Chapter 9 Man overboard; I know how it is; Colonial ships at war; Brigadier....

MAN OVERBOARD!

ANY sailors and ex-sailors will remember the occasion well, especially if they happened to comprise the complement of Australian landing ship Manoora on the moonless tropic night of 1 September 1943. On this night Manoora was steaming in company with an American task force. Position was dead north of Dutch New Guinea with the Equator passed over some time in the dog watches. The task force was indirectly heading for the Japanese-held Halmaheras for the amphibious invasion of Morotai.

The force was still two days from its objective when the incident of which I write happened.

Manoora was crammed to capacity with American troops. It had often been the topic of conversation down in the sailors' mess decks - what a very poor chance of survival a soldier would have if he had the misfortune to fall overboard some dark night when it would be impossible for a troop transport of the Manoora's dimensions even to stop engines owing to the danger of collision with other ships in the column.

So it was with mixed feelings that the first cruising watch that night heard the alarm raised: "Man Overboard".

The after gun crews' lookouts who reported hearing someone shouting far down below in the ocean as the ship slipped past had the presence of mind to throw overboard a lifebuoy with a small flare attached.

Manoora had to continue on her way until the minute glimmer of the calcium flare was lost in the thick darkness far astern. The matter was reported immediately by T.B.S. radio circuit. As a tribute to the Allied regard for human life it is recorded here that the task-force commander detailed off one of the screening destroyers, U.S.S. Stack, to search for this unfortunate speck of humanity floating somewhere far astern.

But it was a vastly different story to A.B. Raymond Reginald Moon, who was by far the most interested in that floating speck of humanity by virtue of the fact that it was himself in person.

According to the later official report he had bedded down for the night in his usual place on the promenade deck and had dropped off to sleep. When he awoke it was to find himself fighting for breath beneath the water with the thud of the ship's propellers filling his eardrums. They almost sucked him into their vortex as they screwed past him.

His medical history sheet showed that he had been a somnambulist or in other words he was most likely sleepwalking when he went over the side. He shouted desperately again and again as the receding stem of Manoora quickly disappeared against the starlit horizon. He realized that they must have been aware of his plight by the small flare that had been tossed to him and was now floating a few hundred yards away. He knew that a lifebuoy should be attached to the flare so he quickly swam over to it - only to experience bitter disappointment. The cord attached to the lifebuoy had snapped and the lifebuoy was missing.

His will to survive was stronger than his despair at the realization of his almost hopeless position. He forced himself to swim well away from his only faint link with life - that faint flickering flame - because he remembered from pre-war fishing experience that artificial light is a strong attraction for sharks.

As hour slowly crawled after hour he swam around that drifting pinprick of light, keeping well out of its immediate vicinity, praying and hoping against hope that some miracle would happen and that he would be rescued. His many years' surfing experience at Bondi was one of the factors that contributed to his epic swim.

It was well into the early hours of next morning when the miracle that A.B. Moon had prayed for eventuated. U.S.S. Stack, after over four hours' criss-cross searching covering more than fifty miles of black ocean, had at last found her human needle in the Pacific haystack. By good fortune, expert dead reckoning, by guess or by God, have what will, they had sighted at last that tiny point of yellow flame.

To A.B. Moon it was the sweetest moment of his life to see a showering crest of phosphorescence caused by the destroyer's bow cutting through the dark water approaching him.

A heaving line was thrown and caught at the first attempt and he was quickly hauled on board U.S.S. Stack, which did not decrease her speed below nine knots during the pickup.

And so three days later the luckiest sailor in that Pacific task force rejoined his ship during the morning of the successful landing at Morotai. He was welcomed as one back from the dead by his shipmates who had not been informed of his subsequent rescue after he had been posted as "Missing at Sea". His kit and personal belongings had, according to naval custom, been packed and checked by the master-at-arms in readiness to be dispatched to his next of kin.

But the thousand to one chance had been beaten and A.B. Moon unpacked his own kit.

D. F. LLOYD (R.A.N.)

Let us glance back to the days when H.M.C. and H.M.V. were not respectively short prefix and short title for one of His Majesty's Canadian ships and a well-known gramophone company, but when they designated Her Majesty's Colonial Ship or, coming down to a specific colony, Her Majesty's Victorian Ship.

The year is 1884, a year not unimportant for the naval forces of the Australian colonies that then were, and also not without import for the Royal Australian Navy, at the time but a dream which was not to be realized until some years after Federation.

It was a year that saw an influx of naval strength to the colonies, and not Imperial naval strength at that, but Australian. For in 1884 South Australia acquired a navy in the shape of the cruiser 'Protector', the Victorians saw their squadron of two gunboats and a first-class torpedo boat-'Victoria', 'Albert', and 'Childers', arrive in Hobson's Bay, while their fleet was also enlarged by two second-class torpedo boats, 'Lonsdale' and 'Nepean'.

And in the same year three vessels left England for the Queensland Marine Defence Force, the gunboats Paluma and Gayundah under their own steam, the second-class torpedo boat Mosquito as cargo on board a steamer of the British India Company,

Thus was laid the first real foundation of a naval tradition in Australia. There had been spasmodic efforts before then. Hobson's Bay, for example, had harboured an earlier 'Victoria' and the turret ship 'Cerberus' which, arriving 1871 was, in her day, the most powerful ship in the Southern Hemisphere. And New South Wales had its Naval Brigade before 1884. But the ships which arrived in that year were the tangible core of the Royal Australian Navy idea, and the small band of enthusiasts who administered and manned them provided the spiritual drive and the human material that brought the Commonwealth naval forces into being with Federation and, later, backed by far-sighted statesmanship, produced the Royal Australian Navy.

But 1884 held a greater importance. It was the period of the Sudan War, in regard to which the Australian colonies made an historic gesture, to be repeated time and time again, to the Mother Country.

