by Pacific War Uncensored: A War Correspondent's Unvarnished Account of the Fight Against Japan
Back in Australia the Americans had formed what was known as the “Brisbane Line.” This was a line of military defences stretching from Brisbane on the east coast of Australia, right across the whole of the continent down to Perth in the lowermost western corner. The immediate objective of this had been to protect the southeastern corner of the country, where the major cities were situated. The Americans were also busy developing the road systems in the Northern Territories of Australia in order to improve communications and supplies to these remote areas, and the United Press wanted me to go up into these remote areas to find out how the development of the defences were progressing.
I had to make contact with the Australian army in order to make this journey possible. Luckily at this time they had just put into service a new radio communications vehicle that was like a large caravan, full of radio equipment, which was making a trip from Adelaide in the south all the way to Darwin in the north. One of the tasks of this vehicle’s crew was to test out radio frequencies and transmit conditions in various parts of Australia, and I was able to join them in their journey.
As I was attached to the American forces I had to let them know about my forthcoming project with the Australian army. One of the standing orders in the American army for anyone going into the northern territories of Australia was that they had to take with them special equipment. As a result I was suddenly laden down with a bunch of special equipment, including a mosquito net, Parang, various types of boots, and lots of other paraphernalia. In fact there were forty-two items altogether! I had to travel to Melbourne with this great load and then down to Adelaide where I was to join up with the radio communications unit.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Northern Territories
Iarrived in Adelaide by train and much to my surprise, as we pulled into the station, I could hear my name being called out over a loud hailer, asking for me to report to the stationmaster’s office. With great intrigue I went along to the office, and was surprised to find a fully uniformed chauffeur standing there waiting for me. I found out that he had been sent by a Mr. Lloyd Dumas, which was a name that I had not heard before, but who turned out to be the proprietor of the leading newspaper in Adelaide. Apparently Sir Keith Murdoch had telephoned him and requested that he take good care of me.
The chauffeur had been given the instructions to take me to the Adelaide Club, which was one of the most exclusive clubs in Australia. So we loaded my American army kit into the back of the car, and off we set. When we arrived at the club I was greeted by the head porter with all the aplomb of a celebrity. The Adelaide Club was a bit like living back in Victorian days, as I had a very old-fashioned, beautifully furnished bedroom, and at breakfast the meal was always served in lovely silver dishes. There was a long story written about me in Lloyd Dumas’s newspaper, and this proved to be something of an embarrassment, because as a result I was invited out by the Press Club of Adelaide and given the most wonderful lunch where everyone had too much to drink, including me! I walked back to the Adelaide Club after that lunch in a very “fuzzy” state of mind. We had been drinking what the Australians call “plonk,” which I don’t think is a very high grade of wine. At the club the head porter said there had been a telephone message for me, asking me to call a number. To my surprise I found that I was speaking to Government House, and after a while I was put through to a Lady Muriel Barclay-Harvey, who was the wife of the Governor of South Australia. She asked me if I was able to go to lunch on the following day, and because of my state of mind I said yes. Then there was an awkward pause, and I found myself saying, greatly to my horror, “What are you going to have?” She said, “Oh! What would you like?” So I said, “Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding,” and she laughed quite loudly over the phone, then said, “Well! You will have it!” On the next day in a rather shamed faced way I presented myself at Government House at the appointed time, where I had the most delightful meeting with Lady Muriel Barclay-Harvey and the Governor of South Australia. Also at the lunch were a bishop and an Australian naval captain, and it was a most enjoyable occasion. We had a good laugh about me ordering my lunch of roast beef, which was on the menu, and it was delicious.
