Weller's War

by George Weller

  Americans are feeling the pinch because some have depended on Australian sources for shirts, underwear, haberdashery and even uniforms. This correspondent, having lost almost all his clothing fleeing Java, failed today in an attempt to increase his number of shirts, which now total three.

  TAKE RIDE ON U.S. BOMBER, FASTEST OF ALL, IN AUSTRALIA

  Somewhere in Australia—June 5, 1942

  The world's fastest bomber1* is American-built and American-flown. It is an enormous wasp with thousands of horses sucking it forward at a speed that the terrestrially bound human being can hardly understand even while he experiences it.

  The wings are so short that the bomber looks like a fledgling. Those wings caused a dispute between young and old as to whether this enormous creature could be flown. Old heads said that, because air fields cannot be lengthened indefinitely for take-offs, the wings would have to be extended. Youngsters said that they themselves could take these big bombers with their terrible power aloft, on fledgling wings alone.

  Youth won. They are taking the world's fastest bomber aloft every day not only for combat but also for experimental purposes. Amidst war, the experiment goes on continuously. And it is young men—only one over 22 years old—who have been entrusted with the job of finding out what the giant can do. Far trickier, they are setting her down without burning her huge tires off the wheels.

  This has been a war of improvisation. Due to low monsoon clouds, the Flying Fortresses, whose proper altitude is five miles, have been obliged to come down sometimes to less than one mile. So, also, with the world's fastest bomber. What she can do in straightaway speed and climbing ability is well known. But this only begins the discovery of what this creature can accomplish when unchained.

  This correspondent got his introduction to the big-timer today and it will be a long time before he forgets the experience. It is one thing to ride a bomber back in the fuselage, with only enough light to find things. The plane's torso is as jammed as a kitchen pantry with everything thinkable on the shelves from navigation drift-finders to a black, compartmented radio set, and with an emergency lifeboat of yellow canvas hung in a tight blanket roll above the aisle. It is quite another thing to ride forward in the bomber's glassed-in nose. If you elect to take a short trip at four miles per minute, which is 360 feet per second, you would not choose your mother's cut-glass bowl as a vehicle for this excursion. But flying in this bomber's nose is precisely like riding in a cut-glass bowl, with free visibility in every direction except behind—where you don't want to look anyway.

  The view is excellent. In fact, the view is just a wee bit too good. You can see everywhere, up, down, right, left and center. You are in a great prism of glass, annealed in a kind of glass belt at chest level. You cannot stand up but you can sit down and dangle your feet upon the glassy floor, like a boy on a cliff, while a world of houses, streets, rivers and little boys and girls waving at you zips past underneath.

  It was hard, in your leather coat, to push your 195 pounds forward between the two bombing pilots and crawl, as Alice through the keyhole, into this translucent world. But it was worth it. There is nothing you do not see, nothing. Nearby is a pair of headphones and a hand mouthpiece that works by pressing a tiny catch.

  It is the low-level runs that take your breath away.

  “Don't be afraid that glass will break, George,” says the voice of Frank Allen, who, from his co-pilot seat, can watch you through the keyhole as somebody studying a bug under glass. “Crawl over and lie on your belly.”

  Somehow you flounder to your knees and lie at full length. Suddenly pandemonium is loosed. Your coat tries to jump off your back and icicles fly hissing up your sleeves. Something inside the fishbowl, like the voice of an animal, is shrieking and tearing at your throat. The trouble is that your elbow struck an unnoticed little window in the glass and moved it open about a quarter inch.

  With the earphones now dangling around your neck, you shut this tiny letter slot. The uproar ceases instantly. It is silent again. The map of the world unreels faster than ever below you, red-roofed houses yanking away. It is fast, yet nothing is blurred. You can see even the expressions on the faces and tell an airedale from a terrier, a lawn mower from a child's velocipede. You see with unforgettable clarity.

  Captain Franklin Allen is a former country editor, now 24, whom Major General George designated, shortly before his death, to carry out investigations on the hitting power of this vicious bomber. Allen is slender and blond. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1939 and used to run a 900-circulation weekly called the Springfield News. Allen probably has more hours on this bomber than anyone else. They used to say the bomber was too dangerous for such boys to fly but Allen has put more than 600 hours behind him. There are five other lieutenants, all in their twenties: from Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Texas.

  “There is a strange plane over there,” says Frank gutturally through the earphones. “Let's go see what it is.”

  It is a bug transport plane. Despite your speed, nearly twice his, you turn inside him as neatly as a motorcycle inside a brewery wagon. The big transport seems hung upon a thread, motionless in midair. Actually, it is poking along at two miles per minute.

  “Come on back now, George,” says Allen through the headphones. “We're getting ready to approach the field. It may be bumpy.”

  You creep and crawl back through Alice's keyhole in your leather coat, like a shedding beetle. It is much noisier back here than up in your slightly overheated fishbowl. It is cooler too, however, and you realize that the sun had given you a topsy-turvy feeling in your stomach. Humbly you crawl on your knees to the doorway, descend the stair and for the first time in an hour stand upright.

