Chapter 6 This was Tarakan, Leave Fever; Retribution; Over Eager; Amphibious Op

THIS WAS TARAKAN

It's dark. There are sleeping forms on the deck, but no shadowy outlines show where they lie. They are like boulders beneath your feet as you stagger through the belly of the night and clamber your way to the rail. You can see nothing.

Yes, you can. There! Over on the starboard side mark the two fires winking and the flicker of rising and falling flame. That's it. That's Tarakan. And those are burning oil tanks the Japs have destroyed.

Wait and watch the dark lose shape. The light seeps in, though you aren't aware of that: you see only the ghosts of cruisers against the background of a paler curtain. You see them guide the convoy through the channel and scatter to their sea patrols. They are your outer protection.

Then the scramble. You haven't time to gaze shorewards now, though as you tear around the deck to your quarters you do see the nippled breast of Borneo. Those are real hills over there.

Grab your gear . . . report to your net station . . . climb down the scrambling net with your weapons and pack . . . below the assault boats are waiting to take you ... and yonder is Tarakan!

Now you can see it as you chum through the oily waters to Lingkas. It's low, it's flat. Nipa palm swamps stretch in from the shore and to the right are a couple of piers and a few battered oil tanks. The first fires you saw are still burning....

Never, until this morning of the 1st of May, 1945, had you known such a barrage as the one thundering now. You've known most of them too: Tobruk, Alamein, Lae . . . you knew all those. But now the world is wild with sound and bell lives in the air, on the ground, on the water. Somehow it seems that the world itself is sound, magnified and intensified until time must be conquered by it. There is no time; there is only now and the unbelievable roar of the barrage.

A dozen destroyers are arranged in tactical positions along the foreshore. They begin to steam slowly and their five-inch guns open up. Hundreds of shells pour ashore and where they alight flame and debris vomit from the ground. Smaller guns are firing and you see the tracer running in in little saffron bursts. You see the rockets arc through the air; you hear the dull thud of mortars punctuating the sharper bursts; and always the five-inch shells crash and thunder along the beach.

Above, the twin-tailed silver fighters tumble in the sky ...

Flight after flight of R.A.A.F. Liberators roar into the rising pall of dust and flying ruin. In pattern they splash hundreds of heavy bombs along the beachhead, and the whole waterfront for miles disappears behind the erupting havoc they cause. There is no Lingkas now, no island of Tarakan. Ahead is only a curtain of smoke! A salvo of bombs bits an ammunition dump ... the smoke blasts outward, flame licks through it and the sea seems to tilt like a tipped table.

Four long plumes of smoke decorate the sky. They trail down to where more oil tanks are burning ...

Dimly you begin to realize that the barrage is receding. The Liberators have gone, their duty done. The destroyers are still pumping shells, hut the barrage is creeping inland.

Propellers churn the water and the boats move to the shore. Into the acrid haze you thrust and race towards the beach.

But that was days ago, wasn't it? Now you're bearded and muddy, your clothes are sodden with sweat. Lingkas is far behind you.

Not far, if you think of distance; far only if you think of achievement. Men have died to get you here. But you're here-you're one of the first Australians to invade Dutch territory.

There's been fighting, heavy fighting, on Tarakan. There'll be more of it. The Japs are just ahead there on Janet, Freda and Margy. Low hills thrust from the centre of the island in a riot of jungle where you can't see more than a dozen yards when the ground is level. The tracks are death-traps with always the slow knocking of a woodpecker awaiting you. Alert with your gun, you look over to Freda. You can't see anything at the moment.

But there have been other moments....

Remember the airstrip. Burn it into your brain and never forget it. You couldn't do that, could you?

The road is mined. Like the barrage you'd never imagined before, you hadn't thought that earth could be so thick with death. Never in the Pacific had there been such minefields, never in the desert. Sea mines, aerial bombs, depth charges, anti-personnel bombs: they were buried at intervals of a few yards. There was that Matilda tank. It ran over one and the earth rocketed; the tank was flung twenty feet into the air to fall a shattered wreck.

One of your mates trod on a 75-millimetre shell which was buried with only the detonator showing. There was nothing you could do but throw a gas cape over what was left and leave him....

From the hill you are looking down on the airstrip. Looking only for the brief moment you may raise your head! Long trails of smoke snake down the sky where the artillery is registering. Beyond the field is another ridge. There are the Japs and here is the spitting lead. You bear it whine around you and your bead comes down for cover. Mortars blast above you and offshore the Navy is pounding hell on that ridge.

Down the muddy hill behind you the wounded go on stretchers. Their moans send you cold on this day of equatorial beat. One, still able to walk, falls and lies flat in the mud without stirring.

