HE had trouble getting volunteers to call him Al, but Major-General Alan Stretton met no resistance when he offered his uniform to a Batemans Bay museum.
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The late military man, most remembered for overseeing the evacuation of 36,000 cyclone survivors from Darwin in 1974, retired to Batemans Bay and formed a bond with the Clyde River and Batemans Bay Historical Society.
When the society opened its Lest We Forget Room three years ago, he knew his full dress uniform had found a good home.
Arriving to fetch it, museum curator Myf Thompson was quickly advised to demote the Major-General.
“He said, ‘Oh, call me Alan’,” she said.
“He was a lovely man, but it was really difficult.
“We have a member here who served in the Navy and he could not bring himself to call him Alan.
“He said, I can’t do it, Major-General, I am sorry.”
Now, with the gift of a mannequin from the Australian War Memorial and a display cabinet, Major-General Stretton has assumed a commanding position in the room at The Old Courthouse Museum.
“We really appreciated the gesture of giving us something so significant for this room, but we could never display it properly,” Ms Thompson said.
“Now, it makes such a difference when you come in.
“Your eyes are drawn to that figure.
“It finally has what it deserves, which is pride of place in this room.”
The display includes a warm photograph and the story published in the Bay Post/Moruya Examiner after Major-General Stretton’s death in Batemans Bay Hospital in October 2012.
However volunteer Kerrie Rowe, charged with dressing the mannequin, wished it had displayed a little more military discipline.
“Alan was a charming man, but our model was not so charming,” the former Army signals operator said.
Drunk and disorderly on parade was more like it.
“When you were putting the shirt, on the arm would fall off,” she said.
“You would get the arm back on, get the shirt, try to get the jacket on and the arms would come off again.
“Then he would fall over.”
They hope the Major-General would have enjoyed the moment.
A lawyer as well as a military man, he did not stand on ceremony.
He was famous, during the sleepless days and nights that followed Cyclone Tracy, for attending a Darwin court in an effort to intervene in the case of an indigenous man arrested for looting.
Ms Rowe said his efforts in Darwin won regard throughout Australia.
“I felt someone had taken over and had taken responsibility,” she said.
