William Trewin: 'Rhoda Mountjoy is my niece. She has been staying with me on a visit for about three weeks

From there along Loch Lynnhe and Loch Ness, past Inverness. Went on to small place called Forres, at Mrs Logan's. Went to pictures. Programme The Water Hole.

Left Forres at 10am. Through Elgin, Keith, Huntly, Inverurie. Then to Aberdeen. Stayed short time, then on to Arbroath at Waverley Hotel.

4. Went to Dundee, saw Firth of Tay bridge, longest in Europe. Went to

Mr Peter Rennie's place. Treated us lovely. Saw Penmure monument, erected

in memory of year of short corn 1836. Saw Danish king's grave, Keniston. Saw

gates locked by Prince Charley, never been opened since. Saw Penmure Castle

owned by the Earl of Dalhousie. Stayed Auchterarder.

5. Left 10 o'clock. Went through Dunfermline, Cowdenbeath and

Cardenden. Went to Mr Andrew Simpson, Cardenden. Met his wife and two

girls, all very nice people. Went to Firth of Forth bridge. Crossed by ferry. To

Princes Street, Edinburgh. Saw Castle in distance. Very wonderful city. Arrived

Peebles, staying night at Green Tree Hotel.

6. Left Peebles 10 o'clock. Came through Cheviot Hills, Galashiels,

Melrose, Newcastle, Durham. On to Swainby. Stayed at Allisons Hotel, very

nice people.

7. Went to Harley (?), saw a wedding. Had lunch at Cat and Pipes Hotel.

Went to Middlesbrough, large steel and iron manufacturing town. Contractor

from there building N shore bridge, Sydney. Called Bob Murray's people.

Lovely home, made us very welcome. Had tea there, one son Albert. Mrs

Coward's daughter came back to Swainby. Staying Black Horse Hotel, very

clean.

9. Stayed home. Ashworth family visited friends.

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10. Left Swainby, came through York. Went through York Minster, very

11. Went to Tom Stanger's (?). All went through Temple Newsam

(Leeds). Lovely place, formerly owned by Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, given to

County of Leeds for £35,000. Came to Accrington, arrived 7 o'clock.

12. Len went to dentist named Entwhistle. Knew Mr Turner when young,

also his father. Asked Len to call on Turner sen.

13. Went to same dentist. Gave great praise to Will's work in the making

of my gold plate. Major Segrave (?) killed on Lake Windermere.

15. Len and I had tea at Robinson's, went for long drive after in Tom's car. Saw Stoneyhurst College, most wonderful building, one of largest Catholic teaching colleges in the world.

18. Said goodbye to Bartrams.

19. Left Accrington at 2.30. Said goodbye to all our friends. All were

very tearful and made us feel quite sad. I slept at Robinson's all the time, while

in Accrington. Treated ever so kindly. I shall never forget Rose Robinson and

her brother Tom. We passed through Blackburn, Wigan, Tunstall (Staffordshire)

and stayed the night at Newcastle under Lyme, at Castle Hotel. Went to

pictures, The Great Gabbo. Newcastle is where the potteries are, also at

Tunstall, Longton, and Stoke, Staffordshire.

Left Newcastle, went through a Tuscan china works at Longton. Saw whole process, from the dry materials to the finished articles. Very interesting. Came through Shrewsbury and Newtown and stayed the night at Llanidloes, Wales.

21. Left Llanidloes, went through Aberystwyth and Aberayron, Lampeter,

Llandovery. Staying at Brecon at King's Arms. Rained all day.

22. Left Brecon, went through Abergavenny and Ross. Staying at Mrs

William's place 8 miles from Bristol. Met folks off Hobson Bay.

23. Called on friends of Ashworths. Left 4 o'clock for Weston Super

Mare. Rained heavily. Stayed night 8 miles from Weston S Mare.

24. Went to Weston S Mare on prom, very nice for holiday. Went on to

Cheddar, saw through caves, very wonderful. Minerals in stones in caves are

iron, lead, lime, manganese, copper. Drove through Cheddar Gorge, very

narrow road, scenery lovely. We came on to Wells, saw through Cathedral, very

wonderful building, old-fashioned clock, man hits bell at every hour. Passed

through Glastonbury came on to Williton, stayed at farm. Miss Bird proprietress,

very nice and comfortable.