In December of that year James Anthony Froude embarked in the Aberdeen Line steamship 'Australasian', Captain "Sandy" Simpson, London to Australian ports. In his Oceana, or England and Her Colonies, Froude describes the arrival in Hobson's Bay in January 1885:

"When 1 woke and went on deck we were alongside the wharf at Williamstown, with Melbourne straight before us five miles off, and the harbour reaching all the way to it. In my life 1 have never been more astonished. Adelaide had seemed a great thing to me, but Melbourne was a real wonder. Williamstown is the port, from which vessels outward bound take their departure. The splendid docks there were choked with ships loading and unloading. Huge steamers, five, six or seven thousand tons, from all parts of the world were lying round us or beside us. In the distance we saw the smoke of others. Between us and the city there seemed scarcely to be room for the vessels anchored there; from their masthead or stern the English flag blowing out proud and free, and welcoming us to Australia as to a second home."

Captain Simpson was well known in the Australian trade, and later to figure in one of the more spectacular wrecks on the Australian coast when the Pericles, under his command, struck an uncharted rock and Sank, fortunately without loss of life, near the South West Breakers not far from Albany.

On her return voyage to England in March 1885, the 'Australasian' carried a part of the military force, the balance of the contingent being in s. s. Iberia, dispatched from New South Wales to the Sudan.

"The raising of the New South Wales contingent,' says Mr. L. Cope Cornford in The Sea Carriers was the work of Mr. William Bede Dalley, Attorney-General and Acting Premier, and marks the first occasion upon which a self-governing colony aided Great Britain. . . . Here again was demonstrated the power of the old combination, the Navy keeping open the sea, the Merchant Service ready at need."

Protector had meanwhile arrived in Adelaide, and was to witness the departure of the Sudan Contingent from South Australian waters. In his reminiscences of Protector the late Admiral Sir William Creswell, who was for a long time the cruiser's commanding officer, recalls how:

"Just before I joined, the Sudan Contingent passed through our waters, and Protector left Port Adelaide with a large party representing the Government, Parliament, the Army, and prominent citizens to meet the Sudan troopship, and cheer it on its way. It was a very rough trip down, and in the calmer waters of Antechamber Bay there was rapid convalescence for all. With anticipation of the horrors of the return journey, this experience lent a note of pathos to the farewell."

Earlier than this, however, back in the previous year, another Australian colony Victoria, had rallied to Britain's side in the Sudan with naval assistance.

In February 1884 the Victorian gunboats Victoria and Albert and the torpedo boat Childers sailed from England for Australia, the squadron being under the command of Captain A. Brodrick Thomas, R.N in Victoria. with Lieutenant Robert M. Collins of the Victorian Navy commanding Albert and Lieutenant T. H. Martyn Jerram, RN, commanding officer of Childers. Lieutenant Jerram later, as Vice Admiral Sir Martyn Jerram, commanded the 2nd Battle Squadron at Jutland, flying his flag in H.M.S. King George V.

Childers left England some days before the gunboats, being instructed by Captain Thomas to "make the best of her way to Gibraltar....my object in sending Childers ahead was to enable her to arrive in the Mediterranean in a much shorter time than would have been possible had she accompanied the gunboats. This her great speed"-she did nineteen knots on her trials-"enabled her to do and consequently she ran less risk of encountering bad weather."

The gunboats sailed from Portsmouth on 14 February after receiving a mark of Royal favour. "Shortly before leaving England Her Gracious Majesty the Queen was pleased to present her portrait to Victoria. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was also pleased present his portrait to Albert." The two reached Malta on 26 February, finding Childers there on arrival.

While in Malta Captain Thomas received two telegrams from the Victorian Agent General in London. The first related to an incident in the voyage of Childers from Portsmouth to Gibraltar. Off Vigo the torpedo boar ran short of coal, whereupon "Lieutenant Jerram spoke s. s. Pathan, and applied for a small amount, which however, the Captain of the Pathan would not grant, but kindly offered to tow Childers through the Strait of Gibraltar, an offer that was gratefully accepted.

The Agent-General now telegraphed, however, that the owners of the Pathan had made a claim against the Government of Victoria for this assistance. In reporting this matter Captain Thomas said that he failed "to understand on what ground the company can possibly make any claim against the Government of Victoria, neither can 1 discover anything in the Merchant Shipping Act that can render the Government liable for what was given and received as a simple act of courtesy."

For, as he pointed out, "the safety of Childers was in not endangered by running short of coal. She, being fitted with a special feathering propeller and being fully rigged is quite capable of making an ocean voyage under sail alone, a fact that has already been proved by two second-class torpedo boats of Messrs Yarrow, of much smaller dimensions that made the passage from England to South America under sail alone".

The second telegram contained the promise of action. It instructed Captain Thomas to sail Childers to join the British naval force under Rear-Admiral Sir William Hewett, V.C., K.C.B., K.C.S.I., Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies station, who was at Suakin in the Red Sea participating in the Sudan campaign and himself to follow as soon as possible with the two gunboats.

Captain Thomas dispatched Childers accordingly. 1 instructed Lieutenant Jerram to call at Suda Bay in the Island of Candia for coal, and then to proceed, and report himself to Rear-Admiral Hewett." Thus did a ship of the Victorian Colonial Navy blaze the trail for the ships of the R.A.N. which, in 194 1, knew "Suda Bay in the Island of Candia" as a harbour of doubtful refuge and a target for German dive bombers during the days of the Battle of Crete.

The squadron arrived at Suakin too late to be of any assistance. In a letter addressed to the Premier and Treasurer of Victoria from that port on 21 March, Captain Thomas wrote:

"I have the honour to inform you that arrived at this port on the 18th instant with Albert in company, Childers having arrived three days previously, and reported myself to Rear-Admiral Sir W. Hewett, the Commander-in-Chief . I regret to say that since the recent victories of the Imperial troops there is no further necessity for our presence with the fleet. I shall leave here tomorrow, the 22nd instant, and continue my voyage to Melbourne."

