ANZAC DAY 2024: Val Blackett on Kindness, Valour and Humour | Newcastle Herald | April 24, 2024 - video Dailymotion

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00:03 When I joined the Army, my name was Valerie Jean Blackett.

00:13 I was 18 years and a few days, and my rank was gunner.

00:19 I think we might have been some of the first.

00:24 I went to Victoria Barracks.

00:27 We had a pep talk, and then we all

00:31 walked from Victoria Barracks down to Central Station.

00:36 Looked like a gaggle of peacocks and things,

00:40 girls in high heels, some in flatties, some with hats,

00:44 and everybody calling out, you'll be sorry,

00:48 you'll be sorry, all the way down to Central.

00:52 And we went on the train to Ingleburn,

00:56 where I did my rookies.

00:58 And then we weren't told much, and got on a train,

01:03 and we got off at Broadmeadow onto a truck,

01:07 standing up on the back of a truck, about 20 of us,

01:10 crossing the ferry.

01:12 The ferry in those days took trucks and cars.

01:17 We pulled up outside a beautiful home called The Laurels,

01:21 and we all said, oh, I'll have that room.

01:24 I'll have that room.

01:26 We walked in through the hallway and out

01:29 into a hut in the back garden, which was a rude awakening.

01:36 So that was the first day that I realised

01:39 I was going to be a gunner.

01:41 My father had been in the First World War on the Somme.

01:46 I think he was pretty proud, because he and two brothers

01:51 and five first cousins all went to the First World War,

01:54 and they were all gunners.

01:56 When he found out I was a gunner too,

01:59 it was just-- he rang everybody he knew to tell them, yes.

02:20 When we got to Wave Battery, the men were pretty aghast.

02:25 They couldn't believe that women were

02:28 coming in to do the same job.

02:31 I think they complained a bit, and the CO promised them

02:38 there would be no difference in the chores,

02:42 so we did exactly the same as the men.

02:46 We got a lot of respect for that too.

02:49 We weren't treated as women.

02:51 The first day, we had a wonderful sergeant

02:55 came to give us a bit of history,

02:58 and he said, you girls have got probably the most important job

03:05 in the whole of Australia.

03:08 You have to protect BHP and the port.

03:11 And we all-- we're only girls.

03:19 That little pep talk, I'd say the girls were 200% always

03:27 their job came first.

03:29 We had night after night on red alert,

03:46 sitting in the concrete gun pit, not

03:50 knowing whether it was planes or submarines,

03:55 but everyone was ready to go, whatever we had to do.

03:59 Wonderful spirit, and the most amazing lot of girls.

04:05 From the first day, we were trained

04:07 in the theory of gunnery, so we understood what we were doing

04:14 and how gunnery works with the trajectory of the missile.

04:18 And aircraft recognition, we could recognize any aircraft.

04:24 And the theory of gunnery was all about mathematics.

04:29 And I think I topped the class, from the men and the women.

04:35 And that caused a bit of a problem,

04:37 because some of the men said-- I was 18, going on 12.

04:44 And the men said, go back to kindergarten.

04:49 And they were a bit peeved that maybe my maths was

04:53 a bit fresher.

04:54 Even though we were frightened, we knew what we knew was good.

05:06 We did the technical work on what

05:09 was called a height and range finder, which

05:12 was a telescope with eyepieces on each end,

05:16 and what they called a predictor.

05:19 We weren't supposed to photograph anything,

05:21 and these have come to light lately.

05:25 Four girls were on the predictor,

05:27 and we got the guns aligned to the target.

05:31 And then we would call fire.

05:34 The gun sergeant would order the gun to fire,

05:37 because we were on target.

05:40 Aircraft pull a drag, what they called a drag, behind,

05:45 and we fired at those.

05:47 But we did the technical part, and the men

05:51 loaded the shells and fired.

05:54 There was an awful rumor that went around

05:57 that when Rathmines found out that it was the girls that

06:01 were going to do it, every pilot turned in sick that morning.

06:06 That's the rumor that went around.

06:12 We were so good at the job that they had nothing to worry about.

06:17 We knew we wouldn't fire at their plane.

06:20 We went for the drag.

06:22 Where we were at WAVE, we were right on the water.

06:28 A worry for us, because we were really anti-submarine.

