Chapter 3 Espionage; Night Eyes; Green Memory; Liberators; Galloping Jack ....

ESPIONAGE - THEIRS AND OURS

JUDGING from the thousands of spy books published and the espionage films released, one might be pardoned for suspecting that Australia, too, teemed with wartime enemy agents. The precautions taken to make it difficult to glean information, the enjoining of secrecy about military matters, the raising of official eyebrows at war gossip, the restrictions upon communications, the vetting of people in high places-all these things deepen the impression that there were scores of Cloak and Dagger Boys just around the corner.

You perhaps are remembering that recently told o official story of the senior British officer who was planted as a trusted General Staff Officer on the German High Command and carried on for so long without detection - was never detected in fact.

And you have read, of course, the stories of the spies we employed in occupied Europe, Paris, in Brussels, in Marseilles, in all the big towns, and among the peasants of the country-side, too. Coded broadcast messages regularly went over to them in apparently plain English in B.B.C. transmissions.

And then there were our own chaps behind the lines in New Guinea, in Java, in the Philippines and in Japan itself. What a lot of useful information they must have sent back to our Headquarters.

Well then, you ask, were there not enemy agents behind our lines doing likewise? Were there no spies unmasked in Australia? What is the score?

Of course there were enemy agents - spies - in Australia and behind the firing lines. I don't know how many were shot in the operational areas, but there were several. Their cloaks and daggers were buried with them. And there were spies on the mainland; many of them were caught, possibly all of them.

Why weren't we told of it, you ask quickly.

As a matter of fact you were told, but possibly you didn't recognize the men-and women-concerned, as spies. Most of the spies in Australia were caught and interned before they were able to do any wartime spying. Nevertheless quite a lot of useful information was sent out by them before internment, so that both Germany and Japan knew exactly Australia's war assets and potentials before hostilities began.

Documents captured in the field, and researches in enemy archives have confirmed that. There was little that could be done in peacetime to prevent such information being despatched, but quite a lot was done unobtrusively to prevent it being got, and that without disturbing the diplomatic niceties, seemingly. Yet I guess that many an important foreign visitor - and others not so important - must have wondered afterwards at the curious incidence of the little accidents and so on that prevented their seeing certain things, things which their apologetic hosts were apparently so anxious for them to see.

But what about these spies in Australia during the war?

Well, as I said before, most of them were picked up in September 1939 and in December 1941 - Many of them had been under close surveillance for months, some for years past. Some had been quietly shadowed since the day they arrived here. And the documents impounded revealed the important espionage parts they were to play, but were never able to.

For the spy, his most critical time is within twenty-four hours-or maybe fort-y-eight hours-of his arrival in the area of his 'Job. He is most likely to betray himself by some little slip, some incongruity of behaviour or appearance, during those few hours before he has adapted himself to his new surroundings. before he has melted into his environment. before he has secured for himself that essential of all operating spies, that utility known professionally as a "cover".

Thus, all of the dozen or so spies executed in England during the war were caught within a day or so of their being dumped there. Despite their cleverly forged identification papers and the other minute details so carefully provided, they betrayed themselves by some silly oversight to some nosey busybody. The classical example is perhaps that poor chap who, feeling hungry after his parachute descent in the middle of the night, pulled out a lump of German sausage from his hiking bag, on a country railway station. How was he to know that such a delicacy had been off the meagre British dietary list for many a month?

Of course some survived the hazard of the first critical hours and who knows how many of those planted in England before the outbreak of war carried on successfully for the duration. That is another baffling thing about contra-espionage work, all you know of some enemy agents is the dire results of their successful jobs.

Incidentally, enemy agents in England had nothing to be proud of, when the German High Command credited Britain with thirty divisions of trained troops in England immediately after Dunkirk. The truth was that there was barely one division of trained troops available then, and many of them were without even rifles.

But what about spies in Australia?

The point is that much the same happened in Australia as in England; all we knew of some spies was the result of their successful bits of work. I mentioned the lack of rifles in England after Dunkirk. An urgent cry went nut from London for small arms. A shipload was collected quickly in Australia and a speedy vessel filled with the desperately needed rifles. The Navy took the utmost care with the security of that vessel yet it was the particular one sunk, out of the many ships vulnerable at that moment to the enemy raider in Australian waters. It wasn't the only one apparently carefully selected. Many ships were sunk off our coasts during those fateful months. We knew that the raider so far from their bases, had to husband their ammunition. The pattern of the sinkings, location, cargo and destinations disclosed only too clearly that the enemy was selecting for attention only those vessels militarily most important and he could do that only on precise information from inside Australia. He was getting it.

The culmination came when Moscow Radio (Russia was neutral at the time) broadcast the news that Queen Mary had just tied up at Singapore laden with Australian troops. This was a lucky break for Security, for the fact was that the ship was at that moment at Fremantle. But the first few hours after leaving Sydney she had shown every sign of proceeding north direct to Singapore. It was lucky also in this way: we were able to check back on air mails, flights and sailings from Australia and the results showed conclusively that the information broadcast by Moscow must have left Australia by illicit radio. It was this incident and the evidence of the pattern of the sinkings, that prompted the radio stations of Australia voluntarily to impose upon themselves recording restrictions upon certain classes of programmes.

