About the contributor

Since my bit-part in the last chapter of my father's tale here, it must be said that my life hasn't had quite the sense of involvement in history that he must have felt. Most of my life since the family's move to Australia in 1948 has been spent there, apart from a stint back in London from late 1974 to 1982, largely undertaken to enable my wife Frances to continue her musical studies. It also allowed me to broaden my experience in what was then the centre of the arcane world of reinsurance broking, which I had joined in Sydney a couple of years previously, where I have been ever since, and where I will no doubt remain, professionally at least, now that retirement is beginning to loom a little on the horizon!
The nearest I have come to military service was registering for Australia's army-only national service scheme, a relatively recent development at the time, in the half-year in 1966 during which I turned 20, and the outcome of which was determined, in the interests of "fairness", by drawing birth-dates from a barrel in the "nasho lottery", as the numbers reaching that age in any one registration period considerably exceeded those required to fill the relevant quotas, even after weeding out for fitness, exemptions, deferments, etc. If one's date didn't come up, as in my case, that was essentially it, although formally I remained liable for service for many years afterwards, if required. One outcome could have been a part in Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, in which the casualty rate among national servicemen was somewhat higher than for regular troops. The scheme was scrapped after a change of government in 1972 and withdrawal from Vietnam, and Australia's armed forces have been entirely voluntary ever since.
Given that Australia's citizenship rules were changed during that time overseas, and I subsequently had to apply to return as a migrant, with my Australian-born wife promising to keep me in the manner to which I was accustomed, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had failed to register - I somehow suspect that "I'm not in fact an Australian citizen, guv (mate/cobber?)!" wouldn't have washed at the time! Perhaps a bit like my father as a late-ish applicant, I did not formally apply for citizenship until shortly after our return in 1982, there having previously been no apparent need to do so, and on the strength of my prior 26-and-some years' residency was duly "done" within a matter of weeks. Indeed Australia House had said that I could not apply while still in London, although that was the first thought to cross my mind once the decision to come back had been made. Even our daughter, born while we were there, had automatic entitlement to return, on the strength of her mother's birth!
My "kid" sister Vanessa and I had always been aware of our father's history, although it took the turning-up of the essay that became the basis for his story here to give things coherent shape. Our late mother Thalia (15th September 1919 - 22nd January 2002) played her part in the war effort too, having graduated early in the war from University College, London, as a German linguist. She became a translator of commercial and other documents for the Department of Economic Warfare, some at least of her time apparently having been based at Bletchley, although whether with any immediate connection with other (possibly more exciting from the public's viewpoint!) operations carried on in and around Bletchley at the time I couldn't say. She was never very forthcoming about it, and perhaps she still felt bound by the Official Secrets Act. Although never formally employed again after I came on the scene, she nevertheless spent much of her Australian life, once Vanessa and I were out of the family nest and both before and after the onset of our father's incapacity, heavily involved in community affairs, the Australian National Trust, local arts councils, university women's organisations and suchlike.