25. Left Williton, came on through several small villages, had lunch at

farm, cream and plums. Went to Lynmouth, Devon, over very mountainous

country, narrow road cut round mountain. Through on to Barnstaple, staying

night at farm. Hollands.

26. Left farm, went to Clovelly, very quaint fishing-village, right on beach.

Goods pulled down on sleighs by donkey. Brick wall to keep tide from village.

Life-boat. Went through Bideford, Bude, Camelford, and crossed into Cornwall

at 2pm. Went to Devon again, staying night at Lifton.

27. Left there, drove through Okehampton, Exeter, Honiton (Honiton

lace), over Devon hills, rich dairying country, very pretty. Crossed into Dorset

(chalk hills), through Chard, Yeovil, Shaftesbury, Salisbury, Amesbury, stayed

night. Went to pictures. Shady Lady.

28. Went Stonehenge, two miles. Saw ancient stones, Salisbury Plains

training camp. Back through Salisbury to Southampton. Drove round docks,

saw Olympic, 45,000 tons. Very clean city, also very clean docks. On road to

Chichester stayed night.

29. Drove through Chichester to Bognor. Went along beach to Craigwell

House, owned by Sir Arthur Crowe, where the King stayed when convalescent

last year. Left there, came on to Littlehampton, staying outside the town for

night.

30. Left Rustington, went through Worthing to Brighton. Lovely wide

stunting and speed-boat racing. Went through to Pevensey, Sussex. Saw old

mint shop, 13 century.

Left 1 July, went to Hastings, New Romney, and on to Dover. Saw through Dover Castle, now occupied by Scotch Garrison. From there we came on to St Margarets Bay, staying night at Cliff Hotel. Went on beach, saw white cliffs of Dover, heavy mist on sea.

2 July. Left St Margarets, went to Sandwich. Old military camp there, visited the RAF aerodrome and barracks. From there to Margate, saw crowds of people. From there to Canterbury, very narrow streets, came on to Sittingbourne, staying night at Bull Hotel. Visited Len Lacey's people, two sisters and mother, very nice people. Sisters very bright.

3rd. Left Sittingbourne, went to Breden, (?) Ode (?), Street, saw Laceys, took photo. Went through Chatham, Rochester, to Cobham. Saw Cobham Hall, owned by Stewarts, earls of Damley for several generations. Eight earls buried in cemetery here.

4. Left Cobham, drove through to Bromley, staying night at Park Hotel.

Southern Kent called Garden of England. Saw many very large orchards, mostly

cherries, also lots of market gardens.

5. Arrived London 7am, staying at Celtic House, 62 Guildford Street,

Russell Square.

8th. Went to see Horns, New Cross, all very nice to see.

9. Saw St Pauls Cathedral, lovely inside. Also saw Crystal Palace,

wonderful building, all made of glass. Went up tower, 410 steps.

10. Went shopping, went trip through Chinatown slums. Visited Charley

Brown's Railing Tavern, saw fine collections of carved ivory. Came home

through Rotherhithe tunnel under Thames river, 1V4 miles long. Saw place

where General Booth preached his first sermon.

11. Went to Evans. Mrs Jones sister, Sid, Eric.

12. Went through Houses of Parliament, House of Commons, House of

Lords. Lords upholstered in red. Commons done in black, beautiful to see.

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Tanner.

boat to Boulogne, arriving 12.30. To Paris per train, arrived 4 o'clock. Staying

Novel (?) Hotel, Noailles, very nice place, very little English. Raining heavily.

18. Went round town. First to Eiffel Tower, Trocadero, Napoleon's

monument, Napoleon's tomb. The Trocadero is a lovely building owned by

Government. Communists ruined organ called Gem of France, now used for low

class entertainments. Church held in chapel where Napoleon's tomb is on 5

May each year. Saw prison, and place where prisoners are still beheaded,

Guillotine. 14 July France national holiday. Freedom after French Revolution.

