by Juliet Wills
down from the wagon and inside the dormitory which consisted of a single small room full of beds. The nuns fussed over the men, supplying them with hot water and soap to scrub off the accumulated dust, mud and blood before dressing their wounds.
The men were encouraged to rest, though beds were at a
premium. Exhausted, Smirnoff lay down next to two men
already sleeping there. When he woke later in the evening, he realised the two men next to him were Cramerus and Muller, whom he had last seen four days earlier. The three chatted excitedly and compared notes. When Smirnoff told the pair of the death of the little boy, Muller took the news particularly hard.
Later, in the reception room of the mission, Captain Smirnoff and the survivors joined the brothers. The captain thanked them for rescuing the group from Carnot Bay, insisting it was cause for celebration. Bishop Raible took the hint and arranged for the men to be handed a glass of red wine. Smirnoff later described it as ‘the most terrific claret I had ever drunk’.
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Famished, Smirnoff ate his dinner with relish, astonishing the missionaries with the amount of food he was able to put away.
During the night the mail truck arrived, and Smirnoff,
Vanderburg, Hoffman and Cramerus boarded the truck for the 140-kilometre trip to Broome. The truck had no headlights and much of the journey along the corrugated track, which only the driver recognised as a road, was at night. Then a tyre blew and they had no spare, but despite this, the truck hobbled into Broome at around 2 a.m. The following morning the rest of the survivors were taken to Broome. There were plenty of vacant beds at the hospital as the injured from the Broome air raid had all been moved south. An RAAF officer provided first aid to the emaciated survivors. He told them of the air raid on Broome a week earlier and that most of the population of the town had fled in panic. Under the circumstances, nobody in Broome had given a second thought to Smirnoff ’s DC-3.
Smirnoff had just settled in for the night when the air raid siren wailed. Smirnoff leapt out of bed and hung over the verandah, yelling to a young policeman who was pedalling
furiously towards the harbour. The policeman slowed down and pointed. ‘Look there.’ Smirnoff looked towards the harbour and saw four fast torpedo boats with no flags flying. As the boats pulled round the quay, Smirnoff smiled with relief as the red, white and blue flag of the Netherlands unfurled from the masthead. The craft had escaped from Surabaya and run the gauntlet of Japanese sea and air power to reach the Australian coast.
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In the morning an Australian National Airways representa-
tive made a DC-2 available for Smirnoff and the other survivors to fly to Port Hedland, where better medical help was available.
A handful of curious locals waved them off. At Port Hedland, the orderlies cleaned their wounds and replaced their bandages.
Already it seemed to Smirnoff as though their ordeal had been just a bad dream. The bullets in his arms and hip were the only tangible reminders of the horror of the week before.
Of course, the captain hoped that one other tangible reminder would be unearthed. It would be the task of Warrant Officer Gus Clinch to return to that lonely shore to bury the dead and search for the valuable package. Before Smirnoff had left Beagle Bay, he had explained to Clinch that he felt responsible for the package as he had been entrusted to guard it. Clinch assured Smirnoff he would do all he could to find it. Neither man could have guessed that, in the coming days, the survivors would come under the scrutiny of Dutch and Australian authorities seeking to find the diamonds. Even Brother Richard would become a suspect as the mystery of the Dakota’s missing
diamonds deepened.
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DIAMONDS?
Where are the diamonds?
Diamonds were of prime importance for both the Allies and the Axis powers during the Second World War. Necessary to manufacture the millions of precision parts required for mass-producing airplane engines, torpedoes, tanks, artillery and the other weapons of war, diamonds were also needed to draw the fine wire needed for radars, for the jewelled bearings in stabilisers, gyroscopes and guidance systems for submarines and planes, and for the abrasives necessary to rapidly convert civilian industries into a war machine. The supply of diamonds was vital to keep the war machine moving.
While the demand for industrial diamonds skyrocketed, so
too did the demand for gem-quality diamonds that had been stockpiled before the war. Small, durable, portable and exchange-able across borders, diamonds were used to purchase arms and 103
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finance the war machine. They offered a means to ensure that wealth survived even when countries did not. Tight controls were placed on the diamond trade for the duration of the war.
Amsterdam and Antwerp were the centre of the world trade
in diamonds prior to the outbreak of war, as this was where thousands of mainly Jewish craftsmen turned the rough diamonds from African mines into finely crafted gemstones. At war’s outbreak, there were an estimated 3000 Jewish diamond businessmen and craftsmen in Amsterdam. When Germany swept
across Europe and looked set to invade England, the world’s stockpile of diamonds was poised to fall into the hands of the Nazis.
Many diamond traders managed to escape to England and
the United States, taking their diamonds with them. In an agreement with the British government, an organisation known as the Correspondence Office for the Diamond Industry was set up to register the diamonds and keep them secure for the duration of the war.
