LAST Thursday community members publicly remembered the heroic side of Australia’s experiences of war, our diggers’ eagerness to enlist, their courage in battle, mateship and tragic, noble deaths as Anzac Day services were held across the South East.
Such remembrance holds great meaning for many Australians and for World War II veteran, Fred Ellis, the valour of those who served and died in the war is something he thinks about every day.
“Anzac Day will commemorate all who lost their lives as far as I am concerned,” he said.
“I know quite a lot of people personally, friends, who did lose their lives and did not come back in the ’39 – ’45 time.
“I think about them a lot actually, not only today, but this is a special day to remember them.
“I often think of them because they are not here anymore.
“That wording that we have ‘lest we forget, they shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old, we will remember them’, they are great words really.”
Mr Ellis, 91, was 17-years-old when he joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1944.
After a year of training, he spent “a bit over a year sea time” on Her Majesty’s Australian Ship (HMAS) Cowra, which was assigned to the minesweeping flotilla and performed mine clearance operations in the waters of the Solomon Islands.
Minesweeping duties started following the war and although a very modest Mr Ellis says he “did not really see any action against enemies at the time” his service was a dangerous duty with the Cowra sweeping harbours and coastlines for deadly underwater mines planted by the Japanese.
“At the time when I enlisted, the Japanese were still very strong and I know they were being pushed back, but they were still, as far as I was concerned, treating our prisoners of war with their torturing and cruelty,” he said.
“That sort of thing brought me to do something about it and a lot of others with me.
“After training I did not really see any action against the enemies at the time, except sweep up the mines they had left along the minefields.
“We never had one casualty on the job, but there were casualties just after that time on one of our ships where they had a mine area out from the Barrier Reef.
Mr Ellis’ time with the navy was quite a new experience for a teenager born and bred in the Mallee and “always worked on the land”.
In 1942, when Mr Ellis finished school, he and his family moved to the Adelaide Hills where he spent the next couple of years working in vineyards and orchards.
He also helped at home, which lead to a delay when he was enlisted in 1944 because of “man power control” in those times and there was no-one home with his mother and the cattle.
Upon receiving an honourable discharge in August 1947, Mr Ellis continued to work on the land for 18 months before he married the love of his life and moved to the South East.
“We had been going together all those years during the war years and then from marriage I applied for war service land settlement,” he said.
“I had to come to the South East then to get further experience on cattle and things like that, but that was my life from when I got home, it was still on the land.
“Actually, that time away in the navy I appreciated as I got older because it was the only time in my life that I did anything different than on the land, in all my years.
“I was born on it and I stayed on it.”
Mr Ellis is a member of the Millicent Returned Services League sub branch and said he has “always” attended the dawn service to remember the fallen.
