by Tony Hill
Wilmot: Now our artillery and machine guns have opened up and all round us we can see the flashing of guns on the horizon . . . the enemy’s mortars have opened up and they have been landing some mortars not very far away from us. I don’t know how far away – how far away would it be? Sergeant: About 300 yards.
Wilmot: . . . I won’t speak for a moment or two so that you can actually hear something of what I can hear in this forward machine-gun post . . . that was a mortar . . . that was another mortar – they seem to be landing in the wadi not terribly far from us. Just now the bursts of tracer fire as they hit a rock and started to ricochet and go along the flat . . . it suddenly seemed to sweep up in the air in a slow sweeping curve . . . that was a ricochet then, ricking from quite close to us . . . that was another mortar . . . and there’s another one coming – blew in a little bit of sand on us then but it is probably some hundred yards away.126
In his time at Tobruk, Wilmot noted that he had been granted exceptional access to official documents and to talk to officers and men. However, in October 1941, his last month in Tobruk, he wrote again to George Fenton to blow off his anger at changes to his scripts by the Tobruk command: ‘The most petty, the most petty-fogging and the most petulant use of the blue pencil that I have ever met.’127 One of his scripts took 22 days to be approved, though the average time was about two days and generally any news despatches for the BBC were passed quickly.128 Fenton proved more than just a friend to Wilmot, and Cecil was also deeply grateful for his help. In Cairo, Fenton would receive the recorded discs from Wilmot in Tobruk or Cecil in Syria and Palestine, unwrap them, listen to them for censorship, re-wrap them and despatch them to the BBC or the ABC. He also re-directed messages and mail to the dispersed members of the field unit.
Chester and Bill were preparing to cover the unveiling of the war memorial at Tobruk when MacFarlane ‘got stuck into the rum’ the night before and it took an exasperated Wilmot all day to get him sufficiently sober to record the story. Wilmot recorded in his diary that the unveiling of the war memorial was a simple and moving event after the long hard siege of Tobruk.
Around the plain concrete monument were gathered about a hundred officers and men just at dusk. Beyond them was the cemetery with its rows of white crosses; behind them was the setting sun. There was no empty rhetoric, no pompous service – just two chaplains in Khaki and a bugler.129
Around 800 Australians died at Tobruk from the force of 14,000. Throughout August, September and October, most of the Australian troops who had held the strategic coastal town were evacuated by ship. After a frantic last few days recording interviews and reports, Wilmot and MacFarlane also pulled out at the end of October.
During the time that Wilmot had been in Tobruk and through to the end of the year, Lawrence Cecil continued to record messages from the troops, and interviews with officers such as the Australian commander, General Blamey. He went to Nazareth to record a Christmas program that was broadcast by the ABC on Christmas Day. Cecil recorded his script from the highest point at Nazareth, the unfinished belfry of the Church of Jesus Adolescent, looking down upon the ancient landscape of the bible.
By this time, Cecil had already indicated to the ABC that he would like to return to Australia. He was in his fifties and by far the oldest member of the field unit, but apart from the physical and mental rigours of the Middle East he had also gone beyond the twelve months in the field that he had agreed with the ABC and that he had promised to his wife. One of the ABC Talks officers, Dudley Leggett, who was then serving with the Australian Militia in Australia and was later a war correspondent in the Pacific, was lined up to replace Cecil, if he returned.
If it had been an Inch Higher
In November 1941, British forces launched the operation to relieve the siege of Tobruk, still garrisoned by British and Polish troops. Near the end of the month, Wilmot and MacFarlane were at the frontier wire fence between Egypt and Libya with a group of others, including the photographer Damien Parer. One afternoon Wilmot and Parer almost drove straight into a German column before they were warned of their mistake by a shot from a German anti-tank gun. MacFarlane then set up the recording gear in a hollow from which Wilmot watched RAF planes strafing German positions across the wire before the start of the main attack. When the British artillery began shelling the Germans, the shells started falling close to the group of correspondents.
We decided we’d better move back out of the way. We moved back and 3 more came over about ½ a mile away – then 2 right beside us – less than 150 yards off. We decided to move again. The others had all piled into Damien’s car and I was about to get in – the door into the front was open and I was standing between the two open doors – so the next thing I remember is picking myself up off the ground out of a cloud of dust. The car leapt away, leaving me on the ground – a couple more shells came down & I up and ran to a Bren carrier nearby which was still moving.’130
Chester had been hit in the groin by a splinter of shrapnel: ‘if it had been an inch higher,’ he wrote, ‘my manhood might have suffered direly’.131 He got a field dressing from one of the Indian soldiers nearby, then went back and packed up the ABC gear that had been left behind. When he re-joined the others he found that a hole had been knocked in the door of Parer’s car, just where he’d been standing. The wound needed further treatment and Chester ended up at the convalescent houseboat on the Nile in Cairo, where he’d taken a rest several months earlier following the capture of Benghazi. Wilmot later found out that the gunners had deliberately targeted them, believing them to be Germans.
