Soldier
He enlisted in the Army on 26 July 1940; and, perhaps, influenced by Lieutenant Colonel Jack Jones, the Melbourne's club medical officer, he served in the 2/9 Field Ambulance, Australian Army Medical Corps. He first trained as an ambulance driver in Bonegilla, NSW; then, having embarked on 4 February 1941, arrived in Singapore on 18 February 1941.
His unit moved to Port Dickson, where they were trained in transporting the sick and the wounded. During his time at Port Dickson, he took part in several football matches, and competed in an athletics competition where he won the high jump.
Read more about this topic: Harold Ball
Famous quotes containing the word soldier:
“‘Stay—stay with us!—rest—thou art
weary and worn!’—
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;—
But sorrow return’d with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.”
—Thomas Campbell (1774–1844)
“We agree fully that the mother and unborn child demand special consideration. But so does the soldier and the man maimed in industry. Industrial conditions that are suitable for a stalwart, young, unmarried woman are certainly not equally suitable to the pregnant woman or the mother of young children. Yet “welfare” laws apply to all women alike. Such blanket legislation is as absurd as fixing industrial conditions for men on a basis of their all being wounded soldiers would be.”
—National Woman’s Party, quoted in Everyone Was Brave. As, ch. 8, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.”
—Keith Douglas (1920–1944)