Midnight Messiah, A Roo in Malaya & The Snows came.

Midnight Messiah, A Roo in Malaya & The Snows came.

THE Intelligence Section of the 2/i9th Battalion was camped with a Sikh regiment on the edge of a jungle in Johore. The men were mapping country that had never been mapped before. It meant long hours each day trudging along narrow jungle tracks with a compass, making traverses. It meant sloshing through steamy, stinking swamps, alive with leeches and mosquitoes. The men went off in pairs; one ahead with a compass, the other behind with a cocked rifle as protection against tigers and black panthers. They saw none, but frequently came upon elephant pads in the swamps. Monkeys chattered and screeched. Vividly coloured birds, unafraid of humans, perched within a few feet of them; squirrels darted up and down the great cedars. It was hot work and slow work because the jungle tracks spread over the countryside like a jigsaw puzzle.

Sometimes they came upon teams of Chinese woodmen. They heard them in the distance chanting a haunting tune like the "Volga Boatmen". They sang it as they dragged the rich cedar logs to the main road along a track made of round timber, greased in the middle so that the logs would glide down. The Chinese wore sandshoes and dragged the logs to the road with ropes slung round their shoulders. Each foot of timber meant extra royalty to the Sultan of Johore.

The Sikhs, with whom the "I" Section was camped, were a great bunch of fellows. They were nearly all six feet tall. They had beards and long hair and shining white teeth which flashed as they laughed. In the early morning they were like women before the dressing-table. They did up their hair and stuck a comb and a tiny dagger in it. But they were fierce fighting men and the smartest parade-ground troops I have ever seen. We got on well with them; they liked Australians.

At night sometimes the hot Malayan air was full of walls as the Indians were called to prayer to perform their traditional religious ceremonies. They were modest fellows, the Sikhs. Because of strict religious tenets, they neither smoked nor drank. There was a stream near the camp and there the Indian soldiers would bathe and wash at the end of the day. They always wore a pair of white silk pants. We caused them a lot of horrified amusement by bathing in the stream in the nude. At first they simply stared us; then they laughed, showing their white teeth.

One day after hours of mapping in the jungle we had bully beef and tea at an old timber-cutters' camp. As we finished, one of our men bent down to pick up his rifle from a log. He was bitten on the wrist by the horridest looking black spider I have ever seen.

Two minutes later he vomited. Then he fainted. We treated him as for snake bite -applying a ligature and opening the puncture with a razor blade. Then we carried him to the truck and raced home to camp.

At the camp we summoned the Indians' medical officer, a young Gurkha lieutenant. He did not know what to do. He looked at the dead spider which we had carried with us, and scratched his head. No, he had never seen a spider like that before and did not know whether it was deadly or not.

Meantime, our man was in a bad way, semi-conscious. And here is the strange part of the story. Our interpreter brought along a Sikh private. There was a lot of talking and gesticulating, and eventually the Sikh agreed to attend to the patient. He explained that until midnight he was God. He had power to kill or to spare, but we had made a terrible mistake. We should not have killed the spider, because, if the spider had been allowed to live, then our man would have been allowed to live too.

However, he would do the best he could-but we should not have killed the spider.

First of all the Indian went to a rubber-tree and picked a green branch. Then he asked for a hurricane lamp. He took kerosene from the lamp and rubbed it on the spot where the spider had punctured our man's wrist. Then he squatted down in front of the patient and drew the rubber branch up and down the patient's arm. He chanted things we could not understand. The Man Who Was God was evidently greatly respected by his compatriots; they gathered round in an awed circle.

It was a weird scene. Dusk had fallen and our patient lay on a wooden stretcher in a grass hut. Around him were grouped perhaps a dozen bearded Sikhs, with the Gurkha doctor scratching his head in the background.

The Man Who Was God chanted and chanted and drew the green branch across the victim's arm. In this way, explained the interpreter, he was drawing out the poison from the patient's body, but was taking a grave risk that the poison would enter his own body.

It was a pity we had killed the spider because otherwise our friend would not have been so sick....

We never found out what kind of spider it was, and we never found out whether it was the Man Who Was God who cured our comrade. At any rate, he recovered and has been wary of spiders ever since.

