WW2: 80th Anniversay interview collection

15/8/2025

Since my university days studying media production, I have been capturing social history reminiscences of Australia's involvement in World War Two. Today, 15 August 2025, marks 80 years since VJ Day, or Victory over Japan Day, the date in 1945 when Japan surrendered to the Allied forces, ending World War Two. To mark this milestone, I am sharing my collection of war memoirs, recorded on video or audio over the last 25 years, and some also committed to print. These stories and interviews cover the major theatres of war for Australians during the war, from the Air War in Europe, to the North African and Middle East Campaigns, the Malayan Campaign and PoW experience, the Kokoda Campaign and the Home Front.

80th anniversary collection:

Major Gwen Fleming AAMC remembers WW2 at the 113th Australian General Hospital (TCM on YouTube, 15 August 2025)
Flt Sgt Ken Gilkes RAAF: The Last of the Guinea Pigs (TCM Blog, 3 August 2025)
Pvt. Bill Flowers: Burma Railway War Story (TCM on YouTube, 22 Apr 2023)
Major Dr Kevin Fagan AO (1909-1992): Memorial Dedication (TCM blog, 28 Aug 2022)
Invisible, Unrecognised, Inspirational: The wartime service of Judith Follett WRANS (TCM Blog, 25 April 2022)
WW2 in the Middle East remembered by Fred Westphal (TCM on YouTube, 4 sep 2021)
Leaving for WW2 remembered by Fred Westphal (TCM on YouTube, 28 August 2021)
We had to Bloody Win: Kokoda Remembered by Fred Westphal (TCM on YouTube 18 Apr 2019)

Interview with Major Gwen (Lusby) Fleming AAMC

Major Mary Gwenyth (Lusby) Fleming AAMC (2016-2011) was one of only a handful of women doctors who served with the Australian Army during the Second World War, and treated both allied soldiers and enemy PoWs at the 113th Australian General Hospital at Concord in Sydney, even as her own brother was suffering on the Burma Railway as a captive of the Japanese.

Gwen was keen to enlist from the outbreak of the war, but the Army was slow to accept women doctors. Her army service commenced on 9 February 1942. She was 26 years of age.

On 13 February, The Sun newspaper reported the arrival of Captain Gwen Lusby to the staff of the 113th Australian General Hospital at Concord. Along with Captain Helen Brae, she joined Captains Margery and Eileen Scott-Young as the only women doctors serving there. Two days later, Singapore fell, and Gwen's younger brother Robert Lusby, a Signaller with the 2/30th Batalion stationed in Malaya was captured.

While Gwen insisted that the Japanese prisoners in her wards were treated like any other patient, her brother Bobby suffered and died on the notorious Railway of Death. At war's end, Gwen commanded the medical division at the 113th, as Australian PoWs returned home, and anxiously watched for her brother among the emaciated men. But he never came.

From an interview in 2001 by Theo Clark, with some additional footage and photographs.

Watch video on YouTube:

Major Gwen Fleming AAMC remembers WW2 at the 113th Australian General Hospital (Youtube)

Interview with Flt Sgt Ken Gilkes RAAF: The Last of the Guinea Pigs

On 7 September 1943, Flt Sgt Ken Gilkes became the worst burned Australian airman to survive WW2, when he was piloting a Short Stirling four engine bomber and his plane was shot down in a ball of flames in a hit and run attack by a German JU 88 fighter-bomber, which dropped out of the darkness over head as he was returning to his airfield.

70 years later, Ken approached me to record his story. He had outlived all of his Australian comrades in the "Guinea Pigs Club" for patients of pioneer plastic surgeon Sir Archie McIndoe.

Watch on YouTube:

Flt Sgt Ken Gilkes RAAF: The Last of the Guinea Pigs (TCM Blog, 3 August 2025)

Pvt Bill Flowers: The Youngest Guerrilla in Malaya, a Burma Railway survival story

Private Bill Flowers of the 2/30th and later 2/29th Battalion was one of the 15,000 Australian soldiers captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. He spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of the Japanese. Before the surrender, he'd been hailed as the "youngest guerrilla in Malaya" when as a part of Rose Force he and a select band encountered the Japanese behind enemy lines as the first Australians to engage the Japanese in battle in the Second World War.

Along with his comrades from the 2/29thth Battalion, he was sent to the most notorious and deadly section of the Burma Railway as a labourer. He was among the lucky ones to survive. Bill's wife and children shared this story of courage and endurance with me for a family history video in 2021.

Watch on Youtube

Pvt. Bill Flowers: Burma Railway War Story

Major Kevin Fagan memorial dedication

On 28 August 2022, Sydney University's St John's College dedicated a beautiful bronze memorial to the memory of Major Dr Kevin Fagan AO (1909-1992), a truly inspiring figure from Australian history.

Dr Fagan was a man who endured the hellish conditions of the Burma-Thai Railway during World War Two, and worked tirelessly for the welfare of his fellow prisoners of war through that terrible time. Former head of the Australian War Memorial Dr Brendan Nelson spoke movingly of the life and legacy of Dr Fagan and I was very pleased to be invited by the college to record proceedings.

Watch on Vimeo

Kevin Fagan Memorial Dedication (Vimeo)

Interview with PO Judith Follett WRANS

"A gentleman from Mi5 came from London to instruct us. He said we were never to explain our work to a living soul, or we'd be shot. And I remember him saying in his English voice: 'Rather messy but still, I've shot so many'!!"

For ANZAC Day 2022, I shared this remarkable untold story of the war service of Judith Follett and the work of the Womens Royal Australian Naval Service during World War Two.

The Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) was formed in 1941 as a result of manpower shortages in the Royal Australian Navy during World War Two.

Judith served with the WRANS from 1942 to 1945, working as Petty Officer Writer in naval intelligence. Here she reveals the untold story of the women of HMAS Harman in Canberra and recalls something of the drama of the Japanese attack on Sydney Harbour and the sorrow of learning that her brother Bob had died as a POW on the Burma Railway.

I recorded this family history interview with Judith Follett in 2001 and in 2022, I put together an essay version following a request from the Royal Australian Navy's Naval History Section.

Read the full story: Invisible, Unrecognised, Inspirational: The wartime service of Judith Follett WRANS
Watch the video: In Which She Serves: An Interview with Judith Follett WRANS

Kokoda veteran Sgt Fred Westphal remembers WW2

Sgt Fred Westphal was a successful Sydney businessman and 6th Division veteran of World War Two. In this 2016 family history interview, I recorded Fred's gripping account of his experiences in the Middle East and New Guinea during the war, including the famous Kokoda Campaign that halted the Japanese advance towards Australia. Fred died before Christmas 2018, at the age of 99. This is his incredible story of "courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice", caught just in time.

I have shared three sections of the story on Youtube:

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