Paul Lavallee didn’t intend to be an officer when he enlisted. He didn’t intend to spend the war behind bars as a prisoner, either.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But as he nears his 100th birthday (the day before Anzac Day), he’s able to have a chuckle about both.
Paul recalls that his first promotion was the easy bit.
“The first day in camp at Ingleburn our company commander – Captain John Bell – he said ‘stand forward one pace anyone who has done previous military training’.
“I took one step forward because I had already done military training. And they gave me one stripe – I was a Lance Jack.”
Lance Corporal Lavallee was in the 2/17th Infantry Battalion. His unit would be captured in Libya, in March 1941.
The Allied forces were retreating from Benghazi towards Tobruk, driven back by German General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The convoy became divided and Paul’s group was captured.
“We finally got the word, righto, head back to Tobruk (from Benghazi),” Paul remembers.
“Get whatever transport that you can get on, and we jumped into a signallers’ truck. We were travelling along during the night, and about two o’clock in the morning the convoy halted and we wondered what the hell happened.
“It was Germans. I was captured. So that’s all I saw of the war.”
Meanwhile the rest of the division had continued to Tobruk where they dug in, ordered to hold the port city at all costs. The Germans laid seige to Tobruk but about 14,000 Australians held out for eight months in what would become one of Australian military history’s most famous achievements – still lauded today as the Rats of Tobruk.
But for the prisoners, there was nothing but despair in the desert.
“It was overwhelming. I was in a daze for days. We were in this particular area, camped there, no food, nothing,” Paul said. “Then Rommel got sick and tired of us and he said I’ll hand you over to the Italians.
“I was like a lot of us – I couldn’t imagine being a POW. I could imagine being wounded, killed, shot up, something like that, but I never even saw that I would ever become a POW.
About 2 o’clock in the morning the convoy halted and we wondered what the hell happened. It was Germans. I was captured.
- Paul Lavallee
“I was four years and one month a POW. The only war that I saw was from our planes. I was bombed out a few times, one of our barriers got bombed out. But anyway, that’s the way it is. We saw the wrong end of the war, from a different aspect.
“I didn’t – like the old saying is – I didn’t fire a shot. Didn’t fire a shot in anger.”
Paul does have fond memories of the travel, however. The Queen Mary had been transformed for wartime purposes and took the Australian force overseas.
“We travelled all in convoy then, with all the Australian Navy was alongside us protecting us.
”You have no idea what it looks like to see the ocean full of shops – destroyers running around like a blooming broody old hen. It was a terrific sight. We went to a place called Gaza – Gaza Ridge actually, and we went to a camp called Kilo 89. We did further training there.”
Paul will mark Anzac Day as one of the acclaimed senior veterans, and will be driven around in an army jeep – which is is looking forward to a good deal.
The sacrifices made by prisoners of war are immense. But perhaps the relative lack of combat, death and horror in Paul’s war experience have had a bright side. For one, he’s alive to see his 100th birthday. And he said he’s not haunted by the memories and nightmares many veterans find it hard to escape.
“Sometimes I get into a bit of a mood, you know, and I think about it, and especially around Anzac Day. That’s when I start thinking about things like that. But it doesn’t worry me. And I think that’s probably why I don’t have any problems. I’m not a halfwit by any means. I’ve got my full faculties (he taps on his head) although I’m starting to lose that too. A hundred years of age, you could well imagine.
“No, I don’t think of the war very much. I don’t dwell on it, put it that way.”