Chapter 4 Far Horizon; Looking Astern; 27th Xmas; Closing loopholes; Running gauntlet

FAR HORIZON

WHEN Duncan McRoberts fell overboard it was the simplest thing imaginable. Just a slip, a wild clutch at the guardrail and he was over. And no sooner over than he was fighting in the mad panic that springs from the instinct of self-preservation. Struggling against the thrusting, twisting swirl of tons of water that clutched at him and spun him, head over heels, before it threw him almost disdainfully to the surface.

The cool draughts, of night air he drew into his lungs steadied him and sobered him, and he slowed his movements so that he could breathe freely and look about him for the ship. Little eddies of water still swirled about him and he could feel them tugging at his pyjama-clad legs. He was in a wide lane of swirls and bubbles that stretched away before and behind. At one end of the lane he could see the gleam of brightness that was the shaded stem light of his ship. As soon as he saw it he shouted. Then he filled his lungs with air and shouted again and again and continuously until he suddenly realized how hopeless it was.

He thought, then, what best he could do. He was a pretty good swimmer, he thought, and could stay afloat for hours; but it would be much better if he shed his pyjamas. He pulled the cord of his trousers and pushed them down with one hand, then he drew his legs up and kicked until they were free. He felt free too. Funny how a man felt free and independent when he could shed his trousers. He never wore the bottom half of his pyjamas when in bed. They always made him feel tied and bound and restrained somehow. His slippers had gone long ago so, while he pulled his coat off, he thought of his chances.

There weren't many, he decided. It was 4 a.m. when he left the mess deck and made his way down to the quarter deck to take up his favourite position perched on the smoke floats aft. He had stood up and then slipped.

It was nice to sit on the smoke floats and dream a bit while he watched the churning water race astern. You could feel the propellers turning taking you home.

"Every turn of the screw
Brings me closer to you."

He used to laugh at the childish jingle.

The lifebuoy sentry must have been skulking on his job not to see him fall. He was supposed to take up his position on the after end of "X" deck and watch for anyone falling overboard as well as keeping a lookout for lights on the horizon. Probably he was asleep or hiding inside the gunshield so that he could smoke without being caught. Duncan tried to think who the lifebuoy sentry was and cursed him.

Perhaps they would miss him at breakfast. Of course they would, but it would be too late then. He could imagine what would happen. Someone would say: "Where's Mac?" and then they would casually look for him. Perhaps it would be nearly dinner time before they decided there was something wrong. Then they would pipe for him and search the ship until the coxswain would report to the First Lieutenant and the First Lieutenant to the Captain.

"Beg pardon, sir, but I think Able Seaman McRoberts must have gone overboard."

"What? WHAT, man?" the Skipper would say and then the inquiry would drag on interminably until the Skipper decided he must really be gone and they would turn the ship round to look for him. Meanwhile he would have drowned.

Drowned! He hadn't thought of that before. Not even when the war was on. He had often thought what it would be like if his ship was sunk but he had never thought of dying. God, he couldn't die now. Not after six years of war and ten years in the Navy. It wasn't fair. If he had been killed at war, in battle for instance, it wouldn't have been so bad but to fall over the side and die just like that; it wasn't fair. He thought of his wife then. She would be out of the hospital by now and have the baby at home.

"I wonder what he's like," he thought, "I suppose he is only little and helpless, and I suppose he is just like any other baby, but gosh I'd like to see him."

He had thought a lot about that when he had his sessions of dreaming, sitting perched on the smoke floats. He could remember the last time he was home and soon after he left he got her letter telling him about it and how happy the words read because she was going to have a baby. All of her letters after that were full of it. The life that was inside her the plans that she was making and the name she chose.

"I want him to be like you, darling," she had said. "So I'm calling him Duncan too."

Suddenly Duncan felt tired. His knees and shoulders were aching from the exertion of treading water.

"I'll change my position," he said, and started because he said it aloud. So he allowed his head to go back and his legs to float up in front of him. In the starlight he could see his body gleaming through the water. He looked at his body and thought about it.

"I'm naked now," he thought, "Naked as the day I was born." He chuckled to himself. "I was born naked and I will die naked. I wonder why people are ashamed of their naked bodies? I'm proud of mine. I won't be proud of it when I'm dead though, I suppose.

"When I'm dead," he reflected, "my body will be just a sodden carcass in the water and I won't be able to think-or perhaps I will. I wonder if a man's soul can think?" That was funny. He hadn't thought of his soul much before, or God, or anything like that. He hadn't believed there was a God.

From where he was lying on his back he looked up into the sky. It was like a black drape of velvet and he was under it. Someone had poked holes in it and little points of light winked through at him as much as to say: "We know all about you. Come on up."

He had a crazy notion that he could so he raised his head and his legs sank under him so that he was upright treading water again. The sudden quick movement of his legs hurt. The knee joints were stiff and it was agony to bend and straighten them. The man groaned. "God," he said, "God, why am I still alive?"

There he was thinking about God again. He supposed everyone thought about God when he was going to die. "There are no atheists in foxholes" he had read somewhere and he wondered who had said it.

