Vet reflects on service with ‘little mate’ Teddy Sheehan: ‘I was no longer there to hold his hand’

Tasmanian war vet Jack Bird signed up for the navy and was drafted for the HMAS Armidale alongside Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean. He was unable to take up his post on the ill-fated ship as he required dental work, but remembers the last day he saw his ‘little mate’ and comrade.

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JACK Bird was in bed with his new wife when his father kicked in the door and broke the news World War II was over.

He was on six weeks leave from service at the time and leapt out of bed in his “battle gear” and ran around “like a goat” as his little brother did “wheelies” on his motorbike.

Mr Bird was among the living veterans to receive a Commemorative Medallion and certificate on Wednesday recognising the 75th anniversary of that significant day.

Bird signed up to the Royal Australian Navy in 1941 alongside celebrated Tasmanian war hero Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean who the Queen approved for a posthumously Victoria Cross on Wednesday for his final act of bravery on the HMAS Armidale.

Bird and Sheean were 17 when they enlisted with Bird serving on the HMAS Manoora and HMAS Westralia.

Now 76, Bird said he remembers “chasing Germans”, bombs dropping from Japanese aircraft and a pact he made with Sheean’s brother not to “have anything to do with women until we won the war”.

Ex navy serviceman Jack Bird received a commemorative medal marking the significance of the end or World War II. Bird signed up alongside Victoria Cross recipient Teddy Sheean in 1941. Picture: PATRICK GEE

He said he and Sheean were very similar and would often get mixed up.

“He was an interesting fella,” he said.

“I’d call him my little mate, because he was a quarter of an inch taller than me.”

Bird and Sheean were both drafted to the HMAS Armidale, but Bird was unable to take up his posting because he needed teeth pulled.

He asked Sheean if he too wanted to “get out of this blasted draft”, but was told; “no, this will do me”.

“So they got on with the war without me and just as well as it turned out.”

Bird said he was not surprised by Sheean’s heroic stance strapped to a machine gun turret on the Armidale as she sank under fire from Japanese planes.

“I expected that [from him] if he was on, and sure enough,” he said.

“But I was no longer there to hold him by the hand.”

Bird said the Queen finally signing off on a VC for Sheean made Wednesday the “greatest day of [his] life”.