by Graham Seal
Truscott returned to Australia on leave in May 1942, playing once again with his club. He was reportedly out of condition, but the crowd loved him anyway and cheered him enthusiastically. It is said that after the game he bumped into one of his old teachers who asked him what he thought of returning to football. Truscott reportedly answered that it was ‘too dangerous’.
Truscott’s fame increased when he was posted to New Guinea just before the Japanese attacked Milne Bay in mid-1941. He took over the command of No. 76 Squadron and led the Kittyhawk fighter-bombers through several dangerous days of fighting. He was mentioned in dispatches for this work.
Another RAAF squadron involved in the battle for New Guinea was 75 Squadron. Their deeds, real and not so, live on in a rollicking ballad about their exploits that reflect the devil-may-care attitudes of the young Australians who risked their lives in the primitive airplanes of the time. P40s were fighter-bombers, also known as ‘Kittyhawks’, while the Zero was the Allied name for the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter plane.
. . . So we grabbed some P40s and went to the fight,
And we soon found the Nips had a nice little kite.
It was bright shining silver and Zero by name
And a bloody fine show as it goes down in flames.
Down in flames, down in flames,
And a bloody fine show as it goes down in flames.
Now the papers they tell of this squadron’s success
And Nippon has many an aeroplane less.
But the pages don’t say how the hell it was done—
Without our replacements and at seven to one.
Yes to one, yes to one,
Without our replacements and at seven to one . . .
Back in Australia to help defend Darwin and the north against the possibility of invasion, Truscott destroyed another enemy plane. But on 28 March 1943 he misjudged a training manoeuvre and was killed when his Kittyhawk dived into the sea in Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia. His tally of enemy aircraft was sixteen destroyed, three probably destroyed and three damaged. Despite this record, Truscott was notorious for his bad landings.
Angels of the Owen Stanley Range
‘Fuzzy-Wuzzy Angels’, as they were dubbed, are a permanent part of the Anzac legend. While there has been some controversy about over-romanticising the motives of the ‘Angels’ and about the paternalism towards them inherent in the attitudes of the day, there is no doubt that the diggers were deeply grateful for their sacrifice. Letters home praised the Angels unreservedly. Captain Trevor King wrote from New Guinea to Miss Clare Theobold of Newtown in Sydney, NSW:
The Papuan natives have done a wonderful job up here. I personally owe my life to one of these chaps. During one part of the show I was trapped crossing a mountain stream. The river was about 40 yards across and running very fast, and with a Jap machine-gun blazing away I decided to cross in an endeavour to sneak up and put Tojo’s gun out of action. I became stranded on a wet, slippery log midstream, and with lead flying in all directions it is not the most comfortable feeling. After a period of shouting for assistance, using as much native language as I knew, one of these chaps spotted my predicament and, in a flash, despite machine-gun bullets, cut a rope of lantana vine and threw it out from a ledge of rocks, soon to haul me to safety.
Private A. Johnson wrote in similar manner to Miss B. O’Brien in Melbourne:
I am in hospital in a back area. Had to be carried by the native bearers for over a day. They are worth their weight in gold, and are doing great work in getting the wounded back. Then I was lucky, and came the rest of the way by plane, and it was only a matter of minutes getting over the country that took weeks to cover on foot.
Probably the most famous Australian poem of World War II celebrated the Angels of the Owen Stanley Range. It was written by Bert Beros, a Canadian veteran of World War I who served with the second AIF in the Middle East and New Guinea. Beros said he wrote the poem hurriedly on ‘14th October, 1942, at Dump 66, the first Range of the Owen Stanley’. It began:
Many a mother in Australia,
When the busy day is done,
Sends a prayer to the Almighty
For the keeping of her son,
Asking that an angel guide him
And bring him safely back.
And went on to describe the actions of the Angels:
Bringing back the badly wounded Just as steady as a hearse,
Using leaves to keep the rain off
And as gentle as a nurse.
Slow and careful in bad places
On the awful mountain track,
The look upon their faces
Would make you think that Christ was black . . .
Australia’s secret submariners
Australian submariners played central roles in some pivotal incidents of World War II, including the raid on the German battleship Tirpitz, the D-Day invasion and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan.
In 1942–43, the Royal Navy developed a secret class of miniature submarines known as X-craft. With a four-man crew, they were designed to attack enemy shipping in port. At around 50 feet (15 metres) in length and weighing 30 tons (27 tonnes), they were towed—on the surface or submerged—to their targets. Lacking torpedoes, they were instead armed with clockwork detachable mines that could be placed beneath enemy ships by a diver, allowing plenty of opportunity for the submarines to escape before the blast. But this all proved to be difficult in practice, a situation worsened by the sometimes fatal buoyancy problems of the X-craft. Many submariners were lost in these extremely hazardous vessels, quite a few of them in non-combat accidents.