Then he saw a lightening in the sky above the rim of the sea. Perhaps his eyes were playing him tricks; they were sore and aching from fatigue and salt water. After a while he decided they weren't because the sky became lighter and when he looked up the stars were fading. Now he could see a layer of clouds above the horizon. They were white and flat underneath. White faintly tinged with transparent pink. "Like Tiki's eyes," he thought. Tiki was a pet of his wife's - the biggest and whitest albino rabbit imaginable. Now he would never see his wife again.

Suddenly, he had to blink his eyes and shut them tightly. A bright arrow of sunlight had darted across the water almost blinding him. with its intensity. He could feel it now, warm on his face and eyelids. When he looked he saw the rim of sunrise staring at him but he didn't close his eyes or blink again. He looked straight back until the tears ran down his cheeks and his eyeballs ached with the effort of it. "It's the sun," he thought, "and I'll swim straight towards it."

At first he started off breast stroking easily; he could see the sun crawling higher and he felt he must reach it before it got clear of the water and was out of his reach.

Madly he struck out. Every bone and muscle tore and racked him but he swam until he could hear a roaring in his ears and he gasped in long sobbing breaths. He had breathed in some water. He could feel the salt burning his throat and chest but he didn't care because the roaring was gone now and instead he could hear a high thin note like the treble of the big pipe organ he had heard once in the Town Hall. The pain had gone from his limbs and he was swimming freely. He felt he was racing through the water.

Now the sun was almost within reach. lie put out his arm but he couldn't quite touch it. Perhaps a little more effort,-----

The sun rose higher in the sky and the blue glass of the sea was undisturbed. Somewhere below some object, turning and moving slowly, caught the light and reflected dimly. On the far horizon a smudge of smoke showed where a ship was passing on its way.

A. R. PRANGLEY, R.A.N.

LOOKING ASTERN

STRANGELY enough, after six years of violence and excitement, it seems that my memory is most deeply impressed by the minor sidelights rather than by the major events.

On that day in 1939 when it all started, I was one of the tense throng which gathered at the wireless set in the Instructors' Mess at the Gunnery School, Portsmouth, to listen in deadly silence to the Prime Minister's fateful words. My outstanding memory of that occasion is of the way in which every man
spontaneously rose to his feet at the first note the National Anthem.

During an operation in which the Bruges anal was successfully blocked at Zeebrugge e encountered some lively opposition from e Mole and from the air, and we didn't enjoy a moment of it. Strange that, amid the fierce turmoil, one should notice and remember -not the bombers, not the machine-gun fire from the shore, but the fact that as the old doomed blockships steered for the canal gates they were flying "paying-off" pennants. Pussers to the end!

Imagine the feelings of those down below a 1917 vintage destroyer, when she pulls with a deadly crash. It's 4 a.m. in a North a gale. She develops a sickening list, and with thoughts other than those of self-preservation you practically fly up a rapidly inclining ladder. Many thoughts rush through your brain on such an occasion, and yet you remember above it all the remark of A.B. Bull, that wit who stands nonchalantly at the hatch above: "Don't linger on the ladder, brother".

Dunkirk, the epic that stirred the world, gave us a taste of war of such sudden intensity at on one occasion, after having had a torpedo pass under the ship, we were firing depth charges and high angle guns at the same time. Yet a memory we cherish of this period is one of soldiers cheering us as we passed them at sea in their strange array of rescue craft.

Came the day when the B.B.C. announcer's news seemed like the end of all, but we were to pile up memories during many more months and years of war before the end came; and always, it seemed, of the sidelights. After sheltering for two hours beneath Dame Agnes Weston's famous Royal Sailors' Rest during a savage air raid on Portsmouth, I emerged to find the massive building and the rest of the street a raging inferno which reduced "Aggie's" to ashes. As I left the building and took a last look at it, I couldn't help saying to the chap with me, "Just think of the generations of sailors who have said, 'What this place needs is a - - - good fire.' "

In the Pacific I recall the Admiralty Islands show. It was a most lively affair in its early stages, when only four destroyers comprised the naval support, and by their gunfire alone made it possible for the small American force to retain a foothold ashore. There were bombardments with everything we had at 500 yards range and similar incidents but I cherish a ridiculous memory of it. When the hard pressed troops ashore were being supplied from the air with parachuted supplies, we were intrigued by the different coloured parachutes which descended as each aircraft flew over and released her cargo. Our guns' crews watched the numerous reds and whites floating down, when suddenly a couple of blue 'chutes appeared. Immediately, the inevitable humorist shouted, "There go the medals."

I was in the T.S. as the striking force moved in for the Morotai landing. Not knowing what to expect, we were sweating on any bit of news. from those up top. Suddenly "X" gun called us up. An eager voice replied, "T.S. - X gun," then I received the message: "There's a bit of an argument going on up here. Ask the Bridge if that's a volcano on the port side."

Since then most of us have known what it is to reach the Discharge Depot, where the ominous "What are you?" has given place to a cheery, "Good afternoon, sir".

DONALD WALKER, R.A.N.

