Chapter 3 Wewak Deal; Sisters Fly On; Mud; Battle for Borneo; Trainee Navigator

WEWAK DEAL

ESTIMATED at 40,000 men at the outset of the campaign Lieutenant-General Adachi's New Guinea army was reduced to a mere 5,500 (Adachi's figure) of malnutritioned, disease ridden, shell-scared, bomb-haunted and hounded rodents peeping from their earth coverings behind the Prince Alexander Range. Overhead circled a Beaufort bearing, under its wings, the writing of Emperor Hirohito's unconditional surrender. Even then, Adachi wanted to talk terms!

To anyone who knew the score it was not surprising that the Northern New Guinea campaign was to the R.A.A.F. at least a major engagement. For more than twelve months Australian Beaufort bombers belted the arrogant "unbeatable" Adachi off our mandated territory, accounting for half the total bomb load dropped by the R.A.A.F. in the Southwest Pacific for that period.

When Squadrons 8 and 100, commanded by Squadron-Leaders (later Wing-Commanders) Bill Hamblin and John Kessey, both of Melbourne, moved into Aitape in June 1944, less than two months after the initial landing, the Japanese of Northern New Guinea were a strong garrison, with the peace-time port of Wewak as their main base, supply barges running the coast, and up at Aitape army personnel hiding in the jungle round our camps. Gradually the enemy's barge traffic was broken.

The counter-attack he made on the Allied perimeter from the Driniumor was repulsed from the air after a fifteen days' battle and air pounding, when No. 100 Squadron flew fifty-six strikes in one day dropping 100,000 pounds of bombs and for the month the two Beaufort squadrons flew 906 sorties. And then as late as September another attempt to fight back in the repairing of Wewak airstrip was frustrated by the Beauforts. For three months the two squadrons totalled up 4,299 flying hours and 2,658 sorties.

The 6th Division of the Australian Army was coming in. The Aitape section of Adachi's army knew the determination that would be behind that drive and got out into the Torricelli Range. While our Army forces were getting settled in, flights from Squadrons 100 and 8 flew to Goodenough to join No. 6 Squadron Beauforts in night raids on Rabaul and a softening up for a landing of Australians on New Britain at Jacquinot Bay. There the combined squadrons were commanded and led by Wing-Commander Brian Waddy, of Frewville (S.A.).

Back at Aitape we found that reinforcements had arrived for the Beauforts, No. 7 Squadron having put down "air freight" from North Australia, and under Squadron-Leader J. 0. Barton, of Scone (N.S.W.), were a welcome addition in this war against Adachi. Wing-Commander Eric Cooper, A.F.C., was commanding the Beaufort Wing.

Numbers of the old crews, Flight-Lieutenants Sid Wright, Stan Polkinghorne, Ken Waters (afterwards awarded the D.F.C.), Flying-Officers Norm Stehn, Reg. Green, C.G.M., Alan James, Bill Fryar, Squadron Leader Len Parsons (after-wards D.F.C.), Flight-Sergeant Hank Pearce-had already raised a century or more for sorties in New Guinea for the present tour of operations.

Two wing-commanders, 0. B. Hall, A.F.C., of Sydney, and Hugh Conaghan, Coolangatta (Q.), were flying as crew captains (later on to command 8 and 100 Squadrons respectively). Hall had learned to fly at the old N.S.W. Aero Club with the late Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and had been associated with "Smithy" in National Airways. He came to the Beauforts with the most colourful of careers as an aviator. Conaghan had commanded Fighter Sector at Milne Bay.

Village after village was blown up in the mountain area at the request of the Army. As our ground forces pushed through they were able to move in close to the bombing, mark the target with mortar shells, shoot off any Japs endeavouring to escape, and to take the position while the enemy was broken and disorganized. This was "close support". In four weeks the Beauforts destroyed and the Army occupied thirteen villages in the Torricellis in this way.

On the coast the Beauforts were still smashing motor transport, ammunition dumps and guns, and breaking up Jap concentrations of troops. The Nips were trying to replenish their supplies by submarine. They got some through, but it was blown up by the Beauforts almost immediately it was landed. A notable incident was the three days' running attack on Cape Moern when the Beaufort squadrons set fire to a dump that billowed out black smoke built up by the intermittent bursting of petrol drums, and the firing of ammunition.

