Chapter 6 Gremlins; An Aussie over the Mohne Dam; He had red hair; Abandon & Destroy

AN AUSTRALIAN OVER THE MOHNE DAM

THE Australian belongs to a ubiquitous clan, and there were few actions in World War 11, from the Bismarck hunt to Burmese bombardments and Murmansk convoys, in which the country was not represented.

On 16 May '43, at midnight of a clear moonlit evening on the Scampton 'drome near Lincoln, in England, some one hundred and thirty men filed into the briefing room. There was little laughter or pretence - the two months' intensive training and close secrecy surrounding their operation had left no illusions as to its hazard - and, soberly keen to hear the worst, they ranged themselves round the map-papered room.

Among them was Pilot Officer Anthony Burcher, R.A.A.F., wireless air gunner, and one of the Australians to be selected by bomber ace Guy Gibson as one of this handpicked bunch to lather the Moline Dam in the Ruhr; he was, as well, to be the sole survivor from the crews of the eight Lancasters downed on the critical operation.

The briefing officer laid a pointer on a large scale map of that dynamo of industry, the Ruhr. Those behind craned forward to read the black letters of the name under the stick. With it still on the map the officer half-turned and, as casually as if he were naming a bus route, told the waiting airmen:

"Gentlemen, your target for tonight is the Mohne Dam."

There it was; short and snappy. They'd been guessing and probing and wondering long enough; now they knew.

Burcher moved with the rest up to a table on which, ribbed in clay, the contours of the target area were shown. As he listened one part of his mind was independently busy on the target: they had guessed it would be a dam. For two and a half months the eighteen pepped-up Lancs had roared in low over dams in England then at low level bombed parts of the Wash in East Anglia into a riven desert. Five hours' day practice, five hours at night it went on, and when you weren't flying you were pumping thousands of rounds of machine-gun ammo into moving targets, or bomb aiming, or map reading, and copping a blast for the slightest mistake.

All of which-that two and a half months' training period was probably the most intensive in R.A.F. history-augured something pretty big. It was: the Moline Dam, at the head of its river, dammed back through hills and valleys millions of gallons of pressured water which, fed with disciplined force into the power house turbines, electrified scores of factories and heavy industries patterning the valley below. Eighteen Lancasters would hardly dent that area; the waters of the Mohne Dam, behind the thick retaining wall, servile and useful, would, if released, expend their pent-up energy in a pressure-pounding flail of destruction.

The briefing officer was introducing a civilian. "This gentleman is the scientist who has been working on the special bomb you will carry for tonight's job."

Then the scientist told them how he and his colleagues had been working since 1940 on a secret explosive which, detonating under water, would make of the surrounding liquid a well-nigh solid force thrusting against the base of the wall containing it; how the bomb looked like a giant depth charge (as in effect it was), weighing 62 tons, that its explosive was nothing like the ordinary well-known disruptives, and, revealing what it was, warned them that it was still very much on the secret list.

There remained nothing but the flight order in which planes would form up. Gibson, of course, would lead. Number two plane going, as it obviously would be, into a stirred hornets' nest, had often been toasted in the mess. Burcher looked at the flight board and a sudden tenseness curled in his stomach. There it was: "No. 2 Flight Lieutenant Hopgood". "Hoppy" was Burcher's captain.

One other thing the crews were told. It was obvious, the briefing officer said, that the dam was a target of prime importance; it had to go. If they failed this night, they would go back again the next night, and the next,

"Until the job was done. He left it to their imagination to conceive what the Hun would be doing between raids to welcome them.

With practised ease the huge shapes formed up, waiting for the brief flick of light that meant the start of their mission. Then, with a succession of coughing roars, each pounded down the runway and soared slanting into the moonlit heavens, lifting on spreading wings its own bulk, seven meticulously trained men, and, lying quiet beneath its belly, 61 tons of violent disruptive.

In a matter of minutes they were over the Channel, in the moonlight lying mute as a dream. Here a flight shafted off to bomb the er Dam, a diversion in force, and another, Sorpe Dam.

In vics of three Gibson led his team towards the Dutch coast, flying in tight formation a bare three hundred feet above water to avoid enemy radar. Alert in his tail turret, watching the water whip past in a smooth, enameled sheet, Burcher saw its surface explode suddenly in a gout of white water. One plane was in. Shortly after it happened again; and two circles of creaming white receded astern on the swiftly unrolling water mat below him. There were no survivors.

They hit the Dutch coast at Texel, and the first reactions of a disturbed enemy. From then on a stabbing flicker of angry muzzles paced them across Holland into the Ruhr, and long, gracefully-climbing lines of coloured tracer reached up to them, whipped viciously past and fled on into the heavens.