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CHRISTMAS

"TONIGHT," the man said gently. "You can hang it up tonight."

"Can I? " the little girl squealed. "A really truly big pillowcase?"

"A really truly big one," the man agreed.

It was Christmas again-the thirtieth in his lifetime. Many of his Christmases he didn't remember; some, bound in tight convolutions around his mind, he would never forget. Like the one in the jungle.

He lay back on the cane chair in the warm sunshine and visually traced the snaking growths of the passion-fruit vines on the small trellis in front of him. Vines! Strange! Christmas again and more vines!

He closed his eyes and, as he raised one knee, his book plummeted on to the grass.

Speeding straight and swift like the dart from a blow-gun, the Spitfire headed for the barge. Splashed with the green and brown of camouflage paint and illuminated by the lambent rays of a December sun, its approach was terrifyingly obvious to the group of yellow men. As they flung themselves desperately into the water they flecked its smoothness like the floppings of newly-netted fish.

The man crouched in the Spitfire didn't laugh. Some would have laughed, but he did not. Some looked at their job with nonchalant objectivity. He couldn't do that, though he often wished he could. He thought war was bloody and sickening.

He watched the pattern of his bullets, like a huge zip fastener on the sea with the barge as the catch. He saw the vessel lurch and shudder as the bullets ripped into it. Then he was over it and making a climbing turn. In his rear vision mirror he caught a glimpse of the front of the barge already under water.

The Spitfire levelled out for a second run. This time the barge bubbled out of sight.

Apparently the Japs had been heading out to sea from the river-mouth gaping on the shore of the island off his port wing tip. He decided to look the place over.

They must have watched him come. A stream of tracer fire, like a jet from a garden hose in the sunlight, suddenly came up from the jungle edge to meet him. He felt the aircraft shudder as the bullets struck home and he instinctively gave it hard right rudder.

The stream of fire followed him as though magnetically attracted. Impassively, he watched a chunk of his starboard mainplane crumble like a piece of broken biscuit. Then a burst hit the airscrew. He cut the motor and looked around. The island was hilly; there were no clear patches. He had climbed to just over fifteen hundred feet so he couldn't hope to glide far. After tightening the harness of his
'chute, he pressed the button to explode the radar set and jettisoned the cockpit hood. Then he stood up.

The jerk of the silken canopy opening seemed about to slice him in two, like a knife through an apple, when he began to float. He watched the "Spit" on its last dive and heard her blow up as a cloud of black smoke rose from her grave.

He was falling too fast, he knew that. He would need to hit the ground relaxed. Absurdly, he wished he was a baby. "They always fall relaxed," his relatives had once told him when his daughter fell off the couch.

The thick vegetation seemed to be urgently thrusting itself in his face, like a massive fist. Then he ducked and felt the pain of contact. Some part of him snapped as the 'chute, shroud-like, enveloped him. Then he fainted.

When he came to, he was covered in blood and he thought he was bleeding to death. He found it was only the flow from deep scratches but he also discovered that his leg was broken.

Painfully he began to extricate himself from the tangle of harness, silk and shroud-lines. When he managed that, his leg was paining so much that he gave himself a shot of morphia from his first-aid kit.

If he just lay there, he reasoned, he might never be found, so, breathing heavily, he began dragging himself through the vines. Each sinuous coil seemed determined to catch him. They dropped round his throat and lasso his legs. Vines! Vines! They were everywhere, like vegetative snakes reaching for him, encircling him until the slowness of his progress made him swear luridly. And he wasn't a swearing man.

The jungle growth was so dense that at four o'clock it began to get dark. Soon, night joined his antagonists. His exertions and the pain of his leg drenched him in sweat. His clothing was tattered. Mosquitoes left dozens of stings wherever his flesh was exposed.

Then the ground disappeared from under his feet and he fell on his broken leg into a hole. There was a soul-searing stab of and he was unconscious again.

When he came to he thought he was in a room. Then he saw it was a hut - a native hut. The smell was terrible and almost made him tch. Beside him, waving a broad leaf over m, a native was squatting. Noticing he was conscious, the native smiled and said, "Bunya bunya," which the man didn't understand.

By laborious and slow sign language, he learned he had been lying there three days with a touch of fever. Three days! Gosh! That made it-he grinned to himself-Christmas Day!

"Merry Christmas," he said to the native who smiled and answered, "Sabi tuan."

He looked at his leg. The native had swiftly diagnosed the trouble and bound it in crude splints. All around him fruit and other native foods were heaped.

The native's name was Kapoe and his woman was called Aenoen. They had moved out of their hut for him and had laboured to build another for themselves. He learned all this and tried to look appropriately grateful.

Christmas Day, 1944, eh? His throat was sore but he decided to celebrate by eating a banana. Kapoe smiled delightedly, dashed outside and returned with a drinking coconut. "Tuan panass, kalapa," he said. "Kalapa."

The man drank the milk greedily.

Christmas Day!