With this letter went forward one from the Commander-in-Chief in Euryalus at Suakin: "I have much pleasure in conveying to you for the information of the Victorian Government the thanks of the British Board of Admiralty for the generous offer of the services of the ships under your command. 1 have the honour to inform you that they will not, however, now be required though I have to thank you for their presence at Suakin."

Thus ended the first essay of Australian ships with warlike intent in the Middle East. The squadron resumed its voyage to Melbourne via Aden, Colombo, the Straits of Sunda, the Java and Arafura Seas, and Torres Strait, an area known and fought over by many ships and men of the Royal Australian Navy in the last world war.

The squadron's voyage was without incident although, at any rate for the personnel of Childers, with considerable discomfort. Much of the way on the long passages she was towed by Victoria. Of the conditions on board her Captain Thomas wrote:

"Great praise is especially due to Lieutenant Jerram commanding the torpedo boat Childers. He has most ably and zealously performed his duties often under very trying circumstances. His energy has surmounted every difficulty and he has been fortunate in having been seconded and assisted by such excellent officers as Lieutenant Williams and Mr. Stewart, Chief Engineer, and also by the Petty Officers and crew, all of whom have borne the close confinement, great heat, especially when under steam in the tropics, and constant drenchings, with the greatest good humour and without the slightest complaint."

The squadron arrived at Melbourne on 25 June 1884, after a voyage of 135 days and 13,323 miles, covering the course of which Victoria's engines made 10,415,380 revolutions.

Sixteen years later it was Protector's turn to be the Australian representative with a British fleet on an overseas venture. The Boxer Rising was the occasion, and when the Colonial Office suggested to the New South Wales Government that three British ships of the Auxiliary Squadron on the Australian Station might be sent, the New South Wales Government immediately agreed and, in addition, offered a contingent of the Naval Brigade, while South Australia offered Protector and Victoria offered two hundred men with field guns.

The Aberdeen Line again figured in connection with transport. Again was demonstrated the power of "the old combination-the Navy keeping open the sea, the Merchant Service ready at need".

This time the ship concerned was the Salamis, commanded by Captain A. H. H. G. Douglas. Many Australian soldiers of the 1914- 18 war will remember him. His ship at that time, the Euripides, was with the first convoy which left Australia on 1 November 1914, and he carried many thousands of troops before his retirement towards the end of the war. In the Salamis in 1900 he carried two hundred men from Victoria under Captain Tickell, RN, and two hundred and sixty from New South Wales under Captain Francis Hixson, R.N.

Protector was a worthy Australian representative in those days of infant colonial navies. In the nineteen-twenties Admiral Creswell recalled her as, to use a land analogy, "one of those rare 'good 'uns', a sturdy, well-bred cob, equal to any journey, and always pulling up fresh and ready for another the next day, and always ready 'with a dash of foot' if called upon".

For her size, 960 tons displacement, she carried the amazing armament of one 8-inch and five 6-inch breech-loading guns and four smaller Hotchkiss machine guns. When she was at Tientsin during the Boxer Rising Captain Jellicoe-later Commander-in-Chief at Jutland and Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe -said he wondered how they could have designed a ship of such small tonnage to carry such an armament.

On her arrival in South Australia in 1884 H.M.S. Nelson m-as flagship of the British Squadron on the station, and Admiral Creswell recalled at that time we could, excepting in heavy weather, out-steam and always (b some two or three thousand yards) out-range the great flagship on the station, Nelson, an armoured cruiser, many times Protector's weight of metal and about six times her size".

As South Australia's one-ship navy she went through some chequered times owing to the iron laws of economy and retrenchment'. Land boom, bad harvests, bank failures, all threatened her and seriously curtailed her activities and the building up of a body of personnel to man her. But with the return of better times and "with the help of willing reserve officers-Lieutenant-Commander C. J. Clare, Lieutenants Marshall. Smith, P. Weir, and others-the force gradually recovered a good deal of lost ground, and possibly more. We did far more sea work than we had ever done, as year by year there came a slight but welcome increase in the naval vote. The South Australian Navy of one ship was once again an active reality. The commander of a French cruiser remarked to me as we walked up Largs Pier on the great advantage of that number. 'South Australian Navy'? One sheep? Then you are not in any danger of collusions in your fleet.'

Captain Creswell, as he then was, had parted temporarily with Protector when he accepted an appointment from South Australia to Queensland in April 1900. But when the ship was accepted for service in China during that year he was sent in command. It was indeed a stroke of luck that brought me back into my own old force, every soul of whom I knew well. All had been trained under me. Many of the men 1 had known in their homes in the coast villages-Robe, Beachport, MacDonnell Bay. . . ."

On the China voyage Captain Clare did the navigating. He later did a great service for Australia when, as District Naval Officer in Western Australia in 1918, he submitted a proposal to the Naval Staff:

"The D.N.O. Fremantle has submitted a system of collecting naval intelligence from the Western Australian coast, and has divided the coast into areas. . . . The D.N.O. Fremantle proposes several persons in each area to report intelligence.

The list of reporters he proposed included postmasters, police officers, stock-route riders, station owners, residents, schoolmasters, lands rangers, settlers, and the nature of intelligence sought included all movements of foreign men of-war, merchantmen, aircraft, sounds of gunfire, suspicious visual signals, unauthorized W/T installations.

From this original proposal stemmed, by slow degrees, the Australian coast-watching service which, in the islands to the north and north-east of Australia, performed such signal service to this country and to the Allied cause in the Pacific during the last war. Of the work of its personnel in the islands Admiral Halsey said that the intelligence signalled by two coast watchers from Bougainville had saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal had saved the South Pacific.

Captain Clare, who went over to the Royal Australian Navy from the South Australian Navy died in Adelaide in retirement during the last war, in September 1940.

