Some people just click, Sam Yates explains as he looks across at his best mate Ricco, when you find a friend that just understands who you are, you are lucky.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Dynamic Duo, Sam Yates and Ricco Eccles share many things, walks through Lintons long corridors, a few drinks at happy hour and having grown up in the Yass Valley. Individually they hold their own stories, having served in two different wars, together they agree no matter what war you served in, it changes you forever.
Ricco Eccles
Born and Raised in Bookham, Ricco Eccles served in the Second World War, sixth Australian Division Infantry, he saw how the war shaped and changed the Yass Valley, certain his younger years hunting foxes on the land saved his life.
“It was 1942 when I joined up. I trained to go to Vietnam at the Jungle Warfare Training Centre (JWTC) Canungra, Queensland. I was in New Guinea for 15 months.”
If there was a hell on earth Canungra is where it would be, describes Ricco, but it was that training that made him the guru in jungle warfare, “The other boys had no experience in the Jungle I had to more or less teach them what to expect. Stuff like how you have to lay around in the swamps and sleep in the water.”
The war changed the Yass Valley enormously expanding it after the war, when all the men came back they knew a lot more, it wasn’t just about you’re bush knowledge anymore, these men had other practical skills and experience in the world.
“I was conscripted initially and then I signed up. I was b-class, and then I joined the Royal Australian regiment. I wasn’t frightened in action, I was frightened of the nights when I laid down. You couldn't lay still always jumping off the ground.”
He will never forget his one close shave, “They had us pinned down, with a woodpecker - a woodpecker is a gun that fires, bang,bang,bang - like a woodpecker pecking a tree. We were laying in a little trench and my mate Tommy was laying along side of me. One of the bullets got him in the head, it missed me by a few inches.”
Ricco reminisces to his childhood as a fox hunter, attributing his survival today to those skills he learnt as a boy, “When you’re hunting foxes, you don't move you watch the fox and when he’s not looking you move. It’s the same principal moving through the jungle, you never ever go through with the wind at your back, because the little noise will carry the way the wind is blowing.”
Although Ricco remembers the funny stories, and hasn’t lost his zest for telling a good joke today, remembering the sad ones is always hard. Like any man that served in the war, the best part of it was the day it finished.
“One of our sergeants were giving us a lecture when we were in guinea training and he was ranting on about when you see the Japs you can’t be afraid. One of the boys in our group yelled out there were Japs just over the hill. The sergeant bolted behind the nearest tree, it was hilarious. So much for our fearless leader.”
Be sure to pick up a copy of Friday's Tribune to learn about Sam Yates and his experience in the Korean War.