For the next few days Kapoe and Aenoen, a grave-faced woman, waited on him slavishly. At last he was able to get up and hobble around aided by sticks. In the hope that a friendly aircraft might see it, he showed the natives of Kapoe's small village how to spell H-E-L-P with white rocks in a small clearing.

One day a "Spit" came over and he hopefully flashed the lid of his first-aid kit at it. After an agonizing pause the fighter banked and came back, flying low. He stood in the middle of the white stones and waved to it and saw an answering wave in the split second the machine was overhead.

The next day the aircraft came back and dropped a small package containing a knife, a bottle of mosquito repellent, a compass and a map of the island with his position pinpointed and escape route marked. Finally, there were instructions to meet a Catalina rescue aircraft at a spot on the coast.

Although the journey was to be only two miles-by map, he knew from the thickness of vegetation that, if he left early the following morning, he would be lucky to reach the sea before night fell. He communicated his plans to Kapoe and the native looked sad.

Next morning he was up early and the whole village turned out to see him go. Gratefully he gave Aenoen the silver identity bracelet from his wrist and laughed at her abject face. Then he pointed the direction to Kapoe and, amidst the farewell cries of the villagers, set out.

The vines once again ensnared him, but this time he was able to elude many of them by following the native and by hacking through em with his knife.

At midday they stopped at a stream to munch on the bananas they had brought. He rinsed his mouth with water from the stream but did not drink it.

They reached the coast just after five o'clock and moved cautiously along the jungle fringe until they reached the rendezvous. Then they sat down to wait.

Right on "the button", as they used to say, the "Cat" appeared, to float down to a smooth landing. With motors roaring it came close to e beach; a rubber dinghy dropped over the de and headed for the shore.

"Leg all right?" was his rescuer's first question.

"Yes, thanks," the man said.

He turned to Kapoe and impulsively removed his watch and gave it to the sad-eyed native.

"Thank you, Kapoe," he said.

"Krima kasi," the native said. "Krima kasi, tuan."

As the dinghy bounced out to the aircraft, the man waved to the solitary figure on the sand. The native waved back.

He saw the men leaning out from the long fuselage of the "Cat" to lift him aboard and felt them grip his hands and pull him up, up....

"Come on, sleepy-head," his wife said, pulling him upright in the cane chair. The sun had gone down and it was cool for a Christmas Eve.

"Come on," she repeated, smiling. "You've got an important assignment-hanging your daughter's pillowcase."

LEICESTER WARBURTON, R.A.A.F.

CLOSING LOOPHOLES

SHORTLY after the outbreak of war in 1939, a funny little man in a long overcoat came to Victoria Barracks, Melbourne, to interview a responsible Intelligence officer.

A refugee from Germany, he was a minor technician of sorts who, until late 1938, when he fled the country, had been engaged in testing and servicing a patented electrical gadget installed in every explosives plant in Germany. The job took him all over the country, inspecting each gadget at least once a year. Would the Army like to know where the explosives factories with these gadgets were?

On the large scale maps hastily procured from London, he pinpointed every plant he knew, and there were many hundreds of them. How accurate his information was I do not know, for it went straight to London and the R.A.F. found that out in due course. That was one of the many little loopholes the German security plan didn't close.

Early in the Japanese war some very important information leaked out through a loophole unknown to, and unsuspected by, the Japanese Security service. That particular information enabled a sizable American fleet to be thousands of miles away from where the Japs thought it was at a critical moment-to arrive, in fact, just off Midway Island at a most unfortunate time for a Japanese fleet speeding there. That unclosed loophole won the battle of Midway for us, and, so some competent strategists say, saved Australia from invasion. That particular loophole permitting the escape of information remained open throughout the war-and may still open in the event of another war, so no more about it.

But other stories of the way loopholes were closed in Australia can now be told, some stories dramatic and tragic, and some just funny.

It is, of course, an impossible task to close every possible channel of information, but that is the target set the Intelligence and Security services in wartime. It is the job of every contra-espionage service, to discover loopholes and to close them.

Now many people imagine that military information in time of war only reaches the enemy through spies. That is not so. It is, for instance, quite certain now that no organized ring of spies operated in Australia during the war; nevertheless much military information from Australia reached the enemy and was used by him.

That no organized spy-ring operated was due mainly to the good Security work done for years before the war. This enabled the picking up in one swoop on the outbreak of war, of all the key men planted here for spying. Some of them had been "tailed" all the way from Europe to Australia, and had been under constant surveillance during their two or three years in Australia - unknown to them, of course.

One of these key men, however, dodged his "tailers" a few weeks before war - he just vanished overnight into thin air. He was picked up on a boat in Fremantle a week later - with false passport, whiskers and everything. He was arrested on some pretext, and what was found in his luggage explained exactly why he was making a getaway. He had certainly put his time in Australia to useful purpose.

However, he was a determined, resourceful fellow, and immediately on his arrest he went sick and staged a hunger strike. By the time

he reached Melbourne in hospital custody, he was thin -and helpless-apparently a very sick man. The medical men couldn't diagnose his trouble. They said that he was just malingering-that there was nothing wrong with him.