Probably no other ridge has received the pounding that was administered to Nambut Hill. Deeply entrenched here, the Japs set up a formidable barrier to our ground drive down the coast. This position could not be taken without grave loss. The Beauforts pounded it for a fortnight, and left the timber broken and the ground scarred. The area where the Japs had dug themselves in under the roots of the trees was devastated, and bodies broken and scattered. Our army went over -,without further trouble from that point.

Similarly the Beauforts aided the drive right through to Maprik headquarters of the mountain defences. The Army's confidence in the accuracy of bombing placed a heavy responsibility upon captains and navigators of aircraft, as often troops crouched under cover as close as 150 yards from the target, sometimes to be sprayed with dirt and rubbish from the explosions.

As the campaigns proceeded Wing-Commander Cooper relinquished command of the Wing, and Group-Captain V. Hancock, O.B.E., took over. Wing-Commanders Hall and Conaghan took Hamblin's and Kessey's places as C.Os of squadrons. J. 0. Barton had been promoted.

While the Beauforts were continuing in close support of the Army a web was being woven over the extent of the Torricellis with threads stretching out from broken villages and occupied ridge positions for a subsequent link-up with the coast. The enemy was being, perhaps slowly, but deliberately squeezed in, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Then came the crowning event of the campaign in the drive on Wewak and the landing of Australian troops at Dove Bay, out of which our forces would shortly occupy the whole coastal strip, and squeeze from that side.

Two more squadrons, Nos 6 and 15, joined our ranks, commanded by Wing-Commander Brian Waddy and Group-Captain "Tony" Primrose, A.F.C. Preliminary conferences between unit commanders and operations officers went into late hours. Aircraft serviceability was raised to a maximum. The coastal area was thoroughly photographed, Wing photo officer Flight-Lieutenant Glen Pearson, Yeelanna (S.A.), and N.C.O. in charge Flight Sergeant Jack Nisbett, Sydney (N.S.W.), presenting Army and R.A.A.F. with 11,000 prints upon which the plan of attack was laid.

Two Beauforts were hit by enemy fire while securing photographs at low altitude. The most damaged, flown by the veteran campaigner, Flying-Officer Jim Forrest, of Melbourne (V.), collected a .5 through the nose directly over the navigator's seat, but the navigator fortunately was at the rear of the plane. Forrest brought the Beaufort home to a nice landing practically without the use of instruments, the wiring of which had been cut, and with oil from a broken hydraulic system trickling through the bomb bay.

No. 71 Wing had at its disposal the biggest force of Australian-made Beaufort bombers ever ranged against the enemy on any front, and at the outset of the "softening up" sorties were flown in one day. Formations, of up to fifty-seven Beauforts in one wave, streaking over Wewak added considerably to the holes left by earlier raiders, and the coastal belt between Wewak and Cape Moem became a colander of bomb craters. Most attention was paid to light and heavy gun pits which up to this time were still operational and likely to inflict heavy damage on both fronts, the one advancing from Wewak and the one to be created by the landing.

A Beaufort, piloted by Flight-Lieutenant Alan Tutt, of Hawthorn (V.), and carrying Air-Army Liaison Officer Major J. Leitch, incidentally a graduate of the R.A.A.F. School of Army Co-operation, Canberra (as were all A.L.Os, who did a great job of work with the Beaufort Wing), provided the coordinating link between land, sea and air forces during the landing. The Beaufort was specially fitted up with two-way wireless, "lines" running to the naval flagship and to Major General Stevens's land troops. Flight-Lieutenant George Mauger, D.F.C., was liaison officer aboard the flagship.

Army forces set foot on the beach at Dove Bay at o83o hours on May i i under cover of 6-inch guns of H.M.S. Newfoundland and H.M.A.S. Hobart, and lighter fire from their escorts, while a squadron of Beauforts circled overhead and others stood by for the alert. Apart from the Royal Navy support, it was an Australian show. The only bombs dropped fell from the bomb bays of R.A.A.F. bombers. The American combat training unit at Nadzab was at hand to help, but on account of bad weather conditions only one U.S. plane got through, and returned to base.

Due to the preliminary blasting of Jap coastal defences by the R.A.A.F. Beauforts, the shelling by the R.A.N. and the cover provided for the actual landing, the Australians went ashore easily. Only one soldier was wounded.

