went to the Medical Orderly known as “ March On ” McGregor , he received no sympathy. McGregor seemed to have little feeling for soldiers and it appeared his duty was to get men back to their section almost on their hands and knees. He accused Bowditch of cowardice and told him he just wanted to be evacuated.
Still feeling terrible, he went back to fighting . Bowditch was delighted to hear they were going to be relieved by fresh Polish troops. The lst Carpathian Brigade duly arrived , all wearing Bombay bloomers –baggy shorts- like the British, and all looking “mad”. “I did not understand what the Germans had done to their country , ”said Bowditch. “They had lost their families, wives and kids, their land. They filed in before us and shook our hands . Very few could speak English . As we left , the Poles proceeded to shoot off every weapon they could at the enemy. Had their officers not stopped them they would have exhausted the entire ammunition supply of Tobruk. They just wanted to kill every German in the area to get revenge for what had been done to their homeland .”
Bowditch was so ill he really did not care and dragged himself aboard an RAN vessel. Stukkas flew overhead and at one stage he did not dive for cover because he felt so sick. When they disembarked they prepared to entrain for eventual action in Syria.
However , Bowditch collapsed and was taken to hospital . He woke to find an aristocratic doctor standing over him , his hand wrapped about his liver , who said : “ The poor bastard’s got jaundice.” Many troops at Tobruk fell victim to jaundice. Bowditch also had a desert sore on his leg which had eaten to the bone and refused to heal. Under treatment, he gradually came good and a skin graft was needed to overcome the desert sore. In the skin graft ward he saw a man who had been badly burned in the dugout explosion at Tobruk .
The drugged man was lowered into a regular saline bath by four orderlies . Despite sedation, the man would scream and sometimes pass out. The graft specialist , Dr Rank, called in four times a day and would never show any emotion on his face as he looked over the terrible victims of burns and appalling wounds . Bowditch told the doctor he felt ashamed occupying a bed while all he had was a desert sore . Dr Rank gave him a short lecture and told him not to be silly. Because of his spell in hospital he missed the Syrian campaign in which he said many of his comrades were killed.
A wild escapade in Palestine landed him in serious trouble . During a bout of drinking with mates they ran out of money. A large businessman wearing a fez was seen sitting in what looked like a garage. Jim went over and asked the man if he would like to make a donation to their drinking fund. He refused, so Jim took down a sword , one of two crossed on the wall, and chased the man. In the uproar, British Red Caps- military police - became involved and a brawl erupted. Bowditch was hit with the book and spent 48 days in a military prison awaiting trial and forfeited 49 days’ pay. Although soldiers were paid six shillings a day , Bowditch said he averaged about one shilling a day for the first three years because of his many fines. NEXT: Clobbering a Yank and fierce battles with the enemy .
