by Tony Hill
The wording of the Japanese surrender demand was also an admission of the Japanese failure against the Australians: it read ‘You alone do not yet surrender to us.’8 Marien described the unintended tribute as ‘one of the most magnificent compliments ever paid to Australian troops’. His reports also paid tribute to the Timorese, whose support was critical to the survival and success of the guerrillas – many Timorese paid with their lives for their actions with the Australians.
The Australian Navy eventually began landing supplies and Marien’s eye-witness account of a forward fighting patrol trekking through the mountains to pick up supplies painted a vivid portrait for the audience back home in Australia, of the men fighting the almost invisible war not far to the north. ‘The men go down the mountain side, down a track so steep and so long that even their tempered limbs cramp. They carry their tommy guns, their Bren Guns and their sniper’s rifles as though the weapons have grown on them like an extra arm. They look like a crew of pirates – or worse.’9
The guerrillas mined roads and blew up bridges in their running war against the Japanese. In April they attacked Japanese trucks on the Ermera–Dili road and killed Japanese soldiers in a native village. In May Captain Geoff Laidlaw led a party of guerrillas in a bold hit-and-run attack on Dili, the base for several thousand Japanese troops. Marien told the story of the raid and the confusion that it caused among the Japanese.
The men chosen for this raid wore dark rubber patrol boots and blackened their faces and hands. At 10 pm, they had come to the outer perimeter defences of Dili. Then it was a hands and knees crawl through the barbed wire. Silence was imperative because of the Japanese practice of stationing fierce, half-starved dogs with their sentries. Undetected the commandos reached the main street. They knew from reconnaissance exactly what buildings the Japanese occupied. Silently they floated down the street. Every finger was crooked round the trigger of a Bren Gun or a tommy gun. No rifles were carried. At the head of his men, Laidlaw’s bulk suddenly stopped. He sneaked to his right to investigate a machine gun post. When he was three feet from the post, a Jap sentry came out. Laidlaw shot him dead. At that signal, the entire party opened fire. Some of them dropped to the gutters and kept blazing away. Others directed their fire from the shelter of buildings. For the next five minutes, Laidlaw told me, it was impossible to distinguish any single shot. So surprised were the Japanese that in many cases they shot their own men.10
A determined Japanese assault on the guerrillas in August ended with an estimated 200 Japanese and five Australians dead: ‘But it was a terrible 10 days for the commandos. They were constantly on the move. What food they had was snatched from the country and eaten raw. Many of them had malaria or dysentery.’11
Some Australian reinforcements were landed the following month but most of Sparrow Force was evacuated in December and the remaining troops early in 1943.
Marien was on Timor when the first Australian-piloted Beaufighters raided Japanese positions on the island. He was walking along a mountain ridge, several thousand feet high, and was looking out over a wooded canyon about a mile wide when the raiders arrived. ‘And then came one of the most unique sensations I have ever had. With my two feet on solid ground, my chin on my chest, I saw two Beaufighters flying at more than three hundred miles an hour at least five hundred feet below me. The vibration of their passing shook the air.’ He tried to explain what the sight of Australian planes in the sky meant to the Australian soldiers fighting in the mountains below. ‘They lose something of the awful feeling of isolation that grows out of commando warfare fought on the other side of the Arafura Sea, far away from nearest reinforcements.’12
A heavy man to be walking in the rugged mountains of Timor, and also suffering from a poisoned leg, Marien was exhausted by his time in Timor – ‘buggared’, he wrote in his diary – and his reports praised the endurance of the Australians who were fighting and living each day under such conditions of privation.