Protector and her crew suffered the vagaries of tropical weather in the typhoon season on the passage to China. Passing Manila the ship was racing a typhoon twelve hours astern of her. "Wind and sea were fairly strong and dead ahead, with a gloomy, threatening sky. Reduced speed meant the approach of the disturbing gentleman behind us, and I was not disposed to make his acquaintance". Clarkson, later a Member of the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board, and Engineer Vice-Admiral Sir W. Clarkson, drove, and the good little ship bored through it right up to a few hours from Hong Kong. All hatches had to be kept closed The funnel, the little ship's most commanding feature, radiated heat yards away from it; below, the temperature was hot to suffocation; on deck the relief was only too immediate; the half-drowning spray was heavy and continuous.

Alternations of this kind are usually rather damaging to health, but we were free from sickness and had precious little sleep. My cabin was a Kew forcing house. Yet nobody was one bit the worse. We are inured in Australia to heat waves and sudden breaking-up of droughts."

At Wei Hal Wei Protector met Terrible, commanded by Captain Percy Scott, from whom Captain Creswell profited by advice on various gunnery devices. But he was unable to put his information to practical use against the Boxers. On the day that Protector entered the Gulf of Pechili and arrived at Tientsin, the enemy forts at Shan-Hal-Kwan which were about to be attacked in force by all the Powers-suddenly capitulated, and the Boxer army retreated inland. "It is not," wrote Admiral Creswell, "in any wav certain that our arrival (there were some thirty other ships of war there) had any effect on the Boxer general's decision. There did not occur any opportunity of inquiring."

But Protector did succeed in surprising the officers of the British fleet. On joining the British fleet under Admiral Sir Edward Seymour at Tientsin, she was ordered to coal the following day, a Sunday, and asked to signal the number of men required to help. She replied: "None."

"The admiral asked me to dine that night on Centurion. He regretted the Sunday coaling, but it was imperative. Across the table to Captain Jellicoe, he said: 'You are sending him a strong working party, Jellicoe?".

"'He's declined them with thanks, sir.'

" Ho! Going to teach us how to coal, is he? Better send a committee of officers to see how he does it, Jellicoe.'

"This was very amusing. I kept my own counsel. Coaling was really our long suit'. I well knew that far the greater proportion of Protector's men were well used to working cargo in all kinds of ships, particularly coal cargoes. At 7 a.m. we were alongside the hulk. Our people had an inkling of what in the air, and at 1.30 we completed our coaling, and steamed from the hulk. It had been considered an all-day operation. As we swung clear the flagship made the commendation signal, 'Very well done.'

"So, the show being, over, Protector weighed for Hong Kong and home one November morning. Dido cheered us as we passed her in a rising gale, and her Scotch pipers played us out."

One is reminded of a later occasion, when H.M.A.S. Sydney, in July 1940, entered Alexandria Harbour after sinking the Italian Bartolomeo Colleoni. "Our berth was at the inner end of the harbour, a distance of about two miles from the boom, and as we moved down between ships of the fleet we were given a wonderful ovation-a *royal welcome', in fact. Every ship had cleared lower deck and as we passed gave us three terrific cheers followed by a burst of clapping and whistling. Naturally we were simply bursting with pride at such a stirring and heart-warming gesture and wouldn't have changed places with the King himself.

It is to be hoped that old Protector, and those builders of the R.A.N., from Admiral Creswell downwards, heard somehow and somewhere the echoes of that tribute. Their cup of payment would have been filled indeed.

And so back to Brisbane, where Captain Creswell received "a most kind private letter from Captain Jellicoe, in which he said, among other things of the South Australian contingent, that he had found Protector 'never sick or sorry, and always ready for a job of work'. That well describes the little ship itself."

Perhaps one might add that it well describes the ships and men of the Royal Australian Navy today. For the around had been well prepared, the seed truly sown, and the fruit has developed true to type, and in the spirit that inspired those early rallies to the side of Britain when occasion demanded.

Acknowledgment. The writer has helped himself generously to information contained in The Australian Encyclopaedia, Mr. L. Cope Cornford's The Sea Carriers, Lieutenant W. H. Ross's Stormy Petrel, and the Letters of Proceedings of H.M.V.S. Victoria, Admiral Sir William Creswell's Protector Reminiscences, in the Adelaide Register of June 1924, and Commander Norman S. Pixley's The Queensland Marine Defence Force, these last three having been kindly made available to him by Mr. George L. Macandie of Navy Office Melbourne. To all these grateful acknowledgment is made.

G. Hermon GILL (R.A.N).

THE BRIGADIER

The Brigadier went out into the veldt to do some reconnoitering, and, after his queer fashion, he rode alone.

He was a peculiar Brigadier, whose erratic performances would long since have earned him a passage home, if it had not been that they were always the causes of very brilliant effects, or the incidents of outstanding successes. From his habit of taking extraordinary risks, not a few distinguished officers prophesied an ultimate complete downfall that wasn't so very far off, either. In the meantime the Brigadier executed rapid and unexpected marches, captured laagers, took convoys, pacified districts, discovered buried guns and ammunition, and fought one or two dashing engagements to his own satisfaction, the delight of his troopers, and the pleasure of the mighty "K.", watching from Pretoria.

The day was warm and bright and clear - one of those fragrant days which winter in the High Veldt means - and the Brigadier reined in his horse on the crest of one of those slight rises which succeed one another in that part of Africa like a long ocean swell, and looked back to where his brigade of mounted rifles were bivouacked beside a narrow sluit. A big, dam shone in the sunlight below the camp, and fringes of horses watered round its edges.

He sat loosely in the saddle and lit his pipe. He was a hefty man - a younger-looking man than he was in fact-and seemingly a bright and happy one. His khaki tunic was faded and weather-stained. Nothing but the red tabs on his collar indicated rank. He wore a soft felt hat, with a brown puggaree, looped up on one side. Grey riding, breeches and brown leggings completed his attire - plain and simple, almost shabby, but well fitting and becoming.