They flew out into the open and a grasping hand of long white fingers fell upon Gibson's plane and held it in its glaring grip. Up along the converging fingers the enemy played hoses of fire, tracer thrusting vehemently up like red-hot meteors streaking out. At any moment the leader's aircraft could expect to disintegrate under the searing blast. Hopgood gave a warning call to all hands and put his big
craft over and down in a steep bank. Burcher lined up his twin barrels on the nearest white-hot eye and let go. It went out abruptly. Every gun in the plane was firing now, and one by one the clutching fingers fell away from the leader, till he was speeding on again in the safety of obscurity.

Then a burst of fire caught the rescuer. Hopgood was hit in the face; front gunner killed; wireless operator wounded; no reply from navigator; and, lonely in the tail end, Burcher clasped his hands over a welling stomach wound. His sights had been shot away, and, testing, he found the hydraulic power line severed. From now on, with the worst to come, he would have to man-handle the heavy mounting.

The flight regained formation and roared on low across Germany. They shot from a wooded valley, banked, and below him Burcher saw the dam lake, two and a half miles of gleaming, placid silver, coiling its white shining length round lumps of forest and farm land. Target!

Gibson detached from the remainder's circling and bore in for the huge wall, aiming between the two high flak-towers flanking its ends. They could see plainly the torpedo-nets reaching protectively back from the wall into the water. Then Gibson was in and over, leaving below him a slight splash and ruffling on the surface of the water. Seconds, then the lake near the dam seemed to tauten; a flash of intense white shot across its face; and its placidity erupted violently into a bursting mound of water that rose high above the dam and flung itself apart in a spreading cascade of spray. The huge structure shook.

Gibson's voice, clipped and nasal, rang through the intercom wires that ran like nerves through Hopgood's plane:

"Hello M for Mother. This is Red Leader. Proceed to bomb target." Hopgood answered, tautly, "Roger. Going in."

They started from the lake's end, boring down till the spots from two lights in the aircraft's belly converged on the water. The scientists wanted their bomb dropped from exactly sixty feet. Altimeters at this level were useless. So, with his lights converged, Hopgood raced in to the dam wall, timing his run with a stop-watch. Fully alerted now, the German gunners converged their lighted Bofors muzzles on the plane and raked it from end to end. The machine quivered with the sudden upthrust of bursting steel.

Holding a sodden handkerchief over one half of his torn face Hopgood held his plane straight for the wall. She lightened suddenly as the bomb dropped. It overshot the dam by inches and, smashing through the power house roof, blew it to pieces. And blew, as well, the Lancaster three hundred feet into the air. This added altitude was to save Burcher's life.

He heard through his phones: "Port outer engine on fire." That was the engineer. "Feather engine, press extinguisher," ordered Hopgood. The wing was burning now, flames whipping back past Burcher's turret.

"Prepare to abandon aircraft." Burcher put on his 'chute (the safety height for its use is seven hundred feet; they were at three hundred), staggered to the rear door, lifted up the wireless operator (with half of one leg shot off he couldn't stand himself) and pushed him out. His 'chute did not open. Burcher opened his own silk, held its voluminous folds in his arms against his chest, and stumbled to the door. At that moment the aircraft blew up. Burcher was hurled out into the air; a stunning blow shocked through him as his back caught and broke on the rudder-fin. Then his 'chute opened.

He came to a few seconds later, lying on his back on a soft ploughed field, on the lakeside above the dam. Luckily Hopgood had turned back over the dam before he and the rest of his crew were blown into eternity.

Burcher had a grandstand view of the break. He saw the fifth plane come in, unload, and zoom clear. He heard the roar of the bomb, saw the tortured water erupt again, then, transcending all that had gone before, a crunching, grinding rend of sound as the restraining wall of millions of tons of water finally broke. Into the valley a wall of water plunged in a liquid avalanche, surging with frightful force towards the buildings below. Lying there propped on one elbow, he saw light after light in factory and house black out, watched the hungry flood overtake motorists, their lights gleaming for an instant beneath the torrent before, with the driver's life, they flicked out.

With the last plane gone, and the lake pouring out now in a steady, muted roar, Burcher took thought for himself. Scooping a hole in the loose earth he buried his 'chute, found to his surprise he could walk, and made for a nearby railway as briefed. The sound of searching motor-bikes sent him into a drain, where he hid all night. Next day, delirious and thirsty, he set out again for the railway. For three days he wandered, plagued with thirst, till a 16-year-old of the Hitler Youth Movement caught him, jammed a Luger in his back and, after kicking him almost unconscious, half-carried him on his bicycle to a nearby police station.

There followed weeks of third-degree questioning to ascertain his squadron, after a brief spell in hospital where, the Germans being short of plaster of Paris, his back was set in cement. The Gestapo couldn't beat him about the body, so they concentrated with rubber truncheons on his calves and biceps. When that failed they tried starving and thirst; Burcher remembers the apoplectic visage of the lieutenant from whom he asked for a cup of water. Water! When the whole area was thirsting through R.A.F.-inspired lack of it!