These, then are the men – bearded, crippled by malaria, smoking native leaf to eke out their meagre ration of Australian tobacco, without beer, leave or any of the amenities a campaigning soldier is entitled to expect – who have immobilised a Japanese army for ten months, slashed it and at times panicked it.13
On returning to Darwin, Marien immediately went into hospital for some final treatment on his leg but was woken before dawn by a raid by 18 Japanese bombers. As he watched the dark sky from the hospital window one of the bombers was shot down, and he wrote with apparent satisfaction in his diary, ‘great sight. Like blazing thistledown.’14
Marien travelled down to Sydney and wrote his stories for radio and the newspapers to be released over several days beginning on 31 December 1942. Chester Wilmot, who was by then back in Australia from New Guinea, planned and coordinated the release of Marien’s stories, which garnered great public attention as they brought to light the full remarkable story of the Australians fighting the hidden war on Timor.
Chapter 8
DONE SOON AND DAMN SOON – PORT MORESBY
Haydon Lennard was in an angry and bitter mood after witnessing some of the early Japanese air raids on Port Moresby in February 1942. It was the same month as the fall of Singapore, the first air raids on Darwin, and the invasion of Timor . . . and the war had now reached Port Moresby on the southern coast of New Guinea, facing the Australian mainland. The state of military un-readiness at Moresby was perilous and the harbour town was poorly defended. ‘If one thinks too much of the whole rotten show,’ wrote Lennard to Frank Dixon, ‘the prospects become almost terrifying . . . Unless something is done soon – and damn soon – it will be the same old story. Complete Jap mastery of the air and the virtual murder of good proud fighting Australians.’1 Lennard was the first ABC newsman appointed as a war correspondent and the first posted to the Pacific theatre, and he arrived in Moresby just a few days after the first Japanese air raids at the beginning of the month.
Even then, the harbour and the town were edged by airfields – the main one at 7 Mile – but there were no fighter squadrons, the only air defence was a few anti-aircraft batteries, and the militia forces garrisoning the town were relatively few in number and poorly trained and equipped. One of Lennard’s main tasks at the time was reporting the air raids on Moresby and he expressed his disgust in his letter to Dixon.
This area must be defended. It’s far better to fight the Japs in the north where they can’t get food and have no great cities to lay waste. Once they get through here there’ll be no stopping them. But to stop them the men here must have something to fight with. Here’s an example. Not one of the hundred or more Jap planes which have been over Moresby has been attacked by a fighter. A few ack-ack shells are merely thrown into the air.2
A squadron of Kittyhawk fighters arrived in late March and Moresby would later be transformed into a huge military base for the campaign in New Guinea, but apparent confusion and mismanagement marked the first weeks. Lennard could not report this at the time and even though there were relatively few casualties from the Japanese bombing of Moresby his bitter memories of the episode remained with him all his life. The poor training and equipment for the militia force resonated with Lennard’s own experience in the militia a decade earlier, and at Moresby he found himself instructing some of the younger soldiers in the basics of how to shoot a rifle. Many had little experience other than as labourers, unloading ships in the harbour.
Frank Dixon had plucked Lennard from his role compiling news bulletins in the ABC Sydney newsroom to send him to Port Moresby. Dixon believed the immediate threat to Australia posed by Japan required a news correspondent rather than a correspondent filing radio talks, such as Wilmot had done from the Middle East. In Dixon’s calculations, a newsman could send a dozen cables a day if necessary whereas a radio correspondent could only deliver one talk a day and with no guarantee it would make the deadline.3
As a journalist, Lennard was in a reserved occupation and Dixon had already obtained his exemption fr
om military service, but Lennard made a strong appeal to be released from the ABC to join the RAAF. Dixon was reluctant to let him go. Lennard had proven to be reliable and conscientious in radio news and it seemed that Dixon liked Lennard’s somewhat maverick energy as well as his undeniable skill as a journalist.4 And there was another likely connection – like Dixon, Lennard had a country background and experience on country newspapers. Lennard was born in Sydney but grew up in the Riverina, where his father was a school headmaster and later an inspector of schools. He started his career as a cadet journalist in the New South Wales town of Albury before moving to newspapers and news-agency work back in Sydney.