I was glad though, to eventually escape from Adelaide, as the hospitality became too overwhelming. When I reported at the Australian military depot in Adelaide to pick up my communications unit, I managed to persuade them to look after the equipment that had been placed upon me by the American army. They rolled it up into a huge bedroll, put my name on it and said they would send it on to me. We then drove from Adelaide in South Australia, up to Alice Springs, which is just about in the centre of the country. It was there that the Great North Road, or “Burma Road” as some called it, started and then stretched for nearly nine hundred miles all the way up to Darwin. This road was being constructed to provide a supply line to Darwin to help protect it from Japanese attacks, and it required hundreds of tons of soil and gravel so that it would resist the torrential downpours experienced during the rainy season. There was a set time limit of ninety days for the completion of the road, and it was actually finished in eighty-seven. It cut through what was marked originally on the maps as complete desert. It was a great asset for a newspaperman to be travelling in one of these communications vans, because I was able to sit down and write a story that could then be radioed to Australian military headquarters in Brisbane or Adelaide. This was a situation of mutual benefit to the Australian army, because through me sending my stories, I was helping them test out their equipment.
Our communications van was part of a convoy of vehicles making the trip up to the north. When we reached Alice Springs I stayed in the Stuart Arms Hotel, which is the same hotel that General MacArthur stayed in when he escaped to Australia from the Philippines. I had a long talk with a chambermaid, whose name was Sarah Long, and asked her about the impression she got of him. She said, “One thing you get here is clean beds, good food and that’s all the MacArthur’s asked for. Like all Americans they liked steak and eggs for breakfast—roast beef and steak is about all the Americans eat. Missus MacArthur was a lovely little woman and the little boy was a darling. I used to collect all the small Australian coins for Arthur, he had a big collection of tiny coins and liked three penny bits. I thought he was a horrible man. The way he used to talk to his wife and son!” We did not stay long in Alice Springs, and travelled further north, from which point the desert really began.
I remember one of the first things we came across was the Devil’s Marbles, which are perfect spherical stones about ten feet in diameter, piled in pyramids, and nobody knew how they had gotten there. Even more curious was the small velvety green-leaved plants that grew from the granite rocks, which the natives called rock moss and which resembled edelweiss from the Swiss Alps. Around us stood the occasional Goanna observing our movements. These impressive looking mini-dragons had originally been imported to help rid Australia of the incredible swarms of flies that invade this part of country. From this point we travelled for miles along a straight road that stretched off into the horizon, where the sky seemed to meet with a miraged ocean. The journey was quite monotonous. The drivers would constantly recount stories in order to keep their wits about them, as it would be too easy to fall asleep and run the truck off the road and get bogged down in the desert sand. At various points along the way we stopped at staging camps, where vehicles were refuelled and checked over and also gave us the chance to rest and eat.
Our party was being lead by an Australian Sergeant called Allen, and he knew quite a number of survival techniques for living in the desert. He had lived in the outback for the best part of his life, and he showed me how to make a meal in the middle of the desert. This first of all involved setting light to a Spinifex bush, and then placing on top of it a slab of Mulga wood. Onto this you then could cook a piece of meat or even a pancake. Meals were always accompanied by “Billy Tea” brewed in a “Billy Can,” which is actually just an ordinary can with a wire handle. You put this on the fir
e until it boils, then take the Billy Can off the fire and put the tea in. The Billy Can is then left so that the smoke from the fire blows across the can, and then it is swung around, and only the force of gravity holds the contents in. The brewing of Billy tea is quite a fine art.
On one occasion we shot a bush turkey, and after plucking the bird we boiled it for almost eight hours in a kerosene barrel, then roasted it over a fire. It cut cleanly, and was just as tasty as the turkey you might have at home for your Christmas dinner. I also learnt how to wash and shave from just the water in an enamelled mug. To do this there has to be two of you. First you can damp your shaving brush and lather your face. Then you shave flipping the lather off into the sand, after which you rinse your face very sparingly with the remaining water. Then you get your “cobber” to slowly trickle the rest of the water over your neck while your head is held forward. It is amazing how much washing you can do with just one mug of water.