Wilmot and Cecil had been working apart for some months when there was more friction over the apparent failure of the engineer, Reg Boyle, to properly maintain the portable recording gear, which was no longer working reliably in the desert conditions. The by-now dangerous state of the utility truck also became an issue. Cecil had a new truck on order to replace it, but Wilmot had expressed concerns about the old ute even before the latest trip to the Libyan border. With Wilmot convalescing in Cairo, Bill MacFarlane was following a few days behind him on the journey back from the border when the overloaded truck broke a spring and rolled over. Wilmot wrote to Cecil:
In overturning Bill was injured, but he is now alright. Later the rear wheel stub bolts on one wheel gave way and the wheel came off, but luckily the truck did not turn over again. Imagine what would have happened to us if these breakages had occurred while we were out in the desert on the way to Sidi Rezegh.132
Miles of Nothingness
While his wound was still healing, Wilmot was moved to an Australian hospital on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem to also clear up a bad cold and cough in the cleaner air. To the west he could look over the city of Jerusalem and to the east he could see the waters of the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley, but the weather was very cold. Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor in December and, while recovering in Jerusalem, Chester’s letter to his family at Christmas reveals his sense of being far from those he loved as war drew closer to home.
I drank to you yesterday and I thought of you all during the service in the morning but the miles of nothingness between us all seemed so much greater this year than ever before, because the need to be together is more insistent . . . now that we are all in it absence becomes so much more unsettling.133
Letters from his family about the risks he had been taking in the Middle East also spurred him to set out his thoughts on why it was important for him to be reporting from the frontlines. These are edited excerpts.
1. If you are to be able to describe accurately and graphically the actions in which the troops take part you must see the ground over which they have to fight, and you must see the positions from which they are fighting and you must get some idea of the amount of fire which goes both ways. Otherwise you have no idea what really happened. You are just stringing together a lot of words. You might easily overstate or understate the case. Most often correspondents overwrite . . . and when they do the troops ridicule their
despatches. The test which I apply is this – ‘Could I face it, if I had to sit beside a man who took part in that action and listen to my broadcast?’
You can’t honestly describe air-raids, mortar, artillery or m.g. [machine gun] fire until you have experienced the feeling of facing them. Until then you don’t even know what they really sound like. In other words I believe that if you are to be a good correspondent you must know something about war – about tactics – and weapons and what it is possible for troops to do.
I believe that truth is more dramatic than fiction – especially if you get the whole truth. I don’t believe one has any right to be satisfied with less, even though security reasons may prevent you from telling the whole truth.
2. If you are to have the confidence and the respect of Officers and men, you cannot be a ‘base-line player’ . . . you have to ‘go to the net’ sometimes. If you don’t then you won’t really understand what they are talking about . . . But what is more important they won’t bother talking so much or so freely to you. I think I have built up a reputation for being prepared to go where the troops go – to take much the same risks. I take what risks I am required to take by my job . . . no more . . . I am too much of a coward at heart to take more.
3. The public have confidence in people whom they know are prepared to get their stories from the troops and with the troops. I think this unit has a good reputation in Australia because people know now – at any rate since the Tobruk recordings – that we go on to the spot to get our recordings. You will only be believed as a correspondent if you have people’s confidence. People have confidence in those whom they believe get their stories from the front.
4. I have to live in Australia after this war – if I then have any reputation as a correspondent, I want to have earnt it. I want to be able to look people in the face and know that I did this job just as any other people here did theirs and perhaps a bit better.
5. And finally – I like it this way and I wouldn’t be happy any other way.134
Coming Home
Wilmot listened to news on the radio of the war in the Pacific, as he and the other members of the field unit prepared to leave the Middle East.135 With the war now on Australia’s doorstep, the 2nd AIF was being brought home and the field unit – Cecil, Wilmot, MacFarlane and Gallwey – were coming with them. The engineer, Boyle, stayed on to look after the Gaza radio receiving station.
The field unit again sailed as part of the convoy carrying the expeditionary force. Wilmot and Lawrence Cecil shared a cabin with two RAF men and, away from the pressures of working in the field, Wilmot’s natural liking for Cecil resurfaced. ‘Lawrence and I really get on very much better these days – in fact we always have got on well socially and off the job and as we haven’t been on the job together for about six months things are pretty sweet just now and that’s a good thing on board a ship.’136 As the convoy sailed homewards, the Australian cruiser HMAS Perth, which had hosted Wilmot, Cecil and Gallwey during the fierce air raid at Alexandria, was fighting the Japanese in the Battle of the Java Sea to the north of Australia. On 1 March 1942, HMAS Perth was sunk by Japanese torpedoes near the Sunda Strait, with the loss of hundreds of lives. Only 218 of the ship’s company of 686 men survived the sinking or later incarceration as prisoners of war.137
Of the returning members of the Middle East field unit, only Wilmot and MacFarlane would go back into the field as correspondents in the Pacific war. MacFarlane spent time at home in Melbourne and operated a field unit in Australia before setting out again for the warfronts overseas.