So a psychological test was devised. One morning as he lay in his hospital cot in a coma, apparently dead to the world, a couple of undertaker's assistants came in and began measuring him as if for his coffin. As they plied the tape and jotted down the figures, they gossiped lightheartedly in mortuary jargon, in which the word "cremation" occurred more than once.

An hour or two after they left, the apparently unconscious patient sat up and crossly demanded nourishment. A week later he was hobbling about, weak but well. During the subsequent years in internment camps, reports say he was an exemplary prisoner.

It is said by some authorities that Germans as a race have what is almost a pathological fear of fire-their invention and first use of the flammenwerfer is quoted as a symptom of this abnormality. That my have accounted for the success of this psychological test-this imaginary "trial by fire".

A piquant situation developed out of the shadowing of one of the Nazis, before the war broke. This chap had been under surveillance for about two years, when suddenly he began to be missed by his "tailers" from his usual haunts at odd week-ends and on occasional mid-week nights.

Eventually, when they caught up with him, they found he was enjoying an affaire with the very charming wife of a very senior service officer. Now here was a pretty kettle of fish. They couldn't risk telling the erring wife of the real character of her paramour, in case she warned him. They could hardly ask the very senior officer to see that his wife's illicit lovers did not include Nazi spies.

Eventually they solved that curly one very simply. They took into their confidence a close woman friend of the wife. Yes, some women can keep secrets, very definitely so. The wife rose to the situation very well, and it all terminated without the suspicions of the Nazi being aroused - nor those of the husband.

I think some bells rang in sundry minds, though, when the Nazi went behind the bars.

Many other things happened when Britain declared war besides the picking up of suspect spies. All loopholes for the escape of information it had been possible to foresee were immediately closed.

One very comprehensive measure was the institution of Communications (Post and Telegraph) Censorship. I don't suppose that any other Security restriction was more thoroughly resented by the public than was censorship, and I don't suppose any other wartime measure was in reality less restrictive in its incidence. Of course, there were anomalies, but they occur even in the best regulated families, as everyone knows. No doubt, the vast amount of communications censorship done was unnecessary, but I shudder to think what would have happened if there had been no censorship.

Because of its nature censorship must be a "blanket" measure, blotting out a lot unnecessarily in order to catch the little that is significant.

By its own efforts and research within a few months of the war starting, Censorship in Australia had compiled a list of more than 3,000 addressees in neutral countries, who were prepared to forward into Germany communications from anywhere, and vice versa. This list was added to throughout the war, as was also the long black-list of firms in neutral countries trading, with the enemy. Naturally, nothing was allowed through addressed to anyone on those black-lists. By this means not only a lot of dangerous stuff, but much useful economic information was kept from the enemy.

But neutral addresses were not the only loophole stopped by Censorship. The amount of mail that is lost in wartime is amazing, most of it by enemy action, but some not. Censorship by its blanket treatment of overseas communications prevented much careless leakage falling accidentally and sometimes mysteriously into enemy hands.

Sometime in 1941 a letter from England addressed to an executive of an oil company in Australia was sighted by Censorship in Melbourne. On the envelope were no fewer than five "Passed by Censor" stamps, two of them English, two German, of which

one was countersigned by a U-boat officer, and one Australian. That letter, after leaving England, had been opened and read in a German U-boat, had been opened and sealed again in Germany, somehow got back to the P.M.G. in England, was censored again and re-despatched, went to China and finally reached Melbourne. And all it contained at any time was a roneoed letter describing an old boys' annual dinner.

It was nothing less than astounding that many people, some of them in high places, persisted in sending most secret information by overseas ordinary mail.

There reposed in a strong secret safe in barracks throughout the war many letters stopped by Censorship, whose contents would have been incriminating enough in some countries to put their writers against a wall. Actually they were merely "indiscretions".

In one case the highly-placed sender was informing an official in London of certain most secret matters on a War Cabinet level. He was entitled to have that information and he was entitled to pass it on to his subordinate in London. But he was stupid to send it through the ordinary mails. When confronted with the letter, he was most astonished to learn that mails sometimes fell into enemy hands - and rather crestfallen. He used proper means thereafter.

War censorship is concerned only with Security. Evidences of crime or immorality are normally of no interest. But occasionally there were glaring cases in which Security censorship was used to control influences threatening the war effort. One was an immoral racket that began to develop in North Queensland among the troops. Both the American and Australian chiefs of all the Services were very worried about it. Eventually Communications censorship was deliberately used, to such good effect that the evil was stamped out.

Another instance was that of a notorious man who, on the strength of a reputation for manly holiness and righteousness, sedulously cultivated in peacetime, was granted special opportunities to distribute amenities and spiritual counsel to the troops. His admirers back in the cities supported his pious efforts with large donations of money.

The real depravity of his character became known to Censorship through the accidental scrutiny of one of his filthy letters to women in capital cities. Thereafter all his outward and some of his inward letters were scrutinized and photographed. They revealed a depth of moral depravity hard to believe. It shocked even the hardened worldly-wise censor, whose confidential business this affair became. Eventually, after the evidence was referred to the highest authority, Censorship was authorized to act outside its function of Security, and, in due course, the double life of this extraordinary person was disclosed in a court of law. He received a criminal sentence that curbed his immoral propensities at least for the rest of the war.

