In Battle, There's No Time For Fear: Veteran
The Age
Friday April 24, 1998
The thought of being stalked and torpedoed at night by enemy submarines is enough to fill most people with terror.
But Mr Ray Parkin, who was a petty officer on the HMAS Perth when it was attacked by Japanese submarines near Indonesia on 28 February 1942, said there was no time to waste on feelings during the battle.
"During the attack we weren't terrified, not because we were very brave, but you were just working for the moment. There was no time for emotions and all that sort of nonsense," he said.
Mr Parkin, who will lead the Anzac Day parade in Melbourne this year, said the Japanese fired 87 torpedoes at 17 allied ships in one hour.
After the HMAS Perth was sunk, Mr Parkin was taken prisoner and sent to work on the Burma railway before being shipped to Japan to work in coal mines.
"We were attacked by American submarines on the way to Japan, but luckily I think our ship was such a derelict they wouldn't have wasted a torpedo on us," he said.
Despite the horrors of seeing nearly 1000 prisoners die in Burma in about 10 months, Mr Parkin said he was lucky to fight in "such a black and white war as World War II".
"The people like the Vietnam veterans and the Korean (veterans) had it terrible because nobody had any sympathy, they were really the meat in the sandwich," he said.
"And it was monstrous in World War I just to sit there in the trenches and be blown to pieces.
"When they called men cannon fodder, that's what they really were, not to speak of the idiots of generals who were pushing them into it, moving pins across the map."
Two World War I veterans will be driven in the Anzac Day march in Melbourne this year - Mr Roy Longmore, who fought in the Australian infantry in France, and Mr Harold Stiff, a British seaman who fought in the Royal Navy at the Battle of Jutland.
These veterans will be followed by the banners of World War I units, which are followed by the marchers.
Then come post-1945 veterans, including occupation forces, Vietnam veterans and United Nations soldiers, followed by British Commonwealth forces veterans and, finally, non-British allies.
Organisers expect between 10,000 and 12,000 in this year's parade.
But the parade began on a much smaller scale in 1916 when a few hundred ex-servicemen marched from Princes Bridge along Swanston and Bourke Streets to William Street.
Because returned servicemen could not get time off work from 1921 to 1924, there were no parades, so the RSL began pushing for 25 April to be an Anzac Day holiday.
The Victorian Government finally agreed to the holiday in 1925, and the march route changed to end at the newly dedicated Shrine of Remembrance in 1935.
About 46,000 marchers turned up in 1946 to march as units for the first time.
Mr Parkin said he did not know why he had been chosen to lead the 1998 march.
"But at least I represent the ordinary bloke who got on and did what he had to," he said.
© 1998 The Age
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