Taffy Smith was one of the men on the beach at Dunkirk, after this appalling ordeal, he returned alive to a peace time Britain to find the wife he had left behind when he went to war in failing health.
With little prospect of decent housing in post war Britain Taffy and his small family eventually migrated to Australia in 1951 as ten pound POMS. After a year in Melbourne they moved to a small property in Karridale.
Karridale main street circa 1940 had changed very little by 1953
New neighbours offered the Smith family help, George Harrison gave piglets, someone from Witchcliffe gave them a few chooks, they bought a few cows and started their dairy enterprise. Mrs Smith recovered her health and planted fruit trees and vegetables to support the family. The family flourished and the children were happy attending the Karridale school.
Nine years after they had invested blood, sweat and tears into this enterprise the Karridale bushfires destroyed everything they had, bar one small box of personal papers that they buried quickly as the fire approached. The Karridale community immediately rallied around and found them a house, which was relocated onto their charred property by the local farmers.
This little house was to be their new home, it had previously been a timber cutter's cottage. It is still located in the same place but today the farm is Hamelin Bay Wines.
The house was placed on a truck for the trip up Karridale Road from Caves Road
This view shows the house travelling across the Karridale Crossroads. No tavern or Post Office in 1961, the post office had been located in the centre of town on Caves Road and had just burnt down a few days earlier.
The house had crossed over the Bussell Highway and was now travelling east along the Brockman Highway, with Morris Minor and children following.
On the morning after the fire Taffy Smith felt defeated. He was drained of all energy and lacked the will to battle on.
The following comments on Taffy Smith's reaction to the loss of his home and how he was subsequently treated by the chairman of the Government Advisory Committee gives an interesting insight into how post traumatic stress syndrome and reactive depression were treated in 1961.
Writing in the Daily News, April 1961, Dan O'Sullivan recounted the following observations on Taffy Smith;
In truth Taffy Smith had been wiped out. His life seemed at an end. He was stunned into a lethargy so profound that people believed he had "dropped his bundle" - and that he would never have the strength to pick it up again.
Yet when I saw Smith again a few days ago, with a neighbour helping him to plough new pastures, the little Welshman was so perky that he was trying to explore his chance of selling up and taking over a bigger nearby, unoccupied farm where he has been quartered since the fire.
And he had a word of thanks for Government Advisory Committee Chairman Mr J.P.Gabbedy. Said Smith;
"He gave me quite a dressing down when I went to Perth depressed, and he more or less roused me from my lethargy. I'd like him to know it helped."
Even a Dunkirk hero can need a little help from time to time, and it was the neighbours' helping the family that made such a difference to their recovery.
An ordinary hero, Taffy was a man who created community here in this shire.
Another of our D-day heroes was Jim Wilson, who served in Bomber Command, but his story must wait for another hour.
The Announcement of D-Day
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27730193
http://ab.co/1xfBmMj
