by Pacific War Uncensored: A War Correspondent's Unvarnished Account of the Fight Against Japan
Nevertheless, the Australian and American engineers continued to tear the forest to pieces on a daily basis, hewing logs for corduroy roads and making detours for streams of traffic hauling tractors and water wagons across country. Since the first landings it had been an engineer’s war, and those brave men bore the brunt of the enemy assaults. They managed to harness a dynamo to the Buso River, the power from which would allow us to receive a broadcast communiqué. It was always interesting for us to read about what we were meant to be doing, because in the jungle, war coverage was sometimes limited to just the six feet of forestation which was around you.
The general consensus was, though, that the Japanese would make one last ditch effort to defend the immediate area of Lae, where there was no doubt that the more suicidal “fox-holed” defenders would once more be encountered. From the point of view of those of us on the ground, the most encouraging factor regarding the conflict so far had been the efficiency of the American air patrols, which official reports claimed had made a significant impact on the Japanese raiders. In addition to this, American fighters had destroyed the Japanese aircraft that were involved in the original attack on our troops during the initial landing. I spent 12 long days in the jungle with the troops before then returning once more to Port Moresby.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Passage to India
When I got back to Port Moresby I had quite a surprise waiting for me. There was a very long telegram from the New York office, telling me that they now wanted me to go to India. This was the last thing that I wanted to do, and so I sent a reply back asking them why. There then followed a big interchange of cables and letters, and it was explained to me that a new headquarters was being formed by Lord Mountbatten in South East Asia, and that John Morris was in New Delhi and had requested that I join up with him.
The pressure was now on, and I returned to Australia to discuss the situation with Marie and whether it might be possible for us to take Pat with us. I started making enquiries but found it difficult to make the necessary arrangements, and encountered some of the most awful red tape that I had ever experienced in all my life. I do not think that there was another country in the world at that time which was so entangled with such bureaucracy as Australia. It was even expected that Marie should get an export licence so that she could take her wedding ring! Clearances were required from various government departments, and it put us right off the idea of travelling out together—I started to hope that there would be so much red tape that it would prevent me from going to India at all.
In spite of this, the New York office insisted that I go, and it was sometime towards the end of September 1943 that I finally set out for India on my own, by ship, and in the company of a Paramount News cameraman by the name of Martin Barnett. I think it took twenty-one days for that little ship to sail from Melbourne in Australia, to Colombo in Ceylon, and we had rough weather every inch of the way. We went right across what they call the “The Great Australian Bight” and around to Freemantle, where we stayed for twenty-four hours, and then across the Indian Ocean to Colombo. Every day the sea was rough, although the ship’s crew were quite relieved by this, because they said that it lessened the danger of attack from any Japanese submarines, which were supposed to be swarming around that area.
I had to stay a couple of days in Colombo, and got a room in the Great Eastern Hotel. It was there that I made the acquaintance of a lanky American lieutenant colonel whose name was Kennedy. He attracted my attention because he was wearing a “bush whackers” hat like an Australian would, turned up at one side, which was an unusual choice for an American. Colonel Kennedy turned out to be a very nice fellow, and was working for a branch of the American army called JICA, which stands for Joint Intelligence Collecting Agency.
In the meantime Martin Barnett, the Paramount newsman, said that he was going to make his way up to India, by ship and rail, because he had so much camera equipment that he didn’t want to fly. I had to go scurrying around Colombo to find out if there was any way of me flying up to New Delhi, and was very lucky to make the acquaintance of a Group Captain by the name of Harris. He was flying up to Bombay, and I asked him if I could get a flight with him. So one morning I was on an RAF plane that flew all the way up from Colombo to Bombay.
From Bombay I then needed to make my way to New Delhi, and was lucky enough to meet a man called Cambridge, who was one of the higher officials in Indian railways. He was flying to New Delhi on an Indian government plane, and said that he could give me a ride, during which he also pointed out various parts of the country to me. At New Delhi a car came to meet Mr. Cambridge, and he dropped me at the Marina Hotel where John Morris was staying. It was the first time I had seen him since Java in February 1942, and it was good to make his acquaintance again.
Whenever you book into a hotel in India, the first person to call on you is a man who wants to tell your fortune, and sure enough that is what happened to me. He came carrying a reference book with a list of names, from the Viceroy downwards, who were people he had apparently told fortunes for. He told me that I would not stay long in India, but one day I would return again. He told John Morris that he would also leave India soon, but he would never return.
I was, however, shocked by John Morris’s appearance and demeanour, and he seemed to be really quite low. He had always been a rather flamboyant character, and very talkative, but now he seemed strangely quiet and withdrawn. In the ensuing days I found out that he had gotten himself into some very serious trouble by breaching sensitive censorship rules. A ship had been ferrying enemy prisoners for exchange with the Japanese, and had called at the Portuguese enclave of Goa. The correspondents had been allowed to go across to meet the ship carrying the prisoners of war, but only on the understanding that they not try to send messages from Goa. Everything had to be censored by the government of India, but John Morris had not obeyed the instruction and had attempted to send a message. Consequently he got himself into some very serious trouble, and to make matters worse this breach of rules seemed to have jeopardised his attempts to get a United Press service established in India.
