It was a cold and wet July at Bracknell in 1940. Just north of the Central Plateau, farmland in the area was harsh in the Winter, but reaped the spoils of the fertile Tasmanian soil.
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The Spencer's farm was well equipped, not so much because of mechanical advances, but because of Edith Spencer's knack for bearing boys.
The Spencer boys, Gordon and Lloyde, worked at the farm as labourers. Separated by just two years, the Spencer boys grew up together, and despite being 23 and 21 at the time, they had never really grown up until July 11, 1940.
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Trevor Sharman had started his career as a teacher at Launceston's Charles Street Primary School not long before that July.
At 22, a teaching vocation was a sound career at a time when Australia had not long come out of the Great Depression before reentering another World War.
Whether he had chosen his job or it had chosen him, Sharman believed in the power of rules and keeping order - just as any teacher of the time did. Sharman had a disposition for keeping people in line, because he knew it was for their own good.
A resilient man, Sharman was a born teacher.
John Sansom had not long been back from France and the front of the Great War.
Finding work as a farmhand, Sansom chose to sow the memories of France into the soil of the South. But his life was written in war and patriotism - it was his due to fight for Crown and country.
As an 18-year-old in 1916 he changed his age to take up arms in Europe. Then again in 1940, when the bells of war rang, Sansom changed his age once more - though this time around he was too old.
Thomas Frederick Smith was 19 and living in Glen Huon when the then Premier of Tasmania Robert Cosgrove cabled then Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies expressing his want to reform a Tasmanian battalion to send to fight in World War II, just as it had in World War I.
Like many young men in the region, Smith worked the land, tending an apple orchard to earn a crumb.
Ernie Stone was a 20-year-old labourer at a North-West mine when the call went out that the army was calling for troops.
A country-boy soon became a man's man, and Stone raised his hand for service. He was no nonsense, but brave, and his background at the mines had instilled in him a hard exterior that meant he would always stand-up for his mates.
Sixteen-year-old George Fred "Roly" Brett from Gunns Plains had a father who was a roustabout and horseman.
He had no idea what the future had in store for him, so when the offer of free khakis came calling he raised his age to go to war.
Not yet a man, Brett had hardly a hair on his chin when he enlisted in the army. But hearing news that his brother Walter had died in battle earlier in the year meant it was his time to represent the family.
Despite his brother's death, he was expecting a big holiday when he first signed the paper among a group of his mates.
Allan Chick was casting a line out from a rock at St Helens, hoping to wind in dinner, when Premier Cosgrove received the go ahead from Prime Minister Menzies. By June 17, Chick was an army man and was on his way to Brighton for training.
St Helens was his home, and it was what he was used to, so when he saw the 2000 others at Brighton his jaw dropped. St Helens was so small at the time that Chick wrote home to his mother telling her it was bigger than his hometown with ten times as many street lights.
Geoffrey Arthur Douglas Youl, from Perth and a Longford councillor, put his hand up for service long before June 1940. He was older as well, and made the choice to leave his son and three daughters at home to protect their land.
Described by his superiors of "gallant, efficient, and thoroughly capable", Youl was appointed the commanding officer of the 2/40th battalion.
It was a job he took great pride in, so when it was declared his position was to be terminated, it was like a dagger to the heart.
Youl was a proud man and fought for his reputation. "[This] is such a serious reflection upon my reputation ... [it is] borne by not only me but also my family," he wrote to Brigadier D. V. J. Blake on November 5, 1941.
Ivan McKay enlisted at 24. A fearless man, McKay went to war, as was his duty. But he was not going to leave himself behind.
As he left for Brighton, he tucked a five shilling piece into his sock to remind him of his home.
He brought humour to the battalion, as many of his mates did, but it was not what defined him.
Geoff Tyson was three quarters of the way through his latest masterpiece when he decided he was going to go to war. A landscape painter and commercial artist at The Examiner, when Tyson sign his enlistment papers on July 25 aged 29, he was leaving a well-lived life behind.
Just two years after the call went out for men the 2/40th battalion was deployed to defend the Penfui Airfield in Timor against 23,000 Japanese troops.
They were 919 strong, of which the overwhelming majority were Tasmanian. And while gallant, within a month they were taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese.
For more than four years the fishermen, the farmhands, the labourers, the miners, the teachers, the sons, the husbands, the young Tasmanian men were forced to work in labour camps on the Thai-Burma railway.
When the war ended in 1945, and the men that survived returned home, their job was not over.
For the next 76 years, until the death of Lloyd Harding, the last surviving soldier of the 2/40th, on February 2 this year, the job was still the same - protect Tasmania from the war.
Ernie Stone convinced his son Rodney not to enlist in the army because he knew there was nothing for him. He even protected his family from his memories and Rodney said Ernie would always tell him "it was our war, it's not your war son".
Gordon Smith, upon returning home, remained tight lipped. In The Advocate on October 12, 1945 the journalist wrote, "Smith refused to comment on the treatment he had received saying that he did not wish to make a song about experiences".
With the 2/40th 79th anniversary next week, Lloyd Harding's final rear guard protecting Tasmanians from the war is done.
The men of the 2/40th have protected generations of people from the horrors of the war, and ever having to experience them again.
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