Page 24 - Potted History 2017

The War ended. Don Wilson, a Hale large piece of West Perth. There
School boarder from Manjimup, was no high rise building to block
remembered the end of the war to: the view as there are today.
The news of the German surrender We pushed the prong of the
stump into the ground and
Alec Choate Ian Keys 1945 in May 1945 didn’t make much propped it up so it would stay put
of an impression to me. There
Alec Choate, an artilleryman in North Africa in 1942, wrote Ian Keys was shot Headmaster Arnold Buntine leaves at the was a lot of celebration going on and waited until after tea-time
wonderfully evocative poetry about his experiences in the down over France in end of 1945 and Vernon Murphy takes in the city, or so I was told, but when it would be dark. At the
desert. May 1942 and, after over at the beginning of 1946. apart from the big headlines in appropriate moment we went
being captured, spent the copy of the West Australian back with some old newspapers
… No passer by would ever understand most of the time in First Master JB (‘Dil’) Newbery retired at newspaper that was daily clipped and a box of matches. Packing
What scars of war were also here, now blurred Stalag Luft III. He was the end of 1945, having previously been to the board in the common room, the newspaper and any other
And softened, smoothed away. Nothing was heard involved in one of the Senior Science Master. The current for me at least, it didn’t seem to combustible material we could
Of war in this spent moonlight, not a sound. the most innovative science wing at Hale School is named the be of any great import. We were find behind the ‘V’ shaped piece
Peace for awhile seemed earnest, and profound. escapes of the war. Newbery Science Block in his honour. still at war with Japan and I think of wood we set fire to it. The
In his book, The the Japanese were always a more anticipated blaze that would
And when the great artillery duel was over: Wooden Horse, Eric realistic enemy to us than ever silhouette our message of ‘V’ for
Williams described the Germans were. So when, Victory set out across the playing
… Gone was the day’s gunfire, gone its skies that how a tunnel was dug four months later, the Japanese fields fell somewhat short of our
expectations and the wind kept
Alec Choate burned, under the noses of surrendered, we really did blowing the burning pieces of
Gone was it’s drag of boredom, gone its fear. the German guards celebrate – if you can call throwing
Back to the laager … the men returned, using a vaulting ‘horse’ a few rolls of toilet paper out of paper back up the hill and into
But still not back to life they held so dear. placed over the mouth the dorm windows and running the garden at the foot of the
Here was respite, but the true rest was not here. of a tunnel relatively down the corridors make a lot of boarding house. Instead of being
No wife or lover claimed one as her own. near to the prison noise ‘celebrating’. congratulated for this display of
Each man of thousands exiled slept alone. wire. Though weak patriotic fervour, the dreaded Miss
with hunger, dozens Franky and I had a surprise Bruce trued up on the scene and
Choate was subsequently awarded the 1986 Western of men, including Ian contribution to make that we were accused us of ‘trying to set fire to
Australian Week Literary Prize for poetry. He was editor Keys, vaulted and keeping until night-time. During the school’ and sent us straight
of Summerland, the Western Australian Sesquicentenary exercised on and the afternoon we had taken an up to our room where we were
‘Anthology of Poetry and Prose.’ 9 around the horse daily axe from the wood-heap behind locked in.
for many months which the kitchen and gone over into So much for patriotism and the
Lance Howard those below excavated the old Observatory grounds and celebrations of ‘V.J. Day’ (Victory
selecting a tree which had a large
their way beneath the
Lance Howard may well have considered himself one of the wire. Three men, Peter fork in it, we proceeded to chop over Japan) … or as they’re more
luckier survivors of the war. He was navigator on the last Howard, John Clifton it down. We then cut off the tops fond of calling it these days, “V.P.
Lancaster to return from the famous Dambuster raid in 1943, and Phillip Rowe, and bottom so that it formed a Day’ (Victory in the Pacific) …
piloted by Warrant Officer Bill Townsend. ‘O for Orange’ eventually managed large ‘V’. This was quite hard work Musn’t upset the Japs … Oops!
returned at zero feet to elude the German radar and night to escape and for two skinny eleven year-olds Sorry, Japanese.
fighters. When they landed as dawn was breaking the motors successfully make their and by the time we had dragged
had tree branches in their cowlings and telephone wires way back to England it around to the front of the It didn’t end there either. The
wrapped around the wings in several places! Lance was via a precarious route Boarding House building, we were next day the slightly blackened
awarded an immediate Distinguished Flying Cross on landing; through Sweden. really fagged out. But it was all in stump, sitting on the side of the
his pilot the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. good cause and so we carried on, hill, led to the discovery of the
eventually pulling it down onto tree we had chopped down in the
The central lake at the Royal Air Force Association retirement the steep, sandy incline in front Observatory and we were in more
Lance Howard DFC complex in Bull Creek, Western Australia is named Lake of the main building. From here, trouble still. 10
Howard.. The Kennedy-Smith Memorial Chair one had quite a good view over a
In memory of his two sons killed during the
1939-45 war - donated by their father.
9 Alec Choate poem ‘On the Frontier’ (1978) in Gifts Upon the Water, Fremantle 10 Old Haleian Don Wilson, in Manji Boy, chapter 6,
Arts Centre Press, pp 54-67. Hale School, 1944-45.’, pp 60-61