The Soldier's Details

 

 

Please read further about 2/4th Football team at Northam.

 

From ‘Joe Pearce Beyond Hellfire and Back’ by Shirley Howell’ – The Vickers guns went off and I remember one of our boys, old Franz Brackleman, an Aussie German from Kalgoorlie – a bullet went straight through his tin hat, creased his skull, and he tipped over. As he went down he shook hands with his mate Fred Tregenza from Quarading saying, “So long Fred, old Bracks has had it” and down he went.  Everybody thought he was dead.  He lay there for about 5 minutes with everybody standing around saying what a shame he was a goner.

Suddenly Bracks jumped up and said “Bugger if old Bracks is a goner!”

He was mad as hell, and wanted to kill all the Japs who were piling up against the barbed wire entanglement.  Jumping over the coiled barbed wire he went for them.  They reckon he took out about half a dozen of them in that short space of time.

He was a very lucky man to survive his outburst, but admired for his guts.  I’m not sure how, but he was left with a limp from the head wound and survived the war!’

There were several boys from Quairading involved in the above skirmish.  Fred Tregenza, Lin MacDonald and Bracks were on the same gun.  Big Ron Anderson was also in the vehicle. They attempted to get through but were ambushed.  With the road behind them blocked having been taken by the Japanese, there was nowhere to go.

Their vehicle was hit by Japanese fire, smashing the windscreen. The vehicle veered into the ditch and the men bailed out taking to the jungle and keeping low as possible.  Ron managed to get to a drain thinking his two mates were behind him.  But they weren’t. Lin MacDonald and Fred Tregenza were never seen nor heard of again.

Ron was on his own and cut off from everybody.  All the wood was knocked off his rifle and he was left with just the barrel.

Somehow Ron found his way back to the troops and issued with a new rifle.  The one he was holding was red hot and burning his hands!

Ron enlisted AIF 30 Oct 1940 and later joined 2/4th’s ‘D’ Company 13 Platoon under CO Lt. Wankey.

Please read about ‘D’ Coy 13 Platoon

As a POW in Singapore Ron left Singapore by boat to sail with ‘A’ Force Burma Green Force No. 3 Battalion to work on the northern/Burma end of the Burma-Thai Railway.

He was recovered at the end of the war from Thailand.

 

 

 

Below:  Ron was an active member of the Dangin Tennis Club.

 

Below:  Football accident 1946

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ron was born 1918 to parents George Edwin Anderson and Irene Whitford who married at Williams 1916.

Below:  Irene’s father died in 1925.

 

 

Returning from war Ron married 1949 at Williams to Betty W Walker.

Ron passed away aged 85yrs, February 5 2003, at Quairading, WA.