  Everybody hooks his seat straps before landing, tenses up slightly as hangar roofs nip past, and holds tight as the wheels reach the ground. Then, as bounces begin to nullify each other, one turns to his neighbor and smiles.

  George Weller in a Chicago Daily News publicity photo; December, 1940.

  Shilluk village traversed by Belgian Congolese troops sent to Ethiopia; August, 1941.

  Liaison plane for Belgian Congolese troops in Ethiopia; August, 1941.

  Belgian Congolese riflemen charging, with bayonets, in Ethiopia; August, 1941.

  In Central Africa; probably September, 1941.

  Weller before dive-bombing with the British over Italian-held Gondar, Ethiopia; November, 1941.

  Interviewing Haile Selassie at his palace in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; December 11, 1941.

  With General Van Oyen, head of the Dutch Air Force, in Bandoeng, a few days before Java's fall; late February, 1942.

  Lt. General Bennett and foreign correspondents in Australia; 1942. At Weller's right is Thomas Fairhall, Sydney Telegraph.

  George Weller in Port Moresby, New Guinea; August, 1942.

  Patient and doctor from Pulitzer Prize-winning submarine story, Seaman Rector and Pharmacist's Mate Lipes, in Perth, Australia; December, 1942.

  Weller with U.S. officers near Buna, Papua New Guinea; Christmas Day, 1942.

  Somewhere in Papua New Guinea; probably April, 1943.

  George Weller with fellow CDN correspondent Leland Stowe in Athens; March, 1945. (Photo by Costa Kouvaras)

  White Horse Camp, Iran, on Persian Corridor route to Russia; May, 1945.

  Jingpaw Rangers (guerrillas) behind Japanese lines in Burma; June, 1945.

  Just-liberated Allied POWs, probably U.S. servicemen, at Camp #17 in Omuta, Japan; September 12-14, 1945.

  FLIER EMULATES DUTCH BOY AND HIS DIKE—LIVES

  An American Naval Base Somewhere in the South Pacific—June 9, 1942

  By popular acclaim, everybody in the fleet concedes an invisible extra bar for understatement to the Navy Cross already scheduled for Lieutenant Joseph Gough of Baltimore. Gough, a member of the naval reconnaissance patrol in Jap-controlled waters north of Australia, was shot down in his big PBY Catalina flying boat. His inflatable life belt was pierced b
y a Jap bullet. Yet Gough managed to stay afloat twenty-four hours in tropical waters alive with sharks.

  “How did you succeed in staying above the waves with a hole in your belt?” rescuers asked him.

  “Oh, I just covered the hole with my thumb,” said Gough modestly.

  “But the whole day and night with your thumb over the hole! How could you keep it up?”

  Gough hesitated and his eyes fell modestly.

  “Well, to tell the truth, I finally had to use both thumbs,” he admitted.

  JUBILATION OVER MIDWAY VICTORY HELD DANGEROUS

  Somewhere in Australia—June 13, 1942

  The American press and public comment upon the battle of Midway Island show a tendency to exaggerate the political consequences, a tendency disturbing to military and naval men here. The war is not aimed at sinking the Japanese fleet or even reducing her submarines to impotence. The purpose is to establish lasting peace in Asia, which can be done only by depriving the Japanese permanently of the sinews of war, rubber, oil, and metals that Japan has seized and still possesses.

  While victories in individual battles will shorten the war, competent officers believe the public should keep in mind that the war's epicenter is not at Midway but at Singapore, where it will remain strategically until Singapore is recaptured, then shift to Tokyo. American progress toward rendering the Japanese harmless forever can only be estimated by the key naval bases that come into American hands and the resources of war, now in Japanese hands, that are restored to their rightful owners.

  Editorial jubilation undoubtedly has its place, but it is extremely premature and may relegate the Far East front to a secondary position. Victories are welcome after the long hard road from Corregidor to Australia, but every inch must be retraced and fought for bitterly, with America carrying the major portion of the burden. The area is twice as large as the United States, with 150 million people still awaiting liberation.

  The war is not yet over. The war has just begun.

  YANK FLIERS FIND BUSHIDO FUNNY CODE

  Somewhere in Australia—July 27, 1942

  If you can ask the pilots of big American bombers operating over New Guinea what this bushido is, they scratch their heads.

  “Darned if we know it ourselves,” they say.

  It is supposed to be the code of Japanese warrior chivalry. But it works out pretty strangely sometimes. Take what happened to the American bomber that was returning to its base and was pursued by a single Zero.

  The fast little Jap attacked from forward, rear, below and above so many times that eventually the bomber had exhausted its ammunition. The Jap pressed the attack unsparingly and the bomber narrowly made the periphery of the home anti-aircraft guns, and it was considerably heavier with armor piercing bullets.

  The next day, another bomber was chased by the new type Zero whose speed appeared well in excess of 400 miles an hour. The harried plane crew, with ammunition exhausted and fuel gauges low, threw over the machine guns to lighten the craft.

  When the Jap saw the guns jettisoned he roared by with lifted hand in salutation and farewell and fired nothing more from his cannons or machine guns. Perhaps he, too, had exhausted his ammunition. Nobody really knows.

