Voices from the Air

by Tony Hill

  Something Unforgettable – Lae from the Coast

  ‘It’s something unforgettable,’ wrote Peter Hemery of the landing near Lae on 4 September. He noted in his diary, ‘I’ve seldom seen a more ugly mess than that on the troop gangway where direct hit scored. Dead lying tangled where fallen. Blood, mud, pieces of meat, everywhere.’33 The graphic horror of the bombing of the infantry landing craft he saw near Lae was to that point possibly Hemery’s worst single experience of the war. The rest of the landing proceeded and Hemery stayed aboard as the landing craft convoy pushed off to return to Buna. Around the middle of the day he saw ack-ack fire from some ships ahead and learnt later that Japanese torpedo bombers struck two tank landing craft, ‘tearing a great hole’ in one vessel, killing 30 to 40 men and striking near the wheel house of the other. He wrote ‘furiously’ through the afternoon and the night to complete his despatches for the ABC, BBC and INS so he could send them from Buna before returning with the next landing.

  In darkness the following night, Hemery waded between the dim shadows of the landing craft on to the sand. The beach was a hot spot and had been raided four times the day before, and the group of war correspondents struggled with their gear through the wire lining the beach, then slipped and slid inland over muddy rutted tracks until they flung themselves down to sleep among the men of the Australian battalion. The next morning at the village of Busu, they were caught in strafing and bombing raids by Japanese planes.

  6 September 1943 Raided four times, shrap bullets flicking through foliage. Lifted off ground by blast one bomb. Felt blast all by flutters back trouser leg. Literally spent most day until about 1500 lying flat, taking cover behind log. About six others all jammed in underneath log. Heck of funny sight. Casualties heavy on crammed beach and along road. Developed splitting headache from blast first bombs.34

  Getting stories away from the coastal landings was difficult for the first day or so but Hemery wrote stories and took notes for his diary. On 7 September, he was listening to the radio when he heard Bill Marien’s news story of the paratroop landings in the Markham Valley. The two prongs of the pincer movement were closing on Lae.

  Hemery and other correspondents moved up from the east as Brigade and Divisional headquarters moved closer and at one point they found themselves camped in an exposed position, outside the picket lines, when concerns arose about a possible Japanese landing. Hemery noted that this caused a degree of discomfort among the ‘gallant war correspondents’.35

  Walking and carrying their gear, Hemery and other correspondents left their typewriters behind to be brought on later by jeep. Rain was frequent and in parts, soldiers and correspondents waded through knee-deep mud. Again listening to the radio, he heard the news that Salamaua had fallen. On 16 September Hemery finally reached Lae soon after the forward troops.

  And there – over the rise lay Lae. It was a calm and peaceful sight as one looked over the ruins towards the fantastically blue waters of the Huon Gulf. Cloud patterns made a scenic delight of Salamaua over on the far side of the Gulf. The peacefulness was only visual though. From Mount Lunaman the crack of gunfire and the reports of grenades indicated where the troops were mopping up the remaining Japs. Occasionally, you’d hear the sharper crack of a Jap’s sniper rifle, and a bullet would ring across the road.

  The road was alive with troops now, pouring in an unending stream into the goal of so many weary miles of damp, evil-smelling jungle. ‘It’s great to get into the fresh air again,’ said the Brigadier.

  What was the town of Lae resolved itself into one vast, crazy rubbish heap. There was hardly a building left standing. Where there’s been a house, there’d be a bomb crater, perhaps flanked by a few gaunt ribs of construction. The house’s contents just spewed about in horrible confusion.36

  Playing Kiss Polka – Lae from the Land

  Bill Marien set out for Lae from the airfield at Nadzab on 14 September in the relative comfort of a jeep, but it was soon bogged in a swamp and from there on he walked with the troops. For three days he followed in the wake of the 7th Division as it cleared the way, passing the occasional evidence of destroyed or abandoned Japanese positions. At Heath’s Plantation on the way to Lae he heard of the actions of Private Dick Kelliher, a ‘young, stocky and quiet’ Irishman who had charged a Japanese machine-gun post with grenades and then with a Bren Gun, killing a Japanese officer and eight soldiers before returning to rescue his wounded corporal. Kelliher was later awarded the Victoria Cross.

  Just beyond Heath’s Plantation, with gunfire not far ahead, Marien came across a rough field surgery and an Australian army doctor at work.