Publicity censorship was another wide reaching means of closing loopholes - voluntarily done throughout the war and very successfully, too. Editors of the Press, producers of films, managers of broadcasting stations, and certain executives of other organs of publicity were responsible for the censorship of their own media, subject to the guidance, and in final resort, to the authority of the Chief Publicity Censor, who in turn was advised by Service and departmental experts.

It was known that, by fair means or foul, copies of most Australian publications were reaching the enemy. In any case, their contents could be radioed easily enough from neutral countries, or even from a neutral ship outside Australia's three-mile territorial waters.

Then again the diplomatic mailbags of foreign diplomats and consuls in Australia were technically sacrosanct and there were some seventy foreign consuls In Australia, many of whom were known to be friendly to the enemy.

It was known also that our radio stations were being picked up in enemy and near enemy countries. Japan, for instance, was logging all our stations, even the weaker commercial stations.

Press and radio thus could be a very fruitful source of information to the enemy and, in the early years of the war, accumulated evidence indicated quite clearly that much information was escaping through these channels. Those in Australia at the time may remember that, during the months before Pearl Harbour, there were many sinkings of merchant ships off the Australian coast. Now the pattern of the sinkings and the time and place of certain of them showed pretty definitely that the enemy raiders or submarines were getting some fairly accurate information about sailings from Australia.

Accordingly Security Intelligence of the three Services was stimulated to the utmost endeavours to blanket off all possible openings.

In due course radio came under critical reexamination. A conference of both A and B class station executives was held in Melbourne to discuss the tightening of the radio censorship regulations.

Shortly, the conference divided into two camps. On the one side were the three Service Intelligence representatives, who desired every possible channel controlled. They were particularly critical of the audience participation sessions which allowed odd people from the audience to speak into the microphone.

On the other side were the broadcasting people, all thoroughly familiar with their station procedures, and quite satisfied that the current precautions would prevent any military information being broadcast, either intentionally or accidentally.

Their attitude was rather condescending to the Service officers. It savoured of the fictional thriller, they said, this talk of messages over the ether in the middle of a song, or during a talk on cowfeed or what have you. We had been seeing too many spy films surely - could we produce any authentic evidence of information actually going out during any programme anywhere in the world? They were completely sceptical.

The Services couldn't produce any complete evidence, just like that - only suspicions and possibilities.

And then something happened which prompted the Services to make a dramatic challenge. While the conference was on I had received a message that the monitors had just intercepted a news item radioed to the world by Moscow to the effect that Queen Mary had just arrived in Singapore laden with Australian troops.

Now I knew - and very many people in Sydney who had seen the ship sail also knew, that she had in fact left Sydney six days previously bound for Singapore and laden with troops. She was carrying the first brigade of General Bennett's Eighth Division to go to Malaya. I knew also that, provided the vessel pursued a normal course north about at a normal speed, she should be tying up in Singapore about this time.

But to me there was something "phoney" about the Moscow broadcast. It wasn't like the Navy to shuttle Queen Mary in such a way that anyone could plot her arrival.

Immediately on my return to barracks I made enquiries of the Navy, and found that Queen Mary at the moment of the Moscow broadcast - at that very moment in fact - was lying in Fremantle harbour. After clearing Sydney harbour she had gone north until out of sight of land and then had turned about and scurried around the south of Australia to Fremantle. She was due to leave Fremantle two days later for a rendezvous with a British cruiser in mid-Indian Ocean and thence she would go to Singapore.

It was plain that Moscow or someone who passed it on to Moscow had learnt of Queen Mary's departure and apparent northward course and had plotted the probable movement. The rest was mere assumption. Now, that information as to departure, freight and destination could only have come out of Australia. How had it gone out? A quick check showed that Queen Mary had not been sighted going north by any neutral ship outside territorial waters, nor had any neutral left Sydney in the intervening period.

A further quick check was made on air mails and commercial outward bound planes. The only ones that had left via Darwin had had insufficient time for any passenger or crew member to reach a transmitting station in neutral territory.

The flying boat carrying mail and passengers via New Zealand had certainly reached that Dominion in good time, but fortunately for the evidence, the connecting flying boat from the United States had had a mechanical breakdown and missed the connection. Thus nothing could have got out by that route.

There remained the almost indisputable conclusion that the information had been radioed from Australia. Although they were unable to pass this story on to the conference, the Security representatives were fortified in their determination to press for more thorough controls over certain types of radio programmes.

It was decided to arrange a challenging test. The secretary of the Federation of Commercial Broadcasting Stations and the representatives of the A.B.C. were told that the Services proposed to transmit coded messages containing military information over two stations on the following Saturday night. The stations would be 3KZ and 3DB - and the sessions would be "The Voice of the People" and "The Heckle Hour". The Army would undertake the task of planting pseudo spies in the audiences to "crash" the microphones and the Navy would endeavour to pick up the coded messages and decode them. If this could be done without arousing anybody's suspicion it would surely provide a dramatic demonstration of the reasonableness of the Security Officers' claims.