In 1939, diamond traders Willy Olberg and David Davidson
joined the flow of jewellers fleeing Amsterdam, taking their families and their diamonds with them.
David Davidson had already brought diamonds, watches
and jewellery to the East Indies in 1914, creating N.V. de Concurrent, one of the finest jewellers’ shops in the chic upmarket town of Bandung. Situated on a plateau in the
Parahayangan mountains, Bandung’s pleasant climate and lush surroundings had offered an escape from the blistering heat of
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the lowlands since the mid-nineteenth century, when it was the heart of the region’s most prosperous plantation area. Surrounded by active volcanoes, dramatic mountain landscapes, forests, cool streams and green valleys, it was to Bandung that the Dutch went to play. Hotels, cafés and shops had sprung up to serve the planters and tourists, and Bandung became known as the Paris of Java. Offering the latest of European wares, N.V. de Concurrent’s clientele included sultans, politicians and businessmen.
Davidson was later joined by his brother-in-law Willy Olberg.
The business flourished in the wealthy colony and in 1930 the pair moved back to Europe, where they could readily purchase the latest goods, including Swiss watches, gold, silverware and gemstones, to stock their boutique Indies business. Their jewellery workshop in Amsterdam hired only the best craftsmen, producing high-quality pieces. Willy’s son, Frans, who had been brought up in the trade, had developed a reputation for precise appraisals through his careful analysis of diamonds. He had a keen eye and was able to spot the tiniest imperfection. This enabled him to select only the finest of diamonds to be fashioned in their workshop.
When they left war-torn Europe in 1939, the Davidson and
Olberg families took as many diamonds as they were able to get their hands on in case the war should hamper supplies to the East Indies. But the East Indies offered only a temporary respite from aggressors,
as soon war was being waged across the Pacific. Ensuring East Indies wealth was kept out of the hands
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of the invading enemy was the role of the Netherlands East Indies Exchange Institute (NEI). When Java looked certain to fall, the Exchange Institute negotiated the storage of valuables and money with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The
Australian government had set up a safe repository for gold and other valuables in late January 1942 at the jail in Broken Hill, a remote mining town 1160 kilometres west of Sydney in the outback of New South Wales. Short-term prisoners had been given early release, and long-term inmates were sent to Bathurst, another rural town, so that construction on the special steel-lined concrete vault with a grille and double combination-locked doors could be built in a space between blocks of cells. In February 1942 a heavily guarded train filled with gold ingots made the transfer from Sydney to the Broken Hill jail. From the air the enemy would never know that the jail held such valuable items. Gold and coins from the Javasche Bank were transported to the hidden repository with the help of the Exchange Institute.
Word of the rescue of the survivors of Smirnoff ’s DC-3 filtered across mainly Dutch networks. The wounded from the Carnot Bay crash had been transported to Perth’s Hollywood Hospital, still suffering from dehydration, burns, shrapnel or bullets embedded in their bodies, but for a time it seemed as if the world had forgotten them. No authorities visited or bothered
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to find out their story. It seemed to Captain Smirnoff that their harrowing ordeal was of no interest to anyone.
Smirnoff had been told to stay in hospital but the indignant Russian did not take well to such orders. He was desperate to get to Sydney to see Margot. He asked to see the Dutch Consul and demanded a flight east. On 15 March, after much begging and pleading, Smirnoff was heading for Melbourne.
Word travelled fast. Soon after he landed in Melbourne, the captain was approached by a well-dressed gentleman who
announced himself as a director of the Commonwealth Bank
of Australia.
‘Is there something you want to hand over to me?’ he asked with some urgency.
‘To hand over to you?’ Smirnoff replied, puzzled.
‘The packet which you were given in Bandung.’ The agitated banker’s face reddened as he spoke. ‘Where is the packet?’
Slowly it dawned on Smirnoff. Was he to be reprimanded
over the packet after all they had gone through? ‘I don’t know,’
he replied tersely.
‘You don’t know, as in it’s been handed over to someone
else, or—?’
‘I lost it,’ Smirnoff interrupted.
The banker was clearly annoyed. ‘But you were entrusted
to take good care of it.’
Smirnoff thought of all the things he had had to ‘take good care of ’ in that fateful week, and somehow the package didn’t seem too high on the list. Smirnoff did not want to share the
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details of all that he had endured, but he told the banker that the package had been lost in the sea near the plane, that he had searched the plane and the water nearby but he had not been able to locate it. ‘We were more interested in water than the package,’ he explained. Smirnoff asked the banker what was in the packet.
‘Diamonds! Thousands and thousands of top-quality
diamonds.’
Smirnoff was taken aback. He hoped the banker would
understand the circumstances in which they were lost. Somehow he thought not.