The first stopping place on the Great North Road was Tennant’s Creek, which was a little one-horse town. There was a wooden shack there that was meant to be a branch of the Bank of New South Wales. It was from Tennant’s Creek that our communications van then set off into Simpson’s Desert. Ninety miles into this desert we came across a man living in a corrugated iron shack, who I sat down and talked to. He said his name was “Buzzer,” and that he’d been sitting there for months, sifting the sand for little grains of gold that he was collecting in a little bag. Every now and then he would take his bag into Tennant’s Creek, where the Bank of New South Wales would give him vouchers in return. He would then set off back into the desert to sift for more gold. In the desert we came across some amazing sites: ant hills that were twenty to thirty feet high, looking like some Middle-Eastern town with mosques and minarets. The bull dust would be whipped up into whirlwinds that the Australians called the “Willy-willys.”
As the convoy made progress we passed through various outback townships, but the further north we travelled the more the civilian population began to dwindle. I left the convoy for a period of time at one staging post, to hitchhike off the “beaten-track,” and found American troops carrying out the construction of defences in these remote areas. I travelled hundreds of miles, passing through cattle stations and mining areas on the way.
I eventually reached an American army outfit, where the soldiers were performing all kinds of miracles in the arid desert, boring for water, from which it was possible to cultivate various crops. In one place they even managed to grow watermelons! Some of the troops had also made contact with the native Aborigines. One in particular was an American lieutenant called Tom McCord, who was among the original American forces that were destined for the Philippines, but were then diverted to Australia after the Japanese invasion engulfed the islands in that area. The camp in which he was stationed consisted of drab pyramid-shaped tents that were typically found in many military concentrations. In amongst these were numerous gum trees, and it was here that the “Burma Road” finally finished.
Tom McCord was on very goods terms with the natives, and they looked upon him as someone that they could come to with all sorts of problems. He was in charge of this camp, which had an advanced railhead that was performing the vital role of supplying Australia’s northern defences. The supplies were transported by an 1860 vintage locomotive that the Americans called “Spirit of Protest,” in a parody of South Australia’s “Spirit of Progress.” Though nobody underestimated the importance of the role of this locomotive in supplying advanced bases where it was impossible to do so by road.
The work that was going on did not just involve the building of the infrastructure, but also in helping the airbases maintain their craft. I met a Lieutenant Paul Hellwig from California and Lieutenant Maurice Richards from Colorado, who ran what was described as “Bush Aircraft Manufacturing Incorporated.” This was an Air Corps service squadron whose meritorious work had become a byword throughout the Northern Territories’ airbases. They directed operations to maintain combat aircraft in action, which had initially involved servicing a small squadron of P40 fighters, but had increased in scale as the war progressed. The increase in Allied air strength meant that they now had to maintain and repair giant Liberator bombers, with little change being made to their available personnel and maintenance equipment. One of their number, a Major M.H. Miller who had serviced Ford and Douglas airplanes since 1928, told me, “this is the best outfit I’ve worked with anywhere. They do everything and some repair alterations and additions are actually factory jobs carried out right here in the bush. Planes get shot-up and damaged and are seemingly beyond repair, but this squadron doesn’t let anything halt them. They know what’s needed and if they haven’t got it they just go ahead and make it.”
Bush Aircraft Incorporated also included a complete parachute department, who found time to also repair soldiers’ uniforms. These repairs were effected using an antiquated Singer sewing machine that had been salvaged from the wreckage of bombed out buildings in Darwin. Further resourcefulness was taking place with instrument repair, where seemingly unusable airplane instruments were being converted into testing equipment to check airplane parts that would otherwise require factory repair. Repair Testing Manager Harry Baylies told me, “some bombers don’t have very good luck, but we always manage to make good use of every salvageable scrap metal, and anything we don’t have we just make it. Everybody is improvising here while awaiting the arrival of necessary equipment and improvisations often prove the best.”
