From the pastures to the skies: Dr Milford’s storied journey

At 99 years old, you could say that Dr Robert Milford’s has lived two lifetime’s worth of incredible moments. He was part of an air force squadron that helped repel Nazi Germany in the Mediterranean during World War 2, before becoming a leading researcher in the field of agronomy.

As we celebrate the 125^th anniversary of the Gatton campus, we explore Dr Milford’s rich connection to Gatton and The University of Queensland and share his remarkable wartime story.

On 3 September 1939, when Australia joined with the UK and declared war on Nazi Germany, Robert was still in high school. He graduated with a diploma in Agriculture at Gatton in 1940 and was employed at the college as a field assistant by CSIR, the predecessor to CSIRO.

On turning 18 in 1941, he pleaded with his parents to let him join the RAAF. He got his wish, and after six months in the reserves, he was called up for duty. After training as a radio air gunner in Australia, Robert found himself in a contingent of about 1,000 other aircrew headed on the next boat to the UK via the USA; for a significant number of those men, there would be no return trip. After a period in a staging camp south of Boston, they boarded a ship to the UK.

That boat was the famous RMS Queen Elizabeth, and was host to Australian, Canadian and US forces. The trip was not for the faint hearted, as the ocean liner zig-zagged across the Atlantic, avoiding the wrath of German U-boat packs. Once in the UK, Robert continued his training, being updated on the new radio equipment, and went on to an operational training unit joining his crew, where they were trained on Wellington bombers.

His call up to join the fight against Nazi forces in the Mediterranean was something you’d expect from an episode of Blackadder rather than reality. After a miscommunication from across the pond which requested “100 air screws” (propellers for planes), Dr Milford and 100 other air crew members were shipped off to North Africa. There, he became a member of a strategic bomber force that would change the face of the war in that region.

The Wellington night bomber force carried out campaigns throughout 1943-44, flying over northern Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, southern Germany, and Romania. Their campaigns mainly targeted key transport and storage facilities such as railway yards, ports, bridges, and shipping. In 1944, the Allied Bomber Force in Italy concentrated on the production, storage, and transport of oil from the Ploesti fields in Romania.

Flying at just 200 feet (60m) above the Danube River to deposit mines, the Wellington Bombers played a significant role disrupting this main source of transport of oil to Germany, depriving the Luftwaffe of their only source of high-octane fuel. This is estimated to have reduced the oil available to Germany by up to 60 per cent, and many historians believe this effort likely shortened the war in Europe by as much as six months. Robert completed 38 operational missions with his crew.

When he was discharged in 1945 at the end of the war, Dr Milford returned to Australia and to the CSIRO as a technical officer and pushed himself to learn more and gather further qualifications in the field of agronomy. Although he had a Junior Certificate and Diploma of Agriculture up his sleeve from his study at Gatton College before the war, Robert knew he needed more. He enrolled in the Bachelor of Agriculture program at UQ in 1947.

In 1950, Dr Milford had a young family and was in his penultimate year of study with the Agriculture Department at UQ Gatton. With accommodation scarce on the campus, he was given permission to convert an unused building into a residence. During the war, the US Army had made Gatton College the biggest hospital in the South Pacific, and the vacant building was the hospital morgue.

To make it habitable, Robert and his UQ classmates worked together to dismantle the morgue refrigerator, remove the slab table, install a makeshift bathroom behind hessian walls, and line the walls and ceiling with hessian covered in butcher’s paper. Today, this building still stands, and is now the campus chapel.

Robert Milford (front row, far right) and his fellow university classmates, featured in the Gatton College magazine (1950).

Gatton Campus Chapel.

On graduation, Robert was employed as an Experimental Officer in agronomy with the CSIRO, still in Gatton at the Cooper Laboratory. His work was mainly concerned with digestibility and energy retention of pasture species such as cattle, goats, and sheep. In 1957, Robert was awarded his Master of Science degree from UQ. Robert’s work was highly regarded, and in 1958, he was promoted to Research Officer and appointed Officer in Charge of the Cooper Laboratory.

In 1959, he was granted a CSIRO PhD scholarship and voyaged to England once more, this time with different duties entirely and with a young family at his side. His thesis work was conducted at the Grassland Research Institute in Berkshire, and he received his doctorate in philosophy through the University of Reading in 1961.

Back in Australia, Dr Milford resumed his position with CSIRO at Gatton College, again working on the nutritional values of tropical grasses and legumes. His work was internationally recognised, culminating in a keynote address to the International Grasslands Research Conference in Brazil in 1966. In 1967 he was recruited to a World bank-funded project in Paraguay, which aimed to introduce improved pastures to the South American country. He spent two years there before joining the World Bank’s staff in Washington DC, working as an agricultural project officer on many projects all around the globe, until his retirement in 1988.

In retirement, Dr Milford split his time between consultancy work with World Bank and plying his agronomy expertise tending to a one-hectare prize garden in southern Maryland. Today, he lives in Prince George’s County, Maryland and recently celebrated his 99^th birthday with his family and friends.