Voices from the Air

by Tony Hill

  Occasional freelance news reports to the ABC from Singapore in 1938 had grown to an almost daily cabled news service from the editor of the Singapore Sunday Times, SA Wykes, but by the beginning of December, the ABC decided to send a field unit to cover the Malaya campaign. It intended the field unit to send recordings and cabled news stories and to make regular direct broadcasts to Australia from MBC transmitters.1

  Former news agency journalist Henry Stokes, who’d met up with Chester Wilmot during the evacuation from Greece, was appointed as the ABC’s war correspondent with the planned field unit for Malaya. Stokes had done some news commentaries for the ABC, was considered an authority on Near Eastern and Far Eastern affairs, and the acting general manager, TW Bearup felt that he could set a ‘new standard in radio reporting.’2 The plans were overtaken by the speed of events and the field unit never made it to Malaya, but Stokes arrived by himself in time to cover the last two months before the fall of Singapore.

  ‘Small, square and imperturbable’3 was how fellow war correspondent David Walker described Henry Stokes when he first met him in Bucharest. Stokes was then the Balkans correspondent for the Reuters news agency and a well-travelled and experienced journalist. Born in Australia, Stokes became a newspaper journalist in England, worked in India on an English-language paper and as a foreign correspondent for the London Times, and then joined Reuters in London. His compact physique, neat dark hair and dapper appearance were complemented by keen skills as an observer and analyst, and early experience as a war correspondent. In the late 1930s he was the Reuters correspondent covering Franco’s nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War and developed the field skills to survive the ‘strange haphazard experience’ of the frontlines in Spain and ‘hair-raising, night-and-day car-driving over war wrecked roads’.4 One of the connections Stokes forged during the war in Spain was an acquaintanceship with the notorious British double agent, Kim Philby, who was then working as a journalist. From Spain, Stokes went on to the difficult life of a correspondent in the treacherous political atmosphere and war in the Balkans, where he rubbed shoulders in hotel restaurants with German generals and the Gestapo.

  Reuters ordered Stokes back to London after the Balkans but he resigned instead and went south into Greece in time for the Allied defeat. In Salonika he had several narrow escapes from German bombing, one of which destroyed part of the small hotel in which he was sheltering.

  He arrived in Egypt from the rout in Greece at the end of April, 1941. By then, Stokes had formed a view of the Allied Middle East GHQ that was not dissimilar to Chester Wilmot’s. ‘The sight of a swollen, arrogant and idling GHQ at Cairo on our arrival there was the living answer to the whole muddle.’5 Despite his opinions on the handling of the campaign in Greece and Crete, he wrote a commentary for the Department of Information much later, in which he explained the need for the Greece expedition.

  Stokes had seen his wife for only three months in the last three years and was anxious to return to Australia, where he hoped to freelance for the ABC or the papers.

  He was 34 years old, with 15 years’ experience as a journalist overseas, when he took up the role as war correspondent for the ABC and the BBC in Singapore in December.

  He left for Singapore on a Dutch airliner via Batavia, ‘the only inconvenience being an armchair of mail bags on the Batavia–Singapore hop’, and by 24 December was able to start broadcasting radio commentaries via the MBC transmitters and to send cables, as well as covering the daily official army communiqué. He attempted to get the shortwave station at Bandung on the island of Java to relay his Singapore broadcasts to the BBC, but reception was poor and the ABC cabled his scripts to London instead.

  Singapore was considered the bulwark of Australia’s outer defences but it was fatally weakened by Britain’s failure to commit sufficient ships and planes to defend it against the Japanese now advancing down the Malay Peninsula. None of Stokes’s ABC reports have survived but his private papers include some fragmentary descriptions and notes possibly intended for a memoir or for a later briefing on events in Singapore. Japanese air raids killed many local people in Singapore. Excerpts from Stokes’s papers, written in a more emotive and descriptive style than he would probably have used in his reporting, describe the aftermath of one such raid, in which fourteen people were killed.