NX55915

"Transport Problems In Malaya" An Australian army vehicle, bogged in a stream in Malaya, being towed out by a recovery van. Transport problems of this nature were frequent. By B3/38

THIS is the story of the Doctor Who Didn't Tell. He was the M.O. of an Australian unit when it went to Malaya. The unit had read about the efforts of the 6th Division to smuggle its famous dog Linky aboard the transport when it left an unnamed Australian port. The 6th Division failed, but the 8th succeeded-thanks to the Doctor Who Didn't Tell.

In the unit was a long, lanky bushman from the Riverina, and out in the bush he had captured a young kangaroo. He, and the unit, were determined to take it abroad with them. When the troops entrained at Bathurst on the first stage of the voyage overseas, a curious piece of equipment went with them. It was a large box with holes bored in it. Inside was Jooey the kangaroo.

Jooey was smuggled across the harbour in a ferry boat to the anonymous luxury liner. And nobody was any the wiser-except the M.O. until the transport was well out to sea. Then the kangaroo was taken out on deck and became a prime favourite with the troops.

He was smuggled off at Singapore by the same method and became quite a feature of the Malayan landscape. Circuses excepted, Jooey was the only kangaroo Malaya had ever seen.

At first the little cocoa-coloured Malayan children were terrified of him and ran screaming when he hopped towards them. But they soon got used to him and he became so tame that he would cat out of their hands.

Jooey lived on wheat and green grass. He seemed perfectly contented in his unfamiliar surroundings and began to put on weight.

Then one day some Malayan children chased him. Jooey hopped away in terror; fell down a concrete drain and broke his leg. He was rushed to a veterinary surgeon, who put his leg in a plaster cast. At first Jooey showed signs of improvement, then he began to pine away. Perhaps it was the paralysis that began to affect his limbs, or perhaps it was nostalgia for the open brown plains of the Riverina and the leadership of an old man kangaroo.

Jooey never recovered. He wasted away until he had to be destroyed. He was Australia's first casualty in Malaya and to those boys who were sweating and toiling in unfamiliar jungles, it was as though they had lost a bit of home.

"Somewhere in Malaya" there is a grave and above it is a headstone inscribed simply: "Jooey, the Kangaroo, A.I.F., 1941."

NX55915

HIGH above the Mediterranean, among the terraced mountain-sides and olive groves of Biblical days, Australians who fought in the Syrian campaign halted after the signing of the armistice. The ferocious, though short fighting had been made worse by a summer sun as fierce as Australia's. Bronzed, battle tired bodies were stretched under the cool shade of the olives and bathed morning and night in spring-fed streams.

Life became idyllic. In the cool of the evening troops wandered through the picturesque mountain villages and relaxed in the open-air caf6s before returning to their beds under the stars. After this rest there would be work, but the languor which the heat produced made even thinking about it tedious. Under such circumstances it was difficult to imagine the same country bitterly cold. When Syrians talked of snow the Australians were skeptical, but as the sun went farther south and bleak winds began to blow, incredulity waned and the army of occupation began to look to its Balaclava caps. Firewood supplies were investigated, clothing stores restocked, and the tents and huts which were rapidly springing up made draught proof.

"Snow Bound In Syria". Australian units in the Lebanese mountains became snow-bound for days at a time during their severe winter there. The scene at Aley, within sight of the Mediterranean, where the clearing of the snow covered road to Aamascus was directed by Australian engineers. By B3/59

A few days before Christmas the snows came, gale-driven with a force that stung exposed faces and sent even the most hardy scurrying for shelter. Within an hour all the higher peaks and plains of the Lebanese mountains were covered, transforming open, inviting landscapes into bleak, arctic-like wastes. But it was not until Christmas Eve that the falls became general and heavy. The gale abated, but the snow fell incessantly hour after hour until even the needles of the pine-trees became hidden in the mantle of white.

Cautiously the Australians-most of them having their first experience of snow ventured out; but within a few hours yells of delight echoed throughout every camp as snowballs found their targets with increasing accuracy.

The first atmosphere of gloom changed to one of carnival. This was fun, and it was Christmas - a Christmas to be spent in traditional surroundings.