You go on firing mechanically; yet there is fury in your throat and hatred in your heart....

Remember many things. The Japs who infiltrated at night with spears. Long poles with cut-down bayonets sharpened and lashed to the ends. Vicious, silent weapons they were. On patrols in New Guinea once you laughed when you spoke of the Man with the Breadknife, the Japanese officer who, you all swore, claimed the privilege of mutilating the wounded with his sword. But you don't laugh at the flung spears whistling in the dark.

Remember the Jap who went through to the field ambulance one night holding in his arms a suicide bomb. Others had carried these 75-millimetre shells equipped with three second fuses for use as grenades, had thrown them at tanks and slid them down hills on wires against advancing troops; but none had used them against wounded men lying in hospital. This one hurled the shell into a ward where soldiers were lying. . . .

Remember Tarakan town where men fought and died in the streets, where the Japs burned the bridges and forced the tanks into the swamps. Remember the snipers, the tunnelled nests on Tarakan Hill and the enemy firing the town at night with barrels of oil while he fed fresh fuel down a pipe to the flames.

You couldn't forget these, could you?

Here are the Liberators again, heading for the triangle of Freda, Janet and Margy. Behind them you can see the Lightnings circling and weaving and waiting their turn.

The heavy bombers wheel in low and make their run. There is a clicking sound as 5oopound bombs leave the planes and you see the black cylinders slowly falling through the air. Down goes your head again. You must keep it down. The moment of waiting is a year but then there is the ring and crash as they land on target along the ridge and viciously rip into the belly of the earth.

There was that day along Snags Track which led from Pamoesian to Sesavip oilfields.

The Japs held a central length of the track and patrols were fingering around his posts. They were there . . . but exactly where?

The forward scout found the answer. A Juki opened fire and with two others he fell wounded. The others crawled to cover; the scout lay in the open. He called back and refused assistance.

The enemy had him covered and he refused to sacrifice his mates. A Bren-gunner was sent to a flank and a shout went forward to the wounded man to dive when the burst opened. He did . . . right into the bullets meant for the Japs. The gunner rose in panic . . . the Juki cut him down.

The Lightnings are following the Liberators with flame bombs and, grimly now, for your moment is coming, you mark the belly tanks turning and falling, gathering momentum as they plunge to earth.

They burst ... the heat fans you as flames run along the feature and the smell of burning volatile spirit bears back as it licks along the ground.

Clutch your gun now, soldier! You're moving in.

Maybe there'll be other fighting. There will be; you're sure of that. You know your war and you know the plan it takes. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard.

You'll accept it whichever way it comes.

Sometimes it's extra hard. You can never be sure of the degree of that. You can only gauge events by the campaigns which have been yours. You've heard tales of Arawe, Tarawa and Guadalcanal....

But this was Tarakan!

"QX-----"

LEAVE FEVER

Now I tell you the straight stuff," said the C.O.'s batman, Tom Gregson, so that everyone in the mess could hear him: "She's on!"

And we all gathered round his table. "She's on," he repeated mysteriously, and stabbed a chop.

Of course, if any of the other batmen had made such a leave announcement-but then no one would. Life is very cheap in wartime.

And leave is very scarce.

But this was Tom Gregson speaking-the C.O.'s man. An omniscient creature, so rare he is rationed one to a unit. A man whose interpretations of events inside the colonel's tent are not to be questioned.

So you can see why all laws are stilled, and why we are all frozen to silence and hang, on his every word with the blind credulity of a Trojan for a Jove.

"I have previously told you," he continued, speaking with a certain amount of chop in his voice, "that the Old Man has been storing his Craven As in the bottom of his trunk-"

"You were speaking of leave, I think," muttered George Childs.

"And I still talk of leave," said Tom, glaring at the intruder. "But of course if you want to be smart--"

He held his fire for a moment as a warning to others who might rashly interrupt. "Well, as I was sayin-it's a sure sign. It worked in Syria, it worked in Finschhafen, and it'll work up here at the wrong end of Australia. When the Old Man starts rolling his own, and stacking the Craven As in the trunk, we're as good as blowin' the suds down south--"

"How soon would you say, Tom?" asked one of the cooks who had crept into the mess.

Tom scratched his head. "Well, let me see now, Rocky. I bought him four ounces of the makin's the last two Sat'dys." He wrinkled his brow in deliberation. "If he comes again this week, you can say it's a home job by the end of the month. She's on," he added pontifically, and renewed negotiations with his chop.

Saturday came round. White belts and shiny boots glittered in the mess. There was an expectant air as Tom entered and took his seat.

We sensed there was something wrong the way he slumped there. His face was lined, and his usually pallid cheeks were heightened with an unhealthy atebrin yellow.