The challenge was quickly accepted by the broadcasters and details were soon fixed. Exchange of encoding and decoding data between the Army and Navy officers responsible had to be done by Wednesday, afterwards no communications on the matter would occur between those officers until the test was over. On the Thursday a representative of the commercial stations would hand over to the Army officer two appropriate military messages in English devised by himself for the occasion. The texts of those messages were to be coded by that officer alone and were not to be divulged to anyone else. On the other hand, the announcers and comperes for the sessions concerned were not to be warned in any way.

The conditions were observed faithfully by everybody. The code chosen was a simple word substitution code, which, after a certain warning phrase was used, gave selected words in the text a different meaning. It was the type of code used by the B.B.C. throughout the war to pass information in English on to secret agents in enemy territory.

The two pseudo agents for the "Voice of the People" test were a young man and a young woman. They had been instructed to get in the forefront of the crowd in the foyer so that they would not miss any opportunity of speaking into the "mike". They obeyed this instruction so thoroughly that, as it happened, they were the first two people addressed by the compere. With well simulated bashfulness they got their messages in code over the air, in stumbling, halting answers to the compere's quick questions.

The message went over all right but, as we learnt afterwards, the Navy listeners were caught sharpening their pencils when the warning code phrase came over in the very first few sentences of the session. Accordingly the decode they presented was a very garbled version of the original message, which was a rendezvous for oiling a submarine at sea. The decode asked the sub to oil-up somewhere in the centre of Queensland!

At the "Heckle Hour" studio, where the second transmission was to be attempted, the two "spies"-a middle-aged man and a younger one-had no difficulty in getting into the studio, although they had no admission tickets. The subject to be debated was "Is the Church a Bar to Progress", and each of the spies had learnt by heart his pertinent long-winded question, which contained in code the second message provided for the test.

Each of them caught the eye of the chairman quite early in the piece. Each without error got his question-and message-over word perfect and without arousing any suspicion among the broadcasting people or among the audience. Neither did any of the listening panels from the broadcasting stations or from the Services detect any suspicious word or phrase in the questions.

The Navy stenographers were on their toes this time and got the message in code down verbatim. They decoded it and the decode read "Six transports laden with troops left Sydney this morning at 11 o'clock escorted by H.M.A.S. Hobart, sailing south", which was the exact message devised for the test.

Naturally enough when this decode was handed to the Secretary of the Federation of Commercial Broadcasting Stations, with a transcript of the actual words put into the "mike" by the spies, it was regarded as a convincing test.

The code used was studied by the broadcasting people so that they could see exactly how the test had been done.

This strengthened the dramatic effect so much that the subsequent meetings of the conference provided some amusing incidents.

Now it was the broadcasting folk who were pressing to tighten the regulations and add precautionary measures, while the Security officers were obliged to check their enthusiasm with an occasional "Oh, we don't really need to be as drastic as all that."

The situation was met by a voluntary decision by the stations to record on discs all audience participation sessions for subsequent release at least two weeks later. This dealt effectively with the time factor, the most important in messages likely to be sent by radio. Coupled with this precaution was to be a "vetting" by the stations of persons from the audience to use the "mike", which, while rough and ready, would be sufficient to deter any enemy agent from attempting to use this channel of communication. These precautions were quickly embodied in Censorship rules and regulations operative throughout Australia.

Thus throughout the war the unceasing vigilance of Security teams kept exposing new possible avenues for the escape of information. Loophole after loophole was blocked, yet evidence kept coming back that some useful information was still reaching the enemy.

Much of what got out was shown to be due to errors of judgment or to carelessness. One such leakage due to an error of judgment had a tragic sequel.

A news flash went over the national stations announcing that a Japanese cruiser and two destroyers had entered a certain harbour in the Solomons during the past few hours. It was during the Japanese southward drive and it was a scrap of news intensely interesting to an apprehensive Australia. The news had been passed by Censorship for release, for surely such information of his movements would already be known to the enemy.

What was unknown in Australia, however, was the fact that the commander of the Japanese cruiser believed that his movements during the past few days had been successfully screened-and he was right. No plane, no ship had come near him and he had avoided the land. And yet within a few hours of anchoring in this hill-girt harbour his radio man tells him that an Australian radio station has just broadcast the news that he has arrived there. The thoughtful eyes of the commander sweep around the overhanging hills. There must be an observer with a transmitter in those hills.

Within a few minutes, searching marines are ashore and before the coast watcher can make a getaway, he is caught. He was tortured and killed. So died another gallant Australian and so ended a useful coast-watching station.

AUSTIN LAUGHLIN, First and Second A.I.F.

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET

"CLEAR lower deck, hands fall in for payment" was the call and before the last notes of the bugle had died away I'm practically there.

There was no need for them to repeat this much-awaited pipe and bugle call. Sailors just live from one pay day till the next. There is no need for the Jaunty, that is, the ship's master-at-arms, to come below and hunt me up. Of course had the lower deck been cleared for hoisting boats, well, that would have been different. But this is the day that the goose lays the golden egg and, after all, I have my creditors.