While most were reveling in those first few hours of snow, transport drivers on supply lines from Beirut were battling with their first snow-country problem. Thousands of turkeys for dinner on the morrow had to be taken across the ice-covered mountain roads to unit cookhouses. All Christmas Eve and into the early hours of Christmas morning they felt their way in low gear over the mountain passes that their comrades could have their Christmas dinner poultry. Every order was fulfilled.

The passing of what was probably the happiest Christmas any man could spend away from his folk brought the serious side of army life in snow country to the fore.

Considering the short notice at which Syria had been occupied and the fact that previous camps had been in comparatively hot climates, the Australians had weathered the first days of snow remarkably well.

But heavier falls were to test their preparedness and resourcefulness to the full.

There was a shortage of firewood, but Australians in many areas overcame that by constructing stoves from old oil drums in such a way that old sump oil could be burnt at a temperature that made the drums red hot. Where sufficient sump oil was not available, crude oils had to be substituted. In some cases Malariol, an oil for spreading on swamps to prevent the breeding of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, was used in the stoves. But warmth was the first necessity of the troops, and it was considered reasonable to use any oil which was not vital for maintaining transport.

As the snow became heavier roads became impassable, thus disorganizing communications and lines of supply. In many cases whole units became snowbound for days at a time, but the position was never allowed to become serious.

Snow ploughs, under the control of engineers, cleared one-way traffic lanes over the mountain roads, and members of provost companies regulated the flow of traffic. Gangs of men were put to work with shovels, and by combined effort and rapid organization, communication was re-established and thereafter maintained.

In many parts snow was banked up at the side of the lanes to a height of eight feet. Heavier transport frequently had only a matter of inches' clearance at either side.

Light aid detachments patrolled the roads, using their specially equipped vans to rescue vehicles which had skidded off their courses.

Here and there heavy lorries which had capsized had to be righted and dragged up steep, slippery banks, but the road patrols never complained and never had to admit defeat.

Back in vehicle parks, drivers were puzzling out how to overcome the effects of cold on their engines. Each fall covered their hoods and piled snow a foot deep on their bonnets. The first fall caught a few unawares, with the result that the water in the engines had frozen overnight and cracked the engine blocks. Early morning starting, too, was a problem, but that was soon solved by keeping at least one vehicle warmed up so that others could be towed for starting.

These same movement problems have stopped armies experienced in snow from operating in other parts of the world. True, the Australians were not called on to fight in snow, but the way they so rapidly and efficiently adapted themselves from extremes of heat to extremes of cold augured well for their success had they been called on to fight at that time. In less than a week they had become snow wise, and with the improvisation for which Australians are famous, had found ways to keep roads clear and traffic on the move with a minimum of hindrance.

With these traffic problems were being overcome, front line men were equally busy with their problems. At the time the snows came they were busy with defence works and general preparation for any battle that might have eventuated.

Work had to continue, and at the same time small arms, guns, and ammunition had to be protected and preparation made to keep them dry on the move, if necessary.

Infantrymen experimented with home-made snow shoes and improvised toboggans to carry equipment.

Nothing was left to chance. just as their comrades had adapted themselves to the sands of Libya, so these men adapted themselves to the snows of Syria.

The Australian command, immediately realizing the need for some form of mobile infantry in snow country, formed the nucleus of a ski patrol from Australians with experience of skiing. At the Cedars, one of the show places of the Lebanon, the ski patrol had its training camp, and in a short time had built up a force ready to take the field under Syria's most trying conditions.

First and foremost with every Australian soldier when the snows came in Syria was the question of adapting himself and his equipment to the new conditions. But circumstances were such at the time that he also had ample opportunity of observing and appreciating the things about him. With the possible exception of Greece, the Lebanese mountains under snow were the most magnificent scenery of his experience, and even though he may have suffered some hardships, the memory will be long and pleasant.

"SX7240"

SKI PATROL
0VER the long white hills they go, Whish of the ski and spray of snow; Death cannot halt for anything, Death cannot wait for early spring. Death in the snow is soft and sweet blanket warm, a pristine sheet, drowsy morphine, heavy shroud, The fleeting tombstone of a cloud. Theirs is a world of lonely things, frightened fox, a whirr of wings, stifled echo through the trees, The eerie whisperings of the breeze. Onward they glide, in search of life, Rucksack and rifle, compass, knife, Theirs is no mountain health resort; True, this is snow-but death the sport. Lebanon, January 1942. NX52009"