Scorched Earth

by Rosen, Sue;

  This is to completely supersede the supply from the catchment area, and using fairly comfortable figure of consumption, which under the siege conditions might be very considerably reduced.

  I am living at Pennant Hills - an unsewered suburb, and our family of six adults is managing to use on the average 31.2 gals. of water per day per the whole family, and managing to be more than reasonably clean. Thus about 5 gallons per day per head is reasonable siege average, and even 15 wells sunk in Botany would be ample to provide the civilian population with minimum water requirements.

  This number of wells could be sunk quickly and equipped before the expected siege begins. Connection to city mains should be made, and in this case water shortage would not be responsible for surrender.

  There are scores of private wells drawing water from Botany sands, and as soon as large scale offer is made to use the underground supply of Botany for public needs, the howl starts that only 8,000,000 gals. a day are available, and further draft will destroy the existing private wells. This is not so. The private owners will have to overhaul their pumping plants, and lower their pump intakes with the fall of pumping level.

  The data on these private wells are very contradictory and scarce. The above figure of 8,000,000 gals. was given in the press, but I doubt its infallibility. All these private wells should be investigated and entered on the map. The hourly capacity of each well should be determined, as well as the time it is operating daily. The static level of water, and its drop under continuous pumping should be indicated, as well as total depth of the well, and the reduced level of its bottom referred to the sea level.

  The chemical and bacteriological tests of these wells should be made, and if water is reasonably clean and safe (very strict standards of the Water Board will have to be probably reconsidered) - connection with the public mains should be made.

  The possible objection that the wells are private, on private property - would not stand criticism: first of all they are drawing God-sent water, and secondly under the N.E.S. Regulations private property might, and should be, commandeered for the common good.

  SUBURBS OTHER THAN BOTANY:

  All restrictions on the provision of private water supplies (which are illegal under the Act which established the Water Board) should be lifted immediately, and a propaganda campaign should be launched in the press and over the wireless recommending people to dig little conservation dams, excavate shallow wells, or sink bores of about 6" or less, and equip them with hand operated pumps. This activity will indicate the state of possible underground supplies and might lead to bigger schemes. On a neighbouring property to ours at Pennant Hills a water hole dug 10 ft. below the ground level is yielding easily 50 gallons of water per day.

  After being settled (and boiled for drinking) this water will satisfy all domestic demands.

  REGISTRATION OF WELL-SINKERS & EQUIPMENT:

  All people with experience in well sinking as foremen and engineers, as well as all available private and public plant for the well sinking should be registered now and might be mobilised if not otherwise made available.

  STOP INCREASES IN SEWERED AREAS:

  For the duration of the war stop all increases in the sewered areas. Sewered suburbs are using from 5-6 times more water than unsewered ones. Some of the sewered suburbs might even be thrown back to old-fashioned sanitary services to save water used for flushing.

  In wealthier homes something between 10-15 gallons per day per head is being wasted by flushing sanitary fixtures unnecessarily, as a matter of habit.

  WATER METERS:

  As far as the circumstances permit, attention should be paid to the installation of water meters for each individual consumer. Water rates should be substituted by charges for water, and sliding scale of these charges might regulate the consumption during drought or emergency better than any appeals to commonsense or patriotism of the general public.

  _______________

  In bringing the above to the notice of the military command and civil Government, I hope that the ideas exposed will be found useful, and if any further considerations of such nature are required, I should be only too glad to do all I can in the result of about 40 years of experience in water supply in Russia and China.

  Yours faithfully,

  (sgd.) J.A. YOUHOTSKY.11

  INVASION - EVACUATION - SCORCHED EARTH?

  One idea - defensive at that - cemented into millions of tons of concrete, into millions of minds of men, delivered France to complete defeat!

  The disaster at Pearl Harbor derived from “Maginot-mindedness”!

  A mental attitude to attack from the sea tucked an £135,000,000 naval base safely away in the narrow strait of Johore - for the Japanese to pluck by land!

  The development of one defensive concept is sufficient to preoccupy the imagination, the labors, and the finances, of a generation: to tie armies and populations to its chariot wheels.

  Yet prove worthless!

  The Axis powers have conceived colossally over years, a Battle for Earth, using a Martian armoury, and a Brobdingnagian movement “to envelop-divide-destroy”.

  What we have treated as fiction, we have now too suddenly to confront - as fact!

  We cannot meet it successfully by sending 20,000 fighting Australians to defend anachronistic fixations in Malaya.

  Nor can we afford to indulge ourselves with any fixations in Australia.

  There is breath-taking challenge today to previous standards.

  x x x x

  The fact that we have radio-announced to Japan the intention to make Australia the allied base of a Pacific counter-offensive, constructed to deny to Nippon what it has so far conquered at cost, must quicken Japanese plans to clinch their Pacific victories by final conquest of the possibly final allied base.

  If Nippon does attempt any invasion of Australia at all, the attempt cannot be on less than a scale computed to break through the Anzac Fleet, and to succeed - as in Malaya, as in the Philippines, as in -

  And we can expect only the unexpected!