The little blue-roan Basuto pony he was riding cropped the grass with energetic haste, and his rider gazed lovingly upon his men from afar off. Presently he picked up the reins, and rode down the outer slope. He left the outpost of a dozen men on the next rise, after having been summoned peremptorily by a sentry to come and give an account of himself; and, having done so-smiling and pleasant as always he headed out into the open veldt toward; the low purple chain of hills and kopjes that broke the skyline northward.

He passed a tree-bowered farmhouse on his right, whitewashed and gleaming in its blue green setting of tall eucalypti. A woman came out on the stoep and gazed after him. Nothing else happened. It wasn't always wise to pass farmhouses within rifle range, however peaceful the day might be. The most graciously innocent landscapes in South Africa were frequently pregnant with death and destruction, and it was a land wherein the only safe rule of existence was "watch thy neighbour as thyself.

The Brigadier rode on for an hour, came to another spruit and crossed it. He lingered among the wacht-en-beetje (Wait-a-bit) thorn bushes growing upon its farther side, and, with his binoculars, raked the veldt that rolled upward toward the hills. There was another farmhouse, and he could make out a horse tied to a tree. A little group of people clustered about a door at the end of one of the buildings. Cattle grazed upon the rise that ran gently up from the house.

The Brigadier took a small sketch-book from his pocket, and rapidly made rough notes and drawings of the hills and the farmhouse and the trees, marking ravines and gullies with heavy lines, and scribbling below each leaf on which he traced the contour of the land. It was one of the secrets of his success that he usually did his own scouting. He moved his troops quickly, but he always knew where he was moving to and how to get there. And that was the simplest and most neglected rule of South African warfare as practised by the British.

After he had finished his notes, he sat staring through his glasses, long and intently, at the Dutch homestead. As he looked, a man came riding from the farm - a man who had a rifle slung across his shoulders and led a spare horse behind him. The Brigadier watched him closely, uncertain as to whether he might be friend or foe, and determined to wait until he

could make sure. The man was heading for the drift across the spruit by which he himself had come there.

Suddenly, from the farm, came a single rifle shot. A tuft of white smoke lifted against the sombre green of the eucalyptus. The horseman paused and seemed to look round. Then, bending low in the saddle, he urged his steed to a gallop, dragging the other after him. Again the thin smoke floated upwards beside the farm, and again the rifle cracked. The rider was racing for his life. Rapidly he approached the drift. Four times again before he reached it came the sound of the rifle-the old-fashioned, loud crack which black powder makes, so different to the neat, slight, quick voice of the Mauser or Lee-Metford, with their higher and stronger explosive charges and smaller bores.

As the man came closer, the Brigadier saw that he was in khaki - was, indeed, one of the men from his own brigade, and that he rode an African pony of mean appearance but obvious staying power, whilst he led the best horse the Brigadier had seen for many months. As he raced into the thorn bushes, the fifth shot from the farmhouse struck the Brigadier's horse squarely between the eyes, so that it reared and fell over backwards, and presently was quite still and dead, after a few convulsive kicks.

The newcomer flung himself from the saddle and dragged the horses towards the Brigadier.

"Hold 'em! " he shouted. "Take a holt quick! I'll teach them lousy cows what's what. I'll learn, 'em not to offer a bloke coffee an' then try to plug him."

The man was furiously angry. In sheer surprise, the Brigadier took the reins and the halter-rope, and held the horses. He was consumed with curiosity as to what might be the sequel to this strange happening. The absurdity of a Brigadier holding horses for a trooper whilst he went into action didn't strike him at the moment. He forgot the relativeness of events in their absorbing interest.

The man rested his rifle in the fork of a little tree and, kneeling, began to shoot, and as he fired he swore and spat into the grass. The Brigadier seemed to recognize that this sole representative of his three mounted regiments was fighting a rearguard action, so he didn't interfere. He tied the horses to a tree, and took out his field-glasses again. The man's shooting was very rapid. Between each shot was the savage clicking and crashing of the breech-block. The Brigadier put his glasses to his eyes and focused them on the house.

He gazed a while and then gave vent to an exclamation of surprise.

"Damn my soul!" he said.

Dropping his glasses. he jumped to the man's side, and, seizing his right arm 'in an iron grip, pulled him roughly.

"Cease fire, you swine! " he cried. "There are only women there! What the -- hell do you mean by it! Drop that rifle, damn you!"

The man tore himself free and fired again, standing. The Brigadier promptly hit him below the ear. The man spun round and reeled, and tripped over the dead pony, dropping his weapon. Quick as lightning, the Brigadier sprang to the rifle and picked it up.

"Now!" he yelled, red with wrath. "Stand to attention! Stand to attention, and salute. Quick-d'ye hear! 'Shun!"

Then-for the first time, he seemed to recognize his Brigadier-the man rose up slowly, dazed and gaping, and mechanically went through the quaint and perfunctory exercise which the Australian soldier supposed to be a salute. His round face, with its fringe of scrubby beard, and wide-open mouth, was such a picture of dismay, and astonishment, and bewildered apprehension that the Brigadier couldn't refrain from smiling. It was characteristic of the Brigadier that he smiled in all situations and under circumstances that wouldn't move other men to mirth.

"My friend," he said, "you may consider yourself a prisoner."

The shooting from the farmhouse had ceased as soon as the reply to it had come from the scrub.

"Put MY saddle on that horse," ordered the Brigadier.

Mechanically the man obeyed him.

"Now, come on; ride beside me back to camp, and tell me what you have been doing this afternoon."

They mounted, and re-crossed the drift. The sun was on the edge of the world their shadows were scores of yards long.

"What's your name?" asked the Brigadier.

'Jimmy Norman-I mean Trooper Norman, sir-Appleby's Horse."

"And what's your game?"

"Me what, sir?"