His questioning ended before a Luftwaffe officer. Weak, emaciated, but still resistant, Burcher stood before the questioner's table and on it noted a Flight magazine. He remembered it as the issue in which Sergeant Burcher of 106 Squadron, led by Commander Gibson, was listed as having won the D.F.M. for his earlier raids over Germany.

"Are you," rasped the Luftwaffe officer, "the sergeant mentioned here?" "Yes," answered Burcher.

"Give me the names of a dozen of your squadron and we will question you no further."

Without hesitation the prisoner reeled off twelve names - of his cricket team at school.

"Ah! " ejaculated the German triumphantly. "I knew the squadron which bombed our dam was 106! Right?" Burcher hung his head in silent acquiescence. He knew it was 617 Special Duties Squadron - but as the other was so certain it seemed a pity to correct him.

"AILERON"

HE HAD RED HAIR

THE breadfruit-tree behind the Rest House threw lengthening shadows across the eroded red earth of the parade ground in the centre of the village. In front of the low-built sago-thatch, kunai and
"pangal" huts the villagers were stoking their fires, and old men, children and dogs were gathered around in eager expectation of the evening meal. Outside the Police House four constables stood at ease waiting for the lance-corporal to march them to the bamboo flag-pole on which the Blue Ensign, now at full mast, moved lazily in the cool evening breeze. On all sides the majestic peaks of the Finisterres towered above us, dark with the rapidly approaching tropic night and already heavily enshrouded with mist. To the south-east Shaggy Ridge was no longer visible.

I glanced at my watch. One minute to six. I nodded to Lance-Corporal Bungami and his ice rang out, clear and confident. The clash rifle butts on the sun-baked earth and the rattle of bayonets brought a hush to the amorous village, and the guard wheeled into e before the flag-pole. I took the salute as, upon the "Present", the flag slowly fluttered down, to be gathered carefully in folds by the waiting N.C.O. Harsh-voiced commands, the rattle of arms, the soft tramp of bare feet, and like the old men, the children and the scrawny dogs I turned my attention to less spectacular but more satisfying things.

Dinner on patrol is an unpretentious meal. Pigeon soup, boiled pigeon and rice, and banana, papaw and pineapple fruit salad, prepared on the lid of a patrol box and cooked over an open fire is satisfying fare after a long day, however, and I felt pleasantly comfortable as I sat on the Rest House steps and puffed "the makings". With the night a cold breeze had come down the valley and the lice were squatting round their fire, chewing betel nut and conversing in low tones, punctuated occasionally by peals of raucous mirth. They had all seen considerable war service, and no doubt, like all old soldiers on this day, they were re-fighting past battles and recounting hair-raising experiences, real and imaginary.

Not to be outdone in this particular form of amusement, and somewhat anxious for company after nearly two months away from the Station, I wandered across. Earlier in the day we had held a short ceremony and I had given a brief address on the significance of Anzac Day and the Anzac tradition. I was rather curious as to what they made of it all. They leapt to their feet on my approach, but on being assured of the unofficial nature of my presence they hastily provided a log on which to sit, and after a few embarrassed moments conversation again became general. The village luluai and a few of the young men began to drift towards our group.

Bungami had been with me for several months in the Aitape-Wewak campaign, and to set the ball rolling, I addressed him: "Remember the time, Bungami," I said, "when you and I and the six soldiers were ambushed near the river and you and I spent two hours in a small hole with a very dead Japanese? Man, I can smell him yet!" Everyone thought this highly amusing and there was a babble of voices as each one tried to provide a similar incident for our enjoyment.

"And the long thin corporal with the red hair," Bungami chuckled delightedly, "who said he was tired of lying in the mud and went and drove away the Japan-man with grenades." He shook his head admiringly and spat with delicate accuracy into the fire. "He was a real fighting man, that one. I think," he added with a cunning look, "that you and I would still be there, Kiap?"

I admitted that such a thing was highly probable. "But," I added defensively, "we did shoot one each as they ran away through the pitpit."

"I remember a man with red hair," interposed Constable Salakim, a Markham with a rather wild gleam in his eye. "I found him on a side track behind Salamaua. He had been shot in the stomach and couldn't walk. I tried to assist him but he kept pointing back up the track. He couldn't speak pidgin but he managed to say 'One boy, one boy' and kept pointing. I went on up the track and found an old man from one of the villages.

He was wounded in the legs and couldn't walk either. He was carrying two papaws and some bananas. He told me that he had gone to get food for the soldier and had tripped over a grenade attached to some wire. I helped him back along the track and then tried to carry the white man but he wouldn't let me. He made me take the old man. It was a long time before I got to some other Australians and brought back help. When we arrived he was dead."

There was a solemn silence.

"He was a good man," Bungami stated simply.

"He had red hair," said Salakim.

"I too carried a wounded soldier," said one of the village men proudly.

"Yes?" urged Bungami politely.

"Just up there;" with a sweep of the arm. "His aeroplane had crashed."

"He was an airman, not a soldier." Constable Bun aired his knowledge.

