Hoye, Martin Timothy

Born: 28th January, 1908 – St Arnaud, Victoria
Died: 1st July, 1942 – Montevideo Maru. Age 34.
Occupation – 1942: 2/22nd Battalion
ID: VX28632

Martin Hoye’s Story

Martin Timothy, or Ginty as he was always known, was the fourth child, in a family of twelve, of Martin and Nell Hoye who farmed at Coonooer West and Gooroc, just outside St Arnaud in Victoria’s Wimmera country.

In an interview in the late 1980s, his sister, Rita, recalled, ‘Ginty was taken when he enlisted to go into the Army. He wasn’t called up. They went on their own account, Tom and Gint. There was no work on the farm with the Depression and everything, so they enlisted. We always said Gint wouldn’t be taken. But he was. They asked Mr Duggan, Bernie Duggan. He was in the first War, Lieutenant Colonel, D.S.O. and Bar. He advised them to go different ways. One go to the Japanese and the other to the Germans, so I don’t know where we’d have been if they had been together.’

So Martin Timothy (Ginty) Hoye joined in the Army on June 6, 1940 at the age of 32 years. His brother, Tom, enlisted a month later and fought with the 2/23^rd in Crete, El Alamein and Tobruk before returning to Australia and being posted to New Guinea and later Tarakan.

It was Ginty’s involvement in the defence of Australia that prompted his mate and third cousin, Leo Breen, to pen the following poem which appeared in Smith’s Weekly in December 1941.

Ginty’s in Malaya

They may have sunk ‘The Prince of Wales’ and laid Pearl Harbour bare.
They may have bombed Manila but somehow I don’t care.
Those little yellow blankards are due for some mishaps
For Ginty’s in Malaya and he’s worth a million Japs.

Ginty’s in Malaya and the tractors in the shed.
The crops are ripe in Gooroc now but life in Gooroc’s dead.
For Gooroc’s life is overseas, just waiting for the Japs,
Just waiting for the little swine who want to alter maps.

Argumentative he was, quick tempered, king-hit like
And God help anyone in range when ‘he got off his bike’.
I’ve seen him clear a bar-room out when someone called him ‘Blue’.
‘Red’ or ‘Ginge’ was right with him, for ‘Red’ or ‘Ginge’ were true.

The dances at Coonooer now are flat and stale to me.
St Arnaud’s pubs have lost their kick; there’s no fun in a spree.
Australia’s dull but safe enough from Darwin to Toorak,
For Ginty’s in Malaya – just waiting for a whack.

(Leo Breen, December 27, 1941)

Photograph and story kindly provided by John Breen (Nephew)