In the Dili area that winter, there were 300 Europeans and 5,000 native villagers working on their sweet potato, pineapple, and peanut plots or in the larger and more ordered government plantations on higher ground where crops of rice, maize, and coffee grew. Among the Europeans lived an elderly German whose papers were found with instructions to buy a plot of land on the south of the island ‘overlooking the Timor Sea’. This was required, so the instructions read, for other than commercial reasons: a submarine refuelling point, perhaps. There had been a number of Japanese businessmen in the town whose interests appear also to have been ‘other than commercial’. In this way, Axis governments anticipated a Pacific war that had been studied by only a few individuals in the Allies’ interests.
The Dutch were discussing plans to evacuate their nationals when Bernard Callinan had a dinner one night at their headquarters. In the party was the British consul: the Australian David Ross. They had gone to bed after enjoying those mountains of rice and bowls of curried concoctions, no doubt, that were a feature of expatriates’ meals in the east, when shouts and running feet stirred Bernard Callinan from his sleep. The thump of a shell hitting the far end of the barrack building brought him wide awake. It was 2310 hours on 19 February 1942. In minutes he was dressed and looking for his signallers at the Dutch HQ, for as second in command of the Company he must warn headquarters and the platoons in their hill positions above the town, as well as contacting Sparrow Force, whom he did not know were under attack the same night. Dodging the shell bursts’ debris as branches fell from the large wahrazin trees above shallow trenches by the headquarters, Bernard Callinan could not make out what craft was shelling them, but through the mist he could hear the rumble of small boats’ engines. Enemy searchlights probed in from the sea, going out before a renewed burst of shelling and heavy machine-gun fire added to civilian casualties in the town.
The Company’s precautions in placing their platoons above the town now paid off. Lieutenant Gerry Mackenzie reported by telephone—the civilian network remained open long after the Japanese invasion—that he could see lights in the estuary of the Comoro river and a patrol went out for a quick recce. They confirmed there was a landing before the platoon moved down from the hill and astride the road west of Dili, where a Bren gun team caught a marching column of Japanese. These troops, clearly oblivious to danger, were at first thought to be a Dutch contingent, and had come so close that the Bren gunner could fire only two magazines before grenades knocked out his weapon. In the next four hours Gerry Mackenzie’s men stood off Japanese attacks, sometimes using the bayonet to keep the enemy from the airfield, but the platoon had to withdraw before daylight, destroying the airstrip installations as they left.
Although wireless networks could not be linked in the mountains and that night fog obscured lamp signals, the platoons regrouped at pre-arranged rendezvous. This arrangement is typical of the forethought that would go into all the Company’s future operations, and was a major factor in their survival. They had also spent the previous six weeks familiarising themselves with the country, getting to know especially the lie of the rivers, which would become torrents after the heavy rain that fell in the afternoon and at night during many months of the year, while the same river beds higher up the hills could be dry at times.
Bernard Callinan came out of Dili with the Dutch headquarters between two files of their native troops and reached the Company positions at Three Spurs above the port. Cutting across country in the morning light he saw the Japanese transports moored peacefully in Dili harbour. Requisitioning the Portugese governor’s 1925 Chevrolet, he drove to the Company headquarters at Cailaco where it was safe from immediate attack in the event of this landing that the CO—Major A. Spence—had anticipated. Unaware of events at Koepang, the Major now decided to withdraw the Company to the south coast and maintain its role protecting Sparrow Force’s eastern flank. All the stores that could not be moved by native porters or the gallant Timor ponies were destroyed on 22 February and the Company moved south into the mountains, from where they were able to watch an area of 300 square miles (over 770km2), patrolling for negative reports as often as they made enemy sightings. By knowing where the enemy was not established, the platoons could be better deployed watching where the Japanese had bases.
