Me Old Granddad’s War Records
The National Archives now has a scanning service where you can pay $16 and have anyone’s war records scanned and published online, so I tracked down my granddad Harry Leonard Lansbury’s name and just got notified they’d finished the scan.
You can download the whole thing as a PDF here (5mb).
It’s pretty bureaucratic reading, but it does confirm he was in Darwin during the first wave of Japanese bombings that took place there in February 1942 - the biggest hostile attack on Australian soil in history. He also managed to rise through the ranks to become a Warrant Officer, which appears to be a decent rank for a Non Commissioned Officer.
He was only in Darwin for a couple of months before returning to Alice Springs where his unit was at a Supply Depot, and had to write letters to the Army for 10 years to try and get an active service medal, which was eventually awarded.
My Dad reckons this was the most exciting time of Len’s life, and he always seemed bored with living back in the suburbs after the war until his death in 1969.
22. April 2008 at 08:31
Nice. I ordered my old granddads war records too!
24. April 2008 at 07:07
What my own Dad remembers:
Seeing Len’s handwriting brought back a flood of memories as he always prided himself on his copperplate writing, which I never accomplished! I also noticed that he was treated for hypertension in the army so his problems with stress may have gone back a long way. I remember just how important the medals were to him,not just for the recognition but also because it gave him access to a war service loan and enabled Freda and Len to build their first home in their 50s, and move from Thanet St. It also meant that Freda gained a war widow’s pension as the army agreed to recognise that the war service may have contributed to his early death… as hypertension was regarded as a factor in his heart attack, and I guess that the medical records from the army helped establish this line of argument. But it was also interesting to see the positive remarks about Len’s leadership ability in the training reports. I know that he was very pleased to be promoted to WO rank which meant that he was still able to be ‘one of the boys’ and not an officer, while being able to exercise some authority and responsibility. Although he regarded his time in the army as a wonderful time of mateship, he hated the authoritarian regime and did not want me to join the army cadets at school or have anything to do with war. Despite his conservative political views he was ultimately against the Vietnam war and even got into arguments with people at the RSL over the issue.
Anyway, Len would have been very emotional about the fact that you had taken the trouble to find out about him and his time in the army. He was a very modest man and would have been amazed (and touched) that you were interested in him.