"His aeroplane had fallen down," the villager reiterated firmly, "and his leg and arm were broken. Myself and my wife and my father-in-law carried him back to our hiding place in the bush and gave him food. He was very sick and was unconscious. I sent my little brother back to the Government and a doctor and some soldiers came and got him. He woke up before they left and he gave me this-" and he exhibited a plain gold ring, looking slightly incongruous on his gnarled black hand.

"Ah!" growled Bungami. "War is a bad thing. Many masters were killed and many black men too. The Japanese are not men. Why did we not kill them all? They will only come back and make more trouble."

Everyone looked at me. I thought, "Come and answer this one, Mr. Politician," but I said, "They won't come back. They are beaten."

"They killed my father," said a villager with a deformed leg, "and he was a very old man. They shot him when he tried to stop them from stealing his food."

"Where are all the Australian and American soldiers now?" asked the luluai.

"They have gone back to their villages," replied Constable Bun, "to look after their gardens and their wives and children. There is no more fighting."

"Will they come back?"

"No," scornfully, "what would they come back for? Didn't I tell you they have gone home? "

"The soldier said he would come back," said he who had rescued the airman.

"They were good men," said Constable Naula.

"They did not bully us or shoot us," said the luluai.

"Or steal or take our women," added another.

"Today many of them are thinking of you," I remarked. "It is a big holiday in Australia, and all the men who were soldiers and airmen and sailors are gathered together. In the morning they all go to Church and pray for those who are dead, and tonight they are all having a big 'sing-sing'. They will all be talking like we are talking, about their friends and about the war."

"Man!" breathed Bungami, "I remember all the cargo they had on the coast. Guns, lorries, aeroplanes, ships, barges, food and ammunition and everything. A great number of men and all 'one-talks'. Now there is nothing."

"Sydney must be a big village to have so many men," said the luluai looking at me.

I thought of Pitt Street on a Saturday morning and Flinders Street on Cup Day. "Yes," I smiled. "Sydney is a big village."

"Someday, when my contract is finished, I'm going to Sydney," declared Constable Bun with conviction.

"You might," I retorted, "if you don't end up in gaol instead!"

The villagers rolled with delight at this unsurpassed witticism, and Bun threw a log on the fire to cover his embarrassment.

"I'd like to go too," said the airman's friend quietly, and he turned and twisted the thin band of gold; his only connection with that distant land of fabulous wealth and good men who fall from the heavens into his garden like shot pigeons. Probably the only connection he would ever have.

I went back to the Rest House. The conversation was freer when I left, and for a long time I could hear snatches of anecdotes, bursts of laughter and periods of solemn silence. Enjoying my last cigarette before turning in, I let my gaze wander over those dark and silent mountains, peaks and gullies and ridges and cool streams, which, but a few short years ago, had echoed to the crack of rifles, the rattle of machine guns, the thud of bomb and mortar, and the laughter and the curses and, too often, the death cries of Australia's "good men", the long thin corporal, the wounded airman, the man with the red hair and a thousand others, remembered in so many different ways and for so many different reasons by the staunch black men who fought with them in those already legendary days.

P. E. FIENBERG, SECOND A.I.F.

"ABANDON AND DESTROY!"

0NE of the saddest losses the Australian Navy suffered during the war was the sinking of H.M.A.S. Canberra in a fierce action lasting only ten minutes, in the Battle of Savo Island.

On the night of 8 August 1942 Allied naval units comprising heavy and light cruisers and a flotilla of destroyers were operating offensively off Guadalcanal. American forces had just established themselves on the island.

The area south of Savo Island was being patrolled by a squadron of four ships, Chicago, Canberra and U.S. destroyers Patterson and Bagley. Australia was flag and lead ship, but at the time was absent carrying Admiral Crutchley to a conference aboard U.S.S. McCawley.

In his absence Captain H. D. Bode in Chicago was in command, with Canberra as guide ship of the squadron. Both ships were disposed in line ahead, with Patterson and Bagley screening 45 degrees on either bow of Chicago.

There was no moon; the darkness fell wide and dense on all sides. A 4-knot breeze carried heavy, low-hanging clouds across the sky, trailing fingers of rain in the sea like a giant opaque curtain.

The four ships were about to turn on the reverse leg of their patrol when, without warning, a group of star-shells burst and hung above the clouds over Guadalcanal. They were large, blue-white and intensely brilliant, and lit up the assembled transports vividly.

Then at about 0143 hours destroyer Patterson sighted a ship five thousand yards away dead ahead, rounding the tip of Savo Island. Immediately she broadcast the R/T alarm to her consorts:

"Warning warning warming. Strange ships entering harbour."

At the same time she altered course to bring her full broadside of guns and tubes to bear. The enemy-for enemy they were-altered course, and were seen to be two cruisers, one a Mogami-type heavy, the other a light Jintsu class.

