94-year-old remembers Battle of Milne Bay

August 24, 2017 

Greg McGregor remembers his time at Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea during WWII as if it was yesterday.

Seventy five years may have passed, but the 94-year-old’s descriptions remain vivid and detailed.

Greg will this week recognise the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Milne Bay at a special ceremony in Canberra.

The Uniting AgeWell Strathdon Community resident in Forest Hill, who was an armourer in the 76 Squadron of the Royal Australian Airforce, is thrilled to have been invited – and has even been asked to honour the Defence Minister with his time.

“To me, it’s an opportunity to be able to get together with some other veterans from that period of time and see how their lives panned out,” he said.

The Battle of Milne Bay is often described as the first major battle of the war in the Pacific in which Allied troops decisively defeated Japanese land forces.  Two thousand Japanese marines landed near the Allied base on August 25, 1942, and were defeated by some 9,000 Allied troops in a two-week battle.

Ironically, Greg was not part of the first attack on Milne Bay, as he had been sent on a special mission to retrieve five aircraft that had to ditch on a nearby island called Goodenough due to poor weather and no radar.

Greg talks of using an old pearling boat owned by Australian actor Errol Flynn to get from Milne Bay to the salvage point; of walking through mangrove swamps for half a day; and of PNG natives lifting a one tonne Kittyhawk engine out of the water and carrying it five miles back to the boat.

It is with some pride he tells how he illegally took photos of the rescue mission – which later came in handy when some of the Defence Force crew had to prove they had taken part in the salvage.

He also took a map case out of one of the crashed Kittyhawks.  That case now sits in the Kittyhawk on display in the Australian War Memorial.
But it was on the way back to Milne Bay that Greg had his most frightening encounter.  As they waited out rough seas in the dead of night, a Japanese destroyer passed some 180m in front of them.

Unknown to them at the time, it was part of a fleet heading to Milne Bay.

“It was going like a bat out of hell,” Greg says.  “We found out it had gone to Milne Bay in the night and dropped about 30 shells on the area.

“Yeah, I was a bit scared.  But I doubt very much whether they saw us because the seas were pretty high and our boat wasn’t that big.”

The father of three has had a long and interesting life, returning to Milne Bay five times for various events and celebrations.

“It’s been a bit of a fascinating journey all round,” he said.

Greg will be accompanied to Canberra on August 24 by two Uniting AgeWell care staff.