  It is between the passing of the raiders and the all clear that arises like some long pent cry of protest . . . drawn erect in tension, some trembling, some whimpering, some sobbing, some moaning, some pointing, a group of women and children looked towards the tangled earth-confounded wreckage of a group of huts. Timber sticks out of the heap like broken limbs: there were people in there, mothers, brothers, sisters, a score of relatives. A rescue squad of Malays, Chinese, Indians, sets feverishly to work. Nothing could have lived here when the bomb fell . . . There is a black mound of mud convulsed; a roundness in it that might be round arm of man or root of tree. The mangled mud coat body of a man is borne away. Then, so unexpectedly that it does not seem real, under a sheet of iron over which we have been trampling, but not crushed out of form, lies a Chinese mother and child. But for the speckling of dirt and disarray they might be sleeping . . .6

  Stokes’s cables and broadcasts were providing a daily picture of the fast-moving events. His despatches were quick and timely, on at least one occasion containing information not reported by other correspondents, and the ABC News department monitored and exploited his reports for the Talks department as they came in. In those anxious weeks, each night at 2.30 am, the Sydney newsroom was also monitoring the shortwave news from Singapore,7 as well as the Netherlands East Indies broadcasts from Batavia (Jakarta) on Java.8

  As the Japanese drew closer to the island, Stokes had numerous contacts with British and Australian commanders and his private notes detail his scathing view of the British strategy for the defence of Singapore under General Percival.

  It is evident that the Malayan Command always envisaged a withdrawal through Malaya should the Japanese land attack from the north ever develop in strength. In point of fact, Lieutenant General Barstow, at Division HQ in Johore, expounded to Morrison of the London Times & myself the whole concerted plan of withdrawal to the Straits . . . withdrawal to the Straits was a pre-conceived idea long before the outbreak of war in the Pacific. In light of that fact, it is altogether blameworthy that there should have been no plan for the evacuation of an island whose ultimate defence was demonstrably impossible.9

  The end came quickly. On 8 February 1942, the Japanese landed in between the defences of the Australian Commander, Major General Gordon Bennett’s 8th Division in the northwest sector. The under-strength division of only two brigades was insufficient to stop the inevitable Japanese landing, and Gordon Bennett would soon become a controversial figure, fiercely defended by some and condemned by others for escaping Singapore when his troops were captured. But Stokes admired him and while he found that the Australian troops had lost faith in the British Command, there was a lot of support for Bennett among the Australians. When Stokes met Bennett at his forward HQ, Bennett put the position quite bluntly.

  He was already resigned to another Crete. All the factors for it were certainly there. He was more bitter than ever about the stupidities of the Malayan Command, though I think he was more full of pity for Percival, than enraged with him . . . I did not see him again. That visit was at his advance headquarters near Bukit Timah village. The HQ was heavily bombed a couple of days later, and eventually re-occupied by the Japanese. GB himself came back to rear headquarters in Holland Road in the north western suburbs of Singapore City. But there was fighting in this area before I left on the night of Feb 10/11 and I have no further news of the AIF HQ staff . . . I was with the Australians themselves on the Sunday when the terrific preliminary bombardment of our positions was put down. That was my last visit to the front; the next day our troops there were being decimated and cut off. Communications were disrupted and I shall not be surprised to hear later that the
administrative area of signals, where my friend Major Bridgland was acting CO, had suffered heavily through bombing. I had remarked the thick tangle of lines in the area and thought then of what chaos would arise in the event of a direct bomb rupture.10

  In the increasing chaos of the last days in Singapore, Stokes caught up with Major Charles Moses, the ABC general manager, who had enlisted and was then a member of Bennett’s senior staff. At the Cathay Building in the city, Moses told Stokes of his narrow escape when he, General Barstow and another officer twice passed through a railway cutting guarded by Japanese machine-gunners. ‘. . . the Japanese had let them pass in the evident hope that bigger game would follow on behind’. Moses was lucky to survive on other occasions, including his escape from Singapore by sampan with General Bennett.

  Stokes believed that the Malayan Command had gulled the public over the truly desperate position and had failed to plan and execute a proper evacuation plan. Dock workers and ships crews deserted, ammunition ships could not be unloaded, and newly arrived troop reinforcements had to disembark themselves. One night at 10 pm he visited the docks where P&O had allocated berths to ‘most of the two thousand-odd old men, women and children who remained’, and who were supposed to embark that evening.

