Weller's War

by George Weller

  “A few minutes before the attack,” said the oilman, “a blonde Danish engineer—a youthful, cheery fellow—had borrowed my stock of American magazines. Then a Chinese scholar, a graduate of Cambridge University, offered to change my submarine watch from eleven o'clock onward for his later trick on deck.

  “I surrendered the magazines but kept my own watch. The next thing I was doing was cutting the shoes off the feet of the engineer and leading the young Chinese scholar, critically wounded, to a lifeboat.

  “The Chinaman kept crying in his Cambridge English: ‘I cannot see. I cannot see.’ Finally he crossed his arms before his face. The flesh had left his finger bones. The blast had blackened as well as blinded him.

  “God knows how the big Dane was able to walk from the engine room after the bomb hit. He was bleeding all over his body. I didn't know what to say. I said: ‘Want a drink, Peterson?’

  “He just shook his head. His yellow hair and fresh-looking face were burned black. After the fire was extinguished and he had been carried to the lifeboat, he tried once to use his lips. I couldn't make out at first what he was saying but I finally understood. It was: ‘Where have the women been put?’

  “He died in a warship's hospital. Eleven died altogether. Some weren't hurt badly but cried for help. Some didn't cry out at all. Two little apprentice seamen never opened their mouths. One was ten years old, the other fourteen. They were, in the Chinese phrase, ‘little learner pigeons.’

  “The skins of some Chinese were peeled by flame from yellow to ghastly white. But these kids were blackened. One little apprentice died quickly but the other tried to crawl upon his charred knees to the edge of the lifeboat. There he tried to pull himself over the gunwale into the water—the only cool thing he could see. Yes, we used picric acid. But both boys died.

  “How many wounded I put into the lifeboats, I don't know. I remember there were four lifeboats full of bodies, spread lengthwise under the thwarts. We had lowered the lifeboats to the water's edge when a squadron of our warships was sighted over the horizon.”

  FAREWELL IN JAVA

  A Short Story

  At twilight the correspondent stood on the hill above the pier at Banjoewangi, the easternmost tip of Java, and looked across the strait to the green, smoking volcano of Bali. To the Dutch commandant of the last two unsunk PT boats he said, “I'd like to put foot once on Bali before we lose it entirely. The Japs have the air field at Den Pasar, but you'll still be evacuating native troops tonight from the northern coast. Take me over with you tonight, will you?”

  The green-clad commandant conferred with three other officers. They shook their heads. Nothing doing. So the war correspondent saluted them and turned and walked bitterly back toward town. Bali: another good story that would never be told.

  In Banjoewangi every house was dark and still. Many had fled after a Zero machine-gunned a schoolhouse. The American went to the little hotel. In the bar the talk was of the battle of Straat Bali. Two sailors from the Piet Hein—the Dutch destroyer sunk when the mixed force of American and Dutch warships had pressed through from the Java Sea to the Indian Ocean to attack the landing Japs—were being toasted at the bar. One had kept afloat in the sucking tides of the Straat for three days with a life preserver, the other for thirty-six hours without one.

  “We cannot sleep you here,” said the innkeeper. “We have no room. You will have to drive back to Soerabaya. But use no headlights, or you will be shot by the anti-paratrooper patrols.”

  Soerabaya was too far. Besides, the war correspondent had to get back to Malang air field to wave off the Nineteenth Group's battered Fortresses, falling back to Australia. Sleep in the army car? In the damp Javanese night an intestinal cold creeps into one's vitals.

  “Could you put up with a bed on a coffee plantation?” said a voice. It was a short, dark-haired Dutchman, in his early fifties. He was the antithesis of copybook Dutchmen, sallow, slim and brown-eyed. There was no mistaking his kindness.

  The correspondent accepted. With army car and soldier chauffeur following, the planter led the way in his old American car, and crept out of town through the mists and up into the coffee highlands.

