"You know you were, you were a cold foot if didn't enlist so you got the white, white feather means you are a coward so they, they were pushing the enlistment as well you see. And ah as I say it was easier to enlist than to not, but at any rate I finally decided to enlist and which I did and ah I found then that one of my, one of my, two of my school mates had also enlisted and ah we finished up at Royal Exhibition Grounds camping there and ah together and some English General rode out because the Australian army was the Australian Imperial Force, not the Australian Defence Force - very much the Imperial Army and this instruction came out that mateship was bad, so mates had to be separated so they just lined us up and put us in different units and we decided there and then we wanted to stay together and the only way we could do that was to transfer out of the infantry. Well we tried the artillery and there was no vacancies but there were vacancies in the Army Medical Corp and that's how we joined them - the only reason."

"Medical Corp finished up in the same unit, we went through the war together - one of them got the military medal at Passchendele and we all got back so that ah mateship was the best thing that ever happened for discipline you know, it helps you to cope".

CORPORAL TED SMOUT