  As at Pearl Harbor! As at Penang! As at Singapore! As in Libya! As in the Straits of Dover!

  But we do know by now the type and magnitude of Axis war concepts: and we can imagine for ourselves an Australian application.

  Though it seek to envelop-divide-destroy, as in Russia and in China, our Australian coast-wise concentration and interior Egypt will give it a geographical version kindred to Libya, edged with Malaya!

  The conquest of the territory from Maryborough, Queensland, to Portland, Victoria, would be the conquest of Australia.

  The rest of Australia would count for little. (Darwin belongs to the Java zone.)

  Whilst we may mostly picture the Japanese in the role of pearl fisher in northern Australian waters, we must not forget that he was a woolbuyer of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, a diplomat of Canberra - and an Antarctic whaler of consequence!

  And that whaling launches, slid through the hinged sides of whalers, make natural assault boats.

  Among the Nipponese plans for the invasion of the final allied base in the Pacific, there is no doubt one resembling the following:

  1. Three to four Macassar-sized convoys12 - with balloon barrages, naval escort, and airplane “umbrellas”. (The Pacific Ocean is wider than the Macassar Strait.)

  2. Simultaneous major landings:

  (i) South of Forster, N.S.W., outflanking the Port Stephens defences - with succeeding mechanised landings at the latter port.

  (ii) Maryborough, Queensland.

  (iii) Portland, Victoria.

  3. Mechanised enveloping movements:

  (i) Port Stephens north via Muswellbrook, the New England Highway and/or Inverell-Toowoomba to meet the Maryborough, Queensland, invading forces proceeding southerly through Kingaroy, Cooyar.

  (ii) Muswellbrook west to Dubbo and southwards through Forbes to meet the northern advance of mechanised forces from Portland, Victoria, through Deniliquin-Narrandera (and the rice fields!)


  4. Pincer movements on Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane - from the rear: supported by a secondary entry via Twofold Bay upon Canberra. Destruction of water supplies - e.g. Burrinjuck, Sydney &c.

  5. Dividing movements - or retreats if necessary - from the Dividing Range down the west-east mountain roads to the coastal ports.

  6. Naval and aerial actions along the coast in support.

  7. Coastal infiltrations using coastal boats requisitioned from us.

  8. Aerodrome captures.

  This plan would call for 6,000,000 tons of Japanese shipping - and a considerable part of the Japanese navy. It is not likely to happen if Java stands. If Java does not stand it could happen here!

  x x x x

  Driven before the Japanese invaders, the Chinese students of the Universities of Tientsin and Pekin took their books and appliances, the factory workers their tools and machinery, the merchants their ledgers and abaci, the peasants their household goods - and these, in their millions and mostly afoot, jog trotted over three thousand miles of dirt tracks to a New China of which Chungking became the capital, and the Burma Road its only lane of warlike supply.

  At Russian injunction, the evacuating Chinese left behind them their good earth scorched to desert - as a barrier to Nippon.

  In vast Russia, Stalin’s men lured Hitler’s hosts into the winter snows that had beaten Napoleon, and smashed their own industrial gods to interpose between themselves and the Germans a no-man’s land of scorched earth and guerilla “islands”: to cheat the invader of wanted resources, to compel him to painfully transport from his own reserves, his own means of supply, to harry his communications, to leave “pools” of guerillas to join with the readvancing “floods” of armies when the Russians marched again.

  In Malaya, the Japanese lived on the country; and requisitioning parties followed closely the infiltrating parties. Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies contain 80% of the world’s rubber, 70% of the tin, much of the petroleum. After Penang, we realised that what had to be abandoned of these war-stores must be first destroyed so that the enemy might not gain to his use what the democracies had lost to theirs.

  In Australia, we must not let ourselves become either Maginot-minded - or Penang-minded!

  But we cannot retreat from our zones of dense population to found a new Australia and find a new Sydney-Brisbane-Melbourne-Canberra at Alice Springs. Nor can we transfer our people beyond Urals we do not possess. Nor have we rubber, or petroleum, of which we must deprive the enemy at all costs.

  There is danger in emulation: if our case be different!

  Because other countries have found reason for a policy of scorched earth is not necessarily in itself reason for its adoption for Australia.

  If our strategy does not propose evacuation, it has no “scorched earth” policy to implement! “Scorched earth” is corollary to the military evacuation of a countryside under irresistible military pressure, directly or indirectly applied. Unless such an evacuation includes the producing forces and their domestic auxiliary, “scorched earth” in the Chinese-Russian sense, does not make sense here.

  If we determine to stand and fight to the last man, to fortify our cities and industries, to fight house by house and street by street, our evacuation-plus-scorched earth tactic will be a limited salvage-plus-demolition process.

  If we are involved in a Japanese invasion plan such as that hypothecated for the purpose of this mental exercise, our evacuation-plus-scorched earth tactic will also be a limited salvage-plus-demolition process because we shall retire to defensible refuges in the ranges, the Russian “island” defence tactic, whence we can harry enemy communications, and re-integrate in a new advance.

  If we must act upon the defensive, the initiative will be the enemy’s. He will determine our evacuations, if any, and their accompanying “scorched earth” operations.