  “I drive slowly for two reasons,” explained the Dutchman carefully. “First, because headlights are forbidden. And second, because I have explosive in the back of this car. You see, I am a planter, not a soldier. I do not know much about things that explode.”

  His home, about the size of any American suburban middle-class house, lay upon the saddle between and below two volcanoes. It overlooked the sea across which the Japs were expected.

  His wife, a blue-eyed Dutch blonde off a Delft plate and perhaps a decade younger than he, was waiting for them with coffee and spicecake. Their two sons, fourteen years old and seven, were studying their lessons. Was it possible, the correspondent asked himself, that this home would soon be in the hands of Japan?

  “While you were gone, I was out on the padang talking to the women,” said the planter's wife. “The phone rang and I thought it might be the signal. But it was only the chief of police making a general call to all the planters. The Americans bombed the Japanese at Bali and disorganized them. He does not think they will be ready to cross the Straat to Banjoewangi until the day after tomorrow.”

  The two boys looked up. The eldest, thin like his father, but taller, said, “Has the guest seen our American diesel? Did you show him the electric pump we bought from Chicago? And the new American bean sorters?”

  “I do not want to take our friend into those wired buildings now,” said the planter. “Remember, we are only amateurs with explosives. We are obliged to blow up all our valuable machinery after the enemy lands. But not ourselves beforehand.” The younger boy, all golden and blue like his mother, looked up at this and smiled faintly, then returned to his book.

  Taking the correspondent out to the porch, the Dutchman explained their preparations for the destruction of the small rubber plant, the coffee sheds, the barns. “This will burn, that will blow up,” he said, pointing to everything that meant the life of the homestead. He spoke without sadness and with extreme simplicity. “It is too bad to destroy all that machinery from America. It took us many years to save enough to buy it. But we shall. Nothing must remain which the Japs can use.”

  Even the American car was doomed to go, though this effectively marooned the family in the country.

  That night there were fires visible on the beach across the Straat on Bali. Japanese campfires? Nobody went to bed because the army captain in his office down by the quay telephoned that the Jap convoy, escorted by warships, was visible over the moonlit sea. But the “stand-by” signal for destruction never came.

  The morning broke and everybody, sleepy-eyed, sat dozing over coffee. The sun climbed behind Lombok. The convoy was gone, the sea empty. Again the phone sounded an air-raid alarm. The father went forth and did what he had repeatedly since February 3—he beat upon the gong hanging upon his porch, warning all the plantation workers and coolies that planes were expected. He drew out a small notebook, noted the hour and date in the methodical fashion of the Dutch.

  “That was our thirteenth alarm,” he said.

  The Eurasian assistant manager already had left the porch, checking once more the demolition plans.

  “Do you think the Japs will want to take my boy?” asked the mother.

  The eldest was already a six-footer, despite being only fourteen, but with pretended competence the correspondent replied, “No.”

  “Yesterday a Jap Navy Zero from Bali, on reconnaissance, flew round and round only a few feet above us,” said the planter speculatively. “But somehow the pilot did not use his machine gun.”

  Candles were set out for when the electric lighting plant was blown. Where the assistant manager of the encharged demolition would hide afterward was a family secret. Nothing but the house structure and the billowing wet, green hills of rubber and coffee would remain when the Japs came up from the harbor.

 
The phone rang again. “The lookouts say the Japanese have begun unloading invasion barges,” announced the planter after he hung up. “You had better not go back to Banjoewangi. You might be caught. We want you to get away. Somebody must tell Java's story.”

  “What are you going to do with your family?”

  “We are going to wait here. We have laid enough fuses. Everything will be blown up except this dwelling.”

  “Why not destroy everything now, and escape? We can all go in the army car. I can get you aboard a freighter at Tjilatjap. In a week we can be in Australia.”

  The father looked at his wife and two sons. “This plantation is ours,” he said mildly. “It does not matter how many Japanese come here, with how many airplanes or tanks. We have our workmen to take care of. We have our plantation. Java is still Dutch.”