  He had set up his aid post on the side of the track, just two hundred yards back from the front line. Bullets were whistling overhead as he bent, his stethoscope incongruous against the background of his dirty clothing, a battered felt hat on the back of his head, beads of sweat running down his nose and forming a tiny puddle at his feet. But his hands were terribly sure and clean as he stitched a nasty bullet wound. The patient, a captain, lay on his side and a medical assistant shaded his face with a banana leaf. This is the frontline surgery which is saving lives.37

  Pools of blood marked the track where the doctor was operating and the wounded waited, and nearby soldiers were trying to explode a parachute bomb caught in a tree by shooting at the fuse.38 The following day Marien reached Jacobsen’s Plantation just outside Lae.

  16 September 1943 At Jacobsen’s a forlorn piano stood in the ruins of a deserted house which was collapsed about it. A soldier sat before it playing ‘Kiss Polka’, my favourite tune. Just before Jacobsen’s I walked across an old bridge which was covered with a vaulted and kunai-thatched archway. It was at this stage that I saw the waters of the Huon Gulf.39

  From that point, the destruction on the track, at the airport and in the town was a ‘drunken riot of disorder’. Marien arrived after the forward troops of the 25th Battalion to find Australian soldiers at the ice factory ‘eating chunks of ice like cake’ and the body of a dead Japanese soldier, grenade in one hand, sitting in the middle of the road where he had been killed while eating a tin of pineapples.

  As Marien entered from landward with the 7th Division, Peter Hemery entered along the coast with the soldiers of the 9th Division. The inlanders of the 7th claimed victory in the race to be first into Lae but the 9th arrived very soon afterwards and when Marien and Hemery met up in the town the almost light-hearted troops were scouring the ruins for souvenirs.

  Marien wrote some of his scripts resting on the wing of a destroyed Japanese plane at the airfield. ‘Smashed planes garlanded the runway and revetments like a bedraggled necklace of faded flowers. There were Zeros, Mitsubishi bombers, reconnaissance planes and an odd transport or two.’40

  That night, still without his typewriter, Hemery wrote his despatches by hand by the light of a burning shack, and slept in a rough shelter on the edge of the airport, amid the stench of dysentery41 and the bodies of some of the 1500 Japanese dead. Another 2000 Japanese were captured at Lae but 6500 escaped into the mountains. Close to 200 Australians died in the fighting.42

  Bill Marien’s return to Moresby after the capture of Lae sparked a row with Army public relations that revealed some of the tensions between the army and the war correspondents, and some of the particular problems for the ABC. Marien noted in his diary that there were now three Army PR ‘toros’ (bulls) in the New Guinea bullring, including George Fenton and the recently arrived director general, Colonel JH Rasmussen. Marien wrote, ‘the big shots are not pleased’.43 Army PR wanted Marien to stay at Nadzab to provide continuing cover of operations at Divisional HQ but Marien was unaware of this and, in any event, would have been reluctant to stay. He was told by one PR officer: ‘A soldier goes where he’s told.’ He replied: ‘I’m not a soldier.’44 However, war correspondents were subject to military authority in the field and the ABC, as the national broadcaster, was under particular pressure to conform to the demands of Army public relations. Army PR
and specifically the deputy assistant director public relations (DADPR) in the field – in this case Chester Wilmot’s friend, George Fenton – could force the issue of where the ABC travelled if it wished, so Marien returned to Nadzab.

  Army PR wanted Marien at Divisional HQ in part for the continuing public relations value to the campaign from continued coverage, but also to counter some inaccuracies in the GHQ reporting from Haydon Lennard. In truth, the problems seemed to be in the information released by GHQ, rather than any failure on Lennard’s part. The row continued at Nadzab when a hot-headed Marien confronted Fenton.

  22 September 1943 I told him I won’t stay Divisional HQ. Rather than that would ask ABC to recall me altogether. I pointed out I would merely be duplicating Lennard’s GHQ stuff . . . I added that I did not want to be scooped by all other correspondents who were permitted go forward. Said my duty as frontline correspondent was to be in front/me sending stories of the soldier himself.45

  Fenton capitulated to Marien’s demand to be allowed to go forward but the relationship with Army PR and the ABC’s role would be a continuing aggravation and would probably play some part in Marien’s later decision to leave the ABC.

  Following the capture of Lae, Australian forces also captured Kaiapit further inland along the Markham Valley, to secure the overland way to Lae against any Japanese counter attack. At the end of September, Marien flew out from Nadzab to follow the Australians as they advanced from Kaiapit to the Ramu Valley, cutting and securing airstrips for the continuing campaign.

