The Australians by now renamed Lancer Force, had a hospital and training base at Ainaro in addition to the HQ at Mape. Through this facility, since ‘base’ might suggest the steady jobs associated with most camps behind a front line, men of 19 units were given some training in Independent Company’s skills. Postal clerks and refrigeration engineers became passable guerrillas, giving them the added confidence they needed when men from this camp faced Japanese attack. Others joined the constant patrolling, giving rise through deliberate and other rumours to the Japanese belief in a steady flow of reinforcements from overseas. The successful training of these men suggests that no extraordinary qualities were needed for commando work in the field, only the right spirit and sound training. On Timor by late May, however, there was the comforting knowledge that the most seriously wounded could be evacuated by sea-plane through Suai and that others could be cared for in the Ainaro hospital—a different picture from the days of doubt and dismay some eight weeks earlier. Brigadier Veale was flown out on 23 May and Major A. Spence took command of Lancer Force, Bernard Callinan being promoted major in command of 2/2. With the 23 May air-flight went muster rolls giving relatives at home their first news of survivors in the Force.
Operations continued, with the many paradoxes of guerrilla warfare: both sides used the civilian telephone network; several Australians attended Sousa Santos’s wedding anniversary celebrations. On the telephone, they used rhyming slang in case they were overheard; at the celebrations, the fine crystal glass and good company belied the hazards of patrolling a few dozen miles away. Going around the Sections posts could take a fortnight, for many of them were beyond the ‘60-mile line’. By June, new wireless sets had arrived, although the first consignment in one of the few supply errors, had no acid for their heavy ‘wet’ (distilled water) batteries. These radios and other stores were brought in by the small steamer Kuru, which was fitted with a device in her stack to prevent the tell-tale streamer of fumes; these she released in occasional puffs. She anchored off the south coast beach at Beco for a couple of hours while the stores—quinine, mepacrine (atabrin), boots, ammunition, and rations, were rafted ashore. But what the Allies could do, the Japanese could also achieve at that time; only in later months would American sea and airpower prevent the Japanese reinforcing their island garrisons. They had already sent in a force of specially trained jungle fighters to hunt the guerrillas. A hundred of these were ambushed by Corporal Aitken, unfortunately ahead of the platoon or his bag might have been greater. Nevertheless he shot the ‘Singapore Tiger’, an arrogant character who had been seen several times before and was strutting ahead of his large patrol when the Corporal’s bullet killed him. By now, though, the Japanese were getting wary of ambush, and following their usual high standard of training they had sentries hidden in the bushes rather than marching to and fro as ready bait for a commando knife.
Timor actions of 2/2 Australian Independent Company 1942.
In the middle of the summer the Japanese had plans to develop the island with aircraft bases after the American counter-stroke of 7 August landed on Guadalcanal, more than 2,000 miles (3,000 + km) to the east of Timor. There is reason to think they were also feeling the loss of their carriers that June at the battle of Midway, and were looking for more land bases for aircraft. But in Timor, much depended on the containment, if not defeat, of the guerrillas.
On 10 August the Japanese bombed most Portuguese towns on the island to discourage support for the Australians. The HQ at Mape was bombed, although this did not seriously disrupt the defence plan as four columns of Japanese, some 2,500 troops in all, drove inland. The two columns from Dili, with 600 to 700 in each, would be met by Laidlaw and Bill Baldwin’s platoon. At Ainaro, as many men as could be collected were put under Gerry Mackenzie’s command—there was nothing ‘base’ about these wallahs. Their task was to watch and delay any drive from the south, where the Japanese had landed at Beco, the ‘port’ of entry in previous weeks for Australian supplies. Away to the west towards Memo Lieutenant D. St. A. Dexter, supported by Turton, blocked the enemy’s eastward push that had overrun Dutch positions, but with the difficult hill country between them and Mape, they were unlikely to link up with the other columns. In this fighting, the Australian plan was to be bold while steadily withdrawing eastward, even though once boxed into a small corner of the island they would lose their precious mobility. The tactics for keeping off the ropes, so to speak, had been explained to every platoon commander the previous June, and they knew ‘every mile towards the east was a serious loss’. The most serious setback in their fortunes, however, was a marked change in the attitude of the natives, who rose against the Australians in two widely separated areas. Natives also stalked Australian patrols and then stood up, giving the Japanese mortars the range and location of ambushes.
While the Australians had been winning their mini-battles, including the fight above the Glano valley, the natives considered them supermen. But with the tide of war now running against the Allies, many of the natives decided to join the winning side, just as they had in Dutch Timor the previous winter. In a land where survival was so nakedly a prime instinct, food supplies were the key that opened local hearts if not minds. The Japanese, holding the Glano valley, had this authority, for most of the hill tribes’ food was normally traded from its fertile plots. It was a handicap becoming increasingly clear to the Australians, and Bernard Callinan was later to put a surplus of food as the prerequisite for guerrillas’ friendly relations with a local population. (Without it or without secure supply lines, guerrillas might last a fortnight or so before their own food resources ran out, for there are strict limits to the weight of rations they can expect to carry with them.)