Reverting to the sinking of the ship carrying rifles to Britain, the Navy regarded it as advisable that no admission should reach the enemy that that particular ship had been sunk. Accordingly, the strictest censorship instructions were issued and carried out implicitly. Nevertheless the information leaked out through the press a few weeks later, not directly of course, but plain to the collators to read. It was no fault of the newspaper men, who co-operated magnificently on all occasions, especially when they knew the why of it. As for that, several indiscretions were passed for publication by experienced service officers. It is the experienced collator of insignificant items who beats the most experienced and the most careful of censors.

The vast territory of Australia added its own special complications to contra-espionage work. There is the story of the British expert in detection of illicit transmitters, who had been sent out here to help us in closing radio loopholes in Queensland. He had an excellent record in Europe for nosing out behind-the line transmitters. The story goes that he did a preliminary reconnaissance in a "Fairmile" along the Queensland coast, shook his head sadly and was heard to mutter as he prepared to return to England, "You've certainly got a lot of ground here. There's nothing I can advise."'

Some amusing incidents occurred in that vast northern state during our efforts to close all possible loopholes for the escape of information. There were some Filipinos training in and around Brisbane for espionage work in the Philippines. Very bright intelligent little men they were too. They practised assiduously on their little portable radios. As practice, a small party of them was given the job of landing on an island off the coast near Brisbane. They landed undetected, sent radio messages for twelve days and then returned to their quarters in Brisbane absolutely unremarked, by anyone. As a further test and practice the same squad under an officer were sent from their quarters to the other side of Brisbane, a distance of some twelve or thirteen miles.

They marched in formation carrying all their impedimenta. After some time an excited message came on the phone from some local citizen to say that the Japs had landed, they were marching down So-and-so Street. A bored Security officer took a car to intercept the party. When he saw the little brown men, he rubbed his eyes and wished that he had brought his revolver with him. However he accosted the officer, who halted the party. Immediately a whistle was blown, whereupon the whole party in a trice scattered and vanished - under hedges, round corners, up bypaths. They were there, the next moment they were gone. The astonished Security officer again rubbed his eyes and then drove at full speed to report to high authority. As a matter of record, the party assembled in due course at its rendezvous, unidentified, unmolested and unchallenged except for the above incident.

Testing again, these secret training stations began sending code messages to and from Darwin, Cairns and Brisbane, They carried on thus for several week-. then the officer in charge mildly asked the organization responsible for intercepting such illicit signals, if it had picked up any of them. No it hadn't and then after a little reflection it expressed its vast indignation that it hadn't been warned beforehand of the tests!

Yes, there were enemy spies in our midst, but recent researches in the archives of Berlin and Tokyo do not show that they pulled off any worthwhile coups. On the contrary, the evidence awards our contra-espionage people a meed of congratulation, especially when one considers the formidable difficulties imposed by the vast areas of their responsibilities.

There are many Intelligence secrets that may not be told, but here is one that may be. There is irony in the story, for credit for the coup must be shared between our Field Security people and a certain very careful Jap naval officer. It concerns the capture, after the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, of the
complete official Japanese order of battle.

These important volumes were in the personal charge of the Jap naval officer mentioned. When the warship he was on was sunk, he carefully wrapped the important volumes in waterproof coverings and prepared to protect them with his life, against both the elements and the enemy. He was cast up with his precious books dry and safe on a small deserted island. There in due course he was caught unawares by one of our Field Security patrols, with his library, so carefully preserved by him for our perusal and use.

This was information for which we would have risked our own best secret agents behind the enemy lines. A conscientious Jap officer gave it to us - on a clean dry plate.

That capture confirmed much of our tentative collations and jig-saw manipulations; it saved us much weary and doubtful labour; it assured us victory in some minor actions.

There has been nothing uncovered from the archives of our enemies to show that their wartime Intelligence, through their spies or otherwise, ever got any information from us which was half as useful.

AUSTIN LAUGHLIN. FIRST AND SECOND A.I.F.

NIGHT EYES

NIGHT, like a great sprawling, black monster, had descended upon the convoy. It seemed almost as if some mischievous power had flung a voluminous pall carelessly down on the eastern portion of the Indian Ocean. The ships, completely blacked out, could scarcely see one another. Blurred, ghostly shapes in an unreal world of darkness, they ploughed their way through a moderate sea in a direction roughly south-south-east.

Aboard the cruiser, whose captain was responsible for the safety of the convoy, a great peace seemed to have settled. But a score of pairs of eyes, watchful and alert, probed the ebony veil through which the ship steamed. Around the decks, guns' crews slept at their quarters, the communication numbers remaining awake ready to arouse their comrades instantly should an alarm be sounded.

Up on the compass platform the men on watch peered into the night. Word had been passed around that there was not a friendly ship within three hundred miles. Thus anything sighted should be an enemy. In the fore part the Principal Control Officer, Lieutenant Commander Poole, continually swept the horizon with his glasses. Beside him the yeoman of the watch did likewise. On his little platform around the compass the officer of the watch, Lieutenant Vine, when not adjusting the ship's position in relation to the convoy, also maintained a sharp lookout.