19th. Went to Versailles, saw through Versailles Palace, most wonderful building. Saw all the different battles of Louis 14th in paintings, and the ceilings painted in most beautiful colours, people all pertaining to Louis 14th. Saw the chair where Napoleon proclaimed himself first Consul or President of France, also room where the President is elected every seven years. Saw the large hall Louis 14th built for his favourites, one especially Madame Pompadour. Louis' wife hated the French. They hated her, called her witch. Saw poor part of town, Montmartre, the highest part of Paris. Also the Great Cathedral of France, Notre Dame. Marshall Foch will be in same building as Napoleon. Marshall Gelhoardi (?) took 250,000 soldiers out to Claf(?), 19 miles from Paris, in 5,000 cars, saved Paris. In one church 80 killed and 70 wounded. Saw 2 main racing-tracks, also tennis courts where Davis Cup is to be played on 25-26-27 July 1930. Went to Malmaison Castle, saw all things pertaining to Napoleon and his wife Josephine. Saw rooms furnished as they were then, saw carriage used by them, also Napoleon's saddle. His wife lived there after he divorced her, died 5 years after. Divorced 1809,1814 died. Napoleon died 1821.

20. Left Paris at 8.45, arrived Amiens 10.45. Went to Carlton Hotel for few minutes, then to battlefields per car. Passed some lovely memorials, the most beautiful being Proyart (?), in all 102 miles. Bretonneux 23 miles from Amiens. Australians drove Germans back, battle in Abbey Wood. Delville Wood cemetery, second largest British, 5,800 dead. Also saw Beaumont-Hamel. Newfoundland Memorial. Log cabin 72 acres, all ploughed with shells. 51 Highlands Mem Theipral (?), Ulster Meml, Pozieres. 1st Battalion Australians, Pozieres. Tank Corps, Transvaal Memorial, Albert Mem. Proyart Big Bertha Gun. Returned to London from Amiens to Folkestone (rather rough trip across Channel).

Left London for home on 23 July at 9 o'clock. Boarded boat at Southampton Station, leaving wharf at 1 o'clock. Len came to Southampton with me.

25th. Lovely weather and keeping well.

26. Missed Gibraltar on account of mist, came over just before we were

passing.

27. Lovely weather. Went to church.

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29th. Sea-plane flew over very low. Went to pictures.

1 Aug. Arrived Port Said 2am. Left midday. Not many went ashore, cost 21- on motor-boat.

3rd. Went to church. Very hot weather since 30 July. Coming through Canal, very trying day. Hot weather continues until 7 August when we got a storm. Not too bad, but half the passengers were sick, self included.

8. Went to pictures.

10th. Went to church. Community singing in evening.

11. Arrived Colombo 12.30 and left 1am on 12th. Nearly all passengers went ashore, had a good time, self remained on board. Hot weather continues.

15. Childrens fancy dress party in afternoon, and fancy dress ball at

night. Some very nice costumes for adults.

16. Went to pictures.

17. Went to church

20. Examined by ship's doctor.

21. Arrived Fremantle 6am. Ken Campbell came down at 9 o'clock.

Went to their place, all well. Took me to Perth, called to see Mrs Henderson. Mr

H very ill, no hope of recovery. Had nice day, returned to ship 4pm, got letters

from home.

23. Went to pictures, weather cold, calm.

26. Arrived Adelaide 7am. Left 4pm. Lovely day, went for walk on shore, did not go to town. Got two letters. Cold bright weather. Concert night on 24th very good, best we have had.

28. Arrived Melbourne 8am. Went up town with Miss Price.

29. Went up town with Mrs Neilsen, bought costume, went to Davis, also

Regelsen, all well.

30. Left Melbourne 11am.

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Prisoner of War

A nice-looking, hazel-eyed, brown-haired, and slim young man, 57" tall, he had worked as a junior clerk in Beauchamp Brothers new and used furniture store in Collins St since leaving Ivanhoe Boys Grammar School when he was 16. At school, his best subjects were religion and history. He enjoyed sport, and singing, imitating Bing Crosby's style. In The Mikado, Bill was once one of the three little maids.

