A month before Anzac Day, it is timely to remember that one of the Rats of Tobruk who courageously defended their garrison from German and Italian forces for eight months is buried in Narooma Cemetery.
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It was the defiant Australian-led Allied garrison that stopped the Germans advancing to Egypt in 1941.
Allan Ward Forster was 19 when he enlisted on July 15, 1940.
On December 31 he and his fellow soldiers in the 9th Division Signals embarked on the Queen Mary for the Middle East.
They were sent to replace the 6th Division in the Western Desert.
In his memoirs he wrote "it seemed an endless journey across the top of Africa in a convoy of three-ton trucks.
"Our first brush with the enemy came with the retreat (from Gazala) to Tobruk in the form of attacks by Messerschmidts 110s.
"Two of our mates were killed in this action.
"That sense of adventure we felt when joining up was becoming a grim reality," he wrote.
"Keeping up supplies of food, water and ammunition would have been no mean feat for at this stage we had no support airforce and vehicles were under constant threat of air attack."
On the 109 wireless set he heard propagandist Lord Haw-Haw urging them to "come out and fight, you Rats of Tobruk".
There were no showers just a truck ride to the beach to swim.
"Germans had complete control of the sky so that was a bit dangerous too.
"I don't think we went to the beach more than two or three times in our whole stay of five to six months in Tobruk."
When they were relieved by South Africans, they made their way in pitch darkness to the previously unseen dock where the relieving destroyer awaited.
Further action
Next was Alamein.
"Then came the big battle, a thunderous crescendo with the British artillery right behind us with their 145 and 155mms belting away day and night.
"Finally, at the end we had a tremendous feeling of relief that we were still alive but with a terrible cost to the 9th Division."
Middle East troops were sent home when Pearl Harbour was bombed as "things were looking very grim for Australia".
Serving in New Guinea he again had several close shaves.
It was the dengue fever, malaria and Scrub typhus though that hospitalised Mr Forster.
On recovery he was sent to Borneo where news came of atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki followed by the surrender of the Japanese in the Pacific War.
"I was on the way by barge to Brunei when it happened.
"We could hardly believe it."
He wrote the only good thing to come from the war was the feeling of friendship.
"It did not matter what background, where we came from, we were all the same."
He found solace in music, being in nature and "thinking of those days in the army with good mates and comradeship".
"Not many are left and a lot have some disability but there is a sort of brotherhood."
Narooma RSL arranged a tremendous party for Mr Forster's 100th birthday and raised funds for a grave site memorial.