Patterson was ready and her guns flared redly. Above the enemy cruisers four star-shells burst, dropped suddenly, then swayed slowly seawards beneath their parachutes. Almost at once the rear Jap ship fired a spread of eight torpedoes. Then two great eyes of light opened on their hulls and searched the silvered wave tops. The beams found and held the little destroyer.

A line of red flashes rippled along the Japs' sides and a heavy shell razed Patterson's No. 4 gun shelter to the deck. The gun's ready-use ammunition ignited in a sweeping, searing blast that laced her after part in flames and burned No. 3 and No. 4 guns out of action.

A torpedo track slid towards her on the port quarter, but swinging violently she avoided it. Though badly hit, she was game. Her guns took on the rear cruiser and struck her repeatedly. Suddenly the Jap's searchlight jerked into the air abruptly, and went out.

The enemy altered course. Destroyer Bagley reported an unidentified ship ahead; soon after the port look-out on Canberra's bridge shouted: "Ship bearing dead ahead!"

But the officer of the watch and signal yeoman, peering into the murk over her bows, could see nothing. By this time all ships had rushed to action stations. Then Canberra's main director sighted two ships less than . a mile away on her port bow. The director rasped violently on to the bearing. The guns started to follow. An instant later a storm of 5-inch armour-piercing shells plunged upon her in a roaring violence of bursting explosive. Her whole length shuddered under the vicious upthrust of bursting steel. One shell burst on the bridge and cruelly wounded Captain Getting. Another bored into the barbette of "A" turret and, its fuse started, exploded inside and jammed the training. Further aft the plane on its catapult flared into flame, and a shell burst between the guns of "X" turret.

The worst destruction was caused on the 4-inch gun-deck. Here P1 4-inch gun received a direct hit; its body was blown in a moment into ripping slivers of steel. Almost the whole crew were killed by the blast.

Then two torpedo tracks stretched out toward her and touched. A blast of fire lighted her length and a rampart of water bulged from her side. It rose in a mound that swelled to a flying mountain of spray high above her bridge.

Fifty feet of her side plating were ripped open near the boiler-rooms. The hungry water rushed in, causing the whole ship's lighting to fail. Engine-rooms were so choked with smoke that orders were given to abandon them. Yet, staggering, Canberra managed to get off a salvo before her guns fell silent.

She was stopped now, listing io degrees to starb'd. Her innards were a shambles. The heat generated when T.N.T. bursts is terrific, and furnishings and kit flamed instantly when shells and torpedoes exploded. Through smashed hatches and doors could be seen the dull red of burning fuel oil and, where their deadlights had been blown off, her ports shone round, like dilated eyes.

In the meantime Chicago prepared to fire on an enemy cruiser sighted over Canberra's bow, and which was still firing into the Australian cruiser. This gave rise to the wholly erroneous rumour that she was sunk by American forces. At no time was Canberra struck by friendly shells.

Chicago had no sooner lighted her target with star-shell than the white wake of a loosened torpedo sprang towards her and savaged a gaping hole in her port bow. Her fo'c'sle was deluged with water, and her bow below water-line largely blown away.

Then a heavy shell hit the starb'd leg of her foremast. It detonated over the for'ard funnel, holing it like a Swiss cheese and showering the upper deck with splinters. Chicago was now firing at an enemy destroyer seven thousand yards distant and, on hearing heavy gun-fire to the north-west of Savo Island, plunged heavily northward to join it. The rest of the enemy force drew off.

Canberra was left alone to fight for her life. Her wardroom was a scene straight from hell. It had been turned into a sick bay, and the ship's surgeons were operating on tables among dying and wounded laid everywhere over the decks and couches.

On the upper deck a torpedo-man fought through flames to fire the loaded tubes. Another rating jettisoned the petrol tanks beside them. In a pom-pom ready-use magazine ammunition caught fire and detonated in a brilliant shower of pyrotechnics. A chain of men was formed and the burning boxes thrown over the side. In that holocaust individual acts of heroism and self-sacrifice became commonplace.

In a choppy sea at 0300 hours destroyer Patterson poked her nose alongside and took off some of the wounded. Not one able-bodied man attempted to leave his ship. Cutters and rafts were lowered, with some of the wounded lowered from the upper deck, their faces black with fumes.

At 0500 Patterson received from Admiral Crutchley this signal:

"It is urgent that Task Force should leave the area by 0630. If Canberra Is not in condition to proceed, she is to be abandoned and destroyed."

So they left her, Patterson loading four hundred of her men, destroyer Blue another two hundred and fifty. She was now burning furiously, a huge cloud of smoke reaching high above her.

The lights of the red dawn shot up across the sky as Selfridge and Ellet were ordered to sink her. The two destroyers began their run in turned, and fired five torpedoes, plus salvoes of 5-inch shells into the fiery hull. The old lady was reluctant to go. It was 0800 before, turning slowly over to starb'd, she sank beneath a pall of smoke, transformed in a few hours from a proud fighting ship to a twisted tangle of steel falling through the sunlit upper waters of the Pacific into the freezing darkness of the unfathomed bottom.