Retreating over the Ramelau Range, the Australians were attacked on 14 August by natives. High on this ridge top, only 10 to 15 feet (2-3m) wide, the weary soldiers felt an earth tremor as the mountain shook. They drove off the hostile bands and shortened their lines of communication, now running back to Ainaro, to where the headquarters had moved. Five days later the platoons were preparing to strike at the nearest Japanese column when this swung clear of the counter-punch. The enemy’s withdrawal was probably due to lack of supplies, for they also had to bring food into the mountains.
The Australians were recovering again from the brink of disaster, although a ruthless reprisal raid by Portuguese against the natives who had helped the Japanese was storing up trouble for the future. Reinforcements for the Australians arrived when 2/4 Independent Company landed, but their destroyer transport—HMAS Voyager—ran irretrievably aground and was strafed by Japanese planes, although without injury to the Australians. The stores brought ashore were then loaded on pack teams of 30 to 40 horses with native handlers and a couple of Australians as guards. Moving across country, they were attacked by Japanese planes and sometimes by infantry patrols, but although several horses and their loads were lost in these skirmishes, the native grooms and their Australian escorts usually escaped into the scrub.
Communication is a two-edged weapon, however, and Lancer Force began to receive some ill-conceived directions for section attacks and platoon operations that were dreamt up by mainland staff with no comprehension that a force without artillery, and facing an enemy superiority of ten-to-one, is likely to be obliterated in conventional infantry attacks. Realising that the Australians were not so foolish as to engage in pitched battles, whatever their masters decreed, the Japanese sent a picked force of guerrilla fighters to take up the chase where the major columns left off. One of their companies reached Ainaro, questioned the local priests and some natives, but did them no harm. This unit had been caught in several skirmishes, losing their CO and second-in-command along with a third of their strength, yet they were seen doing physical training after a short rest in the town a measure of their quality. A major force of 5,000 Japanese were moved into Aileu and a second visit to Ainaro by men of another Japanese unit (which, is not clear) was full of brutality: the priests were killed; some
houses were burnt down. Although the officers of these contrasting units might be held responsible for both the good and the bad behaviour, there is a touch of the ‘kind’ and the ‘nasty’ treatment often meted out to prisoners in the hope of gaining information. On the second visit, a few days after the first, the Japanese used natives in their ravages of the town, much to the disgust of local tribes. On 1 October there were further signs of Japanese influence over native affairs when eight Portuguese men and women were killed by tribesmen in Aileu. From there, the enemy could patrol against the Australians while developments took place along the east coast with an airstrip at Fuiloro, where in 1934 (!) some so-called agricultural specialists had taken soil samples for a Japanese company.
The guerrilla role changed once again, for there was little they could do against well-defended airstrips when the natives gave away patrols before they were within striking distance of Japanese posts. Moreover, the Japanese themselves were more wary, allowing no one—native, Portuguese, or disguised guerrilla—to approach their positions. The Independent Companies were therefore forced into a more passive role which nevertheless made a contribution to the main forces’ campaigns. Information not seen in aerial photographs of jungle fringes was fed back to Australia and enabled the United States and RAAF planes from the Northern Territory of Australia to bomb with a greater chance of finding targets. And knowledge of the naval routines of Japanese occupied ports enabled US submarines from Fremantle to attack shipping again with greater chance of success.
In watching the Japanese build-up, a typical platoon deployment was made by a platoon of 2/4, with their forward posts having a wide view of Lete-Foho. The platoon headquarters were in a deserted village surrounded by a native rock and rubble wall 8 to 10 feet (3m) high with only two narrow entrances that led into the village with its three large circular huts, each 30 feet (10m) in diameter with conical roofs about 20 feet (7m) high. Between the huts were stone platforms holding Lulic poles carrying sacrificial buffaloes’ horns. A native singing ceremony had been performed to clear bad spirits away before the Australians took up the positions. As this village was inaccessible, the enemy patrols were unlikely to reach it undetected, but if they did the platoon headquarters was sufficiently mobile for the captain, sergeant, and their two runners/signalmen to withdraw quickly over the hill, taking their radio with them—a different proposition to moving a 109-set, for now the guerrillas had dry battery radios (see Appendix No. 5) designed by Lieutenant Barcham, a New Zealander, for use by the Independent Companies. However, the platoon cook no doubt would have left his clobber behind, while the batman who acted as bodyguard (striker) and the two snipers would have protected the withdrawal of the vital radio.
The three 16-man Sections (see Appendix 2) were deployed further down the hill each sending out patrols of four or so men to scout the surrounding countryside. Information they gathered was sent back to platoon headquarters by runner and radioed from the village to Company headquarters. Not all positions were as healthy as others, for 4,700 feet (1,400m) up Tata-Mailau mountain a Section post was established that needed a fresh 16 men every week, the cold—Tata-Mailau is 9,000 feet (nearly 3,000 metres) high—bringing on the malaria latent in almost every man of the Companies. At most observation posts, though, the Sections could work for several weeks without relief.