  Outside the warehouses several hundred cars, all lights out, and crowded with evacuees & their luggage had been patiently waiting for hours in a long line. Embarkation had barely begun . . . there was seemingly nobody about with authority to superintend the embarkation. The result was a small tragedy. The vehicles kept obediently in line waiting & those in front . . . tumbled out of the cars towards the gangway with their luggage, in many cases abandoning an empty car across the only entrance to be pushed aside in a bottleneck. In the blackout there was chaos . . . There was plenty of room going begging aboard the ship, but through the grossest mismanagement, she left around midnight leaving five hundred & more people stranded although they were ready for evacuation and there was plenty of room for them. No other opportunity arose for them until the perilous days just prior to the surrender of Singapore.11

  By 9 February, the Japanese were pushing southeast across the island to the city, around 30 kilometres away. Some of the Department of Information officers and staff from the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation had already been evacuated to Batavia some days earlier. Stokes and other correspondents remained but were planning to leave, and Henry sent a cable to the ABC:

  EVENT DISRUPTION ALL COMMUNICATIONS OR GRAVER RESULT SIEGE EYE ENDEAVOUR JAVAWARDS.12

  That night, communiqués were still talking about ‘a line holding much to the west around the old racecourse’,13 which was immediately to the north of the city. The next night Stokes made his escape with others, including the Australian photographers Frank Bagnall and Cliff Bottomley.

  I left Singapore on the night of Feb 10/11th on board a British naval patrol vessel. The wireless transmitters were to be blown that night and the cables were already out of commission for Press purposes. There was fighting in the suburbs and though the situation was confused there was no doubt that the Island would fall within the next few days. To all intents and purposes it was captured two days later on the 13th Friday. The actual surrender was I believe at 6 am on the 15th.

  Shipping was so disorganised by crew difficulties and the evacuation of the Harbour Board authorities that the only thing to do was to fend for yourself. A freighter which I knew to be ready to leave and would take me was being held up by some puerile idea that she should load some more rubber (though there was nobody to load it). So in company with some colleagues we boarded a patrol ship whose destination was unknown but which was evacuating some RAF personnel. We sailed with about 600 on board and found ourselves bound for Batavia. We left during an attack on the western sector of the harbour and had made 40 miles from Singapore by daybreak. We hove to, well off the ordinary course, in the lee of an island & close inshore. It was an anxious day. Ships were being bombed in the neighbourhood & some Jap aircraft flew overhead. But we escaped spotting and by dawn the next day were able to shelter safely in the lee of another island.

  We made the dangerous Banka Straits for a night passage. In the day time, as the Straits were the only passage for evacuating vessels, all ships were subject to Japanese dive-bombing. Again we escaped, though ships before us and after us had been attacked. The last 150 mile run to Batavia was anxious as there have been heavy torpedo sinkings in and around Java waters. We anchored overnight – Feb 13/14 – and after waiting about for instructions and pilotage, threaded the minefields into Batavia harbour about 4 pm in the afternoon, the 14th. The next day news came through that Singapore had fallen.14

  On 15 February, the British commander in Singapore, General Percival, surrendered. From Batavia, Stokes sent a cable to TW Bearup back in Sydney.

  EYE ARRIVED BATAVIA YESTERNIGHT PROPOSE ONCARRYING HERE PENDING YOUR INSTRUCTIONS ENDEAVOURING ARRANGE DIRECT BROADCASTS MEANTIME CABLING. CAN YOU ARRANGE FUNDS. KINDLY INFORM WIFE MY SAFETY. MY CABLE ADDRESS CARE GOVERNMENT INFORMATION BUREAU BATAVIA OR HOTEL DES INDIES. STOKES15

  Stokes stayed a few days in Batavia but he believed that it would also fall before very long. He advised the ABC that, in view of the latest developments, he would return to Australia as soon as transport was available. He left soon afterwards. A little over a week later, the Japanese landed on Java and by early March the Dutch had surrendered.

  Henry Stokes’s account of the escape to Java was sent to the ABC in a long cable from Batavia. It was held up for some time by the censors but still made ‘quite a good story’ according to Frank Dixon.