J. E. MACDONNELL, R.A.N.

LAST ENTRY IN RED

Before the Third Division took over from the Americans in Bougainville the whole of the island was the stamping ground of the Japanese forces under the command of the astute General Kanda who, realizing the impracticability of keeping such large forces in concentrated strength, divided them into innumerable small groups that took over the best of the villages and gardens from the kanakas and lived as self-sufficient units.

This worked out well while the Allied forces were content to remain inside the Torokina perimeter but, when the drive towards the south began and Australian patrols started to finger out into territory that had been so long sacrosanct to the Japs, it proved something of a boomerang, for as soon as the kanakas learned that the Australians were there for no other reason than to liquidate the "puk-puk" men they were only too pleased to lead offensive patrols by hidden ways to the gardens and villages occupied by the Japs, and the "dawn attack" was developed into a fine art.

The following story was woven around extracts taken from a diary captured on one such raid. The Japs were by this time obviously feeling the strain of the long inactivity. Their lines of communication and supply from Japan and Rabaul were breached in a dozen places; they were literally prisoners on the island they had captured and were reduced to living off the land. Entry by entry the story was unfolded in translation . . . until the last entry, which was written in red . . . but not in ink; which bad no words, but was most easily translated of all . . .

IN the long run we didn't learn much from the diary, except that the writer's name was Ayashi, and that he was about twenty-nine when his life came to a sudden end in the coarse grass outside a sac-sac hut in Monokoro; that he was a tiny cog in the glorious Army of Imperial Japan that rolled
invincibly over its enemies until it bogged down inextricably in this last island that was to have become the spring-board for the assault on the great land of the south. Not much, really, but it also unfolded a tale of cunning and desperation, hunger and homesickness, that was tragically enacted in the jungles, where the ceaseless drip of water on to the ageless mould might slowly send a man mad, and in the eerie, lifeless green twilight of the great swamps where the night watched his every move with a million unwinking phosphorus eyes.

We know this because one night, perhaps when the swift tropical dusk welled out of the eastern sky and the smell of wet grass from the river reminded him of home, of a white temple on a knoll amongst the paddies, hot sake and the tang of frosty persimmons, of women, smiling and scented, the clatter of geta on the roadway and bowls of steaming, snowy rice, he wrote ...

"I dream constantly of home. It seems impossible that men of the Japanese Army could be reduced to such straits. I remember Nanking, and the glories they heaped on us . . . now I dream always of the women at home, and bowls of white rice, heaped, steaming . . . food is becoming increasingly scarce; we should not have destroyed the gardens when first we came, but who was to know . . . ?"

Lieutenant Ayashi stalked out of the jungle with a party of stumpy soldiers at his heels and stood surveying the clearing. The few sac-sac huts were mouldy and falling apart, and an old lapun sat in the shade of a wilted papaw-tree and stared vacantly at the Japanese; a tiny pot-bellied piccaninny with pipe stem arms and legs sat in the dust, petrified with fear, its great eyes fixed unwinkingly on the ground, and a few marys who had been working the kau-kau and straggly corn stopped their labours fearfully to watch the intruders. Ayashi stared angrily at the huts. No young men! Gone to the hills, the black swine, with their long bows and spears. He swaggered over to the lapun and shouted:

"All-a boy Mong this-pella place . . . w'ere 'e stop?"

The old man shook his head and muttered, "No got! "

Ayashi spat at him, walked to the kau-kau patch and stopped by a young mary, full breasted and far gone in pregnancy and his eyes flaming over her body, repeated his question. She looked fearfully along the worn path leading out of the clearing into the jungle, and cowered behind the handle of the hoe she had been using.

"No got savvy! she muttered. "Boy 'e go walk-about . .

The Japanese shouted savagely and punched her in the breast. She fell with a low moan and the piccaninny ran and crouched whimpering where her brown body lay half covered by the green froth of the kau-kau leaves.

Ayashi pointed to a cluster of coconut palms.

"Cut those down!

As the keen machetes of his men bit into the tough trunks he kicked over a cooking pot and stood with folded arms while greedy tongues of fire licked the sides of the sac-sac huts. The kanakas looked on expressionlessly . . . the rains were due and a score of moons would pass before new palms bore fruit ... aie-e-e-e!

The soldiers, laden with the great golden nuts, filed past Ayashi as he stood in the first line of trees and looked back at the clearing. It lay perfectly still 'in the hot hush; the lapun still sat in the dust, the marys stood motionless around the garden and the piccaninny whimpered softly by a still brown splotch on the green of the kau-kau. With a harsh oath he turned and disappeared into the jungle.

". . . and we have no contact except with small parties in conditions as bad as our own. There is something afoot amongst the men, some plot; they are sullen and hostile, and betray themselves in a thousand ways. It most likely concerns food . . . it is all we think about, these days ... food . . ."

