At 90, I look back at my life in wonder
Doug Pleasance takes stock of his blessings – none greater than the fact his dad came home from the war.
The realisation that you are soon to become 90 years old arrives slowly, bringing with it a varied mixture of emotions, such as incredulity that you have reached such a great age, amazement that this could actually happen to you.
Then there is a follow up feeling of responsibility, such as, “should I record some of the events from my long life which may be of value to my descendants as they make their way into their own life and times?”
I first had this feeling 10 years ago now, largely prompted by Oscar Levy, who as part of a school assignment was asked to interview “an old person”.
I fitted that description. The skilfully crafted questions really made me think before each response.
I was born in the Kerang Bush Nursing Hospital, on 29 December 29, 1934. My parents were farmers who survived the Great Depression by milking about 20 cows and shearing about 1000 sheep. Though poor and without most of the items now deemed essential for life, I was loved, happy … and totally disinterested in farming.
We had no electricity (candles and kerosene lights), no refrigerator and of course no TV, though we did have a battery-powered radio, the discarded batteries of which became a favourite plaything, perhaps a predecessor to Lego.
We had an Essex 4 open tourer car with a top speed of about 30mph, which took us into Kerang for the weekly shopping.
Tragowel State School No 2227 was seven kilometres distant, and my elder brothers Gordon and Alan (Lal) introduced me into the daily routine of catching the horse, and harnessing it into the gig, ready for a 9am commencement of our classes.
I remember the searing heat of summer, and the frost of winter.
My first teacher Mr Eric Howie smoked (a new smell, since neither Mum nor Dad smoked or drank.) I remember using slate for the first six months. I also remember leaving the one-teacher school, where I was equal dux with Maren Holder, and spending one year, 1947, at the Kerang High School, where I was hopeless at every subject, ending the year rated about 29 out of the 31 students (and you should have seen the other two).
I was devoid of interest, talent, ambition, self-esteem, and then, without me knowing, destiny intervened.
My grandfather, Lachlan Skene Duff Gordon, died suddenly, which left my grandmother living alone in Belmont, Victoria. Mum was one of 12 kids, who had produced 44 grandchildren, and it was decided that I should take care of Gran and so, at the age of just 14, I was plucked from all that was familiar, and made to go to a different school.
I missed my beautiful horse, Lancer, but I became a bit of a swot. I joined the local Methodist Cricket Club, and by Form Four, I was a prefect. I finished the year with a scholarship to do a Diploma of Textile Chemistry course at the Gordon Institute, which was in the 1950s world class, with students chosen from many countries. Qualified diploma holders were sought out by industry and I began work at $32 per week.
At this point, fate intervened again. I had a very nice steady girlfriend, Barbara, but couldn’t help noticing an artist, Elly, working alongside me, and so poor Barbara was dropped, and Elly became my one and only, a position which has never even looked like changing, to this day.
I say that now, but late in 1958 I must have had doubts, because I booked a passage overseas on the good ship Fairsky.
In the days of Jumbo jets, it may be hard to imagine that it took five weeks to sail to Europe, but they were relaxing times, stopping in exotic places like Singapore, Colombo, Port Suez, Cairo and Naples. I travelled very humbly across the continent, until one day, on a very minor road, I recognised my whereabouts as Pozieres.
My memory flipped back to my Dad’s war diary, especially the photos of landscapes and pock marked fields, blown up trenches and general debris of war.
At the tender age of 23, as I was then, I did not really understand the statistical likelihood of my arriving at this point. A million bullets, any one of which might have taken the life of my father, Wilfred Pleasance, had been fired here, but did not find their target.
My grandparents had been living comfortably in Melbourne in 1914, when the rumbling of war began. Three of their young sons, my future father included, became excited by the possibility of adventure and, in their innocence, decided to enlist.
Wilfred was then 24, and his brothers Max and Harold were 22 and 20, and they all signed up together.
Harold, the youngest, was accepted immediately and quickly shipped to Gallipoli.
Max, a pharmacist, was transferred to the Medical Corp, and after minimal military training was dispatched overseas on the troopship Nestor.
My father was sent to Ballarat, where the recruits slept in sheep and cattle yards.
He caught pneumonia and nearly died without active service, but in the fullness of time, he was aboard the troop ship Ceramic.
His description of life at sea with 3000 bodies on a ship designed for 300 would horrify today’s luxury traveller.
Harold was not involved in the initial landing at Gallipoli on April 25, but he arrived soon after and participated in the famous retreat in December 1915.
He spent time at the large camp established near the famous pyramids and sphinx of Cairo, which by chance accommodated Max and Will. The three boys had camel rides and climbed the pyramids as relief for the more serious training they were receiving for warfare in France.
Back in Melbourne, my grandparents had photographs of the three troop ships, captioned with their departure dates, on the wall in their home, in faith that they would bring their boys home again:
8/5/15 H.M.A.T. EURIPIDES (Harold)
11/10/15 H.M.A.T. NESTOR (Max)
23/11/15 H.M.A.T. CERAMIC (Will)
They also bought three beautiful gold fob watches, had them engraved with the names of their sons, ready for their return.
The boys were split up into different battalions. The years 1916 and 1917 were ghastly but they endured and survived. The situation changed rapidly in early 1918.
My father was aboard a cold railway cattle truck, approaching St Quentin, on the river Somme in eastern France, when the end of the war came. He wrote in his diary: “We are grimy and dirty and in rather a cheerless frame of mind, when suddenly from nowhere it would seem, comes the word that PEACE HAS BEEN DECLARED. In an instant, gone is our depression and a state of wildest excitement exists. Can it be true? It cannot be possible. So long have we lived in a state of feeling that any day might be our last that our minds refuse to grasp the fact that from now on the morrow will have no terrors on us … Our thoughts fly homeward, for now the possibility once so remote of again seeing our own folk has become an actuality.”
Of course, not everyone came home. In my family’s case, the official war memorial records the death of Harold Pleasance, aged 23, at Mont St Quentin, on 21 August 1918.
As a postscript, two of the fob watches purchased by their parents are now in the custodial care of my sons. It is interesting to note that the beautiful engraving is perfectly preserved on Harold’s unused watch, while Max’s watch has had the engraving abraded away by a lifetime of wear, while my own father’s watch, together with his medals and photos, were destroyed in a house fire in 1950.
My father’s survival ensured mine, and the past 90 years have been filled with adventure, the blessing of children, and grandchildren.
We have had some disappointments in recent years, none bigger than Elly’s blindness, although she has mastered her iPad to respond to voice commands. My principal loss is my general physicality, but I retain my driver’s licence, and use it (with much self-restraint).
Moving to a retirement village tends to dull one’s sensibility to death. They don’t call it “God’s Waiting Room” for nothing. We have lost some really good friends, but we have also become mentally well prepared for the moment when our own names will surely be called, a positive approach to death being the final act in a long, happy and privileged life.
This is an edited extract from Three Ships, an Armistice Day Story, by Doug Pleasance, who is an avid reader of these pages.
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