  Throughout his time in Singapore, Stokes had been officially accredited by both the ABC and the BBC, but confirmation of his ABC accreditation as a war correspondent had failed to make it through the Army channels to the military PR in Malaya. This put some limits on his ability to cover the Australian operations but, by the last few weeks, such technicalities would have hardly mattered. He continued to harry the ABC and the Malaya Command PR about his Australian accreditation almost until his last day.

  Chapter 6

  THE HOME FRONT – AUSTRALIA

  By early 1942, the home front was a critical area of concern. War correspondents were appointed to cover Allied General Headquarters (GHQ) and in the north of Australia – North Queensland and the Northern Territory, which were seen as vulnerable to attack and were strategic locations for military bases and operations.

  The Bombing of Darwin

  Peter Hemery was in an undignified squat ‘paying his daily tribute to nature’1 when he heard the muffled sound of antiaircraft fire followed by the crump of a bomb exploding. Wearing only his shorts, he scrambled to the shelter of a slit trench from which he watched the white clouds of ack-ack shells bursting around Japanese planes as they dropped their bombs on Darwin. It was 19 February 1942 and the first Japanese attack on mainland Australia.

  The harbour at Darwin and the flat coastal plain around the town were the most northerly staging area for Australian and Allied forces and closest to the Japanese offensives in the archipelago across the Timor Sea. The limited antiaircraft defences at Darwin were little protection when the Japanese planes bombed the town, the ships in the harbour, the aerodromes and the RAAF base in two separate attacks, an hour apart. It was devastating – a great deal of the town was destroyed or damaged and at least 243 people were killed, and hundreds wounded.2 Coming only days after the fall of Singapore, it was a severe blow to Australia’s sense of security. Faced by an apparently unstoppable Japanese advance to the north, the cities and towns of Australia’s long and largely unprotected coastline now seemed even more vulnerable.

  In his report recorded several days later, Hemery told how he watched a RAAF Kittyhawk fighter engage the Japanese planes: ‘Right over our heads the dogfight came, and they couldn’t have been flying at more than a hundred feet when I saw the white jets of tracer hit our plane.’3 (He later spoke to the pilot, who was forced down into the sea but survived by clingi
ng to a submerged mangrove tree.) As soon as he could, Hemery made his way to a position from where he could see the harbour.

  There was an ear shattering roar as a tenacious Nip scored a direct hit on a vessel loaded with flammable material. A two thousand foot column of smoke whooshed into the air, spreading a pall over the town. You could see pieces of wreckage from the explosion falling for what seemed quite a time afterwards.4

  Parts of this description were cut from the recording, presumably by the censor. In all, eight ships in the harbour were sunk. Hemery described the damage to hospitals and the post office, and 20-foot-deep craters where buildings had stood just minutes before. He was on the wharf when a ship moored alongside exploded, but this description was also censored. So too was his description of the damage to the RAAF base, which was the target of the second attack.

  Most women and children had been evacuated from Darwin in the months before the attacks but the Japanese raids sparked fears of an invasion and many more people now fled south towards the town of Katherine.

  Like a scene from a newsreel was the road south from Darwin after the first raid. Pausing only to collect blankets, and the barest essential personal belongings, many of the civilian population evacuated as best they could. Some had cars and trucks, some had bicycles, some went on foot.5

  There was some chaos amid the evacuation, more than Hemery’s report described at the time, but the raids were not the prelude to an invasion of Australia, instead they were apparently pre-emptive strikes as part of the imminent Japanese invasion of Timor, around 700 kilometres to the northwest. The government suppressed news of the true casualties at Darwin and Hemery’s report said only that the casualty list was not complete. He wrote later in his unpublished memoirs that the true story of the first Darwin raid should have been told to the Australian people. They had a right to know, ‘Surely the Australian people could have taken it.’6 The raids on the 19 February were the worst mainland attack of the war, but Darwin was hit by a further 63 raids between February 1942 and November 1943. Other towns on the far north coast were also bombed and at least 70 people and possibly more were killed in a raid on Broome on 3 March 1942.7