Tripp, James – NX97206
NX97206 James “Jim” Tripp’s colourful life started well before he joined the Army. He was born in Campbelltown on September 8, 1920, the only child of Ida May and James William Tripp, but lived in many suburbs, including Darlinghurst, where as a boy he used run errands, at two shillings at time, for the infamous Kate Leigh’s “ladies of the night”.
At the age of 16 he left Sydney to work as an apprentice boilermaker at the John Darling mine in Newcastle. During those hard years of the Great Depression the mine was often closed due to strikes, forcing Jim to return to Sydney on his bicycle to find work.
The long trips led him to buy his first motor bike, which developed his love for motor bikes and fast cars.
He enlisted at the age of 22 and was posted to D Company with the 2/33rd Battalion. He was one of the few D Company members to survive the horrifying Liberator crash.
James Tripp.
Many of his mates were among the 60 2/33rd soldiers to die when the plane, fully armed with 500lb bombs, crashed into, and destroyed five D Company trucks in a convoy parked at the end of Jackson’s Field runway awaiting orders to be airlifted for the start of the attack to retake Lae from the Japanese.
Jim was lucky to survive. In the horrendous inferno that followed the crash Jim suffered burns to most of his upper body and spent the next few months in hospital in Port Moresby receiving life-saving skin grafts. After recovering he returned to the re-built D Company and saw active service with it for the rest of the war in New Guinea and Borneo.
He was demobbed in December, 1945. On returning to Newcastle he met and fell in love with Bridget Morris, meeting her after taking her sister, Kate, to a dance. Jim and Bridget married in 1947 and lived in the Swansea, Belmont and Charlestown areas for the rest of their married life. Jim was well known in golfing circles. He was a member of the Belmont Golf Club for 50 years, and kept playing golf until the age of 88.
He died in 2012, aged 92.