Scrambling up an iron ladder amidships I find myself in a milling herd. I didn't realize there were so many borne on the ship's books, but pay day always brings them out of their holes. Falling into line with the others in the of my ship's hook number I patiently wait for the chief writer to call my name.

Standing there the glamour wears off as one gets a glimpse of the executive officer standing alongside the pay table waiting to pounce on you, like a dog on the hare, for dress irregularities, haircut, not to mention shaves.

Suddenly I realize that I am about to run the gauntlet and there is no dodging, for the only one who can draw a man's pay in the Navy is that man himself.

"Jones, Able Seaman," calls the chief writer.

One, one two, and I step up to the table clicking my heels as I come to attention, whipping my right hand across the body and doff my cap, placing it crown up on the table and call, "Two thirty-one, Sir."

"Four pounds ten, Sir," chants the chief as though he were giving it away.

Turning right I double smartly away, but ere I have gone two paces the voice of the executive officer cuts in,

"Jones, haircut."

"Aye, sir", I automatically reply., mumbling at the same time that it is about time someone handed him a violin case.

I make for the sanctuary of the mess deck, but as yet I still have the gauntlet to run.

No matter what ship of war one may be in one must go through the firms, "the Jews", the boys call 'em.

Every pay day you will see them waiting there in Jews' Alley with their little black books and dirty lists waiting to pounce like a pack of wolves on a wee stray lamb. There is no use trying to dodge them, for a ship is a very confined area and they'll hound you wherever you go, so one must face the music and dance to their tune, which is always, "I want some money, gimme some, gimme some, gimme some, do."

First I contact is the Jewing firm, or the tailor as you would call him. Yes, I owe him for a dicky front and a collar, 9/6. Reluctantly I peel off a note and hand it to the first vulture as he scans through his list for my name. Just throwing money away as you recall that that collar was confiscated by the divisional officer for not conforming to dress regs.

"Okay, Red," says the firm as you palm your change and turn into the very jaws of the photo firm. "Eight and sixpence, Jonesie," is his greeting as he runs his pencil through your name. Rubbing shoulders with the ship's photo firm is the dhobying firm.

"What name, kid?" he grunts as he runs a stub of a pencil over a grimy sheet filled with names and symbols. Six and sixpence -and five and sixpence from last pay day. Gee, I had conveniently forgotten that, but not the dhobi wallah! Approximately three minutes had elapsed since I received four pounds ten shillings in crisp notes. Before I have gone thirty paces I have been relieved of one and a half.

Next is the canteen and you line up to meet your commitments. Waiting there in the queue I think to myself, "To hell with the robbin' cow. I'll pay him next pay. I'll get some one else to get my tobacco," but even as my thoughts go bolshy my eyes light on the black list. This tells all and sundry the "bad pays" and is encased in glass and is there for inspection during captain's rounds on Saturdays. My conscience pricks me, that is, if I have one, and I step up to the counter and mutter inaudibly, "Jones."

"What name?" yells the hawk-beaked ghoul behind the counter.

"Jones," I say. "Have I gotta tell you a dozen times?"

I move away glancing at the two crisp notes remaining in my possession and run right into the arms of the man who shouts the odds on Saturdays. He greets me with a smile, and why shouldn't he - I am his meal ticket. I hand out ten bob and swear that I will never back another nag while I have breath in my body, well, that is, till next Saturday when they're on again.

Glancing through the bulkhead door I get a glimpse of the lowest racketeer on any ship; so lowly is his profession that he is not permitted to stand in Jews' Alley. His is a nefarious racket and is disallowed by even the most lax commander. Behind those beady eyes now piercing me is the master mind of rackets, a nice obliging gent who will lend you a pound for twenty-five shillings at any time. Have I ever thought of the rate of interest we are paying? No, it didn't occur to me. There was that girl I met in Brisbane. I just had to take her out and the price paid was a mere nothing, that is, of course, not till now. Wonder what she is doing now? Out with some Swotty, or maybe a Yank, if there are any left.

One pays for experience and what a cost. I often wonder whether I was given brains to use or just to keep my ears apart. Guess I'll never learn, and the next time they pipe "Liberty men" I'll fall for it again. Sailors are born that way-they just can't help themselves.

I glance around behind me and see the other suckers paying out like totalizator machines. I pay up my last debt of twenty-five shillings and saunter off to the mess deck. Looking at the remaining five shillings I sling it in my locker.

So that was pay day. I am broke and happy in the thought that I am not a lone sucker. By the time many more have run the gauntlet of Jews' Alley they will be like me. But no one worries. Why should they? We can tick up our smokes. And that run ashore, well, after all we can get a pound even if it is for twenty-five and pay day comes round every second Thursday.

My pal lumbers down the ladder. "Well, Red, I'm broke again."

"Why worry? You know, Nobby, come to think of it, Churchill must have been a matelot once. Remember those words, 'Never in the history of mankind have so many been fleeced by so few.' "

R. G. ROBERTS, R.A.N.