At 103, this Aussie larrikin veteran enjoys beer

At 103, Alf Carpenter might just be the oldest survivor of this country’s great generation.

World War II veteran Alf Carpenter at his home in Georgetown near Newcastle. Picture: John Feder

At 103, Alf Carpenter might just be the oldest survivor of this country’s great generation, the nearly 1 million Australians who pulled on a uniform to defend hearth and home in World War II.

Still enjoying a beer, he will pause on Saturday to raise a glass to the mates he lost, the sacrifices made, the loves and friendships that endured, to mark the 75th anniversary of the guns falling silent in the Pacific, ending the bloodiest armed conflict of all time.

Mr Carpenter’s recollections of August 15, 1945, six days after the Japanese city of Nagasaki became the second to be levelled by a US nuclear bomb, forcing the country’s surrender, are as hazy as those sepia-tinged photographs of him in his slouch hat and khakis. Not because he was among the revellers in Australia who took to the streets to celebrate the hard-earned victory over Japan, but because his war had not ended. Mr Carpenter’s VJ Day was spent in a regimental aid post on Borneo in a delirium of malarial fever.

What a war he had and what a story he tells, made all the more poignant by how few of his contemporaries are left to do so. Barely 12,000 Australian WWII veterans remain, aged 93-103, according to available Department of Veterans’ Affairs records, and the laconic Novocastrian tops the count.

You wouldn’t know it. Sharp as a tack, Mr Carpenter insists on driving himself and also fends for himself at home in Newcastle with the help of a visiting carer.

“I reckon if I go tomorrow I’ve had a fair run at this life,” he said when The Australian called.

He joined up in October, 1939, a month after Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, thrusting Australia into the fight. By the time the all-volunteer 2nd Australian Imperial Force landed in North Africa in late 1940, he was in charge of a mortar platoon pursuing the hapless Italians across Libya. When the Australians captured the port of Tobruk they took more prisoners of war than they knew what to do with. Then he was sent to Greece to take on the Germans. The campaign was a debacle. His division, the 6th, was evacuated to the island of Crete with British and New Zealand troops before the Germans mounted a paratroop-led assault.

At the height of the vicious fighting, Mr Carpenter was felled by a blow to the head: he had been hit by shrapnel. By the time he recovered, the war had shifted to Australia’s doorstep. Having bombed Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, the Japanese had run rampant, seizing the Philippines, Hong Kong, the Malayan peninsula, what’s now Indonesia and, of course, Singapore where nearly 15,000 Australian soldiers, surrendered.

The militia and AIF men on the Kokoda Track fought heroically to save Port Moresby and chase the Japanese back over the Owen Stanley Range. Mr Carpenter retrained and was commissioned as a lieutenant, in charge of a company of army landing craft when Australian forces went after Buka Island off Bougainville.

Mr Carpenter in his uniform during the war.

The beach he was assigned was supposed to be a “soft” one, unoccupied by the Japanese. Sadly, no one told the enemy gunners. Mr Carpenter was blown into the water by a direct hit on his launch; with no other place to go, he swam out to sea. There, he came across another Australian officer treading water, Ted Lewis. It turned out they had both worked in retail in civilian life. “If we get out of this, we should go into business together,” Lewis said.

The last major allied operation of the Pacific war took Mr Carpenter to North Borneo in 1945, where he was struck down by illness in the lead-up to VJ Day. Lewis tracked him down when they were discharged to remind him of their deal. Mr Carpenter’s wife, Marjorie, liked the idea.

They had married in 1940, before he shipped out, after she told him he couldn’t expect her to wait around unless he put a ring on her finger. “Marge was keen that I settle down,” he said. Lewis and Carpenter, general store, prospered at Warners Bay near Lake Macquarie, NSW. A boy, Russell, came along and a nephew, Robert, moved in to be brought up as a second son. Mr Carpenter joined the local surf club and the RSL.

But he never lost his taste for adventure. When Russell was 14, he packed up the family and picked up a VW Kombi van in Europe and drove to India.

But in 1968, they lost Marge. “She loved smoking,” he said.

Russell became a roof tiler, married and had children of his own; Robert, a butcher, also raised a family. They too are now gone, as are all those mates that Mr Carpenter used to see on Anzac Day. He was the last man standing for the 6th Division at the last march he attended in Sydney. He likes to meet schoolchildren to tell them his story, a joke or two, because he thinks it is important that they hear about WWII from someone who was there. There’s the grandchildren and great grandkids as well, almost too many to count, and he is still vice-president of his RSL sub-branch. “There must be something wrong with me because I’m not chasing sheilas anymore,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

What will he do on Saturday? Well, his carer, Larisa, has dropped off a case of beer and he plans to get stuck in — even though his doctor has warned him to go easy, because, “you know, Alf, you’re not getting any younger’.

“You’re never too old to knock off a couple of middies,” Mr Carpenter said.