Chapter 11 Thumbs Up; Bloodbath at Cowra; Harassing they call it; Happy Jack

THUMBS UP!

This episode in the war service of HMA destroyer Vendetta was not an important one; unimportant in that no great decisions hung on the outcome. Small as it was, it nevertheless constituted a stitch which combined to form the overall pattern of victory; its real importance lay in its manifestations of the courage, the endurance, and the unexpressed faith, the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship's company.

Vendetta's role in the Mediterranean was much the same as her sister ships of the "Scrap Iron Flotilla". She, too, escorted Terror and her 15-inch guns to deal with "Bardia Bill", the enemy's 9.2 monster on the cliffs; Malta convoys saw her, as did the bombers inevitably sent to attack them; and the role she played at Greece was counter-parted by Waterhen and Stuart.

Her men came from all walks of life. There was a tram driver, a gun-layer who fitted skates at a Sydney Ice Palais, a former kangaroo shooter who was to blow up a Jap bomber in mid-air over Singapore, and a lad from Brisbane who made patterns for printing on ladies' silk dresses.

On this day Vendetta's men were to experience again the austere servitude of the sea; but were to feel, too, that comradeship which alone made it bearable.

Air protection in those days was well-nigh unknown in this area; and when hardly out of Alexandria Harbour a sudden drumming roar had jumped their hearts. The flyers came from e desert behind the oil tanks, in a tight formation of nine, sweeping past her stem, banking vertically, then flashing up her side. They ere Kittyhawks, flown by South Africans. As the leader passed the bridge they saw his hand, thumb pointed skywards, raised in the familiar salute.

They watched them turn toward the land and dwindle rapidly to mere specks, and there wasn't a man aboard who wouldn't have given his deferred pay to have had them stay.

Vendetta steamed on into the blue, small and lonely, her men wondering why there was no air protection, then musing philosophically that it must be needed elsewhere, and not deriving much comfort there from. However, a job had to be done, and the Navy doesn't ask questions.

Not that they were frightened. Not really. Just that the thought of Malta and Alexandria, Sollum and Tobruk, with the devils screaming down at you one after the other, seemed to shrink your stomach inside-if you were so foolish as to allow yourself to think much about it. That's why they looked yearningly after the Kittyhawks.

Up the coast the little ship sped, eyes and ears alert, strained, now at the smiling sea about them, now at the blue vault overhead. It would be a good two hours to dusk, and security, but it wasn't much good worrying about it. If it came, it came.

And as they were on the turn for the outward leg of the zig-zag, it did come. The lookout's cry reached the gun crews at the same time as the whine. It is a horrible sound, that whine-full of vicious, heartless cruelty.

He came straight down from about 15,000 feet, a Stuka, his motor snarling. At 3,000 feet he levelled off. From his belly the bomb came flashing down, resolving into a streak too fast to follow as it neared the water. They watched it with a sort of helpless fascination, leaning subconsciously to the heel as she spun. And she was spinning; stem whipping to port with all the torque that hard-over rudder and thrusting screws could give her. Then, thirty feet off the ship's side, the bomb sprouted and flung itself apart in a spreading cascade of water. The little ship quivered with the sudden upthrust of bursting steel.

But the first one was only a pointer for the rest. One after another, in the current fashion, the black-crossed wings tipped up and they fell headlong out of the sky upon her.

Their ears were deafened, brains dazed by the continuous blasting roar of exploding bombs and diving planes. There were twenty-five of them, and one after the other they unloaded and zoomed away out of it.

Vendetta was firing of course. with her single 12-pounder, the only gun bearing, but with the ship's heeling and slewing, the slamming of each bomb, and the smoke and spray, it's little wonder the Huns got away unscathed. Two planes between them mounted more ack-ack fire-power than all her guns.

The next blow came in low from astern. Thirty feet above the sea he levelled off; grey balls of smoke broke from his wing, and a glowing lacework of tracer reached out to the ship, beating a tattoo along her side. Then with a bellow of sound he was over and away.

