‘I’m not a hero’: A world away from battle, WWII veteran turns 100

He was barely out of his teens when he fought the Japanese in Borneo in World War II, but Max Caldwell is not one to talk up his service.

“I wasn’t alone by any means,” said Caldwell, who turned 100 on Sunday. “Don’t make it out that I was a hero. I was just another soldier.”

A world away from war: Max Caldwell (centre) at his 100th birthday party in Blackburn. At right is Michael Ralston, son of Gilbert Ralston, a 2/14th Battalion soldier, with Michael’s wife, Elaine.Credit: Chris Hopkins

His son, Greg, said Max used to often talk about serving in the Battle of Balikpapan in Borneo, in South-East Asia, in 1945.

On one occasion, a Japanese soldier lobbed a hand grenade near where Caldwell stood. A mate went to throw it away but dropped it. He then fell on the grenade to shield his friends from the blast but was killed by the explosion.

And once, Caldwell stood up while the rest of his unit was seated as an enemy sniper’s bullet whizzed past his head.

The battle in the oil-port city of Balikpapan began with bombing from Allied planes and ships of Japanese positions which destroyed most buildings, followed by a D-Day-style landing of 30,000 Allied soldiers, on July 1, 1945.

Australian troops hit the shore at Balikpapan on the south-east coast of Borneo.Credit: Suppied

Over six weeks, the soldiers drove out the Japanese and secured airports, blowing up bridges held by the enemy and exchanging gunfire.

The Australian War Memorial says it was “the last major Australian ground operation of the Second World War and the largest ever amphibious assault involving Australian forces”.

In total, 229 Australians and 1800 Japanese soldiers were killed. Caldwell helped round up and guard Japanese prisoners at Balikpapan, and later at Celebes Island (today’s Sulawesi) and the town of Parepare.

Max Caldwell on enlistment at age 18, in 1943.

That was 80 years ago, and 5000 kilometres away from where Caldwell celebrated his 100th birthday, at a Regis aged care home in Blackburn, in Melbourne’s east, on Sunday.

Caldwell is one of two surviving soldiers of the more than 3000 men who served in the 2/14th Battalion, according to its Battalion Association. The other surviving veteran, Les Cook, 102, lives in Canberra.

At Caldwell’s party, guests sipped champagne and ate a birthday cake topped with a 1920s logo from Caldwell’s beloved Collingwood Football Club.

Among the guests were Magpie great Peter McKenna and 3AW presenter Darren James, the latter a friend of Caldwell’s son, Bruce.

Caldwell’s sister, Betty Caldwell, 96, remembered that in 1943, when Max was 18 and she was 14, their mother, Hazel, and sister, Joyce, 21, were in “floods of tears” at seeing Max off to war from their Kew house.

Max Caldwell at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, date unknown.

Betty said when Max returned home three years later, he was so thin she didn’t recognise him, and he was “as nervous as a kitten” from his war experiences.

After the war, Max married his sweetheart, Betty Waddington, and spent 45 years working for an insurance firm, rising to be deputy state manager before retiring in 1986.

Betty died last year. The couple have four children, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Asked why he enlisted to serve, Caldwell said there was a sense of adventure, but also of duty.

“I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said.

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