Sparrow, Allan – NX44575
NX44575 Allan Francis Sparrow often spoke about the day he first met his wife to be, Valda. He was delivering milk to a house where she was staying in Yanco in south-western NSW. Allan’s mother and father ran a small dairy farm that serviced the town with milk and cream.
Oddly enough, Valda’s mother also owned a dairy farm that serviced nearby Grong Grong. It was a tough life back in the years of the Great Depression, made more difficult when Valda lost her father when she was 10, leaving her mother as the only breadwinner. Valda used to help her mother deliver milk and cream in a horse drawn sulky and found supplementary work wherever she could as a housekeeper.
She had gone to Yanco looking for work when she met Allan, who often retold the story about the first day he met this beautiful brunette on his milk delivery run.
World War II had already started. It was far from going well for the Allies fighting Nazi Germany in Europe and the Middle East when Allan, who had been born at Whitfield, Victoria, on April 20, 1921, enlisted on September 10, 1941 and went into infantry training.
In October he was told he would be sailing to the Middle East as a reinforcement for the 2/33rd Battalion which had lost a number of men, killed or wounded, during the invasion of Syria.
Allan Sparrow.
Allan and Val decided to marry. A hastily arranged wedding took place at Narrandera on October 11, 1941. The marriage lasted nearly 67 years.
Allan was on his way to the Middle East when Japan entered the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.
He had not long joined the battalion in Palestine when the Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, called the 7th Division, along with 9th Division troops, back home to help defend Australia against the invading Japanese. Allan’s baptism of fi re was on the Kokoda Trail, where the battalion was involved in fierce fighting for 98 days.
The first major battle was at Myola Ridge where the 2/33rd defeated heavily entrenched Japanese in appalling conditions. The fighting lasted nearly five days. The battalion lost 21 killed and 48 wounded.
Allan served with B Company and fought in the remaining Lae, Ramu Valley and Balikpapan campaigns. An outstanding footballer he played with B Company’s team in the 7th Division rugby league competition on the Atherton Tablelands in 1944.
He was among the last of the 2/33rd soldiers to return home from Borneo at the end of the war. He was discharged in January, 1946.
After the war he and Valda settled on the Central Coast. They had four children. Allan had his own firewood business for a while before joining Walker Brothers timber merchants at Wyoming, where he worked for 54 years.
He died on April 6, 2008, aged 86.