At the same time Australian air and sea forces were assisting the Army drive around Wewak for the ultimate link-up on the coast. Shortly the remnant of Lieutenant-General Adachi's Jap army was squeezed off the coast and from the Torricellis into the Prince Alexander Range and the hill country between Mapnik and Mount Shiburangu (the highest peak on the Prince Alexander).

Squadrons 6 and 15 returned to other hunting grounds and 100, 8 and 7 continued in close support of the 6th Division through the rugged terrain of the Alexanders. Here the Japs had gone underground on ridges and on Mount Shiburangu held "impregnable" defences overlooking a great scope of country on all sides from which our forces might approach. In a neat co-operative action, calling for some of the heaviest work put into the Aitape campaign, Army forces with R.A.A.F. Beauforts cleared Mount Shiburangu and gave to the 6th Division an advantage previously held by the enemy.

The Beauforts went on to fill in the foxholes of Yamil. Events generally suggested that shortly Emperor Hirohito would capitulate. But would Lieutenant-General Adachi have any of his New Guinea army left for "honourable surrender"?

From the day two single Beaufort squadrons landed at Aitape in June 1944, to this date, June 1945, the Beauforts' tally over the Wewak domain had reached 8ooo sorties, more than 8,000,000 pounds of bombs, and over 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition.

August 15, 1945, broke with all forces of the South-west Pacific waiting for the order to cease fire, and eighteen Beaufort bombers airborne for a strike on another of the Jap's razor-back ridges in the last link he would live to occupy in New Guinea. The strike made, the Beauforts returning over the mountains to base took a signal from the Controller of Operations: "Emergency. Immediate. Cancel all operations against enemy forthwith including missions now airborne." Emperor Hirohito had surrendered unconditionally.

Then a Beaufort went out with the news painted under its wings to stooge over the burrows behind the Alexanders where the small remnant of Adachi's army lay warbroken and starving.

SERGEANT FRANK SMYTH

THE SISTERS FLY ON

THE war did not end on August 15, 1945, for the R.A.A.F. Medical Air Evacuation Units, nor for the sisters who fly in the "mercy planes". The horrible evidences of war-suffering and disease and wounds and death-were indeed intensified for them by the part they played in transporting our liberated prisoners of war out of Sumatra and Slam and Singapore.

People who had before paid high tribute to the work done by Australia's "flying nurses" since the commencement of the R.A.A.F. Medical Air Evacuation in July 1944, had no words adequately to praise the ,vay those sisters worked on the Singapore runs in September 1945- On one occasion the R.A.A.F. in five days moved 2,000 persons from Sumatra to Singapore, at the rate of 400 per day. Aircrews and medical crews worked from first light until dark, getting the evacuees, mostly women and children, out of Palembang and Padang and the dreadful Pakan Baroe. Many of the patients were suffering from dysentery; most of them were air-sick; some of the cases were extremely harrowing, and our sisters were called upon to show that tactful sympathy and understanding that any boy who has travelled in the care of a flying nurse will vouch for.

The girls who stuck out this task so cheerfully and efficiently were Senior Sisters Margaret Braid, of Perth (W.A.); Manie Budd, of Rushworth (V.); Beryl Chandler, of Longreach (Q.); Joan Rodwell, of Kooyong (V.); Helen Cleary, of Peterborough (S.A.); Marie Wroe, of Brisbane (Q.); Betty Stafford, of Sydney; Veronica Harbourd, of Ballarat (V.); Pat Tarlinton, of Conargo (N.S.W.); Margot Scott, of Bendigo (V.).

Margot Scott also went the previous week in the first plane to land at Pakan Baroe; this plane flew out the first batch of prisoners from there. To a correspondent in Singapore who met the plane on its arrival there Sister Scott Said, "It was the most dreadful place I have ever seen. These you see are the fittest of the sick-the others are too bad to be flown. It was almost too much for me. . . . The boys
who could move about were thrilled to see a white woman and rushed towards me when we landed." We can be sure that that was no over-statement, and we can be sure, too, that however horrifying and distressing their tasks, nothing ever was too much for this splendid and courageous team of young Australian women.

Pride and satisfaction in the service they were able to render to liberated prisoners and internees was tempered by sadness when news came late in September of the loss between Biak and Merauke of a Douglas transport carrying A.I.F. and R.A.A.F. casualties from Borneo. This was the first loss sustained by the R.A.A.F. in evacuating casualties by air, and Sister Marie Craig, of Drummoyne (N.S.W.), who was on duty in the plane, was the first of the flying nurses to be posted missing.

