I knew of Aitape, and so decided to look it up on the web, where I experienced one of those aspects of the modern world that make me feel like I’ve just spent twenty years in a coma. The satellite image, clearly showing the blue line of the sea meeting the green of the jungle, descends at the click of a button further and further until I am looking down upon the streets of a tiny little settlement scratched out of the forest. Not a dissimilar view, I reckon, to the one David must have seen many times from his Beaufort. I play with the little arrows that direct the rolling landscape right, left or up and down at my command and there, on the edge of a clearing, I can make out the remnants of the old wartime airstrip – Tadji – a slightly discoloured rectangle of green against green, jutting defiantly into the sago and the pandanus plantations.
‘Rainstorms so heavy you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face,’ David continues. ‘It was one thing living in it, but quite another trying to fly in it.’
But fly in it he and his crew did, every day having to negotiate the treacherous, cloud-concealed mountains, which rose cathedral-like around them as they set out to attack targets along the northern coast and Sepik River. These were in support of the often-controversial Aitape-Wewak operations, a campaign which has remained the subject of historical argument for over half a century.
By early 1945, the front-end of the Pacific War had long since passed on to the Philippines and the terrible ‘island-hopping’ campaigns of Okinawa and Iwo Jima way to the north. The war was really now an all-American show. But further to the south, where it had all started three years before, it was left to the Australians – who had first showed the world that the juggernaut of Imperial Japan could be defeated on land – to ‘mop up’ in a series of long and bloody campaigns against an essentially defeated and isolated enemy. But whether or not this was a wise, or even proper use of resources was not a question on which men like Robert were given the luxury to ponder. They had a job to do.
‘At the beginning of ’45 things were really hotting up there for the army,’ he says. In shocking conditions, the men on the ground dragged themselves through steaming, fetid jungles, flushing out position after desperate position in gullies and clearings or up razorbacks and mountains.
‘Sometimes we were called in several times each day to go out and help dislodge the Japanese,’ remembers David. ‘We demolished stores and strongpoints or whatever it was that the army was confronting.’
I look at his logbook. I’m getting used to reading them by now, and can glean the meaning in the different coloured inks and various abbreviations. I can see immediately that March 1945 was a very busy time for David and his crew. Running my eye down the page, I note he operated on the 20th, 22nd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 28th and 30th of that month, often carrying out several missions in a day. They were usually short durations of just over an hour, with another two or three hours added for briefing, debriefing and discussions with army liaison officers who were essentially directing the strikes.
‘We operated right on the treetops locating the commandos,’ says David. ‘They would give us a location. Lloyd and Alan would work it out between them.’ A smoke marker would be dropped. David was usually in radio communication with the soldiers on the ground.
‘They’d say for instance, “Drop them on that little knoll to the right of the marker,” and we’d have to know exactly where they meant,’ he says. ‘It was all jungle fighting and the distances between our blokes and the enemy were very small. We had to be extremely accurate.’
This was a pioneering method of warfare born out of the unconventional nature of the conflict. The army, aware of the advantage of working closely with the air force, approached No. 7 Squadron with the idea of forming a specialised low-level liaison unit for a pure army cooperation role. The CO immediately suggested Alan Tutt form and lead a Beaufort Tactical Reconnaissance Unit.
‘We even took army blokes up with us sometimes to guide us close onto a pinpoint.’ Occasionally they’d drop their bombs too close and David would receive an earful of abuse from some justifiably nervous men on the ground.
Later, they would use their skills in the amphibious attack on the Japanese strongpoint of Wewak. Alan commanded fifteen Beauforts which circled the invasion beaches, waiting for the word from the ground to strike. The target was a difficult one, a large Japanese 75-millimetre howitzer whose commander had earned the nickname ‘Dead-eye Dick’ for his previous disposal of several Beauforts and a DC-3 transport. It was difficult to locate, and even harder to hit. Lloyd was the first to spot it. ‘Down by that big tree down there!’ David remembers him saying over the intercom. Attacking an anti-aircraft gun was an inherently hazardous exercise, and Alan was urged to be careful. ‘Leave him to me,’ he said. ‘I want to dive-bomb this bastard.’
