A nautical story

The 1st Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train | Royal Australian Navy

My grandfather's WWI Train. He was at Gallipoli and not only where they the last to leave, by having to look after the wharf, he told us that they also had to decommission any equipment left behind i.e. firearms, artillery etc. According to my grandfather, he and his C.O. were among the last five to go because of the decommissioning factor.

My mum did have a photo of him with the slouch hat and plume but, unfortunately, it has gone missing.
The supplied photo is of him in the desert in his desert clobber. I have retouched it a little to get rid of creases and so on.

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Lieutenant Commander Leighton Seymour Bracegirdle,

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Now, there is a name & a half.[smilebigeye] English was he?[wink11] Seems his parents were, although he was born in Balmain & he has an Adelaide connection.

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He was District Naval Officer at Adelaide in 1918-21 and at Sydney in 1921-23. He had also been a president of the Commonwealth Coal Board in 1919-20. He was made Director of Naval Reserves in 1923 and next year was promoted Captain.

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A side of Gallipoli that doesn't seem to get any attention, but without 'The Train', landings & replenishment would have been almost impossible. No Armed LSTs or DUKWs in those days to run up onto the beach.

Thanks for posting that & the RANBT link Saitch, a most interesting read of times past & of a little known but very essential unit.


USS LST-334 in Australian waters during WW2

4Bee, I might add that, apparently, quite a few of the men were classed as miscreants and of dubious character. [biggrin]

So nothing new there then, it was the RAN.[biggrin]

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Originally Posted by 4bee

I don't know all about that **** even though my old dad was a Driver then a Tally Clerk on the Port Adelaide wharves although he enlisted in the Army for the duration & made WO2.


I only know what I read & that includes your above post, Brian.

I still believe if the country was nearly on it's knees during WW2 then it was traitorous to take the actions they did & not help the country in it's hours of need, & then argue the toss when it was all over.

I wonder how long the Japanese would have tolerated that crap if they had got a foothold here? Nope, heads would have rolled or got a bullet, or slavery would have been in vogue & the North - South railway would have been built before it was, post war, ah la the Burma Railway.

Getting the supplies & equipment to the Forces was paramount & if they didn't, then they were definitely traitors & helping the Japs.

Maybe I'm from another world & age?[bighmmm]

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4bee, who do think unloaded and reloaded all those ships in WW2? Do you not think it perhaps was the wharfies?

Well, all the Google articles (of which there are quite a few) can't all be bull****e & there has to be a basis for them.

The law of averages says there must be a % of bull**** & untruths but what of the rest? Who can say?

I'll go with the non-bull****.

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Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

Bob, go and talk to some wharfies. They laughed all the way to the bank. One said to me they would "lose" every industrial dispute that gave a result like that one.

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Mate my uncle and his son were wharfies. I used to drink at the Brekkie Creek with the ghost, phantom , and a few others. I represented the CEPU at the picket line during the Wharf dispute. Things changed big time after that dispute , don't let them tell you otherwise. They paid off all the ones they didn't want, and the wharf was a much more efficient place because of it. But, by God, they were a lot of characters. I could tell a few stories, but not on this forum.

The Japanese never intended to invade Australia - it was too big to garrison.
They just wanted to conquer Port Moresby and use the airfield as a base for their bombers to sink our ships and isolate us. They made it to the ridge overlooking the airfield, but because of the defeat in the Coral Sea they lost their aircraft carriers and had to retreat.

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

The Japanese never intended to invade Australia - it was too big to garrison.
They just wanted to conquer Port Moresby and use the airfield as a base for their bombers to sink our ships and isolate us. They made it to the ridge overlooking the airfield, but because of the defeat in the Coral Sea they lost their aircraft carriers and had to retreat.

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Did you know that it was the defeat of Japanese troops by the Russian army in the Manchurian war,1939 I think, that convinced the Japanese to look south, to SE Asia and the Pacific. The Japanese retreated on the Kokoda track because their supply lines were too far extended, and they were outfought by the Australians, and Guadalcanal had taken too many Japanese soldiers to fight, with reinforcements to Kokoda given a low priority. Only one Japanese carrier was sunk during the Coral Sea fight, the majority of Jap carriers were sunk at the Battle of Midway. As Admiral Bull Halsey said, " It was the Australian Coastwatchers who saved Guadalcanal, and it was Guadalcanal that saved the Pacific. " If you look at it in that light, you can see he was right.

The battle of the Coral Sea. Without the USN, the war could have had a different result. There were RAN ships in the battle, but in an aircraft carrier battle, they just made up the numbers.

battle of the coral sea you tube - Bing video