Last Hero

Tho

ugh that day in the jungle was more than 60 years ago, people still ask Ted Kenna why he did what he did. Why, with Japanese machine guns pinning down his company from less than 50 m away, did he decide to stand up and fire back, killing the enemy crew even as their bullets passed between his arms and body? And the 86-year-old is still surprised people wonder at what is so clear to him: "I found myself there, and to see, I had to get up - and to get up, I had to show myself. So I just stood up and that was it. I was in it." Before he went to sleep that night, and in all the days of battle after it, the young private didn't think again about what had happened on May 15, 1945, in the steamy heat of New Guinea.

But many others did, and later that year the former plumber's apprentice was told he'd been awarded the Victoria Cross for "the highest degree of bravery." By then he was in a Melbourne hospital, slowly recovering from terrible injuries and malaria. Just three weeks after his actions at Wewak with the 2/4th Battalion, Kenna was shot in the face and recalls hearing a priest at the field hospital being told he'd probably die. "I thought, Pigs," he says. Even as the last rites were administered, he remembers telling himself through the pain, "This is not going to happen." He would be given the last rites twice more before his nine-month convalescence was over.

He was still bed-ridden when news came through that Japan had surrendered. His sweetheart Marjorie Rushberry, the dark-haired nurse who had looked after him, went into town with girlfriends to celebrate. "But all the soldiers were going mad, grabbing girls and kissing them, so we decided to hotfoot it back to hospital," she says. The Kennas have been married for 58 years, and still live in the red-roofed house that locals in Kenna's home town of Hamilton, in Victoria's western wool district, built for them when he returned in 1946. The pale gums and sheep fields were just the same, but the VC changed Kenna's life for good. In between raising four children and being town hall curator for 34 years, he's met royalty, traveled the world for reunions and ceremonies, led Anzac Day marches, given countless talks, sat for his portrait, and been depicted on postage stamps. When the Duke of Gloucester presented what Kenna calls "the gong," Marjorie was only 20 and not sure she'd cope with all the attention. "But Ted said I should just be myself, and that's what we've done ever since."

Australia's last living World War II VC winner takes a little longer to get around these days, and his eyes aren't good. But his white hair still has the dashing curl of the bold young soldier, and his humor is as dry as the bush in summer. "I couldn't call for morning tea or go to sleep," he says of his decision to stand up that day. After the shooting finished, his company met up with another section nearby. "Someone, I think it was Snowy, said to me, 'Did you do that?' and I said yeah, and he said, 'Good shooting.' And that was it - what else was there to say?" Though he says his greatest achievement was marrying Marjorie, Kenna has always felt the special duty of being a VC winner. Long after the war, his captain, "Blah" Smith ("He was always talking, giving orders, blah, blah, blah"), told Kenna, "it takes a lot to win a VC, but it takes a lot more to wear it the way you have for all these years. You've done well."