ANZAC Day holds great meaning for many Australians, but for Juniper Annesley resident Ron Hemery, it is a day that brings together a lifetime of memories including his own years of military service, two strangers whose lives he saved on the side of a road, and a father whose remarkable wartime story he is still piecing together decades later.
Ron was called up for national service in 1955, and was assigned to the medical corps. It was, he says, the best thing that could have happened to him. “My brother was four years older and was called up in 1951 and was put in artillery,” he says. “I was blessed that I was put in with the medics, because it interested me. I was just absorbed by it.”
He trained at Sandy Circle, now the SAS Barracks in Swanbourne, and completed the rest of his training at Karrakatta. “I did the three months basic training and I went there not knowing anything about medics,” he says. “All I needed to do was two years, but I got so interested that I just continued.”
His unit was the 713th Field Ambulance and it had 88 stretcher bearers. Ron’s role included assessing casualties in the field and coordinating their transport by stretcher to the field hospital, where the doctors took over.
His commanding officer was Tom Nisbit, a well-known Second World War veteran who also happened to work at Skipper Bailey Motor Company, the same company where Ron had started out as an office boy. “When I went into national service it was quite unusual, the commanding officer was a guy called Tom Nisbit, a Commando in the Second World War and well known, and he also worked for Skipper Bailey Motor Company,” Ron says.
“He was very encouraging towards me because it was the first time anyone had been called up from there.” Ron stayed for nine years. He still knows his army number off the top of his head. Years later, on two separate country roads, that training would matter in a way Ron had never anticipated.
“On two occasions I came across a car accident and there were people there that didn’t know what to do,” he says. “Both of them were bleeding profusely. One person had damage in their leg and one had bleeding in their arm.” He knew exactly what to do. “I knew where the arteries were and the pressure points to stop the bleeding, and I knew how long you had to put pressure on and how long you have to leave it off,” he says. “When the ambulance came, they said you saved their lives.”
It is something Ron has carried with him ever since. “I can say that I’ve saved two people’s lives from the training that I did with the Army,” he says. “In one way I’m proud of that, and in another I think maybe that was meant to be, that I was the guy who turned up and knew what to do. I think all the time that I spent in national service and CMF proved that there was a reason for it. I was thankful that I knew what to do.”
The years of service left Ron with two things he has carried ever since. “It taught me man management, which helped me later in life when I was running the gates for the Royal Show,” he says. “The other thing it taught me was, if you want to get anywhere in life, you must persevere.” But for Ron, ANZAC Day also means carrying his father’s story.
Ron was just three years old when his father enlisted. The circumstances that led him there were complicated. He had been working in shearing sheds, developed a serious gambling problem, found himself in financial trouble, and was being pursued by people he owed money to.
He enlisted and headed to the Middle East to fight, leaving Ron, and his older brother and sister, to be raised by his Mum and grandparents in Perth. “All my life I lived with my grandmother and grandfather,” Ron says. “I really didn’t know my dad before the war.”
Before enlisting, he worked as the head Australian Wool Buyer for Mitsubishi. While working for Mitsubishi he studied Japanese at Melbourne University, formal upper-class Japanese, and had continued learning the language from locals. When Japan entered the war, that skill made him invaluable and the Army pulled him back from the Middle East. He was sent to New Guinea, where he interpreted signals from Japanese vessels offshore and conducted interrogations of prisoners. “He was so good and so precise,” Ron says. “The Americans found out about him.”
He went on to serve in the Philippines alongside General Douglas MacArthur. When the war ended, he spent two more years in Tokyo, and when he finally came home, he was not able to speak about any of it. Ron attended his father’s funeral in Melbourne in 2000.
“It was pretty emotional, I can tell you” he says. “I had a dad that I didn’t really know, who was quite famous.” This ANZAC Day, Ron will take his place at the ceremony at Juniper Annesley, medals on his chest, honouring both his own service and his father’s. “I’ll be very proud to wear these medals at our ANZAC Day service,” he says.
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