06:34 Instead of firing up, it was very difficult to fire down.

06:39 The battery, before I arrived, they

06:42 had taken part in the bombing of Newcastle that happened,

06:48 that took out the West End.

06:51 Absolute fear.

06:53 I can't believe that you could live being so absolutely

06:58 frightened.

06:59 Most of that was from not knowing

07:02 what we were up against.

07:04 But we were so well-trained that that wouldn't

07:08 have interfered with anything.

07:12 We spent a lot of time on the beach where we were camped.

07:17 And we were surrounded by these tank traps

07:21 with a barbed wire through them.

07:24 We didn't do much swimming, because you

07:27 had to go through the barbed wire to get into the water.

07:31 Under this sand here, 20 feet down, was our command post.

07:37 It was under the sand.

07:39 And it went down 20 concrete steps.

07:44 And our telephones and everything were underground.

07:49 The difference at the fort, it's a completely different war.

07:54 They had everything.

07:56 All the amenities and so on.

07:59 And we were just camped on the beach, really.

08:02 We lived on the sand.

08:04 We ate sand.

08:06 We slept sand.

08:08 One shower, 30 girls trying to get a shower together.

08:11 [LAUGHS]

08:14 And that was the funniest part of the day.

08:17 Our relationship with Fort Scratchley,

08:20 we knew that they were in charge of coastal defense.

08:24 We didn't have much to do with them,

08:27 except when they needed the shells polished.

08:31 We would go, maybe 10 of us would go over and spend

08:36 a day polishing shells and making sure they were all

08:39 clean and so on.

08:41 There was a bit of resentment, I think,

08:43 because the fort was so beautiful.

08:47 And the girls had proper toilets and all sorts of things

08:52 that we would have appreciated.

08:55 And I don't think they did dirty things,

08:58 like cleaning the shells.

09:00 We terrorized the shops in Stoughton.

09:06 We used to go down on a route march or something

09:10 and all go and buy ice creams and try and get them

09:14 for nothing, because four bob a day didn't buy much ice

09:18 creams.

09:19 That's the grocer's delivery van.

09:23 And we commandeered it and went up and down the main street,

09:27 all taking turns of being in it.

09:30 And that's sitting in the main street of Stoughton,

09:34 outside the first house next to the shops.

09:39 I'm on the end here.

09:42 Everyone seemed to be nice.

09:44 At the Ferry Wharf, there was a--

09:50 I think it was Red Cross, something--

09:53 they had a tent there.

09:55 And they had hot meals for free.

09:57 And we used to go and have mints on toast.

10:00 That was probably the best meal of the week.

10:03 Our meals were pretty terrible, mostly potatoes.

10:07 And I lived on fruit, mostly.

10:10 One of the trawlers used to come in.

10:13 I'd get a huge bag of prawns, which

10:18 would take me two days to eat.

10:21 I do know that I had received so much hospitality from locals.

10:27 And I was the only one that took advantage

10:30 of having a church pass every Sunday night, as long as I

10:36 could get back in five minutes.

10:39 And the people were just unbelievable.

10:42 They'd turn up with boxes of homemade cakes

10:47 for me to take back.

10:48 And I just couldn't believe people were

10:50 so absolutely wonderful to us.

10:54 I loved Newcastle.

10:56 Every two months, because they had

10:59 the facility of the golf course with the most wonderful dance

11:04 floor, an orchestra, a band, would come.

11:08 And none of the men at WAVE were given leave over that night.

11:14 And all the girls had to go, because LINC only had men.

11:19 So we used to go and dance.

11:22 My-- we did the jitterbug under the legs and over the shoulders.

11:28 I'd never seen dancing like it.

11:31 And that was one of the highlights,

11:34 going up, standing on the back of a truck, all--

11:38 well, if we had a Saturday night,

11:44 we used to love to go to Newcastle Town Hall, where

11:49 they had dancing every Saturday night, wonderful orchestra,

11:53 and waltzing competitions.

11:56 And they would eliminate people until they

11:59 got the best waltzes, which I won quite a few times.

12:03 And that was a wedding at the church in Stockton.

12:12 Yeah, that's one of my favorite photos,

12:14 because they're all there.

12:16 I remember the name of all of those.

12:19 At WAVE, there probably was 10 or 12 marriage, all successful,

12:27 no divorces.

