Rockhampton seniors reflect on wartime era

Rockhampton seniors from Carinity reflect on wartime on Remembrance Day

Ryszard 'Richie' Ziebicki in Rockhampton in 2019

Ryszard "Richie" Ziebicki was 12 years old when Germany invaded his homeland Poland in September 1939. He would spend most of his teenage years in forced labour camps.

"At the age of 15-and-a-half I was randomly selected for forced labour in Germany along with two other boys from my village, Gielniow," recalls Richie, who now lives in the Carinity Shalom seniors community in Rockhampton.

"After several days of travel, we arrived at Wilhemshaven in the north of Germany. We were taken to a Russian prisoner of war camp and started work at a coal business.

"The coal arrived by boat or train and my job was to unload 50kg bags and deliver by trailer mainly to army barracks, navy bases and businesses in the city, where I had to stow the bags in the cellars.

Richie was given one meal at night, consisting of stew or soup and bread and "if we could scavenge any food from any other source, it was a treat".

"Sometimes when delivering coal to the cellars we would deliberately knock a jar of preserved food off the shelf and quickly pocket some," Richie says.

"During air raids when the Allied planes kept coming and the bombs were falling we were scared but we wanted them to keep coming."

Ahead of Remembrance Day on November 11, Richie and fellow Carinity Shalom residents shared their memories of life during World War II - both in Europe and Australia.

Grace Lund's earliest memories are of "the air raid shelter in our backyard and the compulsory blackout blinds at our windows".

By 1943 air raids and bombings were a constant threat. School lessons in London were often interrupted by the sound of the air raid siren.

"We would all have to leave the building and go en-masse to the shelters. Sometimes it was just a drill, occasionally the real thing," Grace recalls.

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"We all had to wear gas masks. Many children were evacuated to safer places.

"I remember many nights huddled in or on a large cupboard under the stairs while planes were overhead and bombs dropping outside while we were huddled in utter darkness.

"We experienced several close shaves when bombs were dropped nearby. One blew our front door off its hinges, but we were all safe inside."

Lorna Urquhart's first memory of World War II was her brother trying to enlist in the air force but failing his physical. This prompted Lorna to do her bit for the war effort.

Aged 19, she went to the local recruiting office in Rockhampton and was drafted to the Australian Army Medical Women's Service as a seamstress.

"People everywhere were talking war all the time and lots thought it would not last long at first, but gradually everyone realised that it was going to be a long war," Lorna says.

Joan Davis remembers when World War II arrived: her then boyfriend, George, was called up for military service.

She visited George at his training camp in Bauple as his unit had just been given their orders to move to Townsville - and then on to Papua New Guinea.

That weekend George proposed to Joan and they were married in a hastily arranged wedding before he was shipped out.

Joyce Bunt was living on her family dairy farm at Baralaba when World War II broke out.

She says life was hard with rationing for food and clothing but people "helped out each other and got on with life."

These oral histories of Rockhampton seniors were recorded and collated by Carinity Shalom Aged Care Activities Officer Donna Hinchliffe.

Donna says: "Through the hard, frightening and often very lonely years they endured there was a common thread: a sense of 'one for all' for the duration of the war, to ensure that all those that came after lived in a better world."