The X-craft first went to war in an attempt to sink the German battleship Tirpitz at her Norwegian base at Kåfjord in September 1943. Submarines X5 through to X10 were deployed, towed submerged and surfacing every six hours to change crews. The tow of X9 parted on the way to the target and two men were lost with the vessel. X8 was also lost on the way to the attack. On 22 September, the three remaining miniature submarines, X5, X6 and X7, did attack Tirpitz, causing substantial damage that delayed her deployment for some vital months. All three submarines were lost during the action or afterwards.
Over the next two years, X-craft carried out other operations in Bergen harbour in Norway, off the French coast, and in the Pacific. Australians were prominent in X-craft, including NSW-born Lieutenant Brian ‘Digger’ McFarlane, West Australian Lieutenant Jack Marsden and Victorian Lieutenant Ian McIntosh. McIntosh was destined to become Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy and was knighted in 1973. McFarlane and Marsden were both lost with X22 in a collision with another ship in February 1944.
In January 1944, Tasmanian Lieutenant Kenneth Robert Hudspeth, Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve, a schoolteacher before the war, was in command of X20 conducting reconnaissance off the French coast in preparation for the D-Day landings. He had already won a Distinguished Service Cross for his part in the Tirpitz raid and now won a second. The citation read, in part:
For outstanding courage and devotion to duty whilst commanding HM submarine X-20 in a hazardous operation. He showed great coolness, grasp and ability in manoeuvring his X craft submerged in shallow water close under enemy defences during the first experimental beach reconnaissance from X craft in January 1944 . . .
At a similar location later the same year, Hudspeth received a third DSC ‘for gallantry, skill, determination and undaunted devotion to duty . . .’. Hudspeth and crew spent two cramped and humid nights beneath the waters of the English Channel reconnoitring what was to become known as Juno Beach. As the bombardment that launched the invasion began, X20 surfaced and used her lights to illuminate the safest passage for the landing craft.
In 1945, six XE-craft, refinements of the earlier versions, were sent to Pearl Harbor to take part in the Pacific war. Admiral Nimitz of the United States Navy, himself a submariner, observed that they were ‘suicide craft’. The Americans were reluctant to put them into operational roles—until they discovered th
at the X-craft had a longer operational range than they had assumed. The XE submarines then went into training off the Queensland coast to prepare attacks on Japanese warships and on underwater telegraph cables. This would eventually be known as Operation Sabre, designed to cut the cables linking Tokyo with Singapore, Saigon and Hong Kong, an important communication channel for the Japanese high command. Special tools and techniques had to be developed for this unprecedented operation.
After training in Hervey Bay in Queensland, during which two divers were lost in accidents, a group of XE-craft were deployed in missions against the Japanese. On 31 July 1945, Perth engineer Lieutenant Max Shean was in command of XE4. Also aboard were Sub-Lieutenant Ken Briggs from Glenn Innes in New South Wales, Engine Room Artificer Level 5 ‘Ginger’ Coles, Sub-Lieutenant Ben Kelly and Sub-Lieutenant Adam ‘Jock’ Bergius. On that day, XE4 and her crew were submerged off the Mekong River in what was then French Indo-China, now Vietnam. They were dragging a grapnel hook across the seabed in an attempt to locate underwater telegraph cables. After several futile runs, they finally located the southbound cable beneath sand and silt at a depth of fifty feet (15 metres). At 1229 hours Ken Briggs left XE4 through the exit hatch, found the cable and cut it with the hydraulic cutters specially developed for the task. He was back aboard in thirteen minutes, carrying a length of cable as evidence of his success. Adam Bergius RNVR then left the submarine at 1402 and, after several attempts, managed to sever the northbound cable and return by 1452.
The cutting of the undersea cable forced the Japanese to use radio for their communications. The Americans had already cracked the Japanese radio codes and so were now able to gain access to vital information that had been unavailable when transmitted beneath the sea. XE4’s action that day provided intelligence that was reportedly a factor in the decision to use nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Max Shean added a bar to the Distinguished Service Order he had won for his previous X-craft service and the United States awarded him a Bronze Star. The other members of the crew were also decorated, with Ken Briggs and Adam Bergius both receiving the Distinguished Service Cross for their bravery.
During their brief but decisive careers, X-craft submariners, British and Australian, were highly awarded with four Victoria Crosses, four Distinguished Service Orders, seven Distinguished Service Crosses, one Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, two Distinguished Service Medals, one Bronze Star (USA) and eleven mentions in dispatches.
Today, X24 can be seen at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, Hampshire, in the UK. The remains of two others, thought to be the remains of the XT, or training versions of the X-craft, lie at Aberlady Bay in Scotland’s East Lothian region. The Imperial War Museum at Duxford, UK, has an exhibition of X-craft, including the remains of X7 and an intact X51. There is a memorial to the 12th Submarine Flotilla, of which the X-craft were a part, in Sutherland in Scotland and two other memorials near the X-craft training base at Bute, also in Scotland.
The home front
EVEN THOUGH THERE were no hostilities within Australia during World War I, and limited enemy action during World War II, home fronts in Australia and Britain have played a vital role in mass conflicts. As well as being the place to which all soldiers wish to return as quickly as possible, home is the location of essential industrial, medical, political and social support. Home fronts are as much a part of Anzac as battlefronts—not only during a war but also for many years afterwards. It is on home soil that the national community will attend to the inevitable aftermath of broken minds and bodies, as well as to the expression of grief and commemoration.