As the throttles were rammed open, David felt the Beaufort keel over. It wasn’t generally known for its dive-bombing characteristics but in the hands of a capable pilot could sometimes pass for one that was. ‘Cabin crew, equipment, rubbish and dust flew everywhere,’ says David. ‘We all blacked out from the lack of oxygen. I thought this was going to be our Valhalla.’ It would have been a sight to see, but from his position in the fuselage, David was unable to observe the destruction of the gun and its crew of eight, a prospect with which the thankful men on the ground no longer had to deal.
I have rarely met a former aircrew member who lets pass an opportunity to have a go at their other great universal adversary, the Americans, and David is no exception.
A new American squadron flying Bostons had arrived in Lae, full of bravado, and declaring to the Australians, ‘Don’t worry, mate, we’ll clear those Japs out for you,’ etc. No sooner had they been sent into action than the army began expressing grave concerns about the Americans above their heads dropping bombs at close range. ‘They couldn’t read signals and they couldn’t drop smoke markers. They asked us to come in and guide them,’ he says.
David still has a photo of the big green Bostons flying alongside the comparatively diminutive Beaufort on their way to lead an attack on the headquarters of the Japanese General Misaki. ‘Lloyd was to drop several smoke markers so the Yank “greenhorns” wouldn’t miss!’ says David.
It must have gone well because the next day, the US commander flew in to thank them personally. After the formalities, the Australians asked him to stay for lunch, and treated him to their meagre provisions of a rather tough steak and some runny ice-cream. Apologising, they explained they didn’t really have a refrigerator. At this the American perked up.
‘Don’t have a refrigerator?’ he said, appalled. ‘Don’t worry, bud, we’ll send you one. Anything else you want?’ There was a pause until someone mumbled, ‘Well, we could do with a jeep,’ and the American headed off to win the war. A little later, a DC-3 touched down at Aitape and, true to his word, disgorged a brand-new Kelvinator fridge still in its crate, and a slightly older but perfectly workable Wily’s Jeep. The local padre suggested they christen it, and ‘Kelvin’ was painted on the fender in recognition of their new beer cooler, largesse courtesy of Uncle Sam.
Occasionally, they would fly convoy escort duties. Once, they were submarine-scouting for three cargo vessels and two corvettes, one of which David knew to be the Bundaberg. He also knew that somewhere on that ship was his cousin John, the ship’s radio officer. He radioed the Bundaberg’s Officer-of-the-Watch and asked permission to call him up. So, somewhere way out in the Arafura Sea, the two cousins chatted and caught up with family news, one on a ship, the other circling overhead in a Beaufort bomber.
Then in August 1945, with the squadron actually involved in an attack on one of the last remaining entrenched positions manned by starving and fanatical Japanese defenders, an urgent signal came through from base: ‘Cancel all operations against enemy forthwith, including missions now airborne.’ Thousands of miles away, the atomic bombs had been dropped and surrender announced. The crews flew back, strangely quiet, ‘as the realisation dawned on us we could ponder a future be
yond the war’, says David.
David is rightly proud of his book, and the efforts he has made to keep alive the memory of his pilot Alan Tutt, and hundreds of others like him. Strangely enough, they lost contact after the war and only too late did David learn Alan had passed away in 1982. Perhaps the book is a way to atone for time lost.
He shows me through his wartime photo album and allows me to reproduce some of the images. As I place each one through my small scanner, I can’t help but notice that each has been, at one stage, torn quite deliberately in half, then stuck back together with tape. It’s a delicate area to pry into and I simply remark that they look like they met with an accident. ‘Yes. Yes they did,’ is all David says, and I press him no further.
Outside, the heavy, semi-tropical sky is low and it wants to rain. I walk back into the town, lugging a computer bag, as around me oversized drops begin plopping onto the footpath. I think about David’s torn and re-patched photos and a sour mood comes over me. What would I know of the demons that still haunt the memories of men like David? In an hour or so, my mind will have moved on from him and his lucky, nail-biting escape over the sea, as well as the dozens of other missions they undertook. I suspect it will not be so easy for him.