"What have you been doing out here? Where did you get this horse? Why did those people shoot at you?"

"Well, y'see, sir - it was like this. We've been on half rations lately, so this mornin' I went out to see what I could pick up-what I might get a holt of."

"You went out looting,"

"Oh, no, sir-buyin' things."

"And did you buy this horse?"

"Well, yes, sir-in a way I bought him. Y'see, I come to that selection - you seen me gettin' away from it - and there was no one there but women - two old 'uns an' a girl 'bout my age. They were pretty civil, an' asked me in, an' give me a feed. They asked me all sorts of questions about you, an' the brigade, an' which way we was comin' when we marched again; and I told them".

"What did you tell them?"

"I seen what they wanted to find out. I seen this horse in th' stable, an' I seen a man's hat on th' sofa. So I dropped to what it was, an' filled 'em up with snake-yarns an' lies, an' all sorts o' fairy tales."

"And what about the horse', May I ask how he came into your possession?"

"I asked th' girl if they had any more like him. She says 'No. He was her own hack, she says. By an' by, I lets on I must be goin'. They asked me to have some coffee. Th' girl says she must give th' horse a drink. So I says, 'Lemme do it.' She out a halter, an' I put it on him, an' brought him out. When I seen him in th' daylight, I seen what an all-right horse he was. There was a man's saddle in th' stable. I took him to th' dam for a drink, an' when I was leadin' him back again, the idea suddenly come to me, 'Cripes! Wouldn't this feller do th' Brig well? He'd just suit him.'"

"Now, really!" said the Brigadier, chuckling. "Did you think that? Well, now, that was very kind and thoughtful of you."

"Yes, sir. I led him to where my own horse was tied up, an' while th' girl was inside gettin' th' coffee, I got on an' started off, without waitin' for my share of it."

"And I saw the rest?"

"Yes, sir. I hadn't got out fifty yards before them women started shootin' at me with an old Martini. It made me pretty mad, seein' how civil an' polite I'd bin all th' time-an' when I come to a bit o' cover, I couldn't help lettin' drive at 'em."

"I see. Well, you got off pretty lightly. Do you think they were trying to get information from you

"Yes. sir-they done their damnedest. If we go past that farm along th' main road t'morrer, I'll bet there'll be a commando waitin' for us in th' hills!"

"Well, trooper, you've done very good service. I can't forget that you went out in my interests. Seeing that the women are enemy women, and tried to lead you astray and make you betray our movements, I feel I'm justified in keeping this remarkably fine remount. If you come round to my cart when we get into the lines, my batman will give you a tot or two of rum. You needn't consider yourself a prisoner any longer. Now, I'm going to canter on. You'd better come slowly-your horse is knocked up. Report to me when you get in."

"Well damn my soul!" muttered Trooper Norman to himself, as the Brigadier cantered off. "Ain't he a -- doer?"

The Brigadier's new mount was the admiration of the brigade.

Next morning, before daylight, they moved silently out of camp, and at sunrise took a large Boer commando in the rear. And the day after it was read out in orders, amongst other items of information and command: "Trooper James Norman to be sergeant on probation, and to be attached to Brigade Headquarters for special service."

To Jimmy's C.O. the Brigadier said, "As you say, the man is probably the most accomplished horse-stealer amongst us-but he has common sense and a fine eye for a good horse. He's too -- good for you. I like his sort. Let him come to headquarters, where he'll be appreciated."

And the colonel said to the major, "What price the Brig! Fancy jumping a man up like that, for no reason. He'll give him a commission one of these days. And the queer thing is, Jimmy'll probably be worth it. You can't beat our respected Brigadier!"

J. H. M. ABBOTT (1st Aust. Horse)

CLOAK-AND-DAGGER CATALINAS

Now that most of the restrictions imposed for security purposes have been lifted more is being heard of the activities of the "cloak-and-dagger" men in all services.

Something has already been told, however, of the aircrews; engaged in dropping specially selected troops behind the Japanese lines in Burma. These trips were done by land planes based near Calcutta. Farther south in Madras there was based an equally hush-hush squadron of Catalinas, No. 628 Special Duties Squadron, R.A.F. The job of these web-footed types was similar to that of their confreres in the north-to put in or pick up our agents and to keep them supplied with stores.

However, there was one difference. The flying-boat work entailed landings at night without a flare path in bays, rivers, harbours and even the open sea, hundreds of miles behind the enemy lines.

The trips were of long duration, a minimum of twenty hours. The longest recorded was one of thirty-eight hours. They were necessitated by the great distance to be covered across the Bay of Bengal from Indian and Cingalese bases.

Prior to the formation of No. 628 Squadron, a few cloak-and-dagger trips beyond the Burma coast had been carried out by specially selected crews of No. 240 (G.R.) Squadron with great success in 1943. Flight-Lieutenant Bert Kellock of New South Wales was the first Australian to be so engaged.

Most of the agent traffic had been the province of H.M. submarines operating from Trincomalee in Ceylon. But the time and economy factors swung the balance in favour of the use of Catalinas. A submarine could not make the trip from Ceylon to somewhere on the Burma or Malayan coasts or to the Gulf of Siam with the economy and speed of an aircraft. The submarine would usually have some other task to accomplish and the agents perforce had to remain aboard.

Unused to such travel they were not as fit after a week or so as they were after a flight of a few hours in a Catalina. And so it was decided to call for volunteers from the various flying boat squadrons stationed in South-east Asia Command and form what was called "B" Flight No- 357 Squadron. "A" Flight was to be the land plane squadron near Calcutta.

Administrative difficulties soon made it clear that a separate squadron would be more practical and so No. 628 Special Duties Squadron came into being in February 1944.

Five crews were selected, mainly people on their second tour of operations or experienced crews nearing the end of their first G.R. tour.