They circled round her for awhile after that, playing with her, as if deciding on the easiest way to finish her off. Then they came in from different directions - two from either bow, two from either quarter. The rest stayed up top, watching.

Followed ten minutes of hell. No narrative can do justice to the intensity of the action that was now joined or give full coherence to the events of the utmost violence and confusion crowding in on each other from all sides at once. No sooner would one hurtling shape roar down than another was in on the other side. One bomb, a 500-pounder, lobbed so close that a wall of water erupted in a liquid avalanche over the machine-gunners on the quarter deck. She rolled wickedly, and her stern rose sheer from the water. A quiver ran through her, like a tooth under a dentist's drill, as her propellers raced. She couldn't last much longer.

When the Stukas drew off again, regrouping to starboard, those Australian sailors knew they'd finished playing. This was it. The formation headed with dreadful purpose towards them. Closer, growing bigger every second. Faces coppery black with fumes, they waited, tired, sweating, determined to take as many as they could with them.

Then suddenly the whole group turned and shot up into the sky, clawing to gain height.

Vendetta's crew watched, too amazed to be thankful; not realizing, indeed, deliverance was at hand. Then they saw them!

Spearing straight down from the sun at bullet speed, flat-out motors a scream of sound, they came, nine Kittyhawks, straight for that pack of vultures. Faint above the drum of the engines Vendetta's men heard the staccato chatter of multiple machine guns.

One Stuka came across her bow, on his tail a hurtling Kitty. At fifty yards range he opened fire, his tracer needles of flame stitching into the Hun. The German continued straight as a die into the waiting sea.

High above them two tiny dots weaved about the sky, and faintly could be heard the rippling chatter of guns. One plane zoomed seawards, smoke pluming astern. Closer he came till they saw the black crosses on his wings. When 1,000 feet up the fabric opened up like a rapidly spreading sore with red edges and yellow centre. The fire swept to the tail. In a moment the stabilizer and rudder became a framework skeleton. A picket fence of spouts as the disintegrated plane hit marked his grave.

How can the feelings of Vendetta's men be described as they watched those pilots chase their attackers all over the sky? At this moment those men knew, as never before, the deep, sweet feeling of comradeship.

The captain ordered half-speed and she steadied on her course. Suddenly a roar smote their ears. But relax! No vulture this! Round the stem, up the side, past the bridge he came, borne on a great wave of beating sound, power and speed in every line of the beautiful body, a veritable Knight of the Sky.

It was the leader. His helmeted head was clearly visible in the glassy cockpit; and above it, before his nose, the hand raised in familiar, warming salute-Thumbs Up!

J. E. MACDONNELL (R.A.N.)

THE BLOOD BATH AT COWRA

THE town of Cowra lies two hundred and forty miles due west of Sydney. It is a small country town, undistinguished yet hospitable, in the heart of rich and rolling sheep and wheat country. Flanked on the west by the coffee-coloured Lachlan it relies for attention and support on the magnificent agricultural and pastoral lands surrounding it rather than on any genius of handicraft within the town itself.

But Cowra has now become world famous as the scene of the greatest prison-camp break in history, the grim blood bath of the early morning hours of s August 1944

A few miles east of the town is the A.I.F. training camp through which many thousands of Australia's fighting men have passed on their way to battlefields beyond the seas. But only a mile and a half to the north of the town is the group of prisoner-of-war camps which, on that moonlit morning, became a bloodstained battleground. Here Japanese fanatics died by the hundred and Australian soldiers also suffered death and wounds before dawn showed the burnt and smouldering camp, the barbed wire with its dripping load of dead and dying Japanese, the suicides hanging by ropes in huts and from trees, and the sullen, broken survivors being rounded up by grim Australian troops.

The Group comprised four separate camps, the whole forming a rough circle, with each camp designed to accommodate one thousand prisoners of war. In each camp were twenty

e large, wooden sleeping huts, two mess huts to hold five hundred men each with kitchens and store rooms attached, latrines and showers (hot and cold), barber's shop, camp canteen, tailor's shop, medical and dental centres, recreation hut, and sufficient ground between huts and perimeter wire to parade all prisoners and to provide playing fields.