Not all of the tasks set the M.E.A.T.U. sisters have been so grim, and the work occasionally has its lighter and brighter side. Several of the girls have been rostered to fly with American patients across the Pacific to Honolulu or San Francisco. Sister B. Chandler was the first to make one of these flights. Assisted by an American flight nurse and a R.A.A.F. medical orderly, she cared for twenty-four litter cases on the trip, which occupied about twenty-five hours' flying time, and was thrilled at the opportunity of seeing such famous places as Guadalcanal, Canton Island, Pearl Harbour and Hickham Field.

Sisters M. A. Braid and V. E. Harbourd went all the way to San Francisco with American patients. One of them wrote: "During, our few days in San Francisco we were overwhelmed with kindness and hospitality from the people there. Of course our uniforms-never seen in America before-and tropical suntan (to say nothing of our atebrin colouring) made us quite conspicuous and people in all walks of life questioned us in the streets and offered us all manner of assistance in return for hospitality extended to men of the American services in Australia. ... just to find ourselves in a city of glittering lights and well-stocked shops, after some months in a primitive tropical land, was a wonderful experience. It seemed incongruous, recalling the picture shows in the open spaces of New Guinea with oil drums or bomb-racks for seats, to find oneself suddenly at the opening night of the Russian Ballet at the Opera House in San Francisco."

Sister B. Stafford had the good fortune, on her first visit to Dutch New Guinea, to witness a ceremony which very few, if any, white women have seen. At the Dutch mission in the small native settlement of Merauke, Dutch nuns have worked for over thirty years, and the result of their teachings is seen in the large numbers of Javanese and Chinese and even the primitive Kais who gather once a year for a great religious ceremony which includes two days and nights of fasting and prayer.

Another sister writes: "We spend a good deal of time 'strip-sitting'-usually on a box in the shade of the wing, waiting for weather to clear or an engine to be fixed. Occasionally we have to stay overnight at places where there are no women. Then it is a case of a tent with a guard posted outside, and a wash in a basin. On one rare occasion I can remember feeling really embarrassed by the stares of men. I had gone to a place in New Britain where they had previously only seen one white woman in months, one of our girls who had been in the week before. They had heard that there was a nurse on this plane, and when the door opened I was confronted with a huge semi-circle of men, black and white, just looking - not a smile, not a word, just looking."

It seems fitting to close this brief glimpse of the activities of our flying nurses with the comment of yet another of them: "Each flight presents something of an adventure-one can never be entirely sure just what lies ahead, nor how long it will be before one returns. . .

FLIGHT-OFFICER GRACE HUNTER

BATTLE FOR BORNEO

BORNEO is traditionally the Land of the Wild Men and whatever reason the inhabitants previously had to be wild, I guess they now have excellent cause to be not only wild, but fightin' mad. For since May 1, 1945, Tarakan, Labuan, Brunei and Balikpapan have received from land, sea and air a plastering that would have inspired a vague, homesick feeling in any chance-exiled Hamburger or Berliner.

This is the story of Tarakan, the first of these spectacular operations, but it is largely the story of Labuan, Brunei and Balikpapan also, for the pattern of island warfare is necessarily a repeated one. Though the scene changes the play is essentially unchanged-a drama of courage and organization that brings an invasion force to a hostile coast, lands it, and supplies it with everything from bombs to bulldozers necessary for the extermination of the well-equipped fanatical defenders.

It is historically regrettable that the laws of time and space render it impossible for the Roman emperors to direct a modem pre-invasion bash. Nero, with his fine gusto for destruction, would have delighted in it; crazy Caligula, too, would have got a real kick out of such a spectacle. As it is, these unhappy destroyers had to content themselves with puerile affairs of tossing Christians to lions, staging sea battles in flooded amphitheatres, and playfully pushing hundreds of friends and associates to a watery death from a holiday bridge. A great pity! History is filled with such ironical examples of men born before their time, and condemned to watch our modem efforts with envious eyes across the widening Styx.

The technique of blasting another cornerstone from the Mikado's dream castle is intensely interesting. Of the initial planning way back, I know nothing. But the immediate planning started a few months ago at a Pacific Allied base. The A.I.F. and the R.A.A.F. were given the assignment of recapturing Borneo. Smoothly the pre-invasion machinery went into action. Aerial reconnaissance was made, bringing scores of brilliant, low-level photographs of the area; there were persistent raids on the selected airstrip and all neighbouring ones; seaborne traffic to the area was steadily strangled; detailed intelligence reports on the strength and disposition of enemy forces were prepared; there was intensification of the preparation of all sorts of information on the area-medical, meteorological, multifarious.