An attempt to contact Sparrow Force was made by Bernard Callinan, with a Dutch native soldier, whose experience as a schoolmaster and whose knowledge of Portuguese, English and Malay were invaluable in translating the polyglot languages of the different people they met on the westward journey. After a couple of days on horseback they reached Memo on the Dutch/Portuguese border. Here rumours were rife. The Japanese were within eight miles (13km) of the border at this point on 3 March. Crossing into Dutch Timor next day, they moved over the dry coral rocks and through occasional dells of trees around clear springs before reaching a Roman Catholic mission church where the priests told them of Sparrow Force’s defeat. They also collected some weapons recovered from parishioners and—more important in this mounted guerrilla warfare—they collected several saddles.
The first Japanese pincer movement against the Company was made later that week. Captain R.R. (Bill) Baldwin’s platoon had a patrol out under Corporal Palmer when the Japanese launched their first attack and the platoons withdrew through enemy patrolled country, laying ambushes in the scrub. The first Japanese they killed was a ‘richly dressed gent on horseback’ who was followed to his Valhalla by two other officers shot by Bill Baldwin, an ex-shooter of kangaroos. The right prong of this drive was met by Captain G.G. Laidlaw’s platoon withdrawing in good order on Liquissia, but the left pincer made quicker progress towards Railaco and three of Lieutenant T.G. Nisbet’s Section were killed above Bazartete the enemy moving skilfully around ambushes. These troops of the Japanese 38 Division, being specially trained for amphibious assault, were not to waste their talents in chasing guerrilla bands, and their sudden departure surprised—not to say, relieved—the Australians, who considered these were the best troops they had fought. In time, Bernard Callinan has recorded, the Australians also ‘came to admire the soldierly qualities of other (Japanese) units’.
After the main Sparrow Force surrendered, the role of the Company was truly independent. Concentrated in the area of Hatu-Lia and Cailaco, the patrols could see from these hill positions across the wide Nanura Plains, covered in 6 feet to 8 feet (2-3m) high buffalo grass, to the Dutch border. Food was short; they had no sugar, and the large denominations of Dutch guilder coin in the Company’s cash box were too valuable to exchange for a basket of minute potatoes or two bottles of milk. Nevertheless, three meals, often consisting of scraps or little more, were served each day. The guerrillas were helped, however, by an educated native who discovered that Bernard Callinan was a Roman Catholic and was persuaded that others in the Company were of the same faith. Throughout Portuguese Timor the church was still preaching the faith, and although priests were questioned there was little brutality in the early days of this occupation. Yet guerrillas fighting in ambush one moment could within the hour be kneeling in church, and the story of these operations, as with all guerrilla campaigns evolved around the Independent Company’s relationships with the indigenous population.
During that spring and summer the Australians enjoyed a good deal of help from the locals. Each man, NCO, and officer had his personal bearer, a criado who carried his pack, blankets, and other gear except his weapons. This enabled the patrols, usually led by a corporal, to move across considerable areas. But during late March when they were hemmed in, there were many rumours unsettling the less resolute, even though their officers kept them occupied, leaving little time for worry. Maintaining an offensive spirit was a different matter, and the return of Corporal Palmer and his patrol was the boost in confidence the men needed. The Corporal had led his men westwards clear of the advancing Japanese, then south and back east from across the Dutch Timor border in a week’s march back to Cailaco; proving that the Japanese could be outwitted.
However, some natives at this time became unreliable guides and could give away a patrol’s position.
The move south was now imperative in an attempt to contact Allied ships, and platoon areas for future operations were picked by the dubious but only available criteria: those towns in bold type on Bernard Callinan’s map were chosen as platoon centres. Attempts to contact Australia 400 miles (over 640km) to the south were unsuccessful, but the 109-set picked up a Dutch broadcast which was translated for the Company by a passing Dutch Soldier: it announced the surrender of all their forces in the East Indies. The native troops were shattered by this, but many Dutchmen and some natives fought on, others joined the increasing numbers of hostile bands roaming the country. Or—like a few men of Sparrow Force whom Corporal Palmer had found near the coast living off the Company’s abandoned-in-transit Christmas parcels—they wandered aimlessly until captured, or killed by native factions. Some Portuguese gave the Company invaluable help, and Senhor de Sousa Santos, the Portuguese administrator of the southern province, would save the whole Company through his work in civil administration and respect among the local population. But early that spring, these adventures seemed unlikely if not impossible: the men had little quinine, their boots and clothes were worn thin, and when attack was unlikely they went around barefoot. Men with malaria now had to go on patrol. Yet in spite of these difficulties the Company turned down any chance of surrender ‘and would be treated as brigands’ according to the message Donald Ross brought to Hatu-Lia on 13 March—three weeks after the Japanese landed. The same week a Portuguese manager was taken into custody from a Japanese plantation where Bill Baldwin found a powerful multi-band radio receiver. The manager had been held by the Portuguese, but when Bill Baldwin took charge of him the local population, including the Chinese, knew that the Australians intended to continue the war, preferring to be the hunters rather than the hunted.