I also met up with Daryl Berrigan, the young American who had joined me for a short time in Singapore, and then been sent across to Bangkok in Thailand. He told me how he had been driven out of Bangkok when the Japanese arrived, and then made his way to Burma, from where he had then made the long trek to India. It was quite a story, and I was very glad to meet up with him again. John Morris decided to fly off to Chungking because we had an office up there, and so suddenly I was left in charge of the New Delhi service.
I felt restless in New Delhi because nothing seemed to be happening, apart from the inevitable daily communiqués, which this time came from the Burma Front. The Japanese were gradually taking over the whole of that country, and things were becoming very grim. In addition to this, there was a large section of the Burmese people who had gone over to the Japanese side, as well as a pretty heavy section of the Indian National Army. As a result, the situation in India was very uneasy, and the anti-British feeling was running very high. The words, “Quit India!” would be written on the walls in numerous places. I wanted to escape from this country as soon as possible.
I tried to make some visits down to the Burma war front, but there seemed to be no proper facilities for the press there at all. In doing so I found myself in some very tricky situations—the Japanese were making great headway, against which we were offering little defence. Another battle was also being fought at a place called Kohima, right in the middle of a monsoon. It was more like an amphibious operation, with the troops swamped out, making the whole thing a terribly difficult operation.
I did not spend a great deal of time down on the Burma front; the entire situation there was very confusing and extremely dangerous. The Burma front was the longest battlefront in World War Two, being over two thousand miles long, and we had very little in the way of defence against the Japanese.
I soon made my way back to Ne
w Delhi where I had my first meeting with Lord Mountbatten, which for me was an unforgettable moment. It happened when a new American general was being appointed to the area, named General Wedemeyer. Lord Mountbatten gave a reception for his arrival, to which the press had all been invited. We had to dress ourselves up in our best uniforms—I appeared in an American uniform, but with my British war medals decorating it.
At the reception I found myself with Colonel Kennedy, who had also arrived in New Delhi by this time. We stood together talking, looking at the various personalities that were wandering about the room. One of them was General Joseph Stilwell, who was Mountbatten’s Deputy Commander. He was an American with the nickname of “Vinegar Joe,” and nobody really liked him that much. There was also a General Orde Wingate, who became famous for his involvement with the “Chindits”—troops that operated in Burma behind enemy lines.
When Mountbatten entered the room, he immediately spotted me with my British medals on. He came straight over and said, “How is it you’re wearing those?” I said, “I won them Sir.” He said, “I hope so, but where?” I said, “Royal Navy Sir,” and he grinned all over his face. I said, “I do not expect you remember submarine H23 on which you did your training?” The next minute we were talking navy, and about the old days of submarines. He was interested to hear where I had been, and what I had been doing.
That was a great moment for me. I felt I had made contact with one of the men I had most admired in the whole world. One person who was impressed by my encounter with Lord Mountbatten and the stories I had to tell was Colonel Kennedy, of the Joint Intelligence Collecting Agency; he was amazed to find out that I had experienced so much. I did, however, have a bit of a brush-up with General Stilwell, who was the American Deputy Supreme Commander in South East Asia.
It seemed to me that General Stilwell wanted to fight the war in his own way. He had a lot of Chinese troops under his command that belonged to Chiang Kai-shek, and had his own method of combating the Japanese in Burma. General Stilwell’s plan was to build what was to become known as the Ledo Road, to the centre of Burma, where he intended to get behind the Japanese lines and cut them in two. He was a great one for putting on the “rough and ready” act, and you always saw him in a sort of battle dress, but never a full general’s uniform. I remember one day he gave a press conference at the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi, and it was during this press conference that he made reference to Lord Mountbatten as “Lord Louis Non-Combattant.” This made me very furious, so I got up and walked out of the press conference. As I neared the door I heard General Stilwell say, “Whose that horse’s arse?”
It was now 1944, and I found out that Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton was at that time stationed in Colombo. I decided to go and see him, and he gave me the opportunity of getting my first “real” story from that area of the war. He shipped me aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, which was going out on the first operation of the Eastern Fleet. American, French and Dutch ships were all involved, and they were going to strike at a place called Subang in the Dutch East Indies. It was good to feel like I was back as part of the navy again, and I think we were at sea for about nine days. I shared a cabin with a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, called Michael Horden, who later became a famous actor on television, film and radio. He was a great character to share a cabin with, and was always full of fun.
