Civilian Heroes In Medal Fight
The Sunday Age
Sunday November 26, 2006
MORE THAN 60 years after the end of World War II, two Victorians who helped build a secure telephone line from Brisbane to Port Moresby are battling to receive a medal for their service.
The line allowed General Douglas MacArthur to give orders to the front line on the north coast of New Guinea without the Japanese being able to listen in. Previously, orders had been issued over the radio.Albert Dunner and John MacGregor, both 86, were civilians working for the Post Master General's Department when they were called on to recover unused telegraph cables from Bass Strait and lay them beneath the Torres Strait and Gulf of Papua in 1943.The Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged the pair's war service by giving them their medical entitlements recently.Mr Dunner, from Laanecoorie near Bendigo, said receiving his entitlements last month - 63 years after his wartime service - meant a lot to him."I will have great pleasure now in pointing out to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren that I was part of the war."But Mr MacGregor, who lives in northern NSW, is now fighting for the pair to receive the Pacific Star medal, awarded for operational service in the Pacific during World War II. A third surviving crew member, John Iredale, 87, received the medal after applying to British authorities in the mid-'80s."Without (the secure line), General MacArthur would never have been able to drive the Japanese back along the Kokoda Track and it is plain the Japanese would have intercepted the Australian troops, as before, and many more lives would have been lost," Mr MacGregor said. "This was the turning point in the war. We did the work in Australia that nobody else could do, and don't get the recognition."Mr Dunner said conditions on the job were tough and sometimes dangerous.He said the crew, accompanied by two naval escorts, were laying cable between New Guinea and Cape York around midnight when they attracted the attention of a Japanese submarine."Our skipper was warned about it and the lights all went out, we couldn't work and we had to get out of the hole very quickly," Mr Dunner said."The next morning we were informed, and this is on naval records, that there was a submarine sniffing around to see what we were doing. The escorts picked it up and from what we can gather, the submarine was sunk."Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Billson said he welcomed any new information that could assist the Federal Government confirm the men's eligibility for a medal."British and Australian regulations allowed for the Pacific Star to be issued to members of some specified civilian groups, but the Department was not one of those groups," he said.
© 2006 The Sunday Age