Meanwhile the men and supplies were being accumulated. The diversity of modem military equipment is truly amazing. But success demands that it all be available at the right time,- at the right place, and in the right quantities-from the breathing oxygen for the pilot who will operate some miles above the target, right down to the spare parts for the monster mechanical scoops that will make their contribution from the depths of a gravel pit. (Yes, airstrips have to be repaired and extended, bomb craters filled and roads made. So that gravel is not the least important ingredient in the bizarre pudding we call victory.)

The activities pyramid. The operation order is released: a bewildering affair, bulky as a telephone directory, listing every activity of the engaging cogs. Presumably to the planning engineer the thing is an intelligible entity. To the rest of us at least some small portion of the operation is meaningful and of particular importance.

Each of us has at least one small note to strike at the appropriate time as the conductor unwinds his symphonic score.

The shipping assembles-the specialized ships of war that, as much as anything else, make this World War 11 as great a technical achievement as it is a social catastrophe. Trojan Helen's beauty launched a thousand ships. Is her shade, too, writhing with feminine envy at the less readily discernible beauty of Hitler and Hirohito who have launched a score of thousands?

To the sweating troops the business of loading themselves and their equipment on to the multitude of ships seemed as chaotic as the Tower of Babel. But evidently the Plan included all that, for the convoy assembled and got under way to schedule. Miles of ships, motionless relative to one another, but plugging doggedly forward in an immense rectangle. Westward the course! Into the setting sun, day after day, went our purposeful procession.

I have never quite been able to explain to myself how the sea can keep itself in motion. Theoretically, it seems to my incurious mind, the waves should lapse into immobility. But they keep rolling. In similar fashion I do not know why my wonder at the beauty of the moon's ocean should not stale with repetition. But it, too, keeps rolling, and now after considerable experience of night-time sailing I am still as diligent a rail-liner as the newest novice. Moreover equatorial seas and moons have that added something, catalytic in the preparation of this tropical magic. So for long, cool hours we sat on the blacked-out decks with no more detectable connection with the stupidity of war than had the smallest star in the arch of heaven. For several nights our ship concentrated on the delicate task of treading daintily the silken tight-rope of her predecessor's phosphorescent wake.

Meanwhile on a hundred vessels, great and small, life went on. In the galleys sweating cooks looked to man's most ancient need with hash and American coffee; in the chartrooms man's newest marvel, the all-seeing eye of radar, roamed the skies and probed the depths of ocean. Between these extremes fell all the details of ships and shoes and sealing wax, while up top the fighter pilots, cramped in their narrow cockpits, endured long hours of boredom stooging over the convoy. For a policeman's lot is not a happy one, particularly when he has a dull, uneventful beat with all the former law-breakers seemingly cowed into a disgraceful respectability.

"Came the dawn", as we used once to be allowed to say. But no ordinary dawn is this May day of 1945. The previous night's radio has reported various preliminary activities. Australian and American warships have heavily shelled shore installations and oil tanks on Tarakan, leaving mighty fires. Good. That will render less likely the alarmist reports that the wily Jap has devices to flood the sea with his plentiful oil and ignite it to roast our assault troops. An Australian hydrographic vessel has placed buoys and cleared some obstructions from the difficult, defended landing area.

Australian and American heavy bombers have plastered the place; have raided neighbouring areas from which enemy reinforcements might come, and have pounded all the supporting enemy airstrips in an attempt to keep them unserviceable during the vulnerable landing period. Australian artillery have already landed their famous 25-pounders on a small neighbouring island. And reading again the Operation Order one finds that all these doings have been accurately foretold in the prophecies for P - i day.

P-day itself dawned cloudy with rain squalls. But the weather man correctly estimated that it would clear. The dark ships maneuvered into position. Out of the grey light came a wooded island three miles distant. The pier, the oil tanks, the derricks and part of the town were clearly visible. Quite evidently civilized men had recently passed this way for there were smashed and burning buildings, and a huge column of black smoke rising from a burning oil tank stood as a monument to our air power. At 07oo hours the naval bombardment was due to begin.