McCord did everything that he could to help the natives—one of his medical staff had even carried out a caesarean operation on a distressed Aboriginal woman. The Aborigine men would regularly confide in him about their problems, and often made their way across to the camp to seek his advice. McCord took me to meet the Aborigine tribe one evening, which was a most entertaining experience, as they put on what is called a corroboree and daubed themselves in white clay paint. They did some fantastic dances for us, and then laid out a feast of soup made from Kangaroo tail and meat that had been cooked in the hot embers of the desert sand.
While I was in the outback the troops also held a rodeo, which was somewhat nostalgic for many of the Texans amongst their number. Many of the Americans took part in the event, some who were revealed as first timers by being thrown to the ground by their steers. Some, though, were near professional riders, and had been keen to get to the event. They rode for miles through typical Australian cattle country in a variety of vehicles, ranging from jeeps to six-wheel trucks and old style buckboards. Despite the Americans expertise though, the Australians proved to be victorious in the event with their superior knowledge of the steers. Even the Americans admitted that the Australian steers were hard to control, particularly during the buckjumping contests.
I managed one day to witness an Aboriginal kangaroo hunt, which demonstrated the native’s ingenuity and capability to live off the land. A wrinkled ancient member of the tribe dubbed “Smiler,” and his youthful spear-carrier named “Tommy,” walked swiftly out into some bushland, while I pursued them in a beaten up old Chevrolet. They walked for almost five miles, when Smiler suddenly stopped, and signalled to Tommy to do exactly the same, while he raised his head and peered into the far distance. He stealthily moved forward, seemingly sniffing the air, and when I looked further into the distance a large buck kangaroo could be seen.
I halted the car and watched Smiler approach the kangaroo, which once or twice raised its head to look enquiringly around. Each time it did this Smiler stopped and stood still, before proceeding again, until he was just twenty yards from his quarry. He then raised his skinny arm and launched his unwieldy spear. The kangaroo toppled, and Smiler and Tommy danced round in circles, and ran over to claim their prize. The unfortunate beast was then trussed and slung onto the spear between Smiler and Tommy before it was carried back to the reserve for undoubtedly a triumphant feast. Later on I declined the offer to eat the “sizzled” heart and liver, and left Smiler to devou
r these “titbits” with the rest of his tribe.
The American’s achievements in the Northern Territories were quite amazing, and they managed to build a strategic road system through Australia’s interior, allowing many more motor truck fleets to travel throughout previously unexplored parts of the country. After travelling through northern Australia’s seemingly illimitable outback, I was left with the distinct impression that the potential of this land was vastly underestimated. My thoughts were confirmed by a camp sergeant at an Australian staging post. He was formerly a resident of South Australia, and told me that for ten years prior to the war the geography text books in the school where he taught made the northern part of the country appear to be something like the Sahara Desert. However there were many areas in the north where there were green pastures and an abundance of water for those who knew where to find it. At another staging camp, where the geography books had illustrated the land as being a wilderness, six Australian soldiers managed to cultivate three acres of vegetables.
There were many fascinating aspects to Australia’s Northern Territories, but what the United Press really wanted was a story about how the war was being fought from these areas. I managed to locate in my travels some heavy bombing and fighter groups, which unexpectedly presented me once more with the opportunity for taking part in a mission. This arose when I learned that there were raids being planned on Sourabaya in Java, which was an interesting trip as it entailed the longest journey so far in the war, to the Southwest Pacific. From the air base in northern Australia to the target was twenty-one hundred miles, and the bombers to be used in these missions were B24s, which were bigger than the Flying Fortress.
I was extremely keen to get involved in the missions, but initially I was told there would be no room for any additional passengers as fuel had to be preserved on such a long flight. Then, however, a possibility suddenly presented itself. On a B24 they used to carry a very large photographic camera, called a K2 Camera, which fitted into a circular aperture in the floor of the bomber. This was used to take surveillance pictures, and when it was finished with, the camera could then be removed and replaced with a machine gun. I managed to get myself on some training flights to learn how to operate the K2 Camera, and was very pleased when I was eventually told that I was proficient enough to take part in one of their missions.