Each camp was under the direct command of a camp commandant, who had attached to him a number of officers and men for both administrative and guard duties. For convenience' sake the garrison troops were known as "A", "B", "C", and "D" companies according to the camp to which they were posted and it was the duty of the company concerned to maintain vigilance and security in the camp it controlled. The four commandants were responsible to the Group Commandant for the efficient conduct of their respective camps and companies.

To visualize the lay-out of the four camps imagine a circle some eight hundred yards in diameter. Cut the circle into four equal parts. Each of the four portions is a camp, A being the north-west camp, B the north-east, C the south-east, and D the south-west. The Group is on elevated country sloping from north to south, and surrounded except on the southeast by rolling hills close by. The main traffic road to Cowra runs from Group Headquarters on the west. From the southern end of the Group a road made by the prisoners themselves and promptly dubbed the "Burma Road" winds over the southern hills direct to the Cowra railway station. Over it have tramped many thousands of prisoners of war-Italians, Japanese, Koreans, Formosans, and Indonesian men, women and children. Even Chinese.

Bisecting the Group was the eight hundred yards tarred road known as the Broadway, a wide, sloping road with numerous tall electric light poles dawn each side and cut down its length on the west by a deep, stoned, stormwater drain. In the centre of this now famous road were the entrance gates to the four camps, guarded double gates, as were the main gates at the top and bottom of the Broadway.

The four camps were separated by thick belts of densely tangled barbed wire, and the administrative and living quarters of the garrison troops were outside but close to the wide barrier of perimeter wire that encircled the compounds. In the northern portions of A camp and B camp were respectively the hospitals for Italians and Japanese.

Security, naturally, was the primary duty of all ranks, and it was the 22nd Australian Garrison Battalion that maintained this security at Cowra. Raised solely for this purpose it was specially trained for the task. The majority of its members were older men, many being veterans of World War 1, and also on its strength were younger men medically downgraded and some who had returned from World War II.

When the group of four camps was originally planned its designers obviously did not envisage the holding of Japanese prisoners of war, otherwise the whole conception of its defence and security must of necessity have been entirely different. The adopted lay-out with its merely breast-high wire, its dim and chequered lighting, its observation towers with their obsolete Lewis and Hotchkiss light automatic machine guns, was perhaps suitable for the holding of Italians who had "given the war away" as far off as the Middle East, but was palpably dangerous and chancy for the caging of more than a thousand Japanese fanatics.

Certainly Brens and Vickers and Owens were brought in at the eleventh hour when it was realized that these men were dangerous, but it was too late to square the circle of the perimeter so that garrison fire would not be as great a menace to the garrison as it would be to enemy prisoners. Anyone firing across a circle of only eight hundred yards diameter with modem weapons is as likely to hit anyone on the other side of the circle as anyone within it. That was one of the problems left to the group and camp commandants to solve as best they could. The fact that during the furious firing of that early morning of the fifth only three garrison men suffered accidentally from the murderous cross-fire that had to be poured into the circle proved that the group and camp authorities had by their dispositions and fire plans brought that particular risk to a minimum. The casualties from such crossfire could easily have been very heavy.

With the exception of special parties on some particular duty all troops were out of prisoners' compounds by dusk and the prisoners themselves after "lights out" were expected to be in their huts and not walking about the parade grounds. A prisoner could visit the latrines which were lighted all night, or if one became ill could request his camp leader to approach the nearest tower, alone and with a lighted hurricane lamp in his hand, to report the matter, but a prisoner not conforming to these rules was immediately suspect.

If a prisoner decided to attempt to escape and edged through the shadows, and there were many shadows, or tried to rush the wire, he would be challenged first of all. If he persisted a warning shot would be fired. This single shot was also a warning to the garrison to be on the alert. If the warning were ignored the second shot would be fired at the prisoner who then took the recognized risk of being killed. At the second shot the garrison turned out ready for the emergency. Prior to the Japanese break no prisoner had been killed while attempting to escape.

