As a 25-year-old Bruce enlisted to fight in World War II; he is now 97, but has little trouble remembering his time in Darwin.

Bruce stepped forward to join the army in 1941, when the Japanese entered the war after Peal Harbour.

“When I got down there they said ‘you’ve got a reserved occupation. You grow tobacco, get back up there and grow tobacco, the troops in the front line have got to have tobacco!’ so I did that,” Bruce said. “The tobacco saved my life! Wonderful tobacco!”

Bruce said his comments about tobacco might not seem right these days, but all his mates who enlisted in 1941 were sent to Malaya and Singapore and ended up as Japanese prisoners of war.

“It was when the Japs got Malaya they called me and let me go and I went to Darwin and how lucky to go into the signals?” Bruce said.

He served with 17 Australian Lines Of Communication Signals from 1942 to 1946 and was in Darwin through most of the bombing.

“What we did was go underground for a start. We dug a great hole under a mountain. Put our office in there with all our wirelesses, telephone exchanges and all that,” Bruce said.

“Our job was to give communication to every unit that came up there and beside listening on the big wireless night and day to every movement of the Japanese, any messages worthwhile our decipher man decoded and another man transferred it into English and if it was worthwhile we sent it to advanced headquarters or to McArthur.

“We’d code it again in our code and send it down and then they’d decode it again.”

Bruce said he was not in Darwin for the first wave of bombings, but was sent there after the evacuations.

“There was hardly anyone there and those that were there had no guns,” Bruce said.

“We had a gun but the main thing was the big wireless and it amazes me today, you pick up a little thing you put in your hand, although they probably can’t hear London or all over the Pacific, our wireless was that big it would have a job to fit on this table,” Bruce gestured at a medium sized dinning table.

“And outside we had a 5kva generator driving it! … at midnight and they used to say to me ‘See what news there is’, and I’d turn the knob to London; plain as could be; London calling!”

Japanese bombers weren’t the only hazard for the signallers. Bruce remembers a cyclone that came through leaving communications down, which was something he was there to fix.

“The cyclone came through and destroyed most of the communications, especially the one to bomber command. We worked nearly day and night to fix that telephone line,” Bruce said.

“Everyone moved back from Darwin, see, bar the coastal gunners on the big guns. They were there to blow the Japs out of the water if they came. 

“Coomalie Creek was probably 50 miles south of Darwin, that was advanced headquarters…the Beaufighter (air) strip was there and word came through at midnight that there was a big raid there and 20 men were killed; quick get down there and get their communications fixed up again.”

As it turned out only one man was killed and 19 were injured, but the signallers had a big job to do.

“At midnight we had to do the telephone line to the bofor guns all round, you know two or three miles all round in the scrub,” Bruce said.

“They had to have it; you wouldn’t realise but the aircraft head would be in charge of five guns and he would give the elevation speed and would say fire when all the guns were ready and they’d all fire at once. That’s why they wanted them fixed.”

The 17th was also responsible for keeping lines of communication open between the big coastal guns and the searchlight crews.

“General Blake he got onto us and said ‘Look if you fellows want to live when the Japs land you’ll have to kill 10 Japanese each!’ and we said righto we’ll do that,” Bruce chuckled.

“Discipline was fairly strict, we had to carry a loaded rifle everywhere we went to fix phones, always in front with us when we were driving a vehicle and always loaded.

“Then when the Japanese attacked Midway and the Americans destroyed the fleet, we knew they’d couldn’t force a landing at Darwin, because our big guns on the coast could blow any ordinary troopship out of the water. After Midway we were safe and it was an enormous relief.”