Told to go and get written consent because they were under 21, they went to the Captain Cook Hotel, spent two shillings and sixpence on a beer and forged each other's parents' signatures. On April 1, they travelled again to Sydney and became separated. After so many years, they each came to assume that the other had not made it home from war. But on the Easter weekend Mr Wolters, now 90, took action to find out what had happened to Mr Creswick, also 90. He placed a small advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald's RSVP column. But why now? Mr Wolters has suffered a series of serious illnesses. The list would make a sizeable contribution to a medical dictionary.

''The Department of Veterans' Affairs has been, excuse me, bloody wonderful,'' he said. ''I just wanted to know if he [Mr Creswick] was still going.'' Mr Wolters had thought about his old friend often over the intervening years. ''We parted in 1941 and we haven't been in contact since,'' he said, adding: ''My wife Dorothy said: 'What are you worried about? You've only got five minutes to live?''' Last week he was working, as he often does, in his shed when the phone rang. ''The voice said, 'It's Buff Creswick here.' I said, 'Holy, bloody hell.' I was just about dumbstruck.'' On Friday, Mr Creswick left Blacktown and boarded a plane to travel to his old schoolmate's property in Kempsey, north of Port Macquarie. The two nonagenarians embraced, complimented each other on being alive and then, briefly, Mr Wolters was overwhelmed.

Then began the formidable task of catching up. Mrs Wolters had baked scones and sausage rolls and there were a few cold beers in the fridge. As they chatted on the verandah, it emerged that they had almost got involved in the same branch of the war effort. Mr Creswick in the 2nd Infantry Battalion was sent to Syria and Beirut but was among the troops brought back to defend Australia. He was then sent to the Kokoda Trail fighting the Japanese in conditions he described as ''horrific''. ''We started out with a strength of 697 fighting men and finished up left with 87. I was one of the lucky ones,'' he said. But what finally took him away from the fighting was that he became severely ill with malaria. He was regarded as a useful experiment subject to help in the fight against the disease at the Medical Research Unit based in Cairns.

Loading Mr Wolters ended up at the same place, although probably at a different time. He was also enlisted as a guinea pig but one they wanted to deliberately infect with the disease. They are planning the next reunion. There's more to discuss.