At night the Group presented a spectacle eerie and Dantesque. Inquisitive beams from first this tower, then that, then from another of the six thirty-foot towers spaced round the Group examined carefully the strange and ghostly shadows within the compass of the vast perimeter. Armed and silent sentries, additional to those in the towers, paced the dark catwalks just outside the floodlit wire and stared into the compounds at the inky pools between the long rows of huts, at empty Broadway, at anything that moved and at everything that was still.

The perimeter and Broadway were lit all night with hundreds of tall, hooded lights. This system although expensive was not efficient for the effect achieved was merely a dim glow rather than a bright, revealing band of light, and shadows laced the areas between the tall poles making it a simple matter for anyone to glide unseen along these dark places. And when the whole system failed, as it occasionally did, the puny beach lights run on batteries did their best to break the darkness but their effort was like a pocket torch playing inside the vastness of a black and deserted theatre.

The coming of Japanese prisoners caused much speculation and created many problems. It was seen at once that these men were entirely different in mentality and outlook from the Italians. At first, doubtless because they expected death or torture, and also because of their weak, and in many instances emaciated, condition they were outwardly docile. But as they increased in health and strength and numbers, arrogance and the fanatical Japanese army spirit again possessed them, for at this time they firmly believed that the conquering hordes of their own race would soon sweep through this land and set them free. They did not understand the Articles of the Geneva Convention. Their government in Japan did not subscribe to or observe it, and our strict adherence to its terms merely amused them and further convinced them of our moral and spiritual weakness. They read into our humane treatment of them a desire to placate them, and this they felt sure sprang from our secret fear of them.

By contrast with the treatment meted out to our own unfortunate men in Axis hands, enemy prisoners in this country led lives of security, ease and even luxury. Each and every prisoner received weekly a free issue of thirty-five cigarettes, and could purchase more at their own camp canteens if they were in credit. Their quarters were clean, spacious and comfortable; every prisoner eventually had a bed of sorts with ample blankets for the cold nights of the Cowra uplands. Their food at all times was ample, even lavish, and the plenitude of rice, fresh fruit, fresh fish in addition to ordinary meat and vegetables was something the garrison troops themselves did not receive.

By the direction of higher authority Japanese officers were issued with sheets and pillowslips, a concession not granted to Australian soldiers of any rank within the Group. Italian -and Japanese officers could have, within limits, their beer or wine, although this privilege was not extended to the other prisoners. Concerts and games were permitted, and prisoners generally were allowed to purchase many personal amenities in addition to those generously contributed by the recognized philanthropic organisations.

It will be seen that the humane Articles of the Geneva Convention were fully observed and applied by the authorities to enemy prisoners in Australia. But the Japanese prisoners were no impressed. They were not, of course, at this stage openly defiant as a whole, or rebellious or disobedient in the mass, but the wind of ill-concealed and sullen hostility was already carrying the straws of their intransigence.

These things were observed and discussed. It was considered by Group Headquarters that the number of Japanese prisoners within the Group should not at any time exceed five hundred bodies. This opinion was fully supported by Japanese camp leaders themselves who were finding it difficult to exercise control within the compound. The matter was referred to higher authority, but the numbers were not reduced, and Japanese continued to arrive in the Group until B compound finally held more than eleven hundred Japanese other ranks while the officers were held separately in a portion set apart in D camp.

Then, at last, Group Headquarters received definite information from a known source that the Japanese had discussed plans for a mass outbreak, to commit mass suicide on a grand scale by challenging the garrison troops in one last supreme fanatical act. No details were known. Higher authority now took a very serious view of the situation. If a surprise break by the Japanese were successful, they would undoubtedly kill all garrison troops, secure their weapons, and in all probability run riot in the town of Cowra itself. They were in perfect physical condition by this time, and day in and day out trained themselves by wrestling and baseball. They were quick and fast. Their challenge, if it came, would be a serious one.