Scots of the Riverina
In 1915, the alcoholic, depressed and impoverished writer Henry Lawson became the subject of a rescue mission by his friends and journalistic colleagues. A number of them approached then-NSW premier Holman who suggested that the writer be given a literary commission in the recently established (1912) Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas. The job had a number of advantages. It provided Lawson with somewhere to live rent-free; it got him away from his unhealthy Sydney lifestyle; and, most of all, it provided him with a degree of self-respect. All Lawson had to do was write verse and stories that related in some way to the great experiment in large-scale agricultural irrigation, a subject in which he had a strong interest.
Lawson took up the position, on and off, between January 1916 and the end of 1917. He produced a considerable number of poems and sketches during this period, some published in The Bulletin magazine and in a few other newspapers, by then mostly filled with often grim war news. Now ageing, the once-radical firebrand had become a staunch supporter of the British Empire and of Australia’s role in the war then raging at the other end of the world. Lawson was unfit for service himself, but his experiences and observations of life in the Riverina allowed him to compose his last great poem. It tells a story of the wrenching effects of war, of one among many similar tragedies suffered by families throughout the country.
The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time—
They were Scots of the Riverina, and to run from home was a crime.
The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned, And he scratched his name from the Bible when the old wife’s back was turned.
A year went past and another. There were calls from the firing-line;
They heard the boy had enlisted, but the old man made no sign.
His name must never be mentioned on the farm by Gundagai—
They were Scots of the Riverina with ever the kirk hard by.
The boy came home on his ‘final’, and the township’s bonfire burned.
His mother’s arms were about him; but the old man’s back was turned.
The daughters begged for pardon till the old man raised his hand—
A Scot of the Riverina who was hard to understand.
The boy was killed in Flanders, where the best and bravest die.
There were tears at the Grahame homestead and grief in Gundagai;
But the old man ploughed at daybreak and the old man ploughed till the mirk—
There were furrows of pain in the orchard while his housefolk went to the kirk.
The hurricane lamp in the rafters dimly and dimly burned;
And the old man died at the table when the old wife’s back was turned.
Face down on his bare arms folded he sank with his wild grey hair
Outspread o’er the open Bible and a name re-written there.
The Durban Signaller
Ethel M. Campbell was a well-born Durban socialite whose fiancé was killed early in World War I. She became a patriotic icon to the diggers sailing to and from the battlefields of France and the Middle East. Born in Glasgow in 1886, Ethel (sometimes known as Edith) Campbell became known as ‘the Durban Signaller’ because of her practice of semaphoring messages of support to the troopships passing through Durban harbour. Also known as ‘the Diggers’ Idol’ and ‘the Durban Angel’ she sometimes threw fruit and other gifts aboard the ships, all much appreciated by those aboard. She renamed her house ‘Little Australia’ and entertained thousands of soldiers there, assisted by her dog ‘Digger’ and the provision of facilities for playing ‘two-up’.
As well as these practical contributions to the war effort, Ethel Campbell composed a large number of patriotic and inspiring verses, publishing them herself and distributing them to the troops at every opportunity with unflagging enthusiasm. The poems’ combination of patriotism, wry observations and humour made them appealing to the soldiers, who often preserved them in their diaries.
Gunner Millard passed through Durban on his way to England during World War I and kept some of Ethel Campbell’s verses for over sixty years, including this one.
We stand on the shores of Durban
And watch the transports go
To England from Australia,
Hurrying to and fro.
And what can we do to show them
Our love, our pride, our thanks?
; We can’t do much (I own it),
But give them a passing cheer
While the real elite beat a shocked retreat,
Why, they saw one drinking beer!
If they were lucky enough to survive the war, homeward-bound diggers might be greeted yet again by Edith Campbell as their ships passed back through South Africa.
So highly thought of was Ethel Campbell’s war work that she was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1919, and in 1923 was invited to Australia to officially open a war memorial. Despite advancing age, the Durban Signaller answered the bugle call again in World War II with a repeat performance of her pastoral work, and more verse. Ethel Campbell never married. She died in 1954 and was fondly remembered by diggers, including Mr Uhr-Henry of Tasmania.
As one of the thousands of Australian servicemen privileged to meet Miss Ethel Campbell and accept her hospitality and motherly interest, it is with a saddened heart and a feeling of personal loss that news of her death is received. Following her kindness in the First World War, when as the ‘Durban Signaller’ she waited on the wharf to greet and farewell every Australian troopship at Durban, she began the same practice early in 1940, but soon found it necessary to move to Hilton, about 70 miles from Durban, for health reasons. Her love for the Digger was such that she would journey to Durban when she knew a troopship or the Navy was in. Her name became a legend, and when, one day, she was not at the wharf, a crowd of fellows ‘thumbed’ their way to her home, where they received a royal welcome. From then on thousands of troops were entertained by her at Hilton, and the boys seemed to think it was their duty to visit her.
