World War II veteran, and Elizabeth Gates resident, Keith Mills says he doesn’t remember much about the time he spent in what is now described at the “Asian theater of World War II”.

“We lived in tents, it was hot, it rained every night and the mosquitos…,” he says, his voice trailing off.

However, after some coercion, involving a chocolate Easter egg and his daughter producing some old photos of two handsome young soldiers in full military uniform, the conversation flowed.

Mr Mills says his father was an apprentice chemist in Longreach before he joined the army.

According to the official records, Frederick Frazer Mills, Regimental Number 6010, enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on June, 28, 1915.

He was 20 years and 10 months and left our shores on August 16 aboard HMAT Kyarra.

The young soldier departed thinking he was bound for the Gallipoli Peninsula but ended up on the Western Front.

According to the website www.anzacday.org.au, the Western Front was the name the Germans gave to a series of trenches that ran 700km from the Belgian coast, through France to the Swiss border.

To imagine this, think of a ditch deep enough to stand in zigzagging its way alongside the Hume Highway from Melbourne to Canberra and, just like Gallipoli, machine-gun fire caused terrible casualties.

Both sides had dug trenches, sometimes only metres apart, as their only protection from the murderous gun fire. 

But they were never safe from the explosive artillery shells that rained down on the front line soldiers every few seconds for days at a time.

“He was in Egypt expecting to go to Gallipoli but ended up in France,” Mr Mills explains.

“Dad spent the next four years there and he ended up as Staff Sergeant in the 5th field ambulance.”

His job was to rescue the injured, he says.

The brave medic was actually promoted to the rank of temporary Staff Sergeant on October 28, 1916, while stationed at Etaples.

Situated in Northern France, on the right bank of the estuary of the Canche, and only 4.5km from the Straits of Dover, the town became a vast Allied military camp and then a giant “hospital city”.

Many medical facilities were established by the Australians, New Zealanders and British. 

Wounded soldiers were consequently often sent to Etaples to recover, or en route for Britain.

Eight months later he was taken on strength into the 5th field ambulance and sent out to retrieve the bloodied and broken from the battlefields.

The unit attended the following battles: Albert (1918), Amiens (8th August 1918), Bapaume (1917), Beaurevoir, Broodseinde, Bullecourt (3-4 May 1917), Dernancourt, France & Flanders (1916-1918), Hamel, Hindenberg Line, Menin Road (20-22 September 1917), Montbrehain (3rd October 1918), Mont St Quentin (31st August 1918), Poeloappele (Belgium-9th-19th October 1917), Passchendaele, Polygon Wood, Poziers (25th July 1916-5th August 1916), Somme (1916-1918), Villiers-Bretonneaux And Ypres (1917).

Mr Mills says after he was discharged from the army, his father qualified as a chemist and took a temporary job in Cloncurry.

“This is where he met my mother, who was a nursing sister at the hospital.  I think they got married in about 1920 in Mackay, and he ended up buying a chemist shop in Clermont,” he says.

The small town in Central Queensland is where Keith, and his siblings, grew up.

And he was just 18 when he followed in his father’s footsteps instead of heading to university. 

“I didn’t think dad would sign the enlistment papers but he did,” he says.

“He signed the papers and I was in the army.”

At that stage his elder brother was already a part of the war effort - a bomber pilot in England.

After completing his basic training in Victoria because of his mathematical mind Mr Mills ended up in the artillery survey unit and was deployed to Lae, in New Guinea.

Here they had to the task of surveying and drawing up maps of the unknown territory.

The going was tough as it is largely mountainous, and much of it is covered with tropical rainforest.

Prior to the Second World War, the small town on the shores of the Huon Gulf, in eastern New Guinea, was one of several servicing the rich goldfields further inland.

It fell under Japanese control in March 1942 but was then reclaimed by the Allies, with two Australian divisions the first to reach the town on September 16. 

But then after the Australians invaded Borneo, he ended up on the small island off the coast called Morotai.

As a part of the 2/1st survey company, Mr Mills says he simply did his job and mapped areas like Balikpapan.

In 1945, Australian forces launched three military actions against Japanese-held Borneo: at Tarakan, at Labuan-Brunei Bay and at Balikpapan. 

According to the history books, these were the biggest and final Australian campaigns of World War II and, since 1945 controversy has surrounded these final campaigns in which more than 500 Australians died and over 1400 were wounded for little apparent strategic gain. 

Still reluctant to reveal the details of his own experience, the main thing he can recall is the heat and the rain.

His dismisses it as a part of growing up and says he has forgotten it.

The friendships formed and the bonds made, are what he does remember but after so many years they too are becoming just a memory.

When asked about the importance of Anzac Day, he couldn’t quite find the words but his long association with Legacy says it all.

“The First World War boys made a big sacrifice, and the Second World War boys that fought in the Middle East and then came back to New Guinea did too but the rest of us were let off a bit lightly,” he reckons.

After he was discharged from the Army, Mr Mills went to university and studied Dentistry.

He went on to enjoy a career as an orthodontist and while practicing in Newcastle travelled to Singleton where he worked from the rooms of the late Quinton Harvison whom he remembers fondly as being a very good dentist and good friend.