12:28 I think the girls realized who the good fellows were.

12:33 Everyone that got together, they ended up

12:36 married and children and so on, because we

12:40 had a beautiful lot of men, too.

12:42 They were really lovely.

12:44 Maybe the atmosphere of being at war

12:48 and wanting to have something permanent and sustainable.

12:55 And when they found someone that appealed to them,

12:59 they really made it something special.

13:02 I ended up at Fort Wallace, not till we broke up at WAVE

13:11 when they decommissioned that.

13:13 They had six-inch guns.

13:16 They installed the first radar in Australia at Fort Wallace.

13:22 And we were the ones that were chosen to do the course.

13:26 So we did the course.

13:27 Instead of looking out to sea--

13:31 there was Japanese shipping going up and down the coast.

13:34 We'd see-- instead of looking at it,

13:36 we had our backs to it looking at the screens.

13:40 And we couldn't believe it.

13:43 No one had ever thought of those kind of things.

13:47 You've probably read, but I got a bullet wound to my head.

13:51 I hadn't been there very long.

13:54 But they had a boiler, which we called Bessie,

13:58 for the hot water.

14:00 And we were allocated jobs.

14:03 And that day, I was to keep the boiler going.

14:07 And I was walking towards it.

14:10 And I heard an explosion.

14:12 And then blood started to come.

14:15 I thought, gosh, you know, somebody

14:18 must have thrown something, a catapult or something.

14:22 Anyway, I went to the RAP.

14:25 And she said, oh, you've got a little round hole there.

14:30 If it gives you any bother, here's a couple of aspirins.

14:34 You can take those if there's any pain.

14:36 There was a lot of pain.

14:38 I took the aspirins overnight.

14:40 And in the morning, I had a black eye.

14:43 And of course, I thought I was Miss Australia.

14:46 And the only thing that worried me

14:48 is how I was going to look.

14:51 So I got on a bus.

14:53 And I came down to Stockton to buy an eye patch

14:56 to put over the black eye.

14:57 And he said to me, you'll have to buy two,

15:00 because the other one's going to be black as well.

15:04 So the next day, I had two eyes I could hardly see out of.

15:09 But I was on duty the whole time.

15:11 And I was on duty at the front gate with my .303 rifle.

15:18 And I fainted in front of an officer.

15:21 And he called an ambulance.

15:22 And I went to Newcastle Hospital.

15:25 They x-rayed it.

15:26 And the doctor came out and said,

15:28 you've got a bullet in your head.

15:30 So they wrote a report saying that there

15:37 must have been a missile in the coke that

15:40 goes into the boiler.

15:42 And they brought in a surgeon to see

15:45 if he could take the bullet out.

15:47 Then they sent me to Greta.

15:50 And when I got out of the ambulance,

15:52 you walk through about three men's wards.

15:57 And Miss Australia, with two black eyes

16:02 and big bandages and everything.

16:04 And I think, if only it had killed me.

16:08 I've got to go through all this.

16:10 And everyone's saying, how's the other fellow?

16:13 What happened to him?

16:16 In the back of the hospital was the women's ward.

16:20 And the next morning, all the walking wounded men,

16:24 some being pushed in wheelchairs,

16:26 they were all down, how are you?

16:29 And they'd all heard that I'd been shot.

16:33 So I became a hero overnight.

16:37 After the operation, I told them when

16:40 they were going to take the bandages off.

16:43 So they're all there.

16:44 And I said to the nurse, can we do it outside so they can see?

16:48 So she took the bandages off.

16:50 And they were saying, you're beautiful, marry me.

16:55 I had 100 proposals of marriage on one day.

17:02 I spent about eight months in and out of hospital.

17:06 And at the end of that time, I was sent to Victoria Barracks.

17:13 And I was there when the war ended.

17:15 All of my friends have passed away.

17:22 And I have this relationship with most of their daughters.

17:26 And they're as close to me as their mothers were.

17:31 We had an amazing lot of women.

17:35 Absolutely beautiful.

17:37 I loved them all.

17:39 And we kept in touch all the time.

17:43 It was a wonderful experience.

17:46 I think that was the nicest thing that came out of it.

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ANZAC DAY 2024: Val Blackett on Kindness, Valour and Humour | Newcastle Herald | April 24, 2024

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