British Commonwealth Occupation Force stationed in Japan

As a hard hitting middleweight, he'd won the division championship within the Australian 34th Brigade, stationed in Japan as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) following the end of World War II. After cleaning up a bunch of his countrymen he entered the All Japan combined forces tournament and might have gone all the way but for a likeable American GI named Arnold who beat him on points over three rounds.

Strangely enough, it wasn't boxing but a game of tennis that was to have the biggest impact on him, knocking him sideways harder than any gloved fist ever could.

He was just a 12 year old student at Carlingford Rural School in Sydney when one day, a group of students playing tennis nearby hit a ball out of the court towards him. Norm picked up the ball and was returning it when he was met a girl coming over to retrieve it. As she drew near, something odd happened. For just one moment, the world stopped turning.

Norm had never seen eyes so big and brown, or skin so flawless. He didn't know it then but he had just met the woman who was to become his wife of 71 years. His darling, Valerie.

Poor young fella, he was KO'd the instant their eyes met.

The years that followed - the war years - were hard on everyone.

In 1942 Norm would lose an older brother, killed while fighting at El Alamein, while another brother was badly wounded in the Pacific and lucky to have survived. Val also was to lose a brother, killed at Balikpapan Indonesia, in a cruel twist of fate, dying barely a month before the war's end.

Still, as soon as he was old enough, Norm marched in to Lancer Barracks in Parramatta and enlisted.

He became a gun-layer, handling 25-pounder field guns as a member of the A Field Battery, Royal Australian Artillery, a unit dating back to 1871 that's been a part of every engagement from the 1885 Sudan campaign through to Iraq and Afghanistan. In a way he'd found a second home.

Despite World War II having ended before he could see active service, on October 4, 1946 Norm boarded HMAS Kanimbla and set sail for Japan as part of the occupation force sent to demilitarise and dispose of Japan's war industries.

Val would write to him the whole time he was away.

Barely two weeks out of dock and it could've all ended there in the middle of the Indian Ocean but for the keen eyesight of a guard who spotted a mine floating in the path of the vessel. Fortunately a straight shooting sniper managed to detonate the mine before they sailed too close. Not that it made the rest of the voyage any kind of pleasure cruise for the boatload of nervous passengers.

Upon reaching Japan he found a country devastated by the war. Nothing from home prepared him for Hiroshima, which was only about two kilometres from where they were based.

With three battalions of infantry on the ground, Norm was involved in plenty of manoeuvres providing artillery support as part of A Field Battery. In the early stages of the occupation the infantry ran many expeditions into the country searching for caches of arms, ammunitions and possible resistance. When a patrol went out they were a full-fighting patrol, armed ready for combat. These were more than just a training exercises.

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Though hostilities were officially over, within two months of landing Norm found himself immersed in violence of very different kind.

On December 21, 1946, at 04.19 Japan Standard Time, an earthquake occurred off the south coast of Honshu measuring a magnitude of 8.3, causing extensive damage and resulting in the destruction of 36,000 homes in southern Honshu alone.

The earthquake caused a huge tsunami that took out another 2100 homes with its five to six metre high waves. Reports listed at least 1362 dead, 2600 injured and 100 missing.

A couple of days following the event, Norm was part of a contingent overseeing the collection and removal of the dead from the area, something he describes as "not very nice".

While not on the same scale, an experience that touched him even deeper was the day he witnessed two trucks heading out on a work detail when, inexplicably, the lead truck ground to a halt on an adjacent railway line. Moments later a train rounded a nearby bend and collided with the truck, killing five Japanese and two of Norms' mates.

It was by far the most confronting thing he'd ever witnessed in his young life. To see two of his good friends, Thomo and Simo, alive one minute, then dead the next, amongst that terrible carnage. Afterwards he wrote to Thomo's mum, bearing the terrible news.

It wasn't the only such incident of its kind he was to see while stationed in Japan, but it was the one that may have affected him the most deeply.

There were times when he'd go to Tokyo as part of a contingent of about 90, of which 61 were selected to form a guard positioned throughout various places around the city. Of that cohort, a small number were positioned at the entrance to the Japanese imperial palace.

From this group a soldier would be selected, along with another from either the British, American, or New Zealand contingents, to guard the entrance to the palace.

On a number of occasions Norm was to present arms to Emperor Hirohito himself. As far as Norm could tell, the fellow in the backseat of the chauffeur driven car, well, he just looked like any other man. Definitely nothing to suggest the living god the Japanese proclaimed him to be.

Of course, now it seems like a lifetime ago. For Norm it was a great experience and something he doesn't regret, which is not to say that some of it still stays with him in a far from pleasant way. Flashbacks of his friends' unfortunate death on the railway line... the stuff that comes back to him, sometimes at night while sitting alone and thinking. The kind of thing that can "make you a bit wobbly".

But there's one battle that Norm has struggled with since his time in Japan.

While there, the troops were promised the same benefits as those who fought prior to the war's official end. This never happened. Though the enemy had surrendered, the occupation force were positioned in a possibly hostile environment and were trained and equipped for resistance to the occupation.

By the time Norm left Japan in 1948 there had been 180 Australians who had lost their life while there on active service, never to be recognised as active combatants.

It is something that troubles him still to this day.