"Seen a ghost?" George Childs asked him.

Tom came to his feet, slowly, reluctantly. His shirt hung limply about him. "She's off," he said chokingly and sat down again.

Pressed for details, he related: "The Old Man is back on the Craven As-going through 'em at three packets a day. There's nothing ahead but blood, sweat, sand and tears." And, as if to emphasize his point, a lone tear parachuted to his plate.

There was no use asking further questions. The die was cast. The Oracle had failed. Leave was finished.

The old routine was on again. Carefully nursed leave trousers were soon spattered with grease. Boots turned their toes up, hungry for boot polish.

And then, from out of the blue it came. Official. Straight from the Orderly Room. NXs and VXs on Monday, others on Wednesday. In the flurry of excitement poor old Tom Gregson was forgotten.

But Tom's loss of prestige had rankled deep in his heart. He rose that evening, as though to make a statement.

"Sit down, dad," someone yelled.

"Do you think we're going on leave, Tom?" another bawled derisively.

Tom was unruffled. "O.K., smart alecks," he said gruffly. "I only want to explain. We all make mistakes-"

"Give him a go! Give him a go!"

"You see," Tom said seriously. "I was dead right, after all. You can't go past the signs. They're foolproof. What I said about the Old Man cleaning up his Craven As was true enough." He seemed to swell in size. "But what I couldn't be expected to know was that he had sneaked six cartons of Chesterfields into his box. I found 'em there this morning."

And with great dignity he sat down.

"NX98926"

RETRIBUTION

Kurio was a kanaka. In island parlance that meant that he was a bush native-a free being who was not governed by the wills and laws of white men.

Kurio was quite happy with his primitive way of living. He knew no other and he hunted wild pig, fished in the fast-running streams, and cared for his garden of kau-kau with a light heart. That garden was Kurio's pride and joy. It was the biggest field anywhere on the banks of the Puriata and a constant source of envy to his village brethren. Each year it paid him handsome dividends in tobacco and other goods of trade and, as kanaka values go, Kurio was a rich man.

Then the Japs came. They landed on Kurio's island and pushed inland and, among their many conquests, seized the string of vegetable gardens belonging to the Mokokolo tribe and commenced to tend and develop them for their own use.

Kurio and his fellow tribesmen did not adopt a passive role. They returned to their gardens by little-known paths, and in broad daylight and under cover of night waged their own type of warfare. Many a Jap sentry died with a knife in his back or an arrow from a hard-drawn bow.

But the Nip did not relinquish his holdings.

Instead he doubled his sentries and reinforced his "army of occupation", and intruders were met with a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire. Native weapons were of no avail against such a display of armed strength, and with black hatred in their hearts, the men of the Mokokolo returned to their Marys and ''lapoons" and moved with them deeper into the jungle away from the hated invader.

Twelve months passed, and the little brown men from Japan stayed on in the gardens and basked in the glow of their stolen security.

The tide of war had passed them by and they become just another garrison force on another Pacific island. Life was indeed good.

Then came the new year, and with it came to the ears of the Mokokolo, tribe, by bush telegraph and messenger, news of the coming "soldier boy from Australee". Kurio and people were not greatly interested until mission boys sought them out, and sitting cross-legged around their campfires at night, told them tales of the men from "big fella island", the reason for their coming, their abundant supplies of rice and "bullemakau', and of their hatred for the Japan-man which eclipsed even their own. The men of the Mokokolo were impressed. Here was their long-awaited chance to regain what rightly belonged to them, to combine with their unexpected ally and to oust the hated invaders for ever from their holdings.

Kurio and his tribesmen bided their time and before many more weeks had passed, word came through with a runner from the Nargovissi that a force of Australians were encamped on the upper reaches of the Puriata, only a few hours' walkabout from the Mokokolo's old hunting ground. The time had come. The opportunity long awaited by the kanakas was near at hand, and Kurio set out, accompanied by two score able-bodied warriors on their mission of retribution.

The bivouac site of the Australians was on a slight ridge overlooking the river. They were a portion of a commando squadron sent on ahead of the main body, and although their primary consideration was to spy out the land and reconnoitre the area, they were not averse to adding a few more Nips to their rapidly growing tally of "kills". In Army vernacular they were what is known as a "fighting reconnaissance".

