We spoke to three veterans who were in the Australian Army, the Australian Navy and the RAF. The men have a combined age of 296 years.
At the height of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill famously venerated the achievements of the fighter pilots and bomber crews taking on the German Luftwaffe.
The Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs believes there are between 2500 and 3000 of those World War II servicemen and women still alive. By the end of 2026, the department estimates it is likely to be 800. So few. “The landing was OK. I could feel branches going past my face. I was in Normandy near Le Mans. I walked north. It was almost a month before I was picked up. I slept in haystacks or barns.”
He joined naval college in 1939 at a time when the training regime was pretty brutal, before going to sea at 17.“The word bullying didn’t exist in those days,” he said. “For my initiation I had to push a toothbrush with my nose around the quadrangle while one’s backside was flicked with a towel. Their task was to make men out of boys.”
Commodore Ross Swan stands on the flight deck of HMAS Melbourne, the Australian aircraft carrier in Portsmouth for the Jubilee fleet review, in 1977.“After dinner when we were presented to the Queen, she, somebody had obviously briefed her because she mentioned it. I recall saying something like ‘Ma’am, Sir Walter Raleigh laid his cloak before the Queen. I laid my ensign.’ She laughed. Prince Philip didn’t.”Brian Barry, from Mosman, turned 100 in February.
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