Local veteran reflects on WWII

WORLD War II veteran and Anglesea resident Jack Turner will be honoured today (Friday, April 25), along with servicemen and servicewomen across the country, ahead of his 100th birthday later this year.

Mr Turner was working in the railways, a protected industry at the time, and was waiting to get a release so he could enlist in WWII.

On September 5, 1944 at the age of 18, he enlisted as a coder in the Royal Australian Navy and was responsible for putting signals into code.

“My job was to put them in code so that they’d be transmitted in code and some coder at the other end would decode them into plain English.

“There were signals coming in, signals going out continuously 24 hours a day, every day of the week. I would be on duty with two others, another coder and another wireless telegraphist.”

After completing the coding course, he was drafted to HMAS Ballarat before fracturing his wrist in an accident.

“The posting to Ballarat was cancelled, [my wrist] took ages to repair and when it did, it wasn’t fixed, I had to go back to physiotherapy,” he said.

The navy stationed Mr Turner in the signal office at Flinders Naval Depot, where he spent the majority of his two year and two month service.

The coder recalled being on for 24 hours and divided into watches, where his team would complete four hours on and four hours off.

“Finding meals was a problem,” he said.

“You knock off at two in the morning, you wouldn’t find anywhere else you could get a feed and you’re going in at eight in the morning, you did get a breakfast.”

Mr Turner said he enlisted simply because “there was a war on”.

“Things were not looking good. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour. They’d made their way down through parts of Papua New Guinea.

“Like a lot of others, I enlisted, trying to do my bit.”

Once discharged, Mr Turner returned to Melbourne where he married his wife and the pair moved to Bayswater. Upon his retirement they moved again to Bright, where he became a life member of the RSL.

After his wife’s passing, Mr Turner continued living on his own before it started to become too difficult to manage and he moved to Anglesea to be closer to his son.

Mr Turner, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on November 2, has officially joined the Anglesea RSL and said he would never miss a service.