Wilmot had crafted a type of war reporting suited to the medium of radio – an authoritative and engaging style, compelling reporting and sharp analysis and, when he returned home, the ABC designated him as their main commentator in the field for the Pacific war.
Chester then laid out his ideas for the ABC on how the field units should operate. He proposed that correspondents have greater freedom of action in the field; that they be directly responsible to whoever had responsibility for the ABC’s overall war coverage; and, unsurprisingly, that he himself should return to the field very soon.138
Chapter 4
WAR ON THE HORIZON – AUSTRALIA
News from Australia’s own region became increasingly important in the lead up to war in the Pacific. The ABC’s access to sources of overseas news independent of the newspapers remained limited. These included the BBC, the London news bureau, the British Official Wireless service, a few freelance correspondents, and information from official sources in Australia.
Throughout 1941, Chester Wilmot’s reports from North Africa, the Middle East and Greece were heard in the Talks programs that usually accompanied the news sessions, providing the ABC with its own coverage of the Australian campaigns and its own on-the-spot coverage. It was coverage reported for the Australian audience. The ABC’s federal News editor, Frank Dixon, admired the work being done by Wilmot but pointed out that if the ABC also had a newsman in the Middle East, it would ensure daily news coverage.1 The only correspondents providing news coverage for the ABC from overseas were Hugo Jackson in London and, in Australia’s own region, occasional freelance correspondents such as Carlos P Romulo in Manila and SA Wykes in Singapore. A limited cable service was being provided by a freelancer in New York.
Dixon wanted to strengthen the ABC’s own overseas news coverage, particularly in areas closer to home. He was encouraged by the success of the BBC and by the expansion in foreign coverage by networks such as the American company, NBC, which was appointing its own correspondents at strategic locations. Early in 1941 Dixon urged the ABC to grasp the opportunity ‘to take the lead in the news field in Australia’2 and he pushed the commission to send correspondents to Singapore, Tokyo and Washington. ‘I don’t think we should be content, any longer, to follow at the heels of the privately-owned newspapers.3
The ABC’s acting general manager, TW Bearup, resisted and told Dixon that, unlike the newspapers, news, was only part of the ABC’s activities.4 Dixon’s incredulity was palpable. ‘I realise that news is only part of our activities,’ he wrote to Bearup, ‘but will anyone deny that during war time at least, it is the most important part? Only someone blind to realities and lacking knowledge of what is happening in other parts of the world, would take up my challenge.’5
By the middle of 1941, the war had doubled the amount of air-time the ABC was giving to news, to almost 13 per cent of program time. Each day, the ABC was broadcasting seven of its own news bulletins and rebroadcasting six BBC news bulletins. Every week, it aired more than thirty BBC features – all associated with war coverage – and about forty national talks from within Australia.6
Shortly after 6 am on Monday 8 December, Dixon was woken by a telephone call at his home on Sydney’s upper north shore. The shortwave monitoring station at Mont Park in Melbourne had picked up a broadcast announcing that Japanese planes had attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attacks were still underway as the news came through and an ABC journalist, Ian Hamilton,7 told the prime minister’s press secretary, who woke Curtin with the news.8
Later that day the voice of Prime Minister Curtin came over the radio: ‘Men and women of Australia, we are at war with Japan.’ He called on all Australians to give their best.
My appeal to you is in the name of Australia, for Australia is the stake in this conflict. The thread of peace has snapped – only the valour of our fighting forces, backed by the very uttermost of which we are capable in factory and workshop, can knit that thread again into security. Let there be no idle hand. The road of service is ahead. Let us all tread it firmly, victoriously.9
War with Japan began a visible change in Australian cities. In defence against possible air raids, lighting restrictions brought ‘brownouts’ to populated areas on the east coast and some buildings were sandbagged against bomb damage. ‘In dim city streets, car headlights were masked. Barbed wire appeared on the beaches; closed areas were declared; guards were posted.’10
In this atmosphere of great uncertainty before the turn of the year, Dixon sent a memo to his news staff: ‘May you all enjoy the health and strength to do another good job during 1942. The Sun will shine again – it always does.’13
With the battlefields now on Australia’s doorstep the ABC enlarged its plans for covering the war. Within the next few months it would expand its team of war correspondents to include correspondents reporting daily news from the frontlines and at General Headquarters (GHQ), as well as observers with the field units.
Chapter 5
MALAYA AND THE FALL OF SINGAPORE
It was a bleak outlook for Australia at the end of 1941 as Japan made successive gains to the north, capturing Borneo and posing a looming threat to Rabaul, Java and the supposed last major line of defence for Australia, the large British base at Singapore.
Thousands of Australian troops of the 8th Australian Division under Major General Gordon Bennett were protecting the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula and the entry to Singapore. The ABC had established relations with the British-run Malayan Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) in Singapore many months earlier and, for a while, some ABC programs had been rebroadcast for the Australian forces in Malaya.