  Suddenly a bell began to toll dolefully in the workmen's quarters. “Air raid,” said the planter. “Here they come again.” The camouflaged army car was already at the gate, the soldier chauffeur scanning the sky toward Den Pasar. The war correspondent shook hands with the Dutch family and jumped in.

  “Goodbye,” said the planter. “I'm sorry for your not being able to get your story about Bali.”

  “That's all right,” said the correspondent. “I got another.”

  OFFICERS AT FRONT IN PERILED JAVA TELL FEARS

  Bandoeng, Java—March 3, 1942

  Besieged Java looks now to Australia, Great Britain and chiefly the United States for the aid it has been promised to arrive unstintingly after the Japanese invasion, a canvass of military opinion behind the lines revealed today.

  For the Dutch generals it is a life-and-death question. The attitude this correspondent encounters is: “We are perfectly willing to sacrifice if we are certain that greater offensive aims are served elsewhere. But the London and Washington leaders, because of their unfamiliarity with the South Pacific, still do not fully comprehend what Java's peril means in terms of Japan's future striking power.”

  Pictures of America's fighting lanes adorn local magazines, and placards beseeching Indonesian Dutchmen to contribute to Spitfire funds for the defense of Britain strike a paradoxical note as the first top-flight American fighter or Spitfire has yet to be seen in Javanese skies. What Dutchmen cannot make out is whether the Americans and British want a fluid war in the Pacific, with Japan kept busy everywhere, or a frozen war, with Japan merely checked by temporary stopgaps. The Dutch want a fluid war. They want the Javanese front to keep the Japs as busy as MacArthur's Philippine front, until an American naval offensive relieves both. Here is how Dutch, and many American officers, too, see the fateful alternatives:

  Holding Java means forcing Japan to pump men and resources constantly along extremely extended and exposed lines of communication, because an invasion force is far more dependent on its basis of origin than an occupying force.

  Losing Java means backing up to northern Australia, which, because of lack of harbors, exposure to aircraft and insufficient means of feeding forces, means a clogged, static position. An American front there will be awkward and expensive.

  Holding Java means subtracting some pressure from MacArthur, and increases Jap uncertainty as to whether he will receive reinforcements.

  Losing Java means giving the Japs control of the naval base of Soerabaya, better than any other nearby base except Jap-held Singapore, and far superior to Darwin down in Australia, America's next best.

  Holding Java means diverting Jap land forces that might otherwise be used in Burma; Burma cannot tie up the Japs as Java can, because only air and land forces are needed there, the navy's role being minor.

  Losing Java means depriving the Allies of an opportunity for the safe recovery of the Sumatra and Borneo oilfields.

  Holding Java means giving Russia a chance to resist Germany's spring campaign and possibly launch a trans-Balkan offensive.

  Losing Java means empowering Japan to attack Russia as she desires.

  Holding Java means the Allies' second chance to defend Holland, thereby upholding the last spiritual capital for the prostrate but rebellious peoples of Europe.

  Losing Java means the removal from the 26-nation front of the last small country able to throw an effective rather than a token force into the field.

  Holding Java means a springboard for the desire growing in every American's heart to avenge Pearl Harbor and create a permanent pattern for security and economic opportunity in Asia. Without Java the offense cannot get underway.

  Losing Java means opening the door to the Japs' movement of welding 70 million British and Dutch Malaysians into a bottomless reserve of manpower for the already foreseen war in which Japan intends to lead Asia's millions against the European and American hemispheres.

  Holding Java means fighting Japan from a base where the native population is friendly to Allied purposes.

  Losing Java means transferring the chief theater of resistance to Burma and India, where the natives vary from apathetic to rebellious.

  Holding Java means fortifying China by reducing the pressure against the Burma Road and making the Jap Navy's interference with war supplies entering the Bay of Bengal less effective.