The first pip of time signal came from a distant cruiser. A sheet of flame flared from her starboard turrets. A cloud of yellow smoke dissipated sluggishly and seconds later came the staccato report. A patch of grey smoke mushroomed in the target area and later still came the noise of the detonation.

Officially the "do" was on.

Other ships took up the barking and hundreds of point-blank shells sped flatly into the battered foreshores. Every fifth shell was a tracer, a spectacular streak oddly reminiscent of the curving flashes with which Disney interpreted the Bach Fugue in his Fantasia. One did not see the lethal quartette separating the tracers, but their effect became increasingly evident as a grey curtain of smoke gradually rose from the target area. Strangely uniform, it seeped up slowly from the ground -a drop curtain for the unfolding drama, oddly functioning under an inverted gravity.

The spectacular rocket-ships joined in. From a purely spectator viewpoint these are a Good Thing. There is something about a rocket-a touch of carnival. It has more zip than an American advertisement for a new

breakfast cereal. Though possibly the Jap defenders would have only a limited enthusiasm for them. For point of view in determining one's reaction is never more decisive than when the respective points are the dealing and receiving of a gun-barrel.

Promptly to schedule came the air support. Squadrons of silver Libs-R.A.A.F. Libs this time-soared serenely across the target area in unruffled formation. "Bombs away! " was not audible but terribly evident. Some-where or other one of the English essayists remarks on the medical description of a "beautiful cancer". He argues that even so evil a thing as a malignant growth, when it discharges perfectly its function, producing all its clinical effects in precise and ordered fashion, can, in its perfection of evil, rightly be described as beautiful, as aptly as can the benign growth of a rose garden. If such a claim is tenable, let me comment on the "beautiful bombing" of our heavies.

Stick after stick of bombs marched across the grey inferno with giant, luminous strides. From our grandstand seat the effect was remarkable, and one I had not previously observed. Each bomb created a momentary glowing semi-circle, an opalescent fan opening swiftly with an anti-clockwise sweep. Successive bombs repeated the symmetrical design and would have given the grey curtain a scalloped fringe had not one fan vanished before its successor flared. Ten long seconds after each stick there cam-- to us the shattering roar of the heavy bombs. The intervening two miles of air rocked with the grim concussion, pounding our eardrums.

Next came the fighters on their strafing runs. Swift Yankee Lightnings from our distant strips swooped in with chattering guns inaudible in the din. They vanished below the tree-tops and then shot joyously skyward again. No flak pursued them. Nippon was keeping honourable head very well down. Later in the morning another aircraft sped low over the area with white smoke billowing behind. It was science's latest contribution to our victory, the miraculous D.D.T. powder to wipe out the disease pests, the mosquitoes, the typhus mites and the flies, for weeks to come.

"Guess it should kill them thar Japs, too," said a Yankee seaman at my elbow.

H-hour, the time for the assault waves to hit the beach, was o8 15 hours. The time depended on the tide, and man did not ask either of them to wait very long, for at o8 18 hours the first assault barges grounded, and out leaped the A.I.F. with Gallipoli in its swagger. For this was Australia's first great amphibious landing since that grim storming of a Eurasian beach thirty years ago. But the battered Jap was not on the beach to oppose our infantry. Wisely he had moved back to the rising hills, leaving only snipers and entrenched machine guns to dispute our advance and exact their toll. There would be stiffer fighting farther back between the beach and the airstrip-a 21-Miledistant objective. But today's bulletin says "the airstrip is secured".

Tonight with the mildly condescending amusement of people with the inside gen, we hear the B.B.C. announce that "it is unofficially reported that Australian forces have landed on Borneo". Back in Australia the papers placard the news that the A.I.F. had a new major assignment. The great overseas newspapers welcome the spectacular return of these colourful veterans. In thousands of Australian homes, simple, peace-loving folk, wives and sweethearts, fathers and mothers hear the news with a bitter-sweet pride, and turn anxious eyes towards the mail-box.

Hard at it in Borneo, the Old Masters of the world's wide battlefields found time for a quick joke or a quiet moment's thought of the cobbers that those other fields enfolded for ever.

And a thousand miles away in steaming Malayan prison camps battered Digger hats were set at a new defiant angle, as our waiting Eighth sensed unmistakably the determined advance of their cobbers of the Seventh and the Ninth - the irresistible march of the world's most rugged fighting man.

For eyes dimmed by long years of cruel waiting, the end was in sight.

FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT J. O'CALLAGHAN