As the rain really starts, I sit down in a small cafe as tourists scuttle inside. I pull out the little blue book David handed me when we said our goodbyes, and begin to read.
HARVEY BAWDEN
Air Gunner, RAAF
As a kid up around the very flat Victorian country of Pyramid Hill, Harvey rode to school on a horse. A very short time after that – still a kid, really – he was operating the mid-upper turret of a Lancaster on bombing missions into Germany. You could probably argue that he was still a kid upon his return to Australia after the war, but a faster or more terrible growing-up is hard to imagine.
One of the best things about having written one book about the flyers of World War II is the friends I have made along the way. Dick Levy, erudite, seemingly ageless and endlessly enthusiastic, had been one of my first interviewees, sharing with me his memories of piloting B-25 Mitchells with the 2nd Tactical Air Force in late 1944–45. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said his wife Barb bustling into her living room in a tracksuit one afternoon, having just returned from her regular session at the gym. ‘He wouldn’t talk about it for years!’ But perhaps the passage of time, and a newly interested public, has released something in Dick and, perhaps, even some of the demons.
Dick told me about a recent phone call he had received from a man he did not know. ‘Are you the Dick Levy in that book?’ the man asked bluntly. A little uncertain, Dick said he was. ‘I’m making you a model,’ was the reply. A few weeks later, a beautifully put-together 1:48 scale plastic model of a B-25 – especially modified to match the mark and colour scheme of the very one flown by Dick – was dangling from the ceiling of his study. No payment of any kind was accepted.
I was not, however, sitting in Dick’s living room devouring another bowl of his excellent Italian soup to talk about him. For quite some time now, he had been on at me to meet his old friend Harvey, who lived close by and who had a story to tell.
A little while later, having followed Dick’s complicated meanderings through the back streets of a large country town, I was standing in a strange living room, shaking hands with Harvey Bawden. Dick, the wheels of introduction sufficiently oiled, headed home.
Harvey’s dad was also a World War I Light Horseman, and, like David Roberts’ dad, he didn’t much like to talk about it. Sometimes, though, a member of his old troupe would show up and stay for a while. The men would sit and tell the stories of their old campaigns – the good times and the bad – and the young Harvey listened, enthralled. ‘They’d talk for hours, mostly about their mates. They were so close. It was marvellous to hear them,’ he tells me.
Like the young Harvey, I too get to hear stories from men who have been to war. Some are told with a sense of amazement, as if read from an adventure book in which they themselves are the central subject; others are delivered wryly, peppered with humour and talking up the lighter side. Almost all of them, however, contain an element of sadness that lingers with me for hours, often days. For the men telling them, however, this sadness has endured for sixty years. Harvey Bawden’s was one of the saddest stories I had ever heard.
Unlike the homes of many former aircrew, there were few visible references to his air force days that I could see. No colourful aviation prints, no emblems or squadron badges, just a proudly arrayed set of family photos of children and grandchildren. A trio of attractive young women in mortarboards and gowns grabbed my eye. ‘My daughters!’ he beamed. By the looks of the hairstyles, the girls graduated a couple of decades ago. One of them had a familiar look about her. ‘Here she is more recently,’ he says, drawing me to another photo in which I recognise the face of a recently serving Federal Government Minister. Quite the family of high achievers.
Harvey begins his story by telling me the end of it. A few weeks after the finish of the European war in 1945, he walked out of the government-requisitioned Melford Motors building in Melbourne, having just been discharged. Pale, and terribly thin, he limped along Russell Street with the aid of a stick. A street photographer came up and snapped him. Harvey smiled weakly for the camera, but inside he felt lonely and isolated. A figure in air force drab came the other way. The two men stopped, recognising each other instantly. Two years earlier, Mack Holtern had been Harvey’s flight instructor at Somers. The air force thought him such a fine instructor that that’s what they confined him to for the entire war. He grabbed his hobbling former pupil’s hand and swung him around, noticing the row of service ribbons attached to his well-worn battle dress. ‘You lucky bastard!’ he exclaimed warmly. At that moment, though, Harvey thought himself anything but lucky.
