OUR HEROES – THEIR STORIES

Maxwell Lloyd Hickman TX1004 never forgot the day he captured a Vichy French sniper during the Syrian campaign. He was lucky to survive. The Frenchman had a rifle. Max didn’t.

Max told his family the story in a letter he wrote in 1941, one of many wartime letters his daughter, Felicity Hickman, has gathered and put onto a blog https://myfathersletters.me

They make remarkable reading. Max captured the sniper soon after a mortar attack during which one shell smashed a kerosene tin being used to boil tea. It was fortunate Max had sharp hearing. He heard the click of a metal heel on stone. “I turned to see a French soldier about 10 yards away,” Max wrote. He surprised the Frenchman by calling on him to stop.

“Before he had recovered I had snatched his rifle from him, and taken his bayonet and binoculars away from him,” Max recalled.

“It was little short of a miracle I wasn’t shot,” he wrote. In his pocket the sniper was carrying a card with the sketch of a swastika and the words “Vive” Hitler.

Covering his five years with the 2/33rd Battalion from its formation in England in 1940 to his final action of the war at Balikpapan five years later, Max’s letters include the story of one of the most hilarious episodes of the war when a village in Syria surrendered to Max, a private, and his mate, QX2853 Peter McCowan, also a private, the day after the Vichy French had signed an Armistice, ending the Syrian campaign.

Max and Peter, tired and filthy, had been searching for a river in which to have a wash when they walked into the village, causing huge celebration.

They were the first British troops the villagers had seen after the Armistice. The Mayor and other dignitaries mistook them for Australian officers there to accept the village’s surrender.

They were wined and dined for hours, with speeches of welcome and given a tour of the village with streets lined by cheering, waving crowds. Twelve Gendarmes formed a Guard of Honour when they went to visit the Chief of Police and the village’s Commissioner. Max wrote: “It was the funniest experience I ever had. It would have been too bad had an officer arrived while we were there. As it was, we got our ears chewed a bit when we got back to the battalion.”

The full story is on Felicity’s blog https://myfathersletters.me/1941/07/16/a-town-surrenders-to-a-couple-of-privates
Felicity said: “Many years later, he told his children that they came from ‘a long line of actors’ on the basis that their mother had been involved in stage musicals in Adelaide, but it seems there was acting expertise in Max’s blood as well.” Max was a proud Tasmanian. Felicity takes up her father’s story.

Dad was born in 1911 and grew up in the Hobart suburb of Lenah Valley where his great-grandparents and their sons had established orchards in the mid-19th century. He was the second of three children, having an older sister May and a younger sister, Ivy.

His father Henry, who had married May Jackson in 1907, was aged 33 when, in March, 1915, he volunteered to fight in “the European war”. Attached to D Company of the 26th Battalion he was on his way to Gallipoli when he fell seriously ill with cystitis and neuralgia, and later contracted rheumatism. After periods in hospital in Malta and Egypt he was discharged on medical grounds.

Max’s military experience started as a Cadet at Hobart High School. In the 1930’s he had two three-year stints with the Militia (similar to the modern Army reserve). A man of strong opinions he also had an interest in politics. He stood as an ‘Independent Labor’ candidate for the seat of Denison in the 1937 Federal election and as an endorsed Labor candidate in the Tasmanian state election in 1946.

During these years his occupation was shown as clerk or salesman, but at the time of enlisting in March 1940 his occupation was shown as “contractor” which probably accounted for a reference in The Footsoldiers to him being a “builder from way back” when helping erect cabins and other camp structures.

Sergeant Max Hickman.

When war broke out Max initially believed ‘the show’, as he called it, would be over in no time. He embarked on the R.M.S. Queen Mary, bound for the Middle East. His letters reveal another extraordinary event during a stopover in Durban involving highly popular Thursday Island soldier, Charlie Meane, who in apartheid riddled Durban was ordered out of a hotel bar and refused admission to a baths and amusement park because he was black.

By this time Charlie was white with rage and would have gone back to the boat but the others stopped him.” His 2/33rd Battalion mates, led by Max, revolted. “There was nearly a civil war over him, or least a big hotel might have been done up,” Max wrote. Max’s negotiating and oratory skills saved the day. Charlie was allowed to be served and drink in the hotel with his white mates. For the full story see https://myfathersletters.me/1941/07/31/
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Arriving in Britain after the fall of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk dad was stationed on Salisbury Plain south east of London. Assigned to the 1st Anti-Tank Regiment, he became a founding member of the Carrier Platoon of the 72nd Battalion, formed in late June, 1940, and renamed the 2/33rd Battalion later that year. He remained with the unit until Victory in the Pacific was declared in August 1945.

