World War II veteran Roy Porter celebrated his 100th birthday on Monday April 7.
The Ocean Grove resident was thrown a surprise birthday party by Ocean Grove Men’s Shed with his wife Norma.
Mr Porter will attend the Ocean Grove morning service on Anzac Day.
Mr Porter was 18 when he joined the Royal Australian Air Force in the midst of World War II.
He was desperately hoping it wouldn’t end so he could play his part in defending the country.
“You sort of get excited and hope that the war doesn’t finish before you get into it,” he said when the Independent interviewed him last year.
“Really, it’s sort of a funny feeling. You don’t want people to get hurt, but you want to do your bit for the country. I was at the time frightened…frightened that the war was going to finish before I got into it.
“My mother and father both agreed that it was the right thing to do, but they didn’t want to see their little boy killed.
“My father was at Gallipoli, so I think that’s another reason that I joined up. He was somewhat of a hero. He got himself a citation because he went out and saved wounded soldiers.”
After gunnery school, Roy and 19 other members of his squadron were “put on an aircraft and taken away” to Batchelor, about 80km south of Darwin.
The day after he arrived, Mr Porter was thrust into his first operational mission as an air gunner in the 18th Squadron on the B-25 Mitchell aircraft, renowned for low-level skip bombing and strafing.
“I did over fifty missions. Didn’t get injured, although I crashed three times. One in Brisbane, once in Canberra,” he said.
“And a third time I crashed when we were returning from a mission and we didn’t know, but our plane had been shot up and the landing gear was no good. We had a burst tyre which damaged all the landing gear.”