And so it was decided by higher authority to move all Japanese prisoners, with the exception of the officers, from Cowra to Hay, some few going to a camp in Victoria. The Geneva Convention lays it down that prisoners of war who are to be moved from one locality to another shall be given twenty-four hours' notice before being so moved. When all preparations had been made and extra defence precautions taken in the Group, the Japanese were told.

At noon on 4 August 1944, the Japanese camp leader was summoned to the office of the commandant of B camp. According to his own testimony he received the following order:

"On 7 August N.C.Os and other ranks will be separated, and the latter will be transferred to Hay camp. Get ready."

The camp leader at once asked that the N.C.Os and the men be allowed to go together to Hay. He was told an order had been given and it must be carried out. The leader, who was accompanied by four other Japanese, walked away in silence.

At midnight of the fourth the Japanese held a conference in the compound at which all hut leaders attended.

It was then and there decided, apparently unanimously, to stage a mass outbreak at 2 a.m. on the morning of the fifth - just two hours after the time of the conference itself.

What actually was said will never be known, but on the subsequent admission of one of the hut leaders a plan of operations was decided upon. A number of Japanese would be left in the compound to fire all the buildings, these men would then commit suicide by throwing themselves into the flames, or by hanging. The others would split into parties of roughly two hundred and fifty each, and would break from the camp in four different directions, some five hundred by going over the perimeter wire at two points on the eastern perimeter, the other five hundred crossing the wire into Broadway and then splitting and attacking north and south at the same time. The plan obviously was that B and C camp headquarters were to be wiped out first, then A and D, and then finally Group Headquarters. If all this came to pass they would then leave the destroyed Group and march to another objective. This objective was never known. It might have been the town; it could have been the training camp across the southern valley.

From the happenings of subsequent events that seemingly was the plan decided upon. But fortunately some such action was anticipated by Group and camp authorities. It was not known there would be an outbreak, or in the event of such when it would happen or how, nevertheless the feeling of tension, the sense of something impending and imminent was manifest in the watchful attitude of the garrison troops and in the restless playing of the probing searchlights.

Quiet and peaceful was the night scene at a quarter to two o'clock. It was cold, with a full, white frosty moon overhead. But at this tranquil hour important things were happening. The sentries in towers and on catwalks were watching the compound shadows with lynx-like eyes. The long white fingers of the searchlights, pale but still useful under the full moon, kept feeling the pulse of the dark veins between the huts. They were never still, and when one went out another flashed on from a different tower, or from one of the extra lights installed to cover possible shock points. In the four guard rooms the reliefs were awake and making ready to take over from those whose tour of duty was almost over. And, most important of all, at the quarter-guard in Broadway, a precaution only recently taken, tension was mounting as a Japanese, whose name will never now be known, raced from the main Japanese huts to the camp gates and called out to the quarter-guard only a few yards away.

Notoriously restless as the Japanese were at night, the quarter-guard realized that something more than usual was afoot and at once telephoned to D camp guard room. An officer was sent immediately up Broadway to the quarter-guard, and on seeing him the Japanese again called urgently. That harsh, strained voice was evidently giving a warning, for almost in the next moment was seen the massing of hundreds of dark figures near the Japanese huts.

Realizing their hopeless position, the four men of the quarter-guard raced for the southern Broadway gates, and got there only just in time, for even as they ran could be heard the thin notes of the Japanese bugle sounding the attack. Then came the sharp crack of a rifle, a warning shot from a sentry, then another, then another, and then with a roar of "Banzai! Banzai! " the dark mass surged forward on its frenzied mission of self destruction and death, all armed for close combat with a grim assortment of stealthily made weapons ranging from knives and stilettos of wire to fearsome wire hooks on wooden handles, deadly clubs of timber studded with nails, the mounted blades of bread cutters, butchers' and barbers' implements, baseball bats, and a plentiful supply of short, looped ropes with which to strangle either the garrison troops or themselves.

Right to a man the numerically inferior garrison troops leapt from sleep into action. Out of guard rooms and huts they pelted, some dressed, some almost naked, but all with arms and ammunition, and all with the knowledge of where to go and what to do.

