Leonard Roy Mcleod was medically discharged from the army at just 16, still too young to have even enlisted.
But he wanted to do his bit during World War II, and signed up at just 15 giving a false name and lying about his age.
"The recruiting officer said 'how old are you?', and I said 22!" Mr Mcleod said.
"I thought to myself, 'If you're going to tell a lie, tell a good one'."
Even after his medical discharge he was eager to help, worried as the war edged closer to Australia.
"I can tell you everyone in Australia was scared. I mean scared," he said.
So he joined the US Army Small Ships Section, a lesser-known band of civilians who played a crucial role delivering supplies to troops fighting in the Pacific.
The US Army Small Ships section was formed in 1942, when the Americans travelled around Australia, requisitioning fishing trawlers, barges, and ferries.
They also recruited 3,300 Australian civilians.
Dr Ruth Lunney from the University of Newcastle researched and, with her late husband's help, co-authored a book on the US Army Small Ships called the Forgotten Fleet Two.
She said the US Army took people the Australian Navy wouldn't take.
"You could join the Small Ships at the age of 16 but the Navy needed you to be 18," she said.
"There were young guys from 15 who put their ages up, there were older people, there were veterans of previous wars, Gallipoli veterans, Boer War veterans.
"There were people who had been in the army and come back injured, and there were people who were disabled."
Dr Lunney said they went on to perform dangerous, covert operations.
"When they started in the last months of 1942, the Japanese had air superiority and that meant they initially had to travel by night," she said.
"They were in danger of Japanese attack and a number of them were sunk in those early months.
"What they did was take up men and supplies which allowed the allied forces to defeat the Japanese at Buna, which is the northern end of the Kokoda, and then they worked their way up progressively, pushing the Japanese out of New Guinea."
'They were on the front line'
Dr Lunney believes the allies would have struggled to win the war in the Pacific without the US Army Small Ships Section.
"At the end of 1942, they were crucial to the war effort in New Guinea, and they just kept on being useful," she said.
"They were heroic, and they were very special people and they were people who couldn't go off and join the army.
"I think there was a certain larrikin element in it as well. These were the people who didn't quite conform."
But she said they did not get the hero's welcome they deserved when they returned from the war.
"At the end of the war they were often excluded from the RSL, and they didn't receive much recognition until the 1980s when the American government recognised them as veterans," she said.
Author and historian Ian Shaw, who wrote the book The Rag Tag Fleet about the US Army Small Ships, agreed their role was critical to the war.
"They fought to save Australia," he said.
"They were on the front line and a lot of them died off the coast of New Guinea bringing supplies to the Australians and the Americans who were fighting the Japanese there."
He said he is still shocked that they weren't respected for their war effort.
"I just felt all along from the time I started looking at this story, there was an element of, 'No, you signed on with someone else you're not worthy of us supplying you with anything as you age,' and I just feel like that was really, really wrong."
In 2009, the Australian government formally recognised the Small Ships crewmen, but not their maintenance and repair crew colleagues.
Mr Mcleod's daughter, Denise West, said it is not fair on those who served in dangerous conditions.
"It's wrong, because they were Australians ships, they were Australian men," she said.
"All they want is a ribbon, or a thank you.
"No one is asking for money, hardly any of them are alive."
She said her father will not give up the fight for those he served alongside.
"He keeps saying he's staying on the right side of the grass, until it happens," Mrs West said.