Yeoman of Signals Wilson lowered his binoculars from his eyes and taking a piece of fine linen from the pocket of his watch-coat wiped the lenses carefully. He had something of a reputation as a lookout, but he could never fathom the reason for it. It was merely a matter looking carefully in all directions, he told himself. His nickname of "Cat's Eye" was quite undeserved, but nicknames given to a man aboard a ship stay with him.

Lieutenant-Commander Poole was an enthusiastic lookout. He was a student of "dark adaptation", the science of knowing how to see things at night. Wilson was inclined to laugh at such science; but Poole believed in it. The Americans had gone very thoroughly into the subject and laid down some fundamental principles, which were very similar to those the British naval men had been using for years without realizing it. Wilson, for example, scoffed at theory; yet he unconsciously made use of one of the most important principles. This is that when an object is sighted at night, its detail can be discerned more clearly if one looks to one side of it than if one looks directly at it.

The officer of the watch switched off the light under the gyro compass repeater, and stepped down to the wooden deck. He was careful to step lightly, as the captain's sea cabin was directly underneath, and he had been admonished several times for jumping down heavily and waking the captain. There are so many things to remember in the Navy.

"Visibility's fairly good tonight, Wilson," he observed.

"Not too bad, sir," the yeoman replied, carefully following the line of the horizon with his glasses. He moved his position as he did so, thus covering all the visible area. There was nothing in sight but the ships of the convoy, dotting the sea on either quarter like so many caravans on a billowy desert.

"Are all our children there, Wilson?" the Principal Control Officer inquired. A faint smile played around his mouth as he watched the conscientious yeoman bending down, his glasses resting on the protective steel plating. Wilson did not answer, and looking at him Vine saw his body was rigid with concentration. He resembled a pointer that has spotted a bird. Then suddenly, without moving, Wilson spoke.

"How many ships are supposed to be in this convoy, sir?" he asked, an undercurrent of suppressed excitement in his tone.

"Eight. You know that as well as I do," replied the P.C.O.

"Well there are nine now, sir," came the quiet rejoinder.

"Nine," cried the two officers in unison. In an instant both had binoculars to their eyes and were counting the ships astern.

There was silence as the men moved about in order to sight all the ship s. The P.C.O. finally lowered his glasses and frowned.

"How many ships do you see, Vine?" he queried.

"Nine," Vine replied without hesitation. "To my astonishment."

"Then we have a stranger in our midst," Wilson remarked coolly. "And there's not a friendly ship within three hundred miles." The P.C.O. called the captain and closed the ship's company up at action stations. Vine altered course one hundred and twenty degrees to starboard. The stranger was on the port wing of the convoy and Vine, at the request of the P.C.O., had altered in this manner on the assumption that the captain would wish to reach the rear of the convoy and approach the intruder from astern. The cruiser needed time to prepare her armament.

When the captain reached the compass platform, he commended the officers for their prompt action. The P.C.O. informed him that any praise should go to Wilson.

"What, you again, Wilson," the captain threw over his shoulder.

Under the friendly cover of night the yeoman blushed with pride. The ship was soon humming with activity. Men appeared from everywhere and shinned up ladders, wriggled through manholes, raced along passageways. Guns described weird circles as their layers and trainers ran them through the full arcs of training and elevation. On the range-finder platform, just abaft the compass platform, a party of men waited their turn to climb up the foremast to their stations.

There is something thrilling about a big ship of war going to battle stations in the middle of the night with not a glimmer of light showing. The men responded to the occasion grandly and no time was wasted.

While the captain approached the stranger's port quarter, being careful to present as small a target as possible, the gunnery officer made certain the main armament was ready. In a matter of minutes the cruiser's big guns were pointing at the stranger's vitals at point blank range. Some of them could not bear, much to their crews' annoyance. By this time the key men at the various quarters had got their "night eyes", and were eager for the order to open fire.

Meanwhile, Wilson was methodically signalling to the unknown ship. She was a large vessel and to Vine at his station by the forward guns she looked suspiciously like one of the possible Jap commerce raiders pictured in an Admiralty textbook. There was no answer to Wilson's signals, so the captain ordered a different type of signal to be sent. His was a great responsibility, for the ships in his care formed no ordinary convoy. Some of them had refugees from Java on board, far exceeding their normal carrying capacity.

All ships were short of provisions and water and one, with Australian troops and airmen on board, was towing a destroyer. The enemy knew this Australian destroyer was being towed from Batavia, and was certain to attempt to prevent its safe arrival in Australia. Some of the ships had never sailed these waters before. The tow was a great handicap as it kept the convoy's speed down to a mere five knots. In addition to all this, a great battle for the possession of Java was raging only a few hundred miles north of them and enemy ships might be met anywhere. It also did not add to the cruiser captain's peace of mind to know that only three months previously H.M.A.S. Sydney had met a raider in this very same area, and had fared badly although victorious in the encounter.

The captain gave the order to cease signalling and Wilson reluctantly obeyed. There was no answering light. Wilson imagined scores of pairs of eyes watching them from their quarry. Slant, evil eyes set deep in yellow faces. At any moment he expected to see a ripple of flame appear along her upper deck as she opened fire on them. After what seemed an interminable interval, when the cruiser was about to open fire, the stranger commenced signalling and revealed herself as a Dutch passenger ship escaping from the Netherlands East Indies. Seeing the convoy, she had joined it with the intention of following it to the safety of Australia.