Bom on 7 September 1921 in Hawksburn, Victoria, and christened William Alfred Clemence, he was descended from a family of mainly English origins, his grandfather having emigrated about 1880. Bill's father, Vernon, was a sales rep dealing with carpets; his mother, Elsie, was a tailoress. They, and Bill's younger brother, Jim, lived in rented accommodation in Ivanhoe.

After joining up in June 1940 - the month in which the British army was evacuated from Dunkirk, Italy declared war on Britain and France, Paris was captured, and France capitulated to the Germans - Bill did his military training at Puckapunyal in Victoria. He had volunteered for the artillery and was posted to the 4th Anti-Tank Regiment, in due course becoming a junior NCO, a lance-bombardier.

Puckapunyal was about 95 km north of Melbourne, a few miles west of Seymour. Not far away was another large encampment where hundreds of people of Italian and German extraction were interned for the duration of the war, most having been incarcerated since September 1939, within weeks of Australia following Britain into the European war, which was then all it was. The various African campaigns began a year later, as did those in the Middle East.

While Bill was at Puckapunyal, the patriotism of cinema audiences was inflamed by a major Australian film, Forty Thousand Horsemen, which celebrated the activities of the Light Horse Brigade in Palestine during the First World War. Radio audiences continued to enjoy the long-running serial Dad and Dave.

In May 1941, Bill Clemence, nicknamed Babe because of his boyish looks, was posted with his regiment overseas - by which time London and several British cities had been severely bombed, Tobruk had been captured, Rommel had attacked in North Africa and Greece had been abandoned to the Germans. In Sydney, Banjo Paterson had died.

Bill had never been out of Australia. He sailed from Port Melbourne on the Zealandia, which had also served as a troopship in the First World War.

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What follows is an edited account of a four-hour night-time conversation with Bill Clemence in Echuca on 29 December 1988.

There were a lot of men about my age, and I would say it was all a bit of a adventure for most of us from the start. We were so far away from the scene of the war that we had a different outlook to the young fellows in England, who'd already been through a lot. Really it was a lot of fun, and we were all itching to get to the war and show what we could do. I don't think any of us cared where we went, although we expected to go to the Middle East, where the 6th and 7th Divisions - we were the 8th Division - were fighting, mainly in Syria. We automatically expected we'd go there too. But we soon realised by the issue of tropical clothing before we left that we weren't off to the Middle East. It was cold in Melbourne in June and we were issued with khaki shirts (no sweaters) and shorts.

'My father came to the dock. It was supposed to be hush-hush that we were going away. But somehow or other a big crowd gathered to see us off. I saw my father from the train, before we went onto the quay - as we came to the main gates leading onto the wharf. I saw him then and I waved. I was quite lucky to see him among the large crowd that was there.

'We had two batteries on the boat, about 600 men. It was a small boat, about 5,000 tons. It was crowded, but conditions weren't bad. We mostly slept in hammocks up on the deck when it got really hot. The only problem was a shortage of drinking material. There was very little beer. We were supposed to get a bottle of beer a day. If and when we got it, the beer was hot. And there was never enough water. The food was all right. We had enough to eat.

'We called in at Fremantle to pick up some more troops and then sailed on to Singapore. It was actually a very pleasant trip, up through the islands. The nights were absolutely magnificent, balmy and bright with a huge moon. There was singing on deck at night, impromptu, and of course we gambled a lot -cards or two-up. I landed in Singapore without a brass razoo. Had to borrow some money to send a telegram home to say that I'd arrived.

'We went straight upcountry to Tampin, and were absolutely enervated for two or three weeks by the climate. We were drenched with sweat and had no energy. Although we were used to the heat, coming from Oz, this really enervated us there. We were pretty fit really. I noticed when we got over to Singapore and saw English troops for the first time that there was a big difference between them and us. We'd had better food over the years, and overall we were bigger and fitter than the Brits, who were generally weedy-looking, undernourished and pale. We'd just come through an Australian

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summer. We were tanned. Our regiment was very fit and included quite a lot of big men.