Twice selected for his dream job as a fighter pilot, he arrived at No. 5 Service Flying Training School at Uranquinty, only to be scrubbed. ‘I was devastated,’ he says.
The Commanding Officer was sympathetic, and suggested he consider a new nav/bomber course. That, however, would require him going back to school for another seven months, and Harvey wanted to get into the war. So he made a decision. ‘I’ll be a gunner,’ he said.
Harvey completed the short gunnery course at Sale, the standard couple of weeks firing paint-dipped rounds at a drogue towed behind a dilapidated Fairey Battle. Arriving in England, he was told to forget everything he had learned and start over again. This time he honed his skills properly, defending himself in a power-operated turret from ‘attacks’ by a real live Spitfire on ‘fighter affiliation’ exercises.
At his Operational Training Unit in Lichfield, Harvey crewed up, not by the usual method of mingling in a hangar but in true Australian style, around a bar. Here, he met six men who in one way or another would stay with him for the rest of his life: a young Londoner who was pleased as punch to be part of an Australian crew and who talked of emigrating there after the war; a wireless operator from Tumut in the New South Wales alps; a part-Chinese navigator from Melbourne; a fellow gunner from Brisbane with whom Harvey tossed a coin to decide positions; a young bomb aimer from Sydney just out of school; and the pilot. ‘Fine fellows,’ he says, showing me a framed photograph.
There is a certain magic about this picture. Seven young men in flying gear lined up in front of a large aeroplane. Seven young faces – each so different, but bonded nonetheless by something quiet and unspoken.
‘And that’s our skipper, Phil Morris,’ Harvey says, pointing to the man with pilot’s wings. ‘He’d flown three types of heavy bombers but couldn’t drive a car!’ In late 1944, the two of them pitched in and bought a nice little open-top Riley 9. On their afternoons off, Harvey would give his skipper driving lessons. ‘He was shocking! He’d grind the gears and slip the clutch, but he loved it.’ He looks again at the photo.
After some toing-and-froing, Harvey and his crew began operating with No. 150 Squadron at Helmswell, a temporary RAF b
ase in the Lincolnshire Wolds. ‘It was pretty rough, but it grew on us. It was a bit more relaxed than the more established bases,’ he remembers. ‘Less red tape.’
With country gentility, Harvey asks how I’d like to proceed with the afternoon’s discussion. Actually, this for me is a tricky one, and touches on the nature of my process, or rather lack thereof. I had started it all off with a distinct formula. An aspect of the male psyche, I believe, is our ability to be soothed by facts lined up correctly and in order, such as in the steady rhythm of an unfolding timeline. Hence, I would always try to adhere the interview to a strict chronological order, requesting the men start their story at the very beginning. This way I figured – if only from a reluctance to leave something incomplete – nothing would be left out.
Terrific in theory. Old memories, however, are sometimes patchy, and my attempts to pin down a rambling narrative could, I found, become self-defeating. If I curtailed a story being told out of sequence, I would often find it did not arise again, or else not with the same spontaneity. By the time I came to interview Harvey, therefore, I had reached the decision simply to shut up, listen, and see how things unfold.
But when he said, ‘I thought we might just go through the trips in the logbook, one by one. Is that alright?’ it was music to my ears.
He had also kept a series of little diaries, around ten in all – quite contrary to wartime service regulations – filled with his small, spidery handwriting, written at the time as a sort of appendix to the cursory information in his logbook. Starting at the beginning of his operational tour of thirty trips, he reads me the name of his first target – Düsseldorf – carried out on the night of Thursday, 2 November 1944.
‘I can’t remember any great trepidation about the first trip,’ he tells me. ‘No great drama. Just a feeling of satisfaction. The system was so good, you see. We were eased up to the point where we could be thrown into the fire.’
Fly Page 20