There was much disappointment aboard the cruiser, and while her captain reprimanded the Dutchman for not in some way reporting his presence, the ship's company returned to bed. It was quite Impossible to have complete information on every ship on the high seas, and the cruiser met other "strangers" in this manner later. All save one proved to be friendly.

With what was suspiciously like a snort of disgust "Cat's Eye" Wilson stowed away his box-lamp. Then, assuming his old position on the port side of the magnetic compass binnacle, he reached into the pocket of his watch-coat and brought forth a crumpled piece of fine linen.

Slowly and deliberately he proceeded to polish the lenses of his binoculars.

W. N. SWAN, R.A.N.

GREEN MEMORY

"THE remembrance of beauty, the beauty of a thing, or of personal relationships, or of a country has always seemed to me the chief end of life. The present cannot be held, it slips through our grasping fingers, becomes immediately the past. The future may be neither beautiful nor worth remembering; certainly its beauty will be accompanied by ugliness and tragedy. But what has happened is ours and cannot he taken away from us; and the mind, like a gauze screen through which gold is run, transmutes in retrospect almost everything into loveliness. Remembrance is the one sure immortality we know."

No soldier who served in the Middle East will ever forget those years. He may revile them, or he may treasure them, but one thing is certain-he will never forget them. Most of us knew pain or anxiety of one kind or another, some of us knew grief; but whether now or in twenty years' time let someone mention the phrase "Middle East" and instantly a flock of memories will come crowding in upon us. We each have our own individual, entirely unique set of memories. No two are alike, nor can they be more than partly communicated. Mine seem to have crystallized into a pattern quite early, in fact on the day when I returned to Australia. I found, like the author of "Remembrance of Things Past" that the quality of a direct experience always eludes one, and that only in recollection can we sense its real flavour.

We had come into Fremantle harbour late one afternoon aboard the Salween. Despite the excusable confusion associated with leave passes and notification telegrams we all felt a sense of deep relief in being home once again.

When the ship had emptied I gathered up my bundle of letters that had come aboard earlier in the afternoon. I hadn't had time to open them. Picking up my leave pass from the desk, I put the letters in my pocket and walked down the gangway on to ... Australia.

The wharves were almost deserted by this time, but at the gates a group of urchins were still hopefully waiting.

"Got any Gyppo coins, Sarge?"

"Stamps, any foreign stamps, please?"

"Got any Itie buttons, Dig'?"

As I walked on I heard one disappointed lad say, "That bloke's no good, he ain't got no Middle East souvenirs at all."

Souvenirs? Yes, I had souvenirs. I'd been thinking of them the night before when I couldn't sleep, trying to put them into words . . . something like this ...

On the high places in deep summer I had lain among the wild thyme and watched the ghostly legions stir the dust of Time's old highways. I had seen today's armies travelling in the wheel ruts of Caesar's chariots.

Standing on the beach where first had been discovered the shellfish dye which became the symbol of world domination -the purple of Imperial Rome- I had watched trucks and tanks rumble past the once-proud city of Tyre.

Sitting very quietly in the palm-groves at Acre, I had heard the fighting songs of the warriors as they rode in the emblazoned cavalcade of Richard the Lionheart. Could I have been mistaken if I caught a glimpse of a Crusader as he stood on the bastions of the city gazing out across the Homeric blue of the Mediterranean?

On the wooded heights of Carmel I had felt my blood chill to the clangour of massacre as the Turk stormed the monastery and slew the kindly monks.

In Damascus I had stood in a cool green courtyard before the dazzling white tomb of Saladin. There lay the man who put an end to the pageantry of the Crusades and drew the dark curtains of Islam over the jealously guarded secrets of the East.

By night I had heard phantom laughter and the high sound of music coming from a hillside in Jericho. There was the scent of sweet balsam in the air as Cleopatra and Antony stood on a terrace, unknowing, that their fate was mirrored, black and bitter, in the Dead Sea far below them.

My body was walking through the streets of an Australian port, but in my mind I lay on my Syrian hill and watched the blue sky between a filigree of silver olive-leaves. The sun was relentless. It beat down on the hot brown earth. From the burning sands of Gaza, across the stony wastes of Judea and the smiling hills of Galilee, to the fabled peaks of the Lebanons, I saw the land as a mighty stage. The impassioned figures of Delilah, Jezebel and Salome danced their spectral Dance of Death . . . the stark figures of the Baptist and Elijah denounced the pomp and avarice of kings . . . Solomon wooed Sheba with gold and frankincense . . a tide of crimson wine washed through the pagan temples at Baalbek . . . there was a clash of steel as Jew met Philistine ... and a Child was born in a village called Bethlehem. Suddenly that turbulent, historical panorama, that sense of the past which you feel like a hand on your shoulder in the sunken streets of Ascalon, had become my souvenir. That was to be my Middle East for "time out of mind".

Since that evening in Fremantle the years have already softened the sharp focus of my memories. The gentle light of peace falls kindly upon them, and even now I'm enjoying my one sure immortality.

