Don Roulston Buzzard

9.0
After WAAAF Service

After Don was discharged, stayed with a relative of Brian’s, the McKnight family, in Yarrawonga, Vic. Both born in W.A., Frank McKnight had married Maria Theresa (Babe) Sheridan (Brian’s Aunt) in 1920, and they live in W.A. for a time before Franks was transferred, as a bank manager, with the Bank of Australasia to Yarrawonga. Don was very happy at Yarrawonga as Babe was so kind to her during and after her pregnancy.

Meanwhile, Brian had returned from bombing missions over Indonesia and hitched a ride, from Darwin, to Amberley Airbase, Qld on 29th September 1944, and Don travelled up to the Gold Coast for a few weeks. Amberley and the Gold Coast were just over an hour’s drive from each other. Brian then flew to Melbourne then to Leyburn, near Toowoomba, Qld. and Don went onto Sydney and then to back to Yarrawonga.

There on 3rd July 1945, David Buzzard was born in the Yarrawonga Hospital. While David was being born, his father’s flight log book showed he had completed a a bombing mission to Balikpapan, in Borneo just two days before and was resting up before a flight back to Australia. The mission was part of the Operation Oboe, that commenced on 1st July 1945 and was seen as critical to the end of the war as RAAF intelligence determined that half of all lubricating oils used by the Japanese military and 60 percent of all their aviation fuel came from refineries in Balikpapan, and it was therefore an extremely important target.

However, with the first atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, approximately a month later, on 6th August 1945, the need to secure the oilfields and refineries of Balikpapan, at great human cost, has been much debated.

Brian’s Bombing Balikapapan 1st July 1945 [58]

Bombing Mission in B24 Liberator Bomber

Brian managed to get down to Yarrawonga in July 1945 to see his wife and son. “I managed to get a transport aircraft travelling from Moratai [North Maluku, Indonesia], through Darwin and on to Melbourne. From there I caught a train to Yarrawonga to spend time with Don and David”. [59]

On 31st July 1945, Brian Buzzard was sent to the United States to ferry back a Liberator bomber from Fairfield Air Force Base in the United States, near San Francisco.

His flight took him from Brisbane to Biak (Dutch New Guinea), Manus Island in the Admiralty Islands, Tarawa (in what is now known as Kiribati), Hawaii and then to Fairfield on the 2nd or 3rd August 1945.

Soon after he arrived, he was told by the Americans that the aircraft Lend Lease Arrangement between America and Australia was over, as the atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th August respectively. When the Americans were asked by the Australians how they were to get home, they were told that was their problem.

Meanwhile, Don and David continued to wait in Yarrawonga for Brian, as the war in the Pacific had ended with Japan’s formal surrender on 2nd September 1945.

Brian was to spend a few weeks in the U.S. until the aircrew “were put on an old Liberty ship, the ‘John Deere’ at Portland, Oregon and we set sail for Sydney. We were thirty one days at sea. The ship did not call in at any port on the trip. All American ships were dry, meaning there was no alcohol, and when we were only a week out to sea, we ran out of fresh water for showering. The food was mostly Spam, pancakes, bread and a bit of Australian Bully Beef, which we enjoyed more than anything else. We were all most relieved to arrive back in Sydney on 6th October 1945”. [60]

Brian then travelled to Yarrawonga where he found David in good health, but Don had not fully recovered from the birth.

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[58] Wikipedia
[59] - [60] “A Gentleman and a Rascal” – Brian Buzzard