  You can cut it or you can slice it; it's still bushido.

  WRITER MOURNS DARNTON, KILLED IN NEW GUINEA

  Somewhere in Australia—October 22, 1942

  “Barney” Darnton of the New York Times, buried yesterday in New Guinea, was among the best-beloved, as well as most respected, of war correspondents in the Pacific area. His plump but debonair figure, his large head with the slightly greying hair of 44 years and his gentle and sensitive voice were the accouterments of a spirit well equipped for his task.

  Byron Darnton had the searching eye of the reporter, without being cynical. Making no excuses for himself and working without stint, Barney was nevertheless always the first to excuse shortcomings in others. His principles as a correspondent were high; he was always ready to strip the story to its skeleton in order to keep a strict truth. His work was balanced, flexible and honest without ever being dull.

  As assistant editor of the Sunday magazine section of the New York Times, Darnton gained a wider and broader view than that of many of his colleagues.

  What this correspondent loved best in Barney after knowing him nearly ten years was his slow, dry wit which was completely untainted with Manhattan smartness but had, rather, a warm fatherly quality.

  Darnton was the calm rather than high-tension type of correspondent. He was one of the few members of the profession with whom one could be silent and yet know the silence was unwasted. Barney lies today in New Guinea's thick soil. This last silence will be endless.

  Somewhere Australia,

  care: American Consulate,

  MELBOURNE. AUSTRALIA,

  22nd October, 1942.

  Dear Mrs. Darnton,

  I want you to know how saddened all the American correspondents were by Barney's death.

  He was one of the most delightful and most lovable newspaper men I have ever known. For me, there was a kind of exhilaration in being with him. I had known him about ten years but came to know him better in Australia than in the days when I worked on the Foreign Staff of the New York Times.

  On one of our last evenings in Brisbane, we went to a movie together. I miscalculated the trolley stop—we were joking about something or other—and we ran clear to the end of the line. Barney was very tired, and almost anyone else would have been disgruntled. It was the last car for half an hour, and we had to walk home in the moonlight. Yet he made fun even of this, tired as he was. It was a minor experience, but for me a pretty good way to remember him.

  We all know how devoted he was to you and your children. He used to read and reread your letters and seemed to love to write home more than most newspaper men do. He mentioned, I remember, your having been sought out by the relative of one of the boys he had written about; this was the kind of thing that warmed him very much.

  Barney was in good health and high spirits right up to the end, and I think you can probably think of him as having been accomplishing some of the best work of his career when it was broken off.

  We shall all miss him very much, and we extend our hands to you in sympathy.

  Sincerely,

  George Weller.

  correspondent: Chicago Daily News

  NIPPONESE MURDER SLEEP IN FUTILE RAID ON DARWIN

  Somewhere in Australia—October 27, 1942

  “Roll out, Yank. Here they come,” an Australian's voice rang across Darwin's moon-flooded street.

  Captain Lewis Turner carefully lifted his white mosquito net. Then the siren went off. “Those Aussies always get their signal about five seconds before the siren,” explained Turner.

  One Wellington half-boot stuck while being pulled on. “Hurry up. We need every minute to make that shelter,” said Turner. It looked for a moment as though this correspondent would be obliged to go like “Deedle Deedle Dumpling” to the shelter but the boot finally gave.

  Turner already had the motor of the big American Army car turning over beside the door. It was the first time in dozens of raids over Malaya, Java and New Guinea that this correspondent had driven rather than run to shelter. He felt luxurious but slightly guilty, too—a little too sissy, perhaps.

  But as an indication that Darwin was now prepared and would never again experience anything like her black day of February 19, the tolls of which still are unannounced, it was reassuring. Darwin's blocks are about twice as long as America's. Scarred, jagged buildings leer at you by moonlight and after the siren's howl has sunk, as it unwinds to a groan and finally to a sigh, it is uncannily silent.

  Everybody else reached shelter about the same time as we did.

  Everyone around us was Australian because American fliers and ground crews, who have trounced the Japanese every time they have tried to raid Darwin, have their own shelters and they are naturally not in battered downtown Darwin.
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  Turner knew everybody and there was time for introductions as we stood outside the shelter. The moonlight glimmered on Darwin Bay, which faces so peculiarly that even though Jap bombers come directly from Koepang or Dilli in Dutch and Portuguese Timor, they seem always to approach from your back as though based in Daly Waters or Derby.

  As the mighty weather of the approaching subequatorial summer descends upon red-dust-caked Darwin, one of the new diversions is listening to Berlin on the short-wave as it repeats Jap claims of raids on northwestern Australian “cities.” These “cities” are single-pier settlements which in the United States and in Australia itself are called villages and hardly mentioned except on automobile maps. Placed beside the relatively straight-laced Reichswehr and Luftwaffe communiqués, these Jap fairy tales about raids which quite simply never occurred are one of the few diversions in what a war doggerel tersely described as Bloody, Bloody Darwin.

  “Here they come,” said someone casually. Turner drifted toward the shelter. Others moved inside. Still the humming seemed to grow a little louder, so your correspondent remained outside watching the dark outlines of the harbor.