Kurio's fast-moving party located the Australian camp just as the sun's first rays were tipping the distant mountain ranges, and directed to the commanding officer's tent by a curious sentry they filed in from the jungle, each looking about him with wide-open eyes for were not these the soldier boys from far off "Australee" who had come here determined to kill all Japan-man on the island. To, the Australians, the kanakas presented an equally absorbing study. None of them was tall, but they were exceedingly wiry. Standing there looking about them with the slanting rays of the sun glinting on their ebony bodies and multi-coloured lap-laps, they presented a formidable picture, enhanced two-fold by the collection of weapons they carried - bows, with yard-long arrows tipped with fish-bone, knives, spears, and a plentiful sprinkling of Japanese long-barreled "muskets".

At one time in his past, Kurio had forsaken his native jungle for a brief period and become a mission boy on the coast. The life, however, did not please him greatly, and after spending a year there he returned to his village, automatically reverting to the rank of kanaka. Such was the custom. A native working for white men became a "boy", but once back with his village he was a kanaka again. During his period of mission life, Kurio had acquired a knowledge of pidgin, and thus he addressed the commanding officer and ably imparted, by word and gesture, the information that four hours' walkabout from their camp were "four fella ten" (forty) Japan-man. More Interrogation followed, with the result that half an hour later a strongly armed force of twenty men in jungle greens filed out of the little camp on their mission preceded by their eager guides.

Four hours later, following the general course of the river, the patrol halted and melted into the undergrowth either side of the track. Two of their number went forward with two of the natives on a short reconnaissance of the big garden, only a few hundred yards ahead, and hidden from their view by the usual thick foliage and vines. Half an hour later the "recce" party returned and reported. The time of the day was unsuitable for the attack as the Nips were scattered all over the garden, occupied in their various jobs.

There was also a party of them down on the river fishing, and an unknown number in the three huts. There were no sentries posted, but they all had either rifles or muskets close to hand. The patrol, led by the natives, retired into the jungle a few hundred yards off the track, and cooked their dinner by a small creek. Sentries were posted and the remainder reclined on their capes. It was to be a dawn attack and until then their only responsibility was to remain well hidden and quiet.

The hours passed fitfully, each man taking his turn at sentry, and it wanted one hour to dawn as the guard on duty silently woke each sleeping figure.

Without a sound apart from a few whispered instructions, the patrol moved out on to the track in single file and after a few minutes' walking emerged suddenly from the undergrowth and surveyed the open space of the gardens extending to the river.

Visibility was limited, and it was too dark as yet to distinguish the huts which were at the lower end. Kurio, however, knew every inch of the area, and followed by the long file of silent men he led the way unerringly forward.

Suddenly he halted, and held a whispered consultation with the leading scout who was immediately in his rear. The patrol crouched down and Kurio crept forward on his own. To their straining ears came the sound of a dull thud and Kurio reappeared wiping the blade of his knife. They moved forward again, stepping over the dead sentry, and suddenly before them in the darkness loomed the bulky outline of the huts. Each man knew his allotted task, and without a sound they went right and left to form an arc facing the huts and quietly settled down in their positions to await the dawn. It was not long in coming. The darkness faded and colour appeared in the sky to the cast. Objects became clear in the half-light, and the waning blackness revealed the huts thirty yards away where forty sons of Nippon awaited their death.

The Bren-gunner, lying full length behind a log, tightened his grip on the butt and slid the safety catch on to automatic. His opening burst was the agreed-upon signal, and squeezing the trigger slowly, he opened up, sweeping the huts from end to end In a sustained burst. Immediately to either side of him, twenty weapons opened fire as well, and poured a deadly hail of lead into the buildings. The early morning quietude was rudely shattered as rifles cracked and Owens chattered out their grim messages.

Only by a miracle could anyone remain alive before that barrage.

Suddenly the firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun and silence reigned once again. In the first light of dawn it was hard to imagine that the peaceful scene had just seen the enacting of a vicious slaughter.

Five minutes passed and nothing stirred.

Slowly from their positions crept half a dozen of the raiders and advanced cautiously on the huts, covered by the weapons of their watchful comrades. Each man made his way to a doorway and peered in, weapons cocked in readiness for any show of treachery. But precautions were needless. In those huts lay forty dead Japs, sprawled out in grotesque attitudes of death. The majority of them were still beneath their blankets and had died in their sleep.

Swiftly the commandos ransacked the huts, removing everything of value. Swords, rifles, maps and documents were carried outside, and Kurio and the natives hailed with glee the sight of pannikins and blankets, which they accepted with alacrity. Without further delay the patrol set out on the return journey leaving two of their number to follow, after setting fire to the tinder dry huts.

At a junction in the track two hours distant they halted.

To the left lay the way to Kurio's village -this was where they parted.

The black man confronted the commanding officer and gravely shook hands in white man's farewell, then turned on his heel and passed from view round a bend in the track followed by his tribesmen.

Kurio was happy again - his vengeance was complete.

"NX72755"