Author: Jo Winterbottom

CHARLIE Scales’ first attempt to join the army was not a success. In 1939, aged just 16 and a trainee storeman at Coles in Albury, NSW, he had effectively run away from home to join the militia. “Poor old mum and dad were demented with worry,” he remembers. “I was on guard duty at Hume Weir when the police turned up and dragged me out of there; they’d been looking everywhere for me.” World War II had begun and he wanted to enlist, like his father Bill and uncle Joe, both of whom had served with distinction in The Great…

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