With the platoons now established inland from the coast, some way to watch Dili and possibly raid the airstrip was planned. A Section was camped in a knoll at the end of a spur near Nasuta and they built an observation point which was approached by a crawl through thickets before climbing a tree to a branch chair—the comfort of its armrests had more to do with the watcher keeping absolutely still than with his ease. This post was used for several weeks before the men were recalled, despite their plans for a raid ‘fixing charges to the noses of planes’. The Japanese almost certainly knew the Australians were in the area, for a young Chinaman had served food to officers passing through Railaco, and he was later to be ‘shot at sight’ after his Japanese contacts were discovered.
The Dili watchers came back to the Company headquarters to find 2/2 was now linked to Brigadier Veale’s 200 survivors of Sparrow Force with a base at Mape, in the hills. They had also established contact with 40 men under Major Chisholm who were organising a base for patrols from Memo, but contact had not yet been made with Australia, the powerful radio stations on the mainland’s north coast drowning out signals from Timor. However, Signalman Lovelace of Sparrow Force was to build a remarkably powerful transmitter, even though he had neither electrical testing nor other meters. This ‘Winnie the War Winner’ was made from two 109-sets, parts from the plantation manager’s receiver collected by Bill Baldwin, and bits and bobs laid out in a contraption of wires and valves around a room 10 feet square (3m2). Batteries were charged by native power turning a four-foot wooden wheel geared to a car’s generator, a minor miracle of improvisation designed by Sousa Santos. Through this contact with Australia the nature of the guerrilla operations changed to a role foreseen by Collin Gubbins and Major Holland in 1938: acting in concert with the plans for an army’s main campaign.
The 2/2 Independent Company could now fulfill this role because they had remained a cohesive force, not just as a result of their training and leadership but in no small measure because these were men used to living in dry country and capable of fending for themselves in the basic departments of survival. Most of them would go for four or five months before any change of clothing reached them, not perhaps such a hardship as, without a change of clothes, Bernard Callinan found his irritating prickly-heat rash disappeared. But more enervating diseases took their toll, and a man with the malaria shakes every afternoon is not at his best when aiming a rifle. Now, however, some relief was at hand: contact with Australia would lead to new supplies, mail from home the greatest morale booster, and air support. The RAAF using delayed action and other bombs on occasions delayed and confused Japanese column coming into the hills.
The Australian patrols laid ambushes in the way Mike Calvert had taught them: pinprick harassment frustrated the Japanese until every misfortune was blamed on the guerrillas.
Such harrassment did not always need a fighting patrol’s strength: Lieutenant J.A. Rose with three men ambushed a couple of trucks one evening, killing 12 men before melting back into the shadows of the scrub. Hit and run were the tactics, the Australians preferring to kill five or six Japanese than risk casualties to themselves by tarrying longer to kill more enemy in one skirmish.
The Japanese reaction to these ambushes often showed their high standard in the martial arts. Four Australians, for example, above a road to Three Spurs and halfway up a steep hillside, once knocked out most of the men in the first of two trucks passing below the patrol. But before the firing from the bren, the tommy-gun, and two rifles could be switched to the second troop transport, its men were in action. Without any fuss they were setting up a machine-gun while a party came straight up the hill towards the ambush positions. The Australian bren gunner might have been caught as he moved smartly back up the steep hill had not ‘two natives appeared from nowhere’ and carried his gun at a quick trot over the hill.