As a young man in Albury, Lennard himself appeared in the papers when he was charged with taking bets in the bar of the Albury Hotel. He admitted to the charge but was acquitted on a fine technicality. According to Lennard’s colleague in the ABC Sydney newsroom, John Hinde, Haydon had ‘a talent for getting into trouble’. Wiry and dark-haired, he had a quick, occasionally volatile temperament and competitive instincts that sometimes put him at odds with ABC colleagues. Dixon opposed Lennard’s release to join the Air Force – instead, Lennard went on to the RAAF reserve list and, at the age of 32 and with the well-developed skills of an experienced radio news journalist, was posted to Port Moresby as a war correspondent.
At the time, the handful of war correspondents in Port Moresby were based a few miles out of town, with the Australian administrative headquarters. They were quartered in an old plantation house and worked out of a grass-thatched hut, from where they made several trips each day to the town and harbour, and to the various military units.5 Lennard spent several months in Moresby providing the first regular news copy for the ABC from an overseas warfront. His copy was often held up until after each day’s official report of the air raids had been written by Air Force officials in Moresby and received by the Air Board in Melbourne. Lennard was characteristically free with his opinion.
I consider this shows a hopeless disregard of the work expected of war correspondents. The officials concerned in many cases are incapable of quick thinking and I am sure their reports are hours in preparation. Moreover they invariably show a great respect for slit trenches during an air raid and are some of the first to get in and the last to leave.6
Port Moresby was an early test of censorship in the Pacific war. The field censors for all branches of the military at Moresby reviewed correspondents’ despatches for security before they were sent back to the mainland, where they might also be subject to publicity censorship, which reviewed reporting on the grounds of the effect on public morale or the war effort. In April, publicity censors raised concerns about some despatches from Port Moresby – even though the despatches had already been censored and passed by the military censors in the field. The issue of supposedly ‘irresponsible and speculative reports by Press Correspondents at Moresby’ went as high as the prime minister and the Advisory War Council.
The Army had no complaints about the reporting from Moresby. In an early (unsent) draft letter from the Army to the Advisory War Council, the Secretary of the Army explained.
The only complaints which have been received regarding the reporting of the Army activity at Moresby have been from the correspondents themselves and the General Officer commanding, who complain that amplification or alteration by commentators, official or otherwise, of despatches already censored at Moresby have compromised local security.7
Among the problems were ABC commentators who had identified Lennard’s location by describing him as ‘our special representative at Port Moresby’, and who had also broadcast the location of Australian air activity in New Guinea. Lennard had diligently avoided mention of place names and had to ask the ABC not to add any information to his reports in the newsroom in Canberra or Sydney that might breach censorship requirements. The Army appointed a director general of public relations, Errol Knox, who introduced a system of deputy assistant directors of public relations (DADPR) to be based in the field with war correspondents throughout the war: ‘. . . any difficulty which has arisen through lack of control of correspondents in operational areas will now be obviated by the DADPR’.8
The territories of Papua and New Guinea on the island of New Guinea and the port of Rabaul on the island of New Britain were Australian mandated territories with Australian and local communities, and therefore more than just locations of strategic importance. The fall of Rabaul in late January came as a major blow. The news was reported as information came to hand over the following weeks but a more complete, official story was blocked from release until early April.
‘It might be a bit long for a news session but it could make a good commentary,’ Lennard suggested in a letter to Frank Dixon, which he attached to his Rabaul script. His story of the Battle of Rabaul began:
After more than two months’ anxious silence and anxious waiting on the part of hundreds of Australian families the story can now be told of the heroic fight of the Rabaul garrison – the Japanese conquest of the town – and the adventures of young Australians who escaped after struggling for weeks through dense jungles.9
The censors – either field censors or publicity censors – struck out several parts of Lennard’s report, including comments from an Australian army captain who took part in the fighting against the Japanese. Around 400 men escaped inland and crossed the island: ‘The journeys through dense treacherous jungles to the comparative safety of coastal beaches were made by men suffering from starvation and thirst and racked with fever.’ Lennard’s story did not mention the tales of atrocities by the Japanese, although his news despatches may have done so, and some accounts of these were published in newspapers.
