HOME
QX7689 McLean DL (Doug) - Life member
Doug was our newest Honourary Life Member - Douglas L McLean BEM QX7689.
Doug was born on 14 October 1917 in Cairns and enlisted there on 4 June 1940. He was then ultimately to join the 2/15th Battalion 30 December 1941, and was to see the rest of WW2 with the Battalion. He was discharged with the rank of Corporal on 27 November 1945. He worked in North Queensland first in the PMG Department, but worked most of his life in the Brewery.
He lives currently at Villa 21, Bally Cara Village, Oyster Point 4020. with the support of his lovely lady, Marge, who with her charm and lovely smile always makes you feel welcome. Doug has not enjoyed the best of health lately, however he is looking forward to being with us all at Anzac Day with his daughter Jenny (coming down from Cairns) and of course, Bernie and Deborah Pramberg and “little” Lachlan (6 plus feet of him).
---------------------------------------------------------------
The following is from a link to an article in this Brisbane Courier-Mail website.
Name: Doug MacLean
Occupation: Retired brewery worker
Service: Australian Army
Service number: QX7689
Born: Cairns, October 14, 1917
Enlisted: Cairns, June 4, 1940
Family: First wife Gwen died. Married Majorie
in 1980. Three children, two step-children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren
DOUG MacLean remembers the landing at Brunei Bay as the day everything went to plan.
"They usually never put you on the right beach," he says, recollecting the landing on Borneo 60 years ago today from his home in Kippa-Ring.
"And that's the first mistake they make. They would get some here, and some there, and a couple would get knocked off. But this time never a shot fired and on we go and it was beautiful."
When the 26th Infantry Brigade had landed at Tarakan Island on the eastern Borneo coast a month earlier, the Australian troops faced fierce resistance.
But when MacLean and the men of the 24th Brigade of the 9th Australian Division landed, it was a different story.
"There wasn't a Jap on it," MacLean says. "There hadn't been for months."
If the landing at Brunei Bay went off without a hitch, it was a well-earned break for the men of the 9th Division, like MacLean, who had been through some of the toughest campaigns of the war.
MacLean, who was a sugarcane cutter before the war, enlisted on June 4, 1940, became a member of the 2/15th Battalion that was recruited in and around Brisbane, and began his training at Redbank.
On Christmas Day, 1940, MacLean boarded a train at South Brisbane and headed to Sydney.
The battalion was shipped to Palestine in time for the Benghazi Handicap - the race to evacuate the 9th Division from the Benghazi area before Rommel's army could cut off their retreat.
"They all said we retreated to Tobruk," MacLean says. "It was the greatest rabble you ever saw in your life. We went for our lives."
In April, MacLean's battalion moved inside Tobruk and became part of the famous siege that frustrated the German army for six months.
"Tobruk was full of flies and fleas and rats and everything," he says. "And the neighbours (the German army) were most unneighbourly, they were a horrible lot."
After serving in Syria, MacLean's battalion moved to Egypt where he took part in Operation Bulimba, designed to test tactics for the upcoming Battle of El Alamein.
"We had 72 killed in two hours and 100-odd wounded," MacLean says. "I'll never forget it. It was the blackest day of my life."
The following month, the battalion took part in the Battle of El Alamein � one of the great battles of the war.
MacLean was shipped back to Australia and had three weeks' leave before being sent to the Atherton Tableland for training in jungle warfare. He was then sent to Papua New Guinea, where he served at Milne Bay and Lae.
Then they sent us to Finchshafen and that was a detestable place," he says. "It rained every day. I don't think I was dry in the two months I was there, ever.
"And we had heavy casualties all the time. It's one of the last big fights he (the Japanese) really made.
"Well, we landed there and we were right in the middle of the 6,000 or 7,000 of them and we went within an ace of losing it a couple of times. It was there that I lost my closest friend."
After Finchshafen, the battalion was shipped back to the Atherton Tableland for more training.
In May 1945, the battalion was sent to Morotai island to prepare for the invasion of Brunei.
"The day we got to Morotai, I'll always remember, is the day the Germans tossed it in," MacLean says. "We said this is great, the Japs won't go on now. They sent us, they sent a brigade in Tarakan and they had a terrible time. It was an awful island and one of the worst casualties after Milne Bay, after the hump of the Kokoda Trail.
"They were mad sending them in there. They said he had nowhere to go, it was an island and being Japs, he just fought until he died. He took a lot of our blokes with him."
MacLean was in Borneo when the war ended.
"I'm prouder of what I did after the war than what I did during the war..."
When he shipped back home, he moved to Cairns, married and got a job at the Carlton and United Brewery, became district secretary of the RSL, and became involved in running the Warhaven home in Cairns, which then was home to single veterans of World War I.
His first wife, Gwen, died of an asthma attack while being rushed to hospital in an ambulance, leaving him with three children, the youngest of whom was an 11-year-old daughter.
Since he moved to Brisbane 15 years ago with his second wife, Marjorie, he's been involved in the Rats of Tobruk Association. He also marches each year on Anzac Day, and has been joined in recent marches by his 13-year-old grandson Lachlan Pramberg, with whom he has a close bond.
"I'm prouder of what I did after the war than what I did during the war because, well, like a lot of soldiers, I'm a man of peace," MacLean says.