The platoons were losing much of their mobility in these static patrols, and the Japanese developments along the eastern seaboard reduced the opportunities to bring in supplies. Although the old post above Dili was still used from time to time, this port was no longer important as transports off-loaded Japanese air force and other supplies at Bancau stretching the areas to be watched by several hundred square miles. Supply lines were therefore extended across the hills and imperilled at sea, despite the Independent Companies’ landward reconnaissance of likely landing points for the RAN supply ships. Some vital supplies were lost when natives attacked pack-horse trains. They were helped by one-time Allies of the Australians: long-term Portuguese prisoners who had escaped from custody during the summer and now wandered the island in groups of six or more. Such disruption led, by December, to the men of the Independent Companies spending as much if not more time securing their lines of supply, administering the areas of their platoon bases, and fighting hostile natives than were spent watching the Japanese. Some six men were, however, employed in training loyal natives whose chiefs wanted fighting men who could fire rifles, but these forces were of doubtful value. There was no doubt that maintaining several hundred Australians on Timor was now counter-productive; and in December the 2/2 Independent Company were taken off the island, after nearly 11 months of constant movement, if not always in action. The Company made a 60-mile withdrawal to the beach at Betano and were picked up with Portuguese and Dutch civilians evacuated at the same time, the relief ships being bombed during their approach for this night landing.
Although 2/4 remained on the island for several more weeks, they were constantly embroiled in unsatisfactory skirmishes with natives supported by Japanese machine-gun teams. Food was short, and resupplying the Company put the ships at even greater risk than in the previous month: as a result the platoons were taken out on 9-10 January 1943, leaving only a small party under Lieutenant Henry Flood to gather information. This ‘S’ Party was scattered by a Japanese attack but regrouped before February, when they were taken off by an American submarine. There remained only ‘Z’ Special Force, an undercover operation on the island run by Captains Broadhurst and Wylie, former members of the Malay police force, who organised native lookouts and a radio reporting system which at one time had 25 radio stations on the island, demonstrating how a few guerrillas may succeed in adverse local conditions where a larger force cannot survive.
The Independent Companies had never taken a prisoner, although this was not from want of trying. They did kill an estimated 1,500 Japanese, for the loss of only 40 of their own men; a sharp contrast to the 166,500 Allied losses (mostly prisoners) in Malaya, Hong Kong, and in the Dutch East Indies, where the Japanese lost only 15,000 men in the campaigns of the 1940-41 winter. The few hundred Australians on Timor had also contributed to the Japanese conviction that the island was to be re-occupied by the Allies, and the enemy reinforced his garrison with men of the 48 Division in the autumn of 1942 when these forces might have been employed to better effect against the Allies on New Guinea and elsewhere, Few commando guerrillas, therefore, can claim to have had as great an influence over their main forces’ campaign as these Independent Companies, for in the Allied advances of 1943 many garrisons could be by-passed and the Japanese on Timor did not quit the island until a month after the armistice in 1945. The success of these Australian guerrilla companies, with their high standard of individual field craft, their sound leadership deploying platoons with forethought for their mobility, and above all the men’s ability to live off the country while fighting a war of high mobility, had made their campaign in Timor one of the most important of small force operations in World War II.
DIEPPE, AUGUST 1942
Dieppe, with its narrow streets and harbour set between chalk cliffs, 150 feet (50m) high, was the intended target of a commando and RM Division raid, as soon as sufficient craft were available for the simultaneous landing of a division. This raid in force against a defended port was essential to test the Allies’ amphibious techniques. COHQ’s plan avoiding a frontal assault was changed when direction of the raid passed to the Army’s UK Home Forces Command, after a political decision was made to replace the marines with Canadian forces. Later the planned intensive bombardment was foregone—against the advice of Lord Mountbatten and others. Bad weather led to the cancellation of the raid planned for 7 July. Despite security risks—even though no written minutes were kept—the raid was remounted in August, with commandos replacing paras for the flank forces when two LSIs became available and as weather conditions for air-drops differ from these seaborne landings.
The experience at Dieppe, in the words of
their official history, ‘undoubtedly led Canadian soldiers to view the question of their employment more soberly’. Others, who unlike the Combined Operations staff, had expected a second front in Europe that summer, saw what forces would be needed to invade Europe. Many major lessons were learnt and Lord Mountbatten has written ‘the successful landing in Normandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe’.
Dieppe raid—action by 4 Commando, 19 August 1942.
CHAPTER 5
A Perfect Flank
Guard
In sabotage, beach reconnaissance, and guerrilla operations, the commandos showed their abilities in exploiting unconventional military tactics, but they were also fine exponents of such conventional military manoeuvres as fire-and-movement. This simple tactic engages the enemy with rapid fire from one unit while other attackers move closer to enemy positions: as the enemy’s heads are kept down they can neither see nor fire on the assault group positioning themselves for a short charge the moment the covering fire lifts. The principle is easy, but its execution requires exact timing and the assault troops’ complete confidence in the accuracy and sustained fire of those covering the movement forward—a matter of sound training as much as of resolute leadership. At Varengeville-sur-Mer, three and a half miles (5.6km) west of Dieppe, four Troops of 4 Commando in August 1942 carried out a perfect assault on enemy batteries by using fire-and-movement tactics.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 12