Lennard’s work became a daily routine of reporting on bombing raids against Japanese positions on the other side of the Owen Stanley mountain range and the continuing raids on Moresby. And he had his first experience of malaria.
I’ve had a fairly decent dose of the fever in the last few weeks and the copy may have suffered as a result but I’m OK again now and have been getting plenty through in the last few days. Am also covering the BBC. Best Wishes. The bombing’s merely a daily incident now.10
By the end of April Lennard was back on the mainland – it had been a relatively brief assignment at Port Moresby for the first ABC news correspondent in an overseas warzone, but had proved very successful. He now split his time between Moresby and Townsville – the northeastern Allied headquarters covering New Guinea, Pacific island groups and most of Queensland. He was providing the ABC with an unprecedented amount of its own news copy from the field and his ‘colourful, up-to-the-minute’ stories were adding immediacy to news bulletins. Frank Dixon wrote to TW Bearup that Lennard had already provided more real news of the New Guinea campaign than the broadcasting units had provided during the entire war.
Observers were familiar to the ABC audience because of their voice reports from the field but a news correspondent filing copy, such as Lennard, remained virtually unknown. Lennard’s by-line was now used on many of his news stories in recognition of the value of his reporting and to raise his profile with the military, whose co-operation was essential for correspondents in the field.11 Newspaper correspondents already enjoyed an occasional by-line for their reporting12 and with Lennard the ABC began the practice of by-lines for other ABC radio news correspondents.
Chapter 9
SIMPLY AS I SAW IT – KOKODA
One day late in August 1942, Chester Wilmot was standing on a spur of the Owen Stanley Range in New Guinea, looking down into the deep valley leading to Kokoda, thousands of feet below. ‘Somewhere under those treetops in the dark damp forest Australian and Japanese troops were fighting desperately for possession of this track. It didn’t look much to fight for . . .’1
The month before, the Japanese had landed at Gona on the north coast of New Guinea. The beachheads of Gona, Buna and Sanananda led to the Kokoda Trail – the tortuous track across the Owen Stanleys to Port Moresby. Within days of the
landing at the beachheads the Japanese encountered the small Australian force holding the end of the Kokoda Trail. The Kokoda campaign had begun. Over the next four months more than 600 Australians would be killed and more than 1600 wounded, in the fighting on the mountain track.2 Chester Wilmot and other correspondents would fight their own battle to tell the truth of the Australian withdrawal in the Kokoda campaign. Chester wrote, ‘I’ve tried to tell this story simply as I saw it.3
A few days after the first clashes on the New Guinea north coast, Wilmot had left his colleague Dudley Leggett in Townsville and flown to Moresby, followed a week or so later by Bill MacFarlane and the recording gear. As Wilmot headed north, the ABC began moving other pieces on the board of its expanding coverage of the war. MacFarlane’s colleague the technician Len Edwards took up the recording duties in Townsville with Dudley. GHQ had also moved closer to the active battlefronts and relocated from Melbourne to Brisbane and Haydon Lennard soon took up the post of war correspondent at MacArthur’s headquarters.
The night before Wilmot arrived in Port Moresby the town had its seventy-fourth air raid.
. . . you’d hardly have thought it was a much bombed town as our flying boat scudded to rest on the harbour that afternoon. Over on a coral reef near the shore there was the wreck of the Macdhui, but that’s the only ship in the harbour the Japs have sunk. At the wharf Australian and American troops were busy unloading a large supply ship and looking from the harbour Moresby seemed to have suffered little damage. Tobruk was much the same. When you looked at it from across the harbour you couldn’t pick out many blitzed buildings. It was only when you got closer that you could see the scars. But in Moresby there are comparatively few scars.4