  Losing Java means releasing Jap warships from convoy work in the Java and China seas, not only for blockades of Rangoon and Vladivostok but interference with American convoys to Australia and agitational sinkings off the Pacific Coast.

  Holding Java means honoring the Americans here risking their lives in submarines, destroyers, fighters and bombers against odds varying from four-to ten-to-one and sending them the help everyone would like to be able to send MacArthur.

  Losing Java means giving hard-working U.S. forces here a choice between evacuation, which is unfair to the Dutch, and being lost with the island.

  STIRRING STORY OF FLIGHT FROM JAVA AND JAPS

  George Weller Tells How Ship Dodged Attacks to Reach Australia

  (Missing since March 2, when he filed his last dispatches from Java, George Weller, the Daily News correspondent in the Far East, has finally reached safety “somewhere in Australia.” In his story herewith, he relates the story of his miraculous escape.)

  Somewhere in Australia—March 14, 1942 (Delayed)

  For correspondents lucky enough to obtain transportation on B-17 Flying Fortresses, Java was hardly six hours from Australia and safety. But for any who stayed after the last American Navy unit sailed on Sunday, March 1, and the last bombers departed at dusk the same day from Jokjakarta, Australia was much farther.

  After being bombed in Batavia, bombed in Soerabaya and bombed in Bandoeng, this correspondent on Monday, March 2, with William Dunn of the Columbia Broadcasting System and Frank J. Cuhel of the Mutual Broadcasting System, the last remaining radio reporters, started for the southern Java port of Tjilatjap. DeWitt Hancock of the Associated Press and William McDougall of the United Press were the only Americans remaining and they planned to leave immediately in another car.1*

  Our start was made amid a raid in which Jap Navy Zeros were attempting to destroy the eleven fighters and four bombers which alone remained as defenders of Java's western plateau, where the Netherlands East Indies Commander-in-Chief, Lieutenant General Hein Ter Poorten, once planned a Bataan-style stand. There were unashamed tears at our final handshakes with the men and women of the Dutch press bureau, headed by L. H. Rittman, the jovial and lovable director of that singularly honest and fearless governmental propaganda department.

  In Tjilatjap's small cemetery lay, under walnut-colored wooden crosses, the bodies of American sailors who died defending Java. Others were there alive, the wounded with reddish scarifying marks from bomb blasts. Like ourselves they were placed aboard a small Dutch island steamer.

  All day we waited in the tiny harbor expecting raids, but Jap fighters, based on Bali, were harassing the defenses around Rembang and only one alarm sounded and no bombs were dropped.

  Naval physician Lieutenant Commander C. M. Wassell of Little Rock, Arkansas, laid his band
aged, wounded charges out upon the steamer's bulkheads. One topic of conversation was our chances of piercing the Japanese submarine blockade. At darkness we slipped out through the mine-dotted harbor, clouds obscuring the moon.

  There were about six hundred aboard, with cabins for less than forty. Many were officers fresh from the destruction of the Soerabaya naval base. About ninety per cent of the passengers were Dutch navy people. Two were sailors I had interviewed at Java's easternmost end, Banjoewangi, after they spent two days and nights in the water seven miles off Bali following the sinking of their destroyer.

  Past mine fields, a friendly thunderstorm took us in charge, convoying us under cloak of darkness and rain through whatever submarines were waiting. We expected, even with the steamer's labored eight knots an hour, to be a hundred miles at sea by daybreak. But dawn found us far closer to Jap bombers.

  The Dutch Admiralty having other last ships to send from the harbor the same night, one bearing enemy alien internees, spread them variously over the sea. Our ordered course lay straight along Java's shore directly toward the enemy base at Bali and about two miles from shore.

  Out of the rising sun came the Japanese bombers, the same distance offshore as ourselves to evade listening posts. First came nine, then seven, then nine again. They were directly overhead, their motors humming incessantly. The day was blue and bright, but they had bigger prey than our ship in mind. Their missions were to bomb Tjilatjap.