'There was no war then. It was boring. We didn't know what was going to happen, what was going on. We were hoping something would happen, but we weren't told anything. That was the biggest problem. Even after the fighting started we were told nothing. We were told what to do, but we were never told what was going on or why. And that was the worst part of it. Because if you don't know something, you can't think, and you can't contribute. And you can't prepare yourself for what might happen. We never knew what we were up against.'

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. They invaded northern Malaya two days later, swiftly advancing down the penisula in great numbers backed up by fighter-bombers and tanks. The British, Australian, Indian and Malayan forces were forced into a defensive strategy of controlled withdrawals, falling back on Singapore and harrassed all the way. On 10 December the British battle cruisers Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk off the Malayan coast. On Christmas Day Hong Kong was surrended to the Japanese.

'The Japs landed at Kotabaru. We were at Mersing then. We got the news very quickly. We stood to, and then they landed further down on the eastern side, nearer us. They came down the peninsula, down both coasts. We didn't have much contact with them then, because they weren't using their tanks. The infantry did - we didn't. All we could do was sit and wait for their tanks to come. We had 75 mm guns, French guns. We waited and waited and no tanks came, and they said: "Right. You'll retire." Two or three miles, whatever it was. This was the most ridiculous thing. We never saw the enemy. We just sat there and were bombed every day. Jap fighter-bombers used to come over and drop bombs on us every day. That was all that happened then.

'A little bloke, a gunner by the name of Jack Clulow, was the first of us to be killed. At Mersing. There was an air-raid and he got a bomb splinter in the head. He just fell over. It was a shock. We hadn't really thought much about death. Well, this was something different. Something different. It brought us up with a bit of a jolt. I saw his body - he was killed near me. It was the first body I ever saw. Somebody said: "Jackie's gone." Afterwards the reaction set in, mainly because he was such a nice bloke, aged 20 or 21. It wasn't that he was dead - just that Jackie Clulow was gone.

'One of our other batteries was over on the west coast and they ran into a solid Jap tank attack and did very well. Those tanks never got through. But on

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our side the Japs never used any tanks at all. There were skirmishes, and although the infantry wanted to stand and fight, it wasn't allowed. Towards the end of January we pulled back into the island of Singapore and dispersed. The causeway to the mainland was blown up, but it was botched. They only blew up part of it, and the Japs quickly fixed it. The British were incompetent. It was an absolute debacle. I don't know how good our own general was, Major General Gordon Bennett. I don't think he came up as well as he should. At the time we thought he was a great fellow. He was certainly a brave man, right up in the front line. But I don't think he was all that brilliant a soldier - for a professional. Most of his officers were part-timers. They came out of a business, were given a commission and sent off to war. The English commander, General Percival, was absolutely useless.'

At the end of the month, on the night of 30/31 January, the last British and allied forces were withdrawn from the mainland, the causeway was partly blown up, and the siege of Singapore began.

For a week there was an ominous lull, apart form some minor air attacks. Then on the night of Sunday, 8 February, 1942, the Japanese invaded the island in force, an amphibious attack concentrating on the north-western shores. The invasion was preceded by a heavy artillery barrage that pounded the northern coastline and the interior and lasted all that day and into the night.

'The night they landed I'll never forget for as long as I live. For a start, I ended up being cut off behind the Japanese lines. They came ashore in boats and on rafts and their biggest assault was against the Australians, who had the smallest amount of men guarding the largest amount of coast. Percival's idea was that the Japs would attack on the other side, on the east. So he had the greatest concentration of his forces over there. But the Japs first laid into us. Their fifth column, you see, was absolutely brilliant. They knew everything that we were going to do and where we were. They had artillery spotters up on the roof of the Sultan of Johore's palace. We could see them through our glasses. But we weren't allowed to blow them out of there, because it was a sultan's palace [In fact it was used as the Administration Building in Johore Bahru].

'The shelling started early in the morning and they shelled all day. There was a hell of a noise and they made a hell of a mess. Our guns were right on the water, and we were in slit trenches not far away. About four o'clock in the afternoon the barrage lifted for a while and we went down to the guns. Ours was