BERNARD FLETCHER Second AIF

MAN BEFORE A WINDOW

FROM outside, thin splinters of rain maintained a vicious crackle on the window. No sun played in the opaque square; only thick grey murk lay flat to the glass. Incandescent mockery in the globe above his
head lent no belief of warmth to the cold walls about him.

Book closed over forefinger, nail scratching at the last approximate paragraph, he stared towards the rain and the unseen movement of trams five floors below. Somewhere in the past there was other rain. Rain across bellies knotted with hunger and cramp, rain rusting rifles cocked at the side, rain guttering down the mountain where the patrol slept in the solid cube of dark. Somewhere farther back in the past there was cold and a world that was white: snow heavy on the tarpaulins and packed in solid ramps where it had drifted against the vehicles: tracery of icicles and the air so brittle that, every movement seemed pregnant with premonition of its crashing into splintering sheets.

His eyes came down to the last line of his book they had read: "It's cold," Peter said, "and it's raining. And there's the enemy and here am I. I have a fortunate feeling that today I shall do something big, something grand, for the people I left behind me. You see - it's my birthday."

He felt, as he read the words, that he wanted to throw up. Men didn't talk that way; not soldiers, anyway. Even though, now that the war was over, he didn't care what individuals said or did, he didn't want soldiers coloured that way in his reading. He grinned as he remembered what he never admitted to anyone but himself. That he hugged closely every minute of his living in the Army, that he and the men he'd known, the things they'd said and the things they'd done, would be with a lot of his life until he quietly left it.

Grinned, too, as he remembered that today, 3 September 1946, was his own birthday.

Seven years ago today - a little later in the day than this - he'd hear the declaration of war over the Brisbane radio. He'd been twenty three that day and the girl of the moment had baked him a cake, which her sister had iced. During the afternoon they'd driven up near Samford and picnicked, eaten the cake and not given a damn for anything in the world but themselves. Then they'd come home as the Sunday dark was coming down, switched on the radio to see what the news was.

It had come like a blow on the brain. The expected words, all the prescience, the knowledge that he'd known this was how it had to be, crumpled before the tremendousness of fact. Not the light laughter of the poet's, swimmers into cleanness leaping; this was the bitterness of a generation and all the generations before it. War was the terms of the devastation of Warsaw, the spread-eagled dead on a hundred fields, the desperate wail of a million Jews in a thousand places and the language of effort and agony. War was . . .

Something rose and kicked him in the stomach.

Much was crammed in the days beyond, Turned stares on the streets at a man in uniform, bayonet drill in the dusty summer, familiarity with the regalia of killing. War was waiting for suspense to die and the future to topple headlong down to the present with sleek shriek of steel and spout and gout of flame.

Bardia was the flame and the steel and the future, or maybe the end of all living, over a taped start-line. He heard the Thursday barrage cut streamlined swaths in the sky, saw the shocked dark of a desert dawn rock to the device of fire. Singing steel swung upward, outward, and about him men came to their common end and the blood that once ran riot in their hearts drained down and stained the floor or sand. Over the crushed wire, through the blown ditches he ran with the rest and thought was a tangled tumult in a tumbled mind. In the outer Italian defences reason returned: the work was closer and the killing easier than its anticipation. Everything was fine in the three days that followed....

Tobruk to Derna, onward through Barce, Baracca and Benghazi and down to Agedabia. Tobruk was stiffer than Bardia, the fighting tougher; but now he could, and knew he could, take what they had to offer. Except that somewhere there was that ultimate which is for all men and beyond which no man may go. He thought a lot about that at times, wondered if others thought the same as he. Inevitably they must and he learned to submerge thought under succession of deeds. It wasn't shrewd philosophy. It was the hard callus of protective sanity.

Now, somehow, nothing could ever again kick him in the stomach.

But back at base he learned that fear can be the retrospect of horror. The quiet blood no longer ran in spate, the armour of action slid to nothingness. Off-key remembrance plucked at the minor moments, built them to major status.

War was
- Two great burly infantrymen kicking in the head of an Italian prisoner.
- Sergeant Lucas turning over the corpse of his brother in a wadi re-entrant.
- The explosion of bombs along the mole in Benghazi, the whistle and the crump of inanimate metal. the screams of wounded animate men and the silence of inanimate dead.

When the rest of the division went to Greece his unit went back to the desert. There in the hustle of the field he was himself again. Action was scant: a little strafing, a little bombing, a little patrolling. When the switch came to the different terrain of Syria, the acceptance of transition was automatic.

In the ridiculous, sudden skirmish for Syria war was sharper. Weeks dragged out the tiny action which will find no recording in the roll of great campaigns. The fighting was more vicious and excitement and hatred ran higher. But he was now part of a welded formation, one blooded in action, shrewd in battle. The men by him were no longer only friends in a unit; they belonged to a whole and as they stood and fell, so did he. It was more than a necessity of safety. Thinking of it now he could see that together they had been finding a sympathetic stream of unity they had not guessed at. It was a little like an explorer stumbling on a continent where he had been convinced no continent existed.

The campaign folded suddenly. In the long later months of garrison and patrol, war slipped quietly into a background. Even Pearl Harbour was only something discussed over a half-frozen bottle of Almaza beer. Then came the fall of Singapore, the slump to depression; and at once the world seemed cracked wide open.