One thing that frustrated my father was that the Carrier Platoon often travelled separately from the bulk of the battalion. Returning from the Middle East, their ship, S.S. Pundit, described by Max as ‘a little tub’, was the slowest in the convoy. Their journey back to Adelaide took nearly nine weeks. They arrived well after the rest. It was a similar story when they left for Papua New Guinea. The Carriers departed days after the rest of the Battalion, and en route were detached to the N.G.F. composite carrier group, assigned to Port Moresby airfield defence, while the rifle companies took part in the horrific Kokoda campaign.

Max was horrified at the state of the men returning from the ‘track’. Apart from malaria which he accurately reported was bowling chaps over like ninepins, he wrote: “ The Brigade has had a hell of a tough trot. Judging from reports and from what I’ve seen of the chaps who got back, the Owen Stanley show has been the hardest campaign of the war. Most of the fellows were so thin they would have to stand twice in the one place to throw a shadow.”

Dad was frustrated at not being part of the Kokoda action. More than anything else in the army he regretted being called back to the carriers after the Syrian campaign. Max and his Carrier mates rejoined the Battalion at Ravenshoe in March 1943, by which time he had been appointed Acting Sergeant. In July, the Battalion was back in Port Moresby. Yet again, Max was frustrated. When the bulk of the battalion flew north for the Lae– Ramu campaign, Max, now a Sergeant, had been detached to the N.G.F. Training School on September 4. The only fortunate thing was that he was nowhere near Jackson’s field at the time of the Liberator Disaster.

He was finally transferred back to the Battalion as an infantryman in January 14, 1944. He was relieved to be back with ‘the old mob’ as he had been warned that some units were over-strength in N.C.O.s so ‘cross-posting’ was a possibility.

Upon returning to Queensland in February, Max was granted extended leave to visit his parents and friends in Hobart, and his sister and infant nephew in Melbourne, before rejoining the unit at the end of April.

When the battalion sailed for Borneo in June, 1945, for the last campaign of the war Max was pleased to be back in action, responsible for his own platoon. He was in the thick of the fighting. The war ended six weeks after the 7th Division troops landed.

As a “5+2” man – five years service with two years overseas – he was among the first group to be returned to Australia in late August following the Japanese surrender.

On his return to civilian life, Max was employed in the Department of Post War Reconstruction. At first he was administratively responsible for arranging training in building and allied trades for returned servicemen in the southern region of Tasmania. He later moved to a similar, though state-wide role, in the Repatriation Department. It was in the course of this work that, by chance, he met his future wife Betty Coleman, a tutor sister at Launceston General Hospital. Max went to the hospital to arrange training for a young man as a surgical boot-maker, and met Betty when he happened to knock on a ‘wrong’ door. It turned out to be the ‘right’ door for their future.

Betty had grown up in the Adelaide suburb of Edwardstown and during the war had worked as a typist/ clerk at The Adelaide News. When the war ended, her job and those of several friends, were surrendered to returned service men. Betty and two friends decided to train as nurses. All three were accepted into the course in Launceston.

Max and Betty married at St Mary’s church , Edwardstown, in November 1951 and returned to live in Lenah Valley in a house Max had built. Over the next 10 years they had five children – four girls and a boy. This was the family home for the whole of Max and Betty’s married life.

Max did not pursue formal qualifications as a builder, but was always helping others with building-related work. He and Betty were kept busy caring for the family and serving their community. They were active in their local church, and once the children started school they were active with parent associations and fund-raising for schools, church, guides and scouts. Max built a wooden sleigh and each year took on the role of Santa Claus in the local primary school’s end of year festivities. He was also an active member of the local RSL and marched every Anzac Day.

Max and Betty were keen gardeners. Betty enjoyed flowers and ornamentals and Max, food production. The back yard of their quarter-acre block held eight different fruit trees and several types of bramble berries. Any produce not eaten fresh were turned into jams, sauces and preserves by Betty. Max also made play equipment for the children – a wooden slide, monkey bars and a swing. A bush reserve with a permanent creek just over the back fence, ensured the children were always active.

While the children were young, Max also made an annual excursion to collect rose hips from local country roadsides, to turn into the vitamin-rich rosehip syrup. Being a descendant of orchardists who were well known for their fruit wines, Max enjoyed continuing this tradition. Initially he made several varieties, not only from fruits but also from parsnips, but later the focus was on cherry plum. Along with several 60-gallon wine casks, a workshop and the dark room for developing photos were located under the house. Max had always had a keen interest in photography. This continued throughout his life. He delighted in both taking and developing black and white photos, and taking colour slides which were later shared with family and friends, using a white sheet attached to a wall as a screen.

Max lived to see all his children grow to adulthood, marry and have children of their own. By the time he died in October, 1990, just a few months short of his 80th birthday, he had welcomed 12 grandchildren into the world. Betty lived to the age of 93.