Out of their compound poured the Japanese, crushing down the barbed wire with blankets and their own impetuous weight, and at the southern Broadway gates the first of them was shot and killed even as the gates were closing behind the men of the quarter guard. The gates closed and were coolly locked by the commandant of D camp in the face of the racing Japanese. No Japanese man ever crossed over those gates or passed through them until the Japanese surrender at first light hours later.

In the incredibly fleeting time of minutes the Japanese left in the compound had the first flames roaring. Up went the tailor's shop, then the large huts began to flare, and soon the camp was an inferno in which the asbestos roofs exploded like grenades. The dark, frenzied figures of these men could be seen limned in the red light like imps from hell, and into this, holocaust leapt those who craved death by the consuming fire and perhaps some who were thrown into the flames as a punishment.

Down from the garrison huts in B camp ran the Vickers gunners for the gun covering the eastern perimeter wire. Towards that gun rushed the Japanese. A few shots cracked from it, then a swarm of dark bodies leapt at it and overwhelmed it, killing the gallant gun crew with knife and club.

Quickly the Japanese swung the Vickers round so that it could rake the northern Australian huts and headquarters of "B" Company, but in their haste they forgot to swing the belt round with the gun. It jammed and would not fire.

But the Vickers up in B tower had not jammed: its rattling fury could be heard above the swelling Bren and rifle fire. Down the slope of the north-east perimeter wire went its hissing death cutting to pieces dozens of Japanese and filling the sagging wire with dead and dying. The Japanese who had killed the gun crew were in turn slaughtered as the men of "B" Company poured rifle fire into the trailer, avenging their brave gunners and leaving a silent and bloody mound of Japanese round the gun.

Fortunate was that full moon, for by now all lights in the Group excepting the emergency hurricane lamps had failed.

An unlucky ricochet had cut the feed line, but there was ample lig ht from above and the, lamps enabled telephone orderlies, ammunition carriers and other details to carry on.

Up and down Broadway swept the Bren and rifle fire.

Hundreds of Japanese were trapped on the road, furiously smashing the gates leading into the Koreans and the Japanese officers. But the Koreans and the Japanese officers would not "be in it". At the Bren gun in D tower was the officer who had earlier gone up Broadway to the quarter-guard. He could write his name with a Bren, and down below him in the choked lane leading in to the officers' quarters the line of dead and dying bore his personal signature.

The men of C camp, holding the eastern half of the road, killed everything in Broadway that moved. So deadly was the fire from both "C" and "D" companies that the surviving Japanese in southern Broadway, unable to break out from that end, threw themselves into the deep, stone drain where the screaming lead kept them pressed down until the dawn surrender. More than two hundred Japanese crawled out of that drain later.

But hundreds of them were now out in open country. A party of them moved down the east side of the Group and began to work in towards the rear of "C" Company. This had been foreseen, and the grim, tough men guarding this flank broke them. The "C" Company Bren gunner was deadly on this flank, his mates with their rifles equally so. The Japanese melted into the cover of trees in the sloping gully, then edged round on to the southern hill slopes. But the Bren reached them, cut more of them to pieces, and sent the stumbling, broken remnants out of sight in the moonlight. They could be heard calling, calling no doubt to men they knew but to men who never again would answer.

When daylight came the Japanese put up a white rag in Broadway and surrendered. The firing ceased. It was a grim and bloody scene. B camp, with the exception of a few buildings, was a charred and blackened ruin. Japanese dead lay singly and in heaps in Broadway and right round the eastern perimeter.

The surrounding hills were sprinkled with burgundy-clad bodies and in the trees of the south-east gully swung more dead Japanese

The mutiny had failed. It is not difficult to imagine what might have happened to the sleeping town of Cowra had the outbreak been successful and the garrison troops wiped out. But those Japanese who wandered at large for a little while before being rounded up offered no violence to any of the civil population, not because such men had scruples in this regard, but doubtless because it had been sufficiently hammered into their insolent skulls that it would not pay to adopt such tactics.

The 22nd Australian Garrison Battalion who smashed the attack lost three men killed and had three wounded. The Japanese had two hundred and thirty-four killed, including suicides, and over one hundred wounded.