Among the scattered blue gums of Deir Suneid he had thought of return to Australia. But return was not at all as he had imagined it. He found a people apathetic to their future. No, not apathetic. They didn't know what modern war could be. But it seemed that there might have been more effort on the public part. Still ... the job lay up in the jungle. There was no time to worry over anything external to that. Except to note that Australia's blind faith was its best morale.

Instead of embarking for New Guinea his regiment found itself patrolling the Daly River up north. While Buna was being fought he sat with five men on the magnificent mouth of the river keyed up to help repel invasion. The six of them would have given the Japanese fleet hell had it appeared! To do

it they had one Tommy gun with twenty three rounds, four rifles with fifty rounds apiece, two Smith and Wesson pistols with six official rounds and a couple of dozen stolen from the "Q" store.

There came the day when he had to leave the regiment. He had a chance to go to the islands. To go off alone seemed a tremendous thing. It still seemed so. He knew that he would never again find the same unity with other men. He didn't know that he would have wanted to. These stood for the sharing of the greatest things that had ever happened in their living. The adventure should have ended there. Anything additional could be only anti-climax.

In the valleys and on the mountains war was different once again. By this time the skies were filled with friendly planes, but death was more furtive, lurked in a thousand ways where once it hid in only a few.

In the face of it he saw men do incredible, stupendous things, saw an army surmount problems which seemingly couldn't be surmounted
- Along the Mindjim Valley almost a whole unit carried supplies on a five days' carry to keep a company, of which a prong of only one platoon was engaged, in the field.
- Three men, with bayonets, separately charged, in the face of certain fire, a rock bunker which had to be cleared. Each of them was shot down.
- Stretcher-bearers crawling under fire to attend the moaning wounded when treetop snipers had the height of them; strangers in the strangest country in the world finding their own way home when lost for days on patrol; unrecorded death struggles in the mud, on the mountains, on the lips of crazy cliffs.

Six years of war were a lifetime in a soldier's mind. Things which lay behind 1939 still were remembered, but the outlines grew dimmer. Campaigning in the field seemed to have existed always; or, if not that, one forgot the sharp division of pre-war days and enlistment.

He was in Balikpapan when the world flared up in silence. At first it all seemed a little ridiculous. The mind accepted, the mind rejected. Then, one morning . . .

Three gunboats crept up Balikpapan Bay. At its northern end they slipped into mazes of swamps, found a half-hidden creek lined with nipa palms and chugged along it. Their shallow draft allowed them to grate over a Japanese boom. There was no noise in the jungle which lay so close that men might have tossed a match into it. Once some of the men claimed that they saw a machine-gun crew traverse them with a muzzle and throats tautened, but there was no eruption. Low over them two Boomerangs, Bluey and Curly, victory-rolled and taped the land ahead.

The end of the creek was a small lagoon wide enough only for the boats to turn. Two Japanese privates ran down on a small landing stage and threw ropes. With the others he watched their officers come aboard: the parleying commenced .... That was his ultimate acceptance of the end of war.

The date was 3 September 1945. Once again it was his birthday.

It was darker now. The rain was heavier, but, through its curtain, a few lights began to show from the streets. No outside noise rose above the noise of the storm.

He noticed that he had laid his book on the table before him. He picked it up, searched for the sentence which had marked the end of his reading....

Suddenly he stretched over and raised the window. The hand which held the book reached out and released its hold. He saw the book begin to turn over, over, in the air as it dropped towards the trams. Then he lost sight of it in the rain.

SHAWN O'LEARY, SECOND A.I.F.

GALLOPING JACK

T0 every man who fought with the Australian and New Zealand mounted forces in the 19 14-18 war the name "Galloping Jack" means only one man - Brigadier-General Royston of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade,

By virtue of his inspiring leadership and utter disregard for personal danger he stands out in my memory as the most colourful personality with whom I ever came in contact. How he came to be in command of Australians I don't know, for he was a South African.

When he took over the 3rd Brigade after the battle of Romani he had already made a reputation for himself and earned his nickname by galloping seven horses to a standstill during that battle. Although wounded early in the day he had refused to report to the Field Hospital until the scrap was over.

In appearance there was nothing inspiring about him. He was short and rather plump, with a round florid face against which a short white moustache showed with startling clearness. On the left breast of his tunic was an array of campaign ribbons that left me gasping with envy and admiration. Mounted or dismounted he always carried a little cane. I can't recall ever seeing him without it.

According to some of those in authority Galloping Jack was mad. He doesn't seem to have been exactly popular with his superiors. But whatever they thought about him we, the rank and file, worshipped him. We could talk about his doings for hours on end; we would fight any man who said a word against him. We claimed that he had only one motto in war: "When you're in a tight corner and things look bad-charge." And because he always got away with it we felt that he was invincible. It follows as a logical sequence that we soon felt the same about ourselves as his Brigade. We were a very cocky Brigade under Galloping Jack and I think he loved us as much as we did him.

He didn't send us into battle; he led us. galloping up and down the lines of dismounted men, encouraging us. Completely regardless of the enemy fire himself, he frequently cautioned us to take cover. Once, as he galloped past during an engagement, we stood up and cheered him. He reined his horse in at that and swung around.