These actions and the cycle of patrols, with the same Sections covering many miles of territory in repeated visits, led the Japanese to believe that there were several hundred Australians in the hills immediately above the Glano valley. Yet there were never more than 23. These had to be redeployed under Japanese pressure in late April because Mape HQ set a 60-mile (95 + km) base line—from Memo, through Cailaco, Atsabe, and Maubisse to Remexio overlooking Dili—from which patrols could go forward into occupied territory. This jumping-off line gave some order to the patrolling, and behind it the many administrative essentials could be organised. Stores were distributed in pony treks that carried not only ammunition and food but also mail and the force’s own newspaper. There was a paymaster providing ready money to pay natives, and a signals officer controlling the flow of reports back to Australia and the incoming news of airdrops or bombing raids: essential organisation, for even the most independent force needed supplies, and these had to travel over hundreds of miles of mountain tracks before reaching some platoon areas.
When the Japanese base was established at Ermera during the early summer, its 20-mile supply route led through country familiar to the Australians, the road running south from Dili, and despite the Japanese posts guarding the convoys, Australian ambushes made it a hazardous supply run. As soon as a post’s routine was established it would be attacked: Sergeant James and two sappers lay for two days watching a post before deciding that breakfast-time was the right moment for such an attack. Next day a sharp breakfast-burst of fire killed 12 Japanese before the patrol dispersed in the scrub. When the Japanese counter-attacked on other occasions they made a great hullabaloo, often shouting to each other as they came forward. Although the Australians thought this was purely a morale-boosting ploy, in thick cover over difficult terrain or at night, the commandos would use a similar tactic with good reason—as no doubt the Japanese did—in distinguishing friend from foe. When they wished, the Japanese could make silent attacks.
The Independent Company’s constant patrolling—‘pigi, pigi’ as the natives called it, for whenever asked, an Australian was always going (pigi) somewhere—was extended eastward and the first contacts made with the Portuguese on the east coast during May. Not all patrols escaped the attention o
f Japanese counter-measure, however, but the Australians’ skilful use of field craft—the infantry phrase for individuals’ movement in action—saved many losses. Using the numerous hollows and small rises unnoticed to untrained soldiers on a bare hillside, Turton and his men once lay hidden in this deadground while the Japanese moving to encircle them passed by, leaving the Australian patrol to come off the hill at nightfall. On other occasions a guerrilla could snake along such cover on his stomach, his legs pressed flat, knees to the ground as he wriggled closer to enemy positions, or—like one Corporal—he squirmed away from possible capture. The corporal lay that afternoon among hot stones on an exposed and open slope, his skin scorched by the stones; nevertheless, he stayed flat to the ground and escaped being captured or shot. Despite their expertise in such field craft, though, there was a limit to the area the Australians could control, and they had to send more men south to protect their supply line from the coast.
To distract the Japanse attention from the weakening hold of the Independent Company on the western side of the island, Laidlaw’s platoon mounted a raid on Dili, reaching the hills near the town undetected. On the night of 15-16 May, the leading Section of this fighting patrol, their faces blackened from native cooking-pot soot, crept up to the wire around the port. They found no sentries before moving into the town along the storm drains, a convenient cover from rifle fire and running either side of the main road. Passing lamp-lit windows through which they could see sleeping Japanese soldiers and men talking in small groups, they had gone as far as a machine-gun post among the buildings—probably part of the anti-aircraft defences—when a Japanese soldier came up. He was within three yards of Laidlaw when the Lieutenant shot him. Pandemonium! Every Australian weapon was firing and their grenades, lobbed through open doors and windows, were bursting among the men struggling to find their weapons. Down on the beach a covering party under Lieutenant Nisbet added to the Japanese confusion, for they rushed reinforcements to the shore, no doubt expecting this raid was made from the sea. Certain they had bottled up the Australian patrol, the Japanese searched the town house by house next day, but Laidlaw and his men were long gone. A colomn of 400 Japanese followed them a few days later and reached Remexio, but there were no Australians in the town. Laidlaw’s raid, however, had other repercussions, for the Japanese built more extensive defences around Dili and manned them day and night; a use of men and resources that in eight or so weeks would be desperately needed on Guadalcanal, or later that year in defences against other Allied landings.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 11