The Commander-in-Chief passed on the following brief comment from the Minister for the Army:

"It appears to me that a difficult and delicate situation has been very well handled by the Military Authorities concerned, and I desire to record my appreciation."

A tribute that all ranks of the 22nd Australian Garrison Battalion well deserved.

E. V. Timms (First and Second A.I.F.)

HARASSING-THEY CALL IT!

Tokyo had been reporting a task force off Balikpapan in the Straits of Macassar for several days. Our forces were softening up the area, preparatory to the landing of troops and capture of the oil port and town. It was necessary to neutralize the neighbouring airfields of the Celebes to save annoyance to our fleets, and to preserve local freedom of the air for our spotting aircraft.

By day these airfields, runways and dispersal areas had to be heavily bombed, and by night all attempts to patch up the runways and to fly off night attackers had to be interfered with as much as possible.

This was our particular role: to cause as many night alerts as we could, to keep up their blackout, chase repair gangs off the strip, shatter their nerves, and deny them their hours of sleep . . . in short, to harass.

Catalinas were used for this same purpose earlier in the war, over Kavieng and Rabaul, to even out the odds against us in those dark days, though Japs didn't take it lying down then.

In order to remain over the target as long as possible, our bomb load was restricted in weight but not in numbers of bombs, and we carried dozens of small bombs of great annoying power, and incendiaries. Also some "screamers" of no explosive power but ear shattering in their descent. Nor could we go without a case of empty beer bottles fitted with old razor blades in the neck, and reputed to sound like a bomb . . . there was also the odd chance that we might hit a Nip on the back of the head as he tried to imitate the ostrich.

We had to harass two airfields which were about half an hour apart, the general practice being to flit from one to the other, sometimes dropping one or two bombs if a good target appeared, at other times only a few bottles and incendiaries, or nothing at all, and to vary the visits in unpredictable ways.

These annoyances were confined to enemy air installations and their adjacent barracks areas, while for the native villages and cultivated fields we had leaflets printed in the Malay language . . . two or four pages on how we were winning the war, with photographs of the German surrender to drive home the idea.

All this work was carried out above the effective ceiling of light anti-aircraft fire, and although some of the airfields were equipped with searchlights and some also with heavy guns, they remained blacked out to avoid giving away their position to the harassing aircraft. On some nights the haze and low cloud made the runways very hard to locate from our safe height.

Not even rifle-fire broke the sombre and deserted appearance of these military areas. Occasional lights from native villages and huts in the foothills appeared and we dropped them a few leaflets to read at breakfast. The Japs were said to tour the countryside in trucks next day to collect these leaflets and to arrest anyone found in possession of one.

On our first trip our eagerness to remain over the target areas as long as possible, together with bad weather and freshening winds on our return, got us home with empty fuel tanks, after several hours of delicate settings of engine controls as we made for our base. When we had moored up to the buoy we climbed on to the mainplane and opened the tanks, to find only a weak smell of petrol from that remaining in the fuel lines to the engines.

Our next trip was memorable because, while flying over the beautiful hills and dales of Timor, a lonely Jap outpost opened fire after we had passed nearly overhead. The shell bursts came very close but didn't hole us. It was all over in a few seconds.... Did they run out of ammunition, or was that their ration for the week? This post was one remaining from an overgrown and defunct airfield which once saw hundreds of enemy aircraft.

It was, however, our third and last trip which gave us the biggest promise of excitement and some signs of life in the Nip at night. We were briefed to harass Limboeng and Boeloedawang airfields from forty-five minutes after dusk for as long as we could.

Minimum height over target was eight thousand feet, flying direct to and from the target across Timor, for these targets were nearly nine hundred miles from our base. Our special orders forbade us from diving down to deck level to strafe the enemy camps, nor were we allowed to attack small schooners or other native craft. We had to commit to memory the air-sea rescue points and procedure, and carry survival kits and small arms in case we were forced down into jungle or enemy territory.

