AMUSING INTERVIEW

Southland Times, Issue 25335, 11 April 1944, Page 6

AMUSING INTERVIEW

Australian V.C. Winner SYDNEY, April 3. Sergeant Tom Derrick, the latest Australian to be awarded the - V.C., stated that his earlier award, the D.C.M., which he won at El Alamein, must have been a “Comforts Fund prize.” “That’s all I know about it,” he said. Sergeant Derrick was being interviewed in a broadcast by Frank Legg, an A.B.C. war correspondent who served in the Middle East in the same battalion as Sergeant Derrick. Speaking of the action at Satelberg, New Guinea, in which he. won his V.C., Sergeant Derrick said that the Japanese in machine-gun nests who were wiped out by his grenades had no chance because if they had put their heads up they would have been mown down by the small-arms fire of the Australians covering Derrick. Legg: There was some fire directed at you, though. ' Derrick: Yeah, there was a bit. Legg: You make winning V.C.’s sound very easy. Derrick: Well, I reckon this is the easiest of the four V.C.’s our battalion has won. Legg told listeners that Sergeant Derrick was a man of action and not words.