Dull brown trees pressed in around the clearing and a few pale stars gleamed in the green evening sky. Deep in the jungle night insects spasmodically tuned their instruments, and streams of black foxes strung across the heavens on their way to the soft ripe papaws of some deserted garden.

Private Tanaka sat up suddenly in the hot gloom of his hut and peered fearfully through the uncurtained doorway.

"Stop!" he whispered harshly. "Who is that? "

"Be quiet!

A slow and stealthy footstep sounded by the doorway, and the pale afterglow was shut out by the head and shoulders of someone entering the hut.

"Quiet! It is me, Corporal Okura."

"Ah!"

Tanaka lay back heavily on the filthy pile of ginger leaves that served as a bed, and fireflies stitched the silence with a pattern of palely glowing green. The visitor sat on the bed and laughed bitterly.

"It was good for supper tonight," he muttered, bitterly, his voice sarcastic, "the chicken and sukiyaki! They feed us too well . . ."

Tanaka said nothing and the corporal continued.

"How long do they think that we can keep going like this, our guts chewing on grass and kau-kau leaves? This morning I passed blood, and Nigato did, too, and Wanatabe. There is plenty of fish in the store, and rice too, barrels of it. I have seen it; enough for all of us, but that swine Ayashi keeps it for himself and his lick-spittles . . ."

The hot silence of the hut was unbroken except for Tanaka's quick breathing and the nervous shrilling of a tree-frog on a bough outside the window. Okura coughed softly and laid his hand intimately on the private's shin.

"Sergeant Higashi sleeps in the ration hut," he murmured. "If he were not there . . . if something happened to him . . . I should be in charge of the rations, and my friend should not want for rice and fish . . ."

Tanaka shifted fearfully in the darkness.

"If something . . . what do you mean, Okura?" he muttered. "What can I do?"

The corporal laughed softly.

"I have a grenade ... you will know where to find it, in my hut. Late tonight, when the moon is down . . ." his words trailed away, and he rose softly and left the hut, pausing in the doorway to whisper, "Remember, there are barrels of fish, and rice; Ayashi should not get it all . . ."

Only the highest of the trees were splashed with silver when the moon sank into the pools of darkness, and the clearing lay deep in gloom when the savage roar and hungry red flash of a grenade burst the silence into a thousand shivering fragments and strewed them amongst the trees. The echoes died away and no one stirred; they lay in the dark and listened and sweated and trembled, waited for the evil red flower of another grenade, and another, and the cold flame of steel clawing at the heart, but never moved or groaned or whimpered. They lay in the dark, and listened .

With the first light Lieutenant Ayashi walked abruptly into the ration store. The sergeant was sitting on a keg of fish with his round cropped head in his hands. One of the kegs of fish was split, and the bags of mouldy rice were pitted with small holes.

"Sergeant! What happened here last night?"

Higashi raised his head and stared owlishly at his officer.

"I . . . don't know." He waved his hand toward the kegs and the bags of rice. "Someone threw in a grenade last night; fortunately, I sleep between the two stacks, otherwise . .

The officer shook his head impatiently.

"Have you checked the stores? No? Well, I shall do so! " He moved over to the stacks and counted swiftly. "As I thought ... a bag of rice and a keg of fish are gone. Whoever threw the grenade took them, do you suppose?"

"Yes, yes!" cried the sergeant, eagerly, passing his hand before his eyes and staring out at the door. "That is it . . . I was dazed,

I didn't know. Corporal Okura . . ."

Ayashi looked at him intently for a moment and said, "Corporal Okura? You think that he might be mixed up in it? " He walked to the door.

"See if you can devise a bar for the door ... on the inside. Immediately!"

Higashi bowed and sucked his teeth, tiptoed silently to the door and watched the officer as he strode away across the clearing.

ic... what day is it? I have almost lost count of them. Each one is just like the others, sickness and hunger and quarrelling amongst the men. I don't know how I hold them, in fact I don't; their condition does that for me. As I thought, there was a plot to seize the rations . . . I have disposed of Sergeant Higashi . . ."

Lieutenant Ayashi sat at the soiled table in his hut. It was hot and close, and hundreds of flying insects whirled around his head and sweat trickled down the stubble of beard on his sallow face; a dull haze lay over the clearing, and thunder growled in the bruised purple hills in the south. He looked up impatiently as a footstep sounded at the door and a hesitant shadow fell across the entrance.

"Come in," he grunted, "what do you want?"

Private Tanaka shuffled toward the table on his dirty bare feet. His sunken eyes were red-rimmed, and he wiped his hands ceaselessly down his greasy jacket.

"Well?" barked the officer, and Tanaka passed his tongue over his lips.

"I know things . . ." he said, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the doorway.

Ayashi slid his stool back and moved swiftly and silently across to the opening, but by the time he looked out Corporal Okura was leaning against a dying papaw-tree yards away. He returned to the table, sat down, and asked wearily, "What things?"

Tanaka sucked in his breath.