"Keep down, boys," he bellowed. "Keep down, that man!"

Don't expose yourselves, to fire like Not long after he was back, telling us to get our bayonets on. "We'll charge 'em," he declared, shaking his little cane at the Turkish lines. "We'll show 'em!"

It may be argued that the enemy opposition must have been very weak when a mounted man could gallop up and address the front line troops unscathed. Against that I can only say that my own troop (C Troop, A Squadron, 8th Light Horse) had twenty casualties out of the twenty-four men who went into action that day. Judged by any standards that's a fairly heavy casualty list.

Although he didn't have a blind eye to turn to signals, Galloping Jack several times imitated Nelson's tactics and successfully ignored the order to retire and break off the engagement. "We'll lose more men trying to withdraw over this open plain than we would going forward," he declared passionately on one such occasion. "We'll fix bayonets and charge." An hour later we were gathering souvenirs from our prisoners.

All Light Horsemen know that those tactics won the battles of Magdhaba and Raffa. To me it always seemed that the lack of them brought about our defeat in the first battle of Gaza.

Between stunts Galloping Jack must have been a restless, irritable old man. He never seemed to be happy unless he was actually in touch with the enemy. He accompanied patrols and, when Galloping Jack was out, a patrol was always liable to develop into a minor engagement.

I think we all enjoyed those fighting patrols as much as he did. There wasn't a great deal of danger and there was usually plenty of fun. On the rolling hills around the Wady Ghuzze mounted patrols from both sides met almost daily and indulged in a series of manoeuvres, the general idea being to lure the other fellow into a trap. It was ideal country for such tactics and, being better mounted than Jacko, we always had the advantage. If we found ourselves outnumbered we simply galloped out of danger.

My first actual meeting with Galloping Jack took place on one of those outings. Our whole squadron was out, the old Brig evidently having decided to show Jacko just who owned that particular sector. At about 10 a.m. we made contact with a squadron of Turkish lancers and, as usual, were careful to show only a quarter of our strength, the remainder taking cover well in the rear. All that morning Galloping Jack moved the single troop about, offering it as bait, but although we were in territory that Jacko had always considered his own he wouldn't bite. Possibly he suspected the presence of the rest of the squadron.

Late in the afternoon our major sent for me. "The Brigadier wants a Hotchkiss gun section to volunteer for a special job," he said. "Are you interested?"

Was I interested? I was so flattered that I was only scared someone else might beat me and my gun section to the job. I was very young and foolish then.

We mounted and rode off with the Brig actually riding alongside me and talking to me. I can still remember how tongue-tied I felt.

"Young fellow," he said, "would you like to earn a V.C.?"

"Too right, sir!" I answered. With the boundless optimism of youth I could already see the little purple ribbon on my tunic.

Half of the squadron had now gone into action and were exchanging shots with the enemy, but instead of riding towards them we rode to the rear. I remember thinking that this was a dammed funny way to win a V.C., when the Brig explained things. On the top of a very small rise my Number 2 and I dismounted with the gun and a supply of ammunition. After ordering the other two to take our horses one mile to the rear Galloping Jack pointed to one of those rows of lilies one sees everywhere in Palestine.

"How far are those lilies"" he asked.

"Three hundred yards, sir." I answered, making a wild guess.

"Four hundred," he corrected. I'm withdrawing the whole squadron. The Turk seems to know our strength today. When he sees us retire he'll follow up. This is his territory. Don't let him see you and don't open fire until he gets to those lilies. This is a great chance for you two boys. Good luck." He drove in his spurs and galloped back to the squadron.

We watched them mount and withdraw and as they trotted past us the old Brig waved his little stick.

"Good luck, boys," he called. "Give it to 'em."

We felt very lonely as they disappeared over the next rise. We were a mighty long way from anyone, we realized, and we were only two against more than a hundred.

My Number 2, a big chap named Bill Willis, was a good soldier and a good cobber. He voiced my own fears when he said:

"We'll be properly stonkered if this so-and-so gun jams. You and me'll be skewered on them long lances like a couple of stuffed chooks."

I said, trying to reassure myself as much as Bill:

"Old Galloping Jack won't let us down. He'll have the squadron somewhere handy."

Bill examined one of the spare strips of ammo. "They'll want to be a flamin' sight handier than they were when I last seen 'em," he remarked. "They're a couple of miles away now."

Time dragged on. Four Turkish horsemen appeared on the ridge less than a mile ahead of us. They rode slowly down the slope towards us and a long line of heads appeared on the ridge. My V.C. and my hopes of ever seeing Australia again were fast fading. Perhaps, I thought, they'll post it to mother and tell her how it all happened. A lot of good that would be to me!

The four horsemen retired behind the distant hill and another hour dragged by. ' Just before sundown our section mates galloped up with our horses. Galloping Jack himself was with them. "Bad luck, boys," he said as we mounted and rode away. "No damned enterprise, those Turks."

Neither Bill nor I said anything but had we been in the presence of a lesser personage we would both have said, "Thank God."

A week later I was told to smarten myself up and report to Brigade Headquarters, there to take over the duties of Brigadier's galloper, the most coveted position in the whole Brigade!