We take off straight after lunch, loaded with all our precious cargo of top nuisance value and air rations for a few meals, for the trip is sure to exceed eighteen hours and call for food and hot drinks to sustain us through the long night's work.

We climb up through a thick eiderdown of cloud over Timor during the afternoon, looking down through the gaps at mountain gorges, rice fields, steep grassy slopes with their wild ponies, mountain villages, and goat track roads. Then we see a mountain peak appear up through the rolling clouds, dark blue and obviously by the same architect as the peaks of the Himalayas. This is the apex of Timor, 9,676 feet high Yatamailau. Beyond Timor lies the chain of Allor Islands, whose high volcanoes, wearing smoke plumes, show our navigators the direction of the wind at that height.

After two more hours over sea and scattered islands, we approach the Celebes and see ban s of cloud forming in layers . . . low cloud, middle cloud, high cloud, stacked against the high land. We test all our guns, blackout the windows, and have our evening meal of steak and potato, bread and butter and tea. The land and sea below only appear in the gaps in the cloud layers, and darken early in this hazy atmosphere.

We pick up the coastline by radar and identify the bay we want on our screen. As we fly on we catch a glimpse of it in the murk below, and run towards the V-shaped strips of Boeloedawang. We get to the main strip, turn parallel along it, and throw out a couple of incendiaries and bottles, to wish them a very harassing evening. This is a fine place for starting persistent little fires ... the gun emplacements and barracks must be amongst heaps of tinder and something like mallee roots, which burn all night and make the target easy to find each time we return.

Now on to Limboeng, the more important field where a few single and twin-engined fighters still hide from attack and occasionally sortie out after our day bombers. This set of runways is hard to locate. The sandy stretches of river nearby confuse the issue, nor does a light appear near them. The neighbouring seaport of Macassar shows some bright lights and occasional searchlights from the naval base, either to lure us over their strong defences, or to divert us from our timorous target.

After some, circling over the area we at last pick up the most noticeable runway, and the navigator bomb-aimer in the bow prepares to give the Nips a hearty thump on the back, accompanied by fire sticks.

These bum very brightly for a few seconds, bathing the aircraft in a glare like a searchlight, then out they all go, leaving us no clues for finding the place next time. This area must abound in sand and marsh, a very poor place for fire-bugs.

Away we go to the coast, and then double back to find Limboeng again, straining our eyes in the murk. I am watching the ground below, and the various lights flickering here and there like fireflies in the tropic night.

I have just located the main strip again, when the second pilot reports an aircraft's exhaust flame, flying below us out to sea; at the same time three or four of my flickering lights come exactly into line.

We turn quickly on to the lights which must be a flare path on the east-west runway, and we hurriedly prepare to bomb.

No doubt at all that an aircraft has just taken off, probably a night fighter, and he may not be the only one with the same urge tonight. We have the immediate intention of blasting that flare path and anything near it. I picture a very harassed duty pilot rushing between his cubby-hole and the lights, trying to extinguish them before we get the chance. We planted a couple of googlies right between those yellow lights, and kept him out of business for the rest of the night.

But we were beginning to feel our own position a little more realistically. There were we, as they say, spending the evening in someone else's back garden, throwing stones on their roof and lighting matches under their woodshed, while a grinning heathen with a very superior twin-engined night fighter bristling with guns was whistling through the same patch of sky looking for a juicy big Catalina.

Not that we could do anything but bear it in mind and we saw no more of him that night. Now, however, I can lay it down that Jap night fighters aren't much good. Their eyesight is bad, their airborne radar is ineffective, and they have to rely on ground radar control to tell them where they are, and at what height. Also we are so slow that their shots would go wide ahead of us.

At last all our bombs have been used up, one or two at a time, and we save a few bottles for parting shots as we prepare for the long trip home. It's a great relief to set course for base, and the mind is then free to ponder the problem of miles and gallons of fuel, and the gentle art of navigation.

Long hours of plugging into the fresh southeast trades, with six hundred gallons and nine hundred miles. Why, sure we made it!

BRETT HILDER (R.A.A.F.)