"Corporal Okura gave me a grenade to kill Higashi. He said he would give me fish and rice. Then, that night, Higashi stole a keg of fish and a bag of rice and hid them by the river. I have watched him. I never got any ... 71

Silence settled on the room and a great scorpion fell from the thatch with a fat plop. The officer leaned over and crushed it beneath his boot and his eyes remained glued to the disgusting mess on the earthen floor. Men . . . lying, cheating, thieving reptiles. They did not deserve to live-if only he could crush them all, like that, under his boot. He raised his head and stared at Tanaka.

"Why do you tell me this?" he asked softly, brushing the crawling beetles from the table with a trembling hand. "What do you expect to get out of it?"

The private walked backwards toward the door, frightened by the expression on Ayashi's face.

"Nothing," he stammered, "nothing. I just thought . . . I . . ."

"Then get out!"

Lieutenant Ayashi sat at the table and watched Tanaka shamble across the clearing to the men's huts, where he was joined by Okura. The first heavy drops of rain were falling on the sac-sac when he took up a brush and wrote on a piece of dirty paper, "This man is a thief, a cheat and a liar. Shoot him immediately. Ayashi." He dropped a blob of hot wax on the folded paper, pressed it with a seal delicately carved from amber and called through the door to Higashi.

"Sergeant," he said, when the man stood before him, "take this despatch to Lieutenant Nakama, at Mevai. Waste no time; it is most important! "

The sergeant glanced through the door.

"It is getting late, lieutenant," he said. "Shall I stay overnight at Mevai? "

Ayashi looked at him and laughed suddenly, uncontrollably.

"Yes, sergeant, you will stay overnight at Mevai . . ."

". . . and yesterday Corporal Okura shot Private Tanaka - he blamed the kanakas who are daily becoming bolder. The day before yesterday, two of them appeared at the edge of the clearing and shot Private Wanatabe who was digging for kau-kau. They were using captured Japanese rifles. Our position is hopeless; patrols of the Australians are seeking us out, and nearly every dawn we are awakened by gun-fire as they attack one of the gardens. Only last week it was Mevai ... soon it will be our turn. I do not mind, but it will be hard to die without once more tasting hot sake and eating clean white rice. It is all I dream about or care for . . ."

Creeping softly through the dripping undergrowth in the darkness of just before dawn, a kanaka stopped suddenly and raised his hand; the file of dim figures behind paused in the shadows. From deep in the jungle came a full, throaty throbbing-pigeons stirring in the first light. The kanaka leaned close to the Australian patrol officer and whispered, "You hear 'im, masta? Balus 'e cry! Be'ind, sun 'e come! "

The officer grunted and turned to the sergeant just behind him.

"Almost first fight, Nig. Better get into position right away!

"O.K., boss! "

Before long the party of ten had melted into the shadows, moving silently to positions planned for them in close reconnaissance during the past few days. Directly in front of them was a clearing with a few tattered huts just becoming visible, and so close that the deep breathing of the occupants was plainly heard.

"Never wake up, do they?" whispered Number-two on the Bren to his mate Number-one. "You'd think that they'd be on to us by now, wouldn't you?"

Number-one was about to reply when a single shot rang out, and a split second after it a torrent of lead poured into the huts from every weapon in the party. It stopped jerkily, fading from a solid blast into spasmodic shots; the sergeant shouted, "O.K.! Grenades!" and a moment after scarlet flowers of flame blossomed in and around the smoking buildings.

A figure dashed from a little hut, isolated from the rest, and had almost reached the shelter of the jungle when an Owen stammered in the thick silence and he lurched to the ground, heaved desperately once or twice, and then lay twitching in the long grass.

"In we go!" cried the officer. "Be careful, make it snappy, and pull out on the whistle. You know what to look for!"

"I'll say!" muttered Number-one to Number-two. "Me for a ruddy sword . . . I ain't got nothing yet!"

As they poked their way into the indescribable shambles inside the hut, someone shouted from outside, "Hey, boss! Look at this . . . this chap's an officer, or something! Got what looks like a diary . . ."

"Give it to me," replied the officer. "Intelligence might be interested in that!"

Two of the Australians had found the ration store and the grim thing guarding it. One of them kicked a keg, and they watched the dried fish run out on to the floor.

"What flamin' tucker!" one of them muttered, almost in pity. "No wonder the little runts are so skinny . . ."

What tucker . . . men had coveted it, and schemed for it, cheated and lied and murdered to get it, and had lost it; now they lay in the burning hut beyond all hunger and hate and longing.

A shrill whistle rang out, and the green clad figures faded into the jungle as silently as they had come. Lieutenant Ayashi sprawled on the coarse grass with his head on a crimson cushion and already the jungle had started to claim him; a green beetle walked over his lips and disappeared into his nostril, and a waving tendril of kau-kau, blown in the cool morning wind, swayed over him and fell across his chest. In the storeroom hordes of green ants struggled to and fro, busily removing a pile of dried fish that had escaped from a shattered keg.

T. G. HUNGERFORD, SECOND A.I.F.