Usually the title of Brigadier's galloper is somewhat misleading; with Royston it described the job exactly. A man had to be well mounted to keep in sight of Galloping Jack.

I took over my new duties just in time for the first battle of Gaza so that I had what amounted to a ringside seat at that disastrous engagement. The battle has been described by men much better fitted for the job than 1, who can give only personal impressions and set down the things I actually saw. Nor do I propose to criticize the High Command; my story is of one man only and the part he attempted to play that day.

The Tommy infantry had the difficult task. They hammered unsuccessfully against the heavy frontal defences while the Australian and New Zealand mounted forces made a swift encircling movement and cut off the town. In a series of fierce, individual hand to-hand encounters among cactus hedges they quickly subdued the outer Turkish defences. After that most of the prisoners we took were not front line troops and they were very surprised to see us. Gaza had not fallen, yet here were mounted Australians miles behind the town! A Turkish general lounging in a gharry was driven right into our midst. Later in the day I saw a Light Horse machine gun section driving around in the gharry.

Galloping Jack, with myself tagging along behind, was everywhere. The old chap was working himself a frenzy. A major battle was in progress and all a-round him were troops taking no active part in it. He wanted permission to make an assault on the rear of the town. In half an hour, he pointed out. it would all be over. Attacked by the infantry in front and the Light Horse in the rear the Turks would
surrender at once. To me his argument was unanswerable. but then I was only a humble trooper. albeit temporarily promoted to Brigadier's galloper.

Refused permission to attack the town the old fellow sought other outlets for his boundless energies. Obviously it maddened him to see his whole Brigade standing about in idleness when such immense potentialities were at hand. Nor was he the only one, for I got the impression that every man in the Australian and New Zealand mounted forces was itching for the word to go that day. The small, individual attacks had whetted their appetites. They had emerged victorious from every one and were anxious for the final kill.

But there was to be no kill that day. Instead, late in the afternoon, the order for a general withdrawal was given. Royston, his brigade major and I were out on a scouting expedition when it came. Riding to the crest of a small rise we looked out across a great rolling plain and saw a column of marching men. For a few moments the two officers studied the troops through their binoculars, then Galloping Jack swung his horse around and the three of us raced hell-for-leather for our Brigade.

The other two were better mounted than I and Royston was talking excitedly to the Divisional Commander and his staff when I pulled up a discreet distance away.
I don't know, course, but I think the Brig's meeting with his superior was accidental and I have often thought how unfortunate it was.

With no knowledge of the order to withdraw Galloping Jack would have acted.

The Divisional Commander was an Englishman of the old "obey orders if you break owners" type.

His command was only temporary and I fear he never got to know or understand us. Certainly he didn't understand our fire-eating old Brig nor did he believe his report about the advancing Turks.

"You're mistaken, Royston," I heard him say. "You probably saw some of our own infantry. In any case our orders are for a general withdrawal."

Galloping Jack waved his arms wildly. "Come with me," he said. "I'll show you."

The general didn't come. He sent two of his staff and we were off again at another mad gallop. There was no mistaking the identity of the marching troops this time. They were much closer and we could distinguish the grey field uniforms of the Turkish infantry marching at case in column of route. At their head rode an officer on a white Arab pony. They were marching up to reinforce the Gaza garrison and they were obviously unaware that we had the town surrounded.

"We'll charge them mounted," Royston declared, shaking his little cane at them. "I've got my whole Brigade waiting. just think what a mounted charge would do to that lot! They don't even suspect we're here! "

Even I could see the absolute rightness of his argument. A brigade of galloping, yelling horsemen would have created such a panic among those marching troops that they'd have thrown down their rifles without firing a shot. It was a cavalry officer's dream come true.

Back we raced to Divisional H.Q. where Galloping Jack resumed his pleas. "We don't need swords," he almost shouted. "We don't even need rifles. We could capture 'em with sticks!" He had dismounted this time and I was holding his horse, edging as close as possible to catch the conversation. I heard the general say something about "orders". He didn't look at all pleased at the Brig's outburst but Galloping Jack hadn't finished. He argued, pleaded and waved his arms, pointing first to the town and then in the direction of the advancing reinforcements. "We'll never get the chance again," he said, "never! I'll lose hundreds of my boys trying to take this town next time. They'll be butchered!"

How right the old chap was! History has proved that. But his urgent pleas did no good. Finally he turned away and walked towards his horse, a dejected, pathetic figure with no spring or military snap in his step. His plump shoulders sagged, his chinstrap dangled loosely under his jaw instead of fitting tightly under his chin, and even the usually jaunty Emu plume in his felt hat seemed to droop. He took the reins I passed to him and I saw the tears running down his red cheeks. Slowly and clumsily he mounted and, with me taking station behind him, actually rode away at a walk.

Galloping Jack was my god and a god may do as he likes. He may even cry in public. But I was only his galloper, a very un-godlike trooper. Afraid lest the old fellow should turn his head I gulped quickly and wiped my nose first on one shoulder strap and then on the other.

The next moment Galloping Jack drove his spurs into his mount and we were off, galloping to get the 3rd Brigade started in the retreat from Gaza, a retreat that at least two of us felt should never have taken place.

"STANDBY" (R. S. PORTEOUS), FIRST A.I.F.