The C.O. was 6 ft. 6 in. Squadron-Leader Frank Godber (of the R.A.F.), a lad of twenty-four years with tons of personality and a fund of good stories. He called together the five volunteer crews, explained the full nature of the work to be undertaken and the chances of getting back alive should anyone fall into enemy hands while engaged in such operations. It was a distinct possibility that the aircraft might hit some obstruction and rip open the hull when landing or taking off at night in some enemy bay or harbour. After this talk the crews knew exactly what they were in for and were given the chance to withdraw. Some did for family reasons and every credit is due to them for having the courage to do so.

Once constituted, the squadron pitched its tents on a rise beside Redhills Lake in Madras, well away from the existing station area occupied by No. 24 (G R.) Squadron. This was done from the security viewpoint. Training then began in earnest. All crews were sent on Jungle courses in southern India and were taught to live off the land.

Flying training for pilots consisted in becoming proficient at landing in all conditions of water at night without a flare path. Practices were carried out with the agents themselves in unloading stores in the dark from the Catalina blister to rubber dinghies, a procedure by no means easy when there is a swell running and heavy items of equipment have to be moved. The aircraft were stripped of all radar and I.F.F. in case these should fall into enemy hands in the event of a mishap. Navigators thus had to rely on their D.R. and Astro navigation and very proficient they became, topping the 255 Group list for accuracy.

For some of the longer operational trips, the aircraft was stripped of all armament to save weight for extra stores or to help in obtaining range. Very thorough consumption tests were carried out by all crews so that when operations began they knew very accurately just what were the capabilities of their own aircraft.

Only one operational flight was carried out prior to the arrival of the south-west monsoon in May. From May to September, weather conditions over Burma and the Malayan Peninsula were too risky for the type of work projected and so these months were used to carry out meteorological flights.

These were done daily to just west of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal and they gave all crews absolutely invaluable experience in weather flying. The squadron ran into some trouble even before its first operational trip. On a flight from Calcutta to Madras one of the squadron's aircraft transporting a load of agents was lost with all hands in a cyclone.

These agents, too, were highly valued men. Some of the higher Air Force command who had never been too enthusiastic on the cloak-and-dagger scheme looked very adversely on this disaster and there was talk of the squadron disbanding. Nevertheless all was smoothed over and so began a story of flights as dramatic as any of the war.

The squadron's first operational trip was in May 1944. The aircraft was captained by the C.O. with Flight-Sergeant (later Flying Officer) George Drummond, of Swan Hill, (Victoria) as navigator. The target area was an island off the Thailand coast and the task to put in two agents.

All available information as to the target and enemy intelligence was provided by the Back Room Boys in Calcutta.

However, on this occasion the only available chart of the landing area was one for which the survey had been done in 1857! A comforting thought that when one had to land at night knowing nothing later than 1857 gen about sandbanks, coral reefs or other obstructions. Despite all these difficulties, George Drummond opened the score for the squadron very successfully and gained for himself a mention in dispatches for his hard work and for the fine example he set the rest of the crew.

All flights were of course shrouded in secrecy and crews not on duty had no knowledge of the job to be done. Even the crew detailed, apart from the captain and navigator, had no inkling of the operational details until the last moment. Agents would arrive at the squadron and be billeted well away from all other personnel in a separate tattie hut. Even loading and going aboard the aircraft was done in secrecy. Every possible precaution was taken to give the agents every chance to do their invaluable work when they were put in. Even so, many times it happened that the agents were picked up by the Japs soon after getting ashore.

The usual time of take-off from Indian or Ceylon bases was 11 a.m. and so heavily laden were aircraft on occasions that a take-off run of two and a quarter minutes was not unusual. Out they would go across the Indian Ocean until ninety-two degrees east was reached, when height was reduced to fifty feet to avoid radar detection from the Andaman or Nicobar Island garrisons.

This first hurdle was usually reached just before dusk and pin-points enabled a check to be made on the navigation and any necessary alterations to be made for the second three to four hundred mile leg to the coast.

If the job was one into the Gulf of Siam height was reduced again as the Malayan coast was approached, although a high range of mountains required the aircraft to start climbing fairly early. The risk of radar detection had to be run. Extreme navigational accuracy was essential, for if the aircraft on E.T.A. had to fly around looking for its target for any length of time, the secrecy of the whole operation was compromised and the chances of the agents escaping detection when put ashore were slim indeed.

Operations began again in September when Flight-Lieutenant Bruce Daymond of Sydney with Flight-Lieutenant Jack O'Meara of Swan Hill (Victoria) set out to do a daylight reconnaissance of Davis Island near Victoria Point on the Burma coast. If found suitable. agents and stores were to be landed.

Low down on the water to dodge radar detection when going through the Ten Degree Channel at the Andamans the two aircraft ran into a Jap convoy. Making off in an apparently homewards direction to allay suspicion

the aircraft pressed on to the target, and while Jack O'Meara went off to carry out his diversionary raid, the other aircraft commenced its low-level reconnaissance of Davis Island.

Flying around a headland, they came across a beach just covered with Japs. Feeling after these two unexpected encounters with the enemy that the secrecy of the trip was about nil, the aircraft made off to Chance Island some forty miles south.

From the air the possible landing area looked terrifying. Coral reefs appeared to be right at the surface of the crystal clear water. After a hasty survey and remaining undetected the aircraft landed just at dusk. The other aircraft had by this time rejoined the party and once it saw that its fellow had alighted safely it set course for base. Aircraft "A" had switched off engines and anchored.

The agents were put ashore and contact was kept with them with a walkie-talkie set. Sitting on the water in an aircraft with its engines dead behind the enemy lines for two hours produced a feeling that has to be experienced to be believed It is a feeling at one and the same time of intense excitement and helplessness.

At last the O.K. came from the agents and off into the gloom and ocean swell bounced the Catalina to arrive safely back at base some twenty-six hours after its departure.