I spent a lot of time in the Engine Room Artificer’s mess and often went down to the engine room to get a taste once more of that part of navy life. The degree of information I was able to get about the war was largely restricted to the official communiqués; being on an aircraft carrier prevented me from seeing much of the action, and didn’t make my reporting on the attack very satisfactory. However, I was the only correspondent who could claim to be involved with the operation, which provided me with an exclusive story, and that was all thanks to Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton.
I stayed in the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, where I remember all the guests sitting around the radio listening to the bulletin from London, which included my story about the HMS Illustrious. It was also about this time that my stiff leg became very inflamed—the problem seemed to be emanating around the deep flesh wound that I received from the flying tree splinter that had hit me during a Japanese air attack while I was in Malaya. It was so painful that I thought I better go and get it properly checked, and managed to find a civilian doctor who told me that I should go straight to bed. He fed me with “M and B” tablets, which I think were some sort of antibiotics, and they made me feel terribly miserable.
Colonel Kennedy became very concerned about my condition and sent for an American army doctor to see me, who made his own diagnosis of the problem. I told him about my stiff leg and flesh wound, and he said that I had gotten a “tropical ulcer.” He said that he would have to get me into a hospital, and that I would have to be flown up to New Delhi where there were proper hospital facilities. The next thing I remember was being carted away and put on board an airplane, then admitted to an army hospital in New Delhi.
The Americans had very stringent treatment procedures for anything like a tropical ulcer. They put a lot of penicillin on it, then strapped it up, which made it hurt all the time. I was told to stay in bed and not get up at all, and that was how I spent Christmas—in a hospital bed in New Delhi. Eventually, when I got out of hospital, I found out that John Morris had flown home to America on leave, but also that he had put in an application to return to India. There seemed to be some difficulty with this, and New York asked me to speak to the appropriate authority in the Indian government to find out why there was a problem. To do this I had to see the Minister for External Affairs, Sir Olaf Caroe, who told me outright that they were not going to issue a permit for John Morris, presumably because of the previous trouble he had been in.
I informed New York of the decision, and not long after this I received some very tragic news. John Morris had been up to the United Press office on the 12th floor of The News Building, on East 42nd Street in New York, and had thrown himself off—he was extremely upset and frustrated about his difficulties in India. It was a very sad moment because I liked John Morris, who had given me my chance with the United Press.
Following the death of John Morris, I received a message from the United Press office in New York, saying that I was now being appointed the Far Eastern Manager. This changed my life completely, because it meant that I had to direct the movements of about a dozen correspondents in the South East Asia command. I had to do a lot of flying around the area, sometimes all the way from China and then down to Ceylon. We had correspondents on several sections of this massive war front, and it seemed to me that I was spending all my life flying around in airplanes. At times this could, however, be most exciting, and I remember making a journey over the Himalayas with the United States Air Force, which they called “going over the hump.” It was a tremendous thrill to fly over that great “shimmering wall” which was the highest mountain range in the world.
The northern most point that I reached in China was Chun Ming. This was a very interesting experience because by this time the Chinese communists had announced their willingness to cooperate with the nationalist troops of Chiang Kai-shek in a common battle against the Japanese. I also travelled to Kabul in Afghanistan, which was a neutral country during World War Two. I found it to be a most extraordinary situation, with all the embassies of the belligerent countries operating in one ramshackle street, or boulevard, alongside one another. Another trip that I remember was to a place called Bangalore, where there was a big military command. I thought that I might be able to find some friends of Marie’s, and went along to the military headquarters and asked to see the education officer. I met with a major who was the first person during my whole wartime experience to ask me for my credentials! This seemed amazing to me, as it had happened in a place that was far removed from any of the war fronts in Southeast Asia.
I then received a spate of bad news in qui
ck succession. First, I heard that Brydon Taves, who was the United Press officer in General MacArthur’s area, had been killed in an air crash in New Guinea, and also that another good friend, Frank Priest, a United Press photographer, had also been shot by a sniper. Another young fellow by the name of John Andrews, who was a correspondent in my area, was killed in a bomber out on a raid over Bangkok. It seemed that correspondents were getting killed all along the line, and it was time for Lord Mountbatten to shift his headquarters from New Delhi down to Ceylon. He set up new headquarters in a place called Kandy, and most of it was located in the botanical gardens that were nicknamed the “Garden of Eden.”
It was while we were at these headquarters that I covered my second story involving sea action. I went to sea on a United States aircraft carrier called the Saratoga, which was part of the Eastern Fleet. It was quite a big operation meant to strike at a place called Sourabaya in the Dutch East Indies, which I was familiar with having been there before on a bombing mission from the Northern Territories of Australia. This time, though, I was able to leave the ship and take off in a dive bomber with an American commander called Joe Clifton, who had the nickname of “Jumpin’ Joe Clifton.” It was a terrifying experience, and I think for the whole time we were in the air we were in close combat. Jumpin’ Joe really lived up to his name, plunging the aircraft down and then back up into the sky.
