THE Free Times recently had the privilege of catching up with Tom Phillips who served as a field ambulance officer in the 9th Australian Division during the Second World War and was awarded the Military Medal for his courage in tending to wounded comrades in New Guinea.
Tom, who is 95, recently became a resident at Killarney Memorial Aged Care and along with Stanthorpe’s George Flood, a Lancaster bomber rear gunner, is the subject of an upcoming book by Warwick writer Deborah Wheeler.
JEREMY SOLLARS gives a taste of what’s to come in the book from our chat with Tom, which will be a fitting record of two of the region’s undoubted heroes.
“There was mortar fire and explosions everywhere and a lot of the blokes couldn’t bloody swim. We lost 18 men in that crossing.”
SEPTEMBER 1943. The 9th Australian Division has been called home from the deserts of North Africa, where it fought Rommel’s Afrika Korps to be urgently refitted and retrained before being sent north to the dense jungles of New Guinea to fight the Japanese.
Among them was a field ambulance officer from Mt Colliery, Tom Phillips, who was part of an amphibious force which landed east of the strategic, Japanese-occupied town of Lae on 4 September.
Their mission, along with the 7th Division advancing from west of the town – after being flown in following the capture of the crucial Nadzab airstrip by US paratroopers – was to recapture Lae as part of the Allied advance on the Japanese in the Pacific theatre during World War II.
The Lae amphibious landings, referred to as Operation Postern, were the largest by an Australian force since Gallipoli.
Along with his mates, Lance Corporal Tom Phillips and the rest of the 2/28th Infantry Battalion to which he was attached found a formidable obstacle in the days following the landings in the form of the Busu River just east of Lae, which was swollen from recent heavy rains.
Lacking the equipment to bridge the Busu – the fastest-flowing river in New Guinea – and with the Japanese holed up on the other side, the battalion was faced with no choice but to wade almost a kilometre across the surging river to meet the enemy.
It’s something he grimly says he will “never forget”.
“Our battalion commander, Colonel Norman, sent two scouts across the river ahead of us,” Tom recalls.
“The first one was killed and the second one took a bullet in his shoulder, nearly in the lung.
“We attacked that afternoon – we just waded right into the river, near the mouth.
“There was mortar fire and explosions everywhere and a lot of the blokes couldn’t bloody swim.
“All you could do to keep yourself afloat was to hold onto the rifle sling of the bloke in front of you.
“We lost 18 men in that crossing.”
What followed when they reached the other side was three hours of intense, bloody fighting, after which the Australians managed to establish a beachhead on the banks of the Busu and drive the Japanese back.
During the firefight Tom and the 10 ambulance officers and stretcher bearers under his leadership – the only medical unit on that side of the river – worked under heavy fire to rescue their wounded mates and bring them to cover, providing preliminary medical aid well above their level of training and risking their own lives as they did so.
It was for these acts of bravery and selfless service that Tom was later awarded the Military Medal.
Lae was captured on 16 September after the 9th and 7th Divisions reached the town, with 115 men killed, 73 reported as missing and more than 500 wounded between them.
The Japanese casualties were much higher, with 1500 killed and 2000 captured. Around 6500 Japanese troops managed to escape.
Tom describes the sight of the Australian flag being raised above Lae as “lovely”.
The 2/28th Battalion saw further action in New Guinea, capturing other strategic Japanese strongholds before returning home for intensive training on the Atherton Tablelands in January 1944.
It then headed back to New Guinea shortly before the war’s end where it helped to take Labuan Island not long before the Japanese surrender.
Tom returned to civilian life in Killarney where he married his wife Peggy, with whom he had two sons, but he re-joined the Army in 1950 as the Korean War loomed.
He was promoted to warrant officer in 1952 and was sent to Ipswich to train regular soldiers for combat, somewhat ironically given his past Army service helping to save lives.
He was spared service in Korea and later left the Army for good, establishing the first dry-cleaning business in Killarney with Peggy.
But his Army days came back to him in 1953 when he was chosen as part of the 130-strong Australian Armed Forces contingent to travel to London to march at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
The highlight of the trip for Tom came one day when he was on guard duty in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
“I spotted the Queen just as she was about to get on a horse,” he said.
“The horse’s name was Churchill, as I recall.
“She gave me a smile and I gave her a beautiful salute.”
Tom also fondly recalls his mateship during the war with Yangan’s Sandy Kemp – who he met by chance during a visit to the loo while enlisting in the Army in Toowoomba – and other good mates from Killarney and surrounds, including Tom Gribben and Yangan’s Reece Tart, who was killed in action.
He also remembers the other tough times of his war service, such as crossing the frozen Lebanon Mountains during Australia’s Middle East campaign, along with recurrent bouts of malaria from jungle action.
There’s much more to Tom’s story, from his birth in Scotland and moving with his parents and siblings to Australia and Mt Colliery at the age of six – where his schoolmates used to tease him over his accent – to playing footy at Killarney, his time in Brisbane with his family running successful businesses, his extensive RSL involvement and his eventual return to the Southern Downs and Killarney.
It will all be in Deborah Wheeler’s book Tales of a Military Medal Recipient and a Lancaster Bomber Rear Gunner, which will be ready in time for Remembrance Day on Fridayh 11 November. Deborah will present readings from the book during the Monthly Music Morning at Brysons Place in Warwick from 9.30am to 11.30 am on Wednesday 25 October. The book will be officially launched at Killarney Memorial Aged Care at 10am on Wednesday 9 November. To RSVP for the launch and morning tea call KMAC on 4664 1488.
Copies of the book can be pre-ordered by emailing info@dolsdirectory.com.au.