The KLM director and his wife took Margot to Sydney airport to meet Ivan. She was not able to speak; tears choked her as she collapsed into his arms. Smirnoff later chastised the director for not providing him with transport to Sydney, pointing out he had been forced to beg for passage. He demanded the rest of the survivors be flown to Sydney immediately.
Finally alone together, Margot tended her husband’s injuries, pleading with him to go to hospital, but he had had enough of hospitals and wanted to be with his wife. Months of fear, tension and anguish flooded out in waves of relief, joy and laughter, with the two lovers together again like newlyweds.
That night, the same people who had attended the two-
minute silence in Smirnoff ’s memory joined him in a celebratory dinner at the Australia Hotel. Hundreds of Dutch exiles gathered
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in the lavish ballroom to honour the man who had managed
to land an unarmed plane on the remote north coast of Australia under heavy enemy fire. But it would not turn out to be
Smirnoff ’s red-letter day.
Also waiting for Smirnoff at the hotel were a Mr Richardson from Australian Military Intelligence and Mr van Oosten of the Netherlands Exchange Institute. On his arrival, Smirnoff was whisked away for questioning in another room. The investigators grilled him for what seemed like hours, focused on the task of getting to the bottom of where the diamonds were and whether someone had taken them. Smirnoff told the two men every detail: of the man at the door of the aircraft in Java as they were ready for take-off, the Zeroes’ attack on the plane, the injuries, the dead, and the search along the shore for the valuable package.
The investigators finally allowed Smirnoff to return to the dinner, but just as he was about to eat he was called out again.
Smirnoff spoke English but was more comfortable speaking in Dutch, so van Oosten often translated Richardson’s questions and Smirnoff ’s answers.
‘You say van Romondt dropped the package in the water?’
van Oosten continued.
‘Well, I didn’t see him drop it,’ Smirnoff replied.
‘But he told you that he dropped it?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘And you believed him?’ Richardson interjected.
‘I don’t know him well, but I have no reason to doubt him.’
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‘You are certain he was not carrying the package when he
left the plane?’
‘Well, no.’ Smirnoff could see the look on Richardson’s face, as if he thought he had it all figured out. Their questions annoyed the Russian intensely.
‘Van Romondt immediately brought you your satchel, but
nothing else?’
‘Yes,’ Smirnoff replied angrily.
‘He prioritised the satchel over the valuable package?’
‘I don’t think it was a matter of priority. And if you are inferring that he handed the package over to me and that I played some part in its disappearance, then as far as I am concerned you will not get an ounce more cooperation from me!’
‘I’m suggesting nothing of the sort,’ Richardson tried to reassure him, hoping to calm Smirnoff down. It didn’t work.
Smirnoff was infuriated by the repeated inferences that he or one of the passengers had stolen the package. Over and over he recounted the terrifying events of that week, while the investigators honed in on each passenger’s actions, looking for anything that was suspicious.
‘Van Romondt—what was he wearing when he went inside
the plane?’ Richardson pressed.
‘Actually, it was really hot, but he wore a waterproof leather jacket. I thought that was a bit odd. I didn’t say it at the time.’
‘Would it be possible to conceal a package in this jacket?’
‘I suppose so.’ Now Smirnoff was beginning to have doubts about the man.
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‘What about the other men? Who else entered the plane?’
‘Leon Vanderburg went in when the plane was still burning,’
Smirnoff answered.
‘Before or after van Romondt?’
‘I don’t know. What difference does it make?’
The investigators didn’t answer. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Heinrick Gerrits grabbed a few things early on, and they both returned later looking for supplies—but then again, van Romondt, Muller and Hoffman also went through the plane
to collect pieces of equipment. I remember Vanderburg went through the dead woman’s bag,’ Smirnoff said in Dutch. Van Oosten explained the revelation to Richardson, who looked horrified.
‘No one found any trace of the packet,’ Smirnoff added.
‘And did these men take anything with them when they left the crash site?’
‘Gerrits and Vanderburg each carried a small case back to the mission.’
‘What about the rescue party? Did they go near the plane?’
‘Not that I saw,’ Smirnoff answered. ‘They were Germans,
though. Vanderburg spoke German with the brother—Richard, I think his name was. They were talking the whole way back.
The rest of us couldn’t tell what they were saying. Those brothers at Beagle Bay were interned, but they let them out.’
Van Oosten translated and Richardson shook his head. ‘The country’s under attack and they let the Germans out up north.
You’ve got to wonder, don’t you . . .’
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They didn’t want to know what it was like to listen to the screams of the injured in the plane, knowing that every life was in your hands, nor what it was like to watch a man dying a slow, agonising death on the beach, nor how frustrating it was, not to be able to use your arms to hold the child who had just lost his mother. Smirnoff loathed them for their incessant questions and for all the doubts they placed in his mind. Later that night, he found himself going over the events on the beach, questioning the actions of every man.
