OUR HEROES – THEIR STORIES

Like so many other returning soldiers, Henry “Harry” Flynn NX89316, a champion footballer from Glen Innes, on the New England Tablelands, never spoke to his family about what he did in the war. All they knew was that he served in New Guinea with the 2/33rd Infantry Battalion and his combat war ended after being evacuated from battle in the Ramu Valley in December, 1943, with malaria and scrub typhus that almost took his life.

His family would never have known about his courage in battle but for a long lost letter his platoon commander, Lieutenant Ray Whitfield, sent to Harry’s wife, Aileen, to let her know he was safe in hospital, and to express his admiration for Harry as a soldier. He wrote: “I wish I had a platoon full of Harrys.”

War records show he was a Lance Corporal with the 2/33rd, but don’t record which of the four rifle companies, A, B, C or D, or which of the nine platoons, he served in. Without that vital information it would have been impossible to pinpoint what actions he and his platoon took part in, bearing in mind he was one of more than 10,000 men thrown into battle to defeat the Japanese and retake Lae in September 1943. Lieutenant Whitfield’s letter, which Harry’s family didn’t discover until 1995, was the key to the missing link. Wartime security prevented Whitfield naming his company or Harry’s Platoon, but, fortuitously, the Battalion’s official history The Footsoldiers lists him as commander of 14 Platoon, C Company, during the Lae and Ramu Valley campaigns, in which Harry fought. This then led to the discovery of the graphic details of every battle Harry and 14 platoon fought in.

His family was astounded to learn that among many heroic actions, he took part in a famous bayonet charge on a Japanese machine gun post in the Markham Valley during the Lae campaign, later was a truck-length away from being incinerated in the Liberator crash, and took part in attempts to save mates from the inferno.

There was never any doubts about his courage. Born in Tamworth on January 4, 1915, he was a champion amateur boxer and represented NSW country in rugby league for four years running as a diminutive, but fearless, half-back who never took a backward step against much bigger and stronger opponents.

Harry Flynn.

He represented the Army in rugby league while training at Bathurst and played half-back in the 2/33rd Battalion’s team that won the 7th Division Championship at Ravenhoe in 1943.

Harry hoped to become a teaching Christian Brother, but by the time he completed his Intermediate Certificate around 1930 Australia, like the rest of the world, was in the grip of The Great Depression, with spiralling unemployment, grinding poverty and national hardship.

He was lucky to fi nd work as an apprentice hairdresser. He later opened his own barber shop at Glen Innes where he married, played representative football for Glen Innes and NSW country, and became a prominent community leader.

Australia was facing the gravest threat in history when Harry went to war. He tried to enlist to fight against Nazi Germany, but failed his medical due to a back injury suffered playing football.

He wasn’t rejected the second time around eight months later with the Japanese knocking on Australia’s door. He enlisted on February 18, 1942, the day before the Japanese bombed Darwin. He was aged 27.

Harry was still in training when the 2/33rd Battalion was sent to Port Moresby for the Kokoda campaign, but was among 300 replacements sent to join the battalion at Gona, where the Japanese were making a last stand, with hundreds being killed and wounded on both sides.

Fortunately for the 300, the battalion, now reduced to a handful of exhausted men after 98 days of continuous fighting, was withdrawn from battle the day the reinforcements arrived.

The Battalion returned to Australia to be rested and rebuilt in readiness for the attack to recapture Lae from the Japanese. But first came the Liberator disaster..

Some of the men in the same truck as Harry were killed or injured in the Liberator crash, but he survived and went on to fight in the Lae-Ramu Valley campaigns. At first light on October 10, Harry’s 14 Platoon set out from Kaigulan to attack Japanese positions in the Finnistere Ranges. Three days later he fell violently ill with malaria and scrub typhus and could hardly walk.

He was evacuated on October 13, the same day the battalion suffered its highest ever battle casualties in a single day, 50, in a disastrous attack on a Japanese-held treeless mountain peak called John’s Knoll in the Surinam Valley. Harry’s combat war was over. He spent months on hospitals and convalsecent centres when he returned home. He was discharged in 1945.

He became one of Glen Innes’s most respected businessmen, community leaders and sporting personalities. He conducted his men’s hairdressing business for 35 years, and, for a time, served as an alderman of the municipal council, including a period as deputy mayor. He returned to rugby league after the war, playing both club and representative football into his 40s.

He devoted a great deal of time to the local sub-branch of the RSL. During the 1950s he was vice-president of the Ex-Servicemen’s Club committee. His war illnesses plagued him for the rest of his life.

He died at the age of 57.