  Of his strategy we shall not be told until the unexpected happens. We must, therefore, so organise that at any place at any time we must have a plan of retirement in any direction, and a plan of instant salvage and demolition which will retain for us, in withdrawal, all possible essential stores, leaving nothing for the use of enemy occupying forces.

  And certainly no fishing boats or coastal shipping for his use in coastal infiltrations.

  And as certainly no motor vehicles and no petrol.

  And as little water and food as possible.

  We should not hesitate to sacrifice our Dnieperpetrovsk dams if it pays militarily so to do - but the military profit and loss of civil destructions must be coldly calculated before the military button is finally pressed.

  And since the fighting forces will be busy fighting for us - and dying for us - Civil Collaboration must be organised everywhere to instant-automatic “scorched earth” evacuations to plan when that button is pressed - leaving only to the hard-pressed fighting forces the final military demolitions of retreat.

  There is plenty of Australia from which we could evacuate without danger of defeat - but these places will not interest the enemy.

  There are places in Australia from which we must not retreat. These are Sydney and Newcastle, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra.

  And these places will interest the enemy.

  They must be fortified: the sandbagged buildings must be used not only as air-raid shelters!

  They are our Leningrads and Moscows.

  Four hundred thousand Japanese soldiers must not be allowed to conquer seven million Australian men, women, and children.

  Nor can they - if we organise Civil Collaboration: as in Russia! As in China!

  If we incorporate Civil Collaboration as a military measure of modern warfare, not only are our defensive operations consolidated at their weakest point, but some part of our defending forces could be released to take the offensive towards Java.

  If not, we remain upon the defensive awaiting our turn for invasion.

  The defensive does not pay in the long run. It must evolve to the offensive which provides the initiative to victory.

  Let us have Total Organisation!

  TOTAL ORGANISATION -

  National war-time policies, through -

  (i) Limitation of civil supply - by import cessation, reduction of “non-essential” industry, rationing, rationalisation, and economic concentration.

  (ii) National Service operations - by conscriptive diversion of human-power to war -

  are processing to reduce the citizen structure to -

  (i) The Fighting Arm.

  (ii) The Production Arm.

  (iii) The Cadet Arm.

  (iv) The Domestic Arm.

  The Cadet Arm will consist of boys and girls between 13-18. It represents future reinforcements-in-training for the Fighting and Production Arms.

  The Domestic Arm excludes all persons in the home engaged in the first three Arms. It has two sections:

  (i) Auxiliary to the Production Arm - the homes and domestic associates of the essential worker.

  (ii) Unattached - (a) the non-working wives and children of soldiers and sailors.

  (b) the non-working aged unfit, widows, children.

  The unattached section of the Domestic Arm can be:

  (a) Transferred to relieve congestion in danger areas; and/or

  (b) Organised to voluntary aid, camouflage netting, care of unfit, aged and young &c.

  The Auxiliary section of the Domestic Arm (auxiliary to the Production Arm) should ordinarily stay at its post - but may be permitted voluntary transfer from danger areas where the safety of children (under 13-14) is involved.

  The Cadet Arm should be mobilised at base camps in “safe” areas for combined vocational and military training (including parachute tower exercises). The Armidale University College could be used as a base for the technical-professional group.

  Note: The word “evacuation” should not be used in these connections: it is a military term meaning “to withdraw from a city or fortress” implying total abandonment: it con
veys a sense of flight, and produces a psychological unease and a mental and emotional confusion which may become a defeatist morale - a sauve qui peut complex.

  There can be no evacuation except by force of the enemy - but there can be a war-time redistribution of population and industry, a civil mobilisation, a marshalling of the total community to total battle.

  If we implement the above war logic, we have left in the battle zones:

  (i) The Fighting Arm.

  (ii) The Production Arm - with its auxiliary Domestic Arm.

  The Production Arm (and its auxiliary domestic) should become corporate with the Fighting Arm before battle (since battle will compel its involuntary and unorganised incorporation anyhow - vide Singapore).

  The war functions of the Production Arm (with its Auxiliary Domestic) must be:

  (i) Essential administration, service and industry - up to front line.

  (ii) Self-defence against air attack and incendiarism (A.R.P.-N.E.S.).

  (iii) Self-salvage and self-demolition in military emergency.

  (iv) Self-transport and self-retreat in emergency.

  (v) Self-defence and self-fortification against enemy infiltration, parachute troops, street fighting, (V.D.C.).

  (vi) Self first-aid.

  (vii) Self-planning to guiding principles militarily enunciated in the Master Plan for Citizen Collaboration.

  Note: The civil structure is too complex, subdivided and immobile for direct military incorporation. Nor can it be directly commanded. Incorporation and command, therefore, will have to be indirect - viz. via a Master Plan enlisting each unit organisation to a general scheme of civil collaboration on lines (i) to (vii). Military direction will be given by military revision of the Plan, and by delegating to the State War Effort Co-Ordination Committees the responsibility of implementing the militarily approved Plan.

  Each staff of each essential administration service and industry, therefore, should be enrolled as -