The aircrews had the greatest possible admiration for the agents who were left behind for three or four months or more. Grand people they were, be they British, American or Burmese.

Flight-Lieutenant Jack O'Meara had an amazing escape in September 1944. Whilst landing one night in the water around Bentinck Island, the aircraft, unknown to him, hit a log which ripped a great hole in the hull. He merely felt the aircraft bounce as if thrown off by the swell; to this day he cannot understand why he didn't carry out a stall landing off the bounce as training in the previous months had taught him to do.

Instead he opened the throttles to go round again. A crew member rushed up and told him of a hole in the hull big enough to climb through. Had he stalled the aircraft in, it would have meant the almost certain loss of aircraft and agents.

O'Meara continued to provide cover for the other aircraft, completed his mission as well as he was able and then flew 1,200 miles back to base where he landed with great skill and enabled the aircraft to be taken up the slipway without sinking. For this effort he received a mention in dispatches.

Flight-Sergeant George Drummond in the meantime had been going on his merry way and when he had completed his tour of Special Duty operations he had eleven trips to his credit. One trip deserves particular mention. It was from Trincomalee in Ceylon to Kota Bharu on the east coast of Malaya. On the first visit the water in the Gulf was far too rough to land so twenty-nine and a half hours' flying was done for nothing.

Out again after a brief rest and this time with more success. The agents were put in, but on leaving the aircraft they had a row of two miles in very rough water. However, they got ashore after great difficulty though it was learnt some weeks later that they had been captured and executed within a few hours of arrival.

This second trip took thirty-one and a half hours, a very creditable performance when it is realized that there was only one navigator and that extreme accuracy had to be maintained till well past the Andaman Islands on the way home.

Drummond's further adventures included interception by fighters off the Andamans, being chased off the water by a Jap patrol boat, and a marker distress marine going off in the aircraft whilst in enemy territory and making the Catalina look like Luna Park. On completion of his tour Drummond was awarded a second M.I.D.

Flight-Lieutenant (later Squadron-Leader) Bruce Daymond, of Sydney, had a hectic time at the end of October 1944. Due to the loss of another aircraft and crew on the first of that series of operations, he had to take over the flying commitment of the lost crew as well as to carry out his own.

The two remaining aircraft of the squadron were at that time operating from Ceylon.

From Madras Flight-Lieutenant Daymond began his marathon in which he flew just on a hundred hours in seven days, approximately thirty-three of which were spent over enemy controlled waters and territory.

The last of the four flights which ticked up the hundred hours brought for him a special letter of commendation from the Air Commander-in-Chief, South-east Asia, as well as an immediate award of the D.S.O. He had already received an immediate award of the D.F.C. some three weeks before for the operation on which Jack O'Meara had his lucky escape.

An immediate signal had come in from a party of agents to say there had been a lot of enemy air reconnaissance of their island and that now an enemy submarine had come into the bay. From all indications a search party was being put ashore to capture them. They would try and avoid the Japs till an aircraft could arrive.

When the signal arrived Flight-Lieutenant Daymond and his crew were sleeping off the effects of their three trips in four days in which some seventy hours had been done. He was ordered to get the agents back at all costs. The information they had gathered was vitally important and it had to reach headquarters.

On reaching the target the aircraft was flying at fifty feet. A flashlight signal was received from the ground giving the all clear for landing. The agents stated afterwards that the submarine had gone away that afternoon. All stood by for the landing, but while on the down-wind leg, the bow turret gunner called up on the "intercom." to say that the submarine was in the middle of the bay.

The Japs may have realized that a rescue attempt would be made and had left during the afternoon to lull the agents into a sense of false security.

The aircraft came in low over the submarine, touched down and taxied on the step down moon in a whirl of spray, almost reaching flying speed in doing so.

Engines had to be cut and the anchor thrown out, otherwise the agents in their rubber dinghies could not have come alongside against the slipstream.

They, incidentally, were unaware that the submarine had returned. A certain amount of exhortation from the aircrew let them know the facts of the case. Never have rubber dinghies moved faster.

Fortunately the down-moon position helped to prevent the exact location of the aircraft from being discovered.

As the submarine moved in to do its worst, the agents-were unceremoniously dragged aboard. There was no time to load their equipment; this was cast adrift in the dinghies. The anchor cable was slashed with an axe.

The engines, those wonderful little motors, started without a splutter. A down-wind takeoff straight over the submarine again, a turn, flat on the water, behind the Cliff face and the aircraft was safely away.

A portion of the recommendation for Flight-Lieutenant Daymond's D.S.O. stated "For twenty minutes the aircraft was a vulnerable target and it was only due to the resource and skill of Flight-Lieutenant Daymond that the aircraft was not subject to destruction by enemy action. Moreover, the weather conditions for the greater part of the trip were extremely bad and it is to the highest credit of Flight-Lieutenant Daymond that he appreciated the importance of the task and carried it through to a successful conclusion in the face of adverse conditions created both by weather and the presence of hostile forces which would have formed adequate reasons enough for any captain of aircraft failing to complete the mission. The resource, skill and daring shown by this officer on this and the other three flights was of an extremely high order. His endurance, perseverance and enthusiasm for operational flying shown during the period could not be surpassed."

These, then, are some of the incidents in the life of the cloak-and-dagger boys. Lord Louis Mountbatten on a visit to the squadron stated that he regarded each flight as equivalent in importance to a whole bombing raid, a bouquet which was greatly appreciated by the squadron.

About this time all the Australians so far mentioned were repatriated and R.A.A.F. representation was carried on by Flight-Lieutenant "Aussie" Smith of Sydney. No details are available at the time of writing as to his adventures, but he assuredly must have had some 2~~ the "grapevine" reports the award of a D.F.C

The spirit of camaraderie that existed 1No. 628 Squadron was magnificent. Nowhere in the Service could the competence, keenness and resolution of aircrews and ground staff be surpassed.

WEB-FOOT (R.A.A.F.