  2 October 1943 We’ve come some 50 miles in 4½ days. The Battalions must have doubled that distance by their zigzag sweeping patrols. Captain Bob Rose . . . tells me that the Japs [have] been 24 hours ahead of us all during advance from Kaiapit . . . our series airstrips, Kaiapit, Sagarak, Marawasa, has enabled air transport to keep up the supplies to us. This system giant leapfrog been added to by droppings. The Jap has nothing to counter this. We’ve, in addition, advanced under constant cover of fighters and Mitchells.46

  Kakagog Kate – Finschhafen

  Much of the Japanese garrison at Lae escaped inland over the Huon Peninsula. The Australian division was now tasked with capturing the peninsula and the key Japanese positions at Finschhafen on the coast and nearby Sattelberg Mountain. Finschhafen was taken up in most part by a Lutheran mission but its narrow bay and anchorage made it a significant base for Japanese barges. The 9th Division landed north of Finschhafen on 22 September and Peter Hemery arrived a few days later by PT boat, transferring in the dark to a landing craft and then jumping off into waist-deep water to wade ashore. He found a tense atmosphere.

  25 September 1943 Been 18 raids a day since landed plus odd night raids bringing the total near 30. Several of these heavy pattern bombing which caused considerable casualties. Been absolutely no contact with outside since landing. All dressing stations overfull with wounded – short plasma, having [to] give live transfusions. MO worried not being able to get wounded away from beach and bombing.47

  Correspondents already there were ‘pissed off’, observed Hemery. There was no way to get their stories out, and he would face the same problem – all his despatches from Finschhafen would be delayed.

  The Australians were aiming to capture the high ground around Finschhafen and pushed from the beach up into the hills. Hemery was watching from the high point of one observation post when Japanese mortar fire forced his group back down the hill in a scrambling flat crawl through the kunai grass to the safety of an Australian weapons pit. ‘Seems bombing isn’t my meat, [a] conviction I’ve felt for [a] long time,’48 he noted. There were ten Australian casualties and by the time Hemery had climbed back down to the relative safety of the Bumi River he was ‘absolutely trembling with exhaustion’.

  Allied and Japanese bombing from the air, artillery fire and ground attacks continued over the following days, with the key objective the capture of the hospital at Kakagog. Australian troops fought down towards Kakagog but sheer cliffs forced them to swing around for an attack on Salankaua Plantation towards the coast, setting up camp as darkness fell.

  Darkness had barely brought the fireflies sparkling among the trees before the enemy counter attacked, driving uphill towards our waiting troops. The darkness broke into a hundred jets of flame, as we opened up. Twice they counter attacked, but each time we drove them back with casualties. Then our artillery took a hand and, right through that long night of the first of October, harassed the Jap with sporadic fire. As dawn brought another day’s fighting to the weary men, we prepared for another attack, moving further down into the plantation from the hillock we’d defended during the night. And then – came anticlimax . . . the only live Japs the Aussies found when they advanced was a pathetic party, wan and pale in the dawn light, huddled together in a corner of a ruined hut.49

  Strong Japanese resistance was continuing well inland at Sattelberg Mountain but the Australians had captured Finschhafen. Hemery’s news despatches were now getting out but still with some delay before they reached Moresby, from where Dudley Leggett could voice them or shepherd them onwards to the ABC. Hemery was struck by the deathly quiet in Finschhafen after the ‘continuous din’ of bombing and artillery fire of the previous days – and the different atmosphere to the ‘slightly delirious, triumphal finish to the race between the 7th and 9th Divisions for the honour of being the first into Lae’. The troops at Finschhafen ‘had fought a fierce battle for possession of Kakagog hospital on the heights overlooking Finschhafen proper. They were weary, tired men after their battle following hard on the heels of the magnificent mountaineering which outflanked the Japs on the Finschhafen side of the Bumi River.’ Hemery’s feature – Kakagog Kate – recorded two weeks later back in Port Moresby, described the destruction at Kakagog but ended with a whimsical note:

  . . . the whole story of the occupation of Finschhafen is stolen by Kakagog Kate. Probing among the bomb craters, an ack-ack major heard an irritable clucking. He excavated a bit, and found a box which had once contained a dozen bottles of gin, its label now overprinted with Japanese characters. He opened it. Inside was a truculent Kakagog Kate – a fine Rhode Island Red hen brooding over five eggs. Completely surrounded by bomb craters, with ruin all around her, Kate had remained true to her task. With tender care she was placed in the major’s jeep. For two days he and his men fought off those who fancied a chicken dinner. Their battle was rewarded. On the morning of the third day, five healthy chickens smashed their way through their shells into the world of war.50

  Hemery headed back to Moresby with the usual surreal episodic hops of wartime travel. From Nadzab, with wounded awaiting evacuation at the airstrip and flights over the mountains turned back because of bad weather, he dog-legged on a flight to Dobodura. That night he had the luxury of a swim in the river and sat outside in the dark evening to watch a film – the ‘indecently sexy’ Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier. The next day amid a competing tangle of transport priorities – cargoes of aero engines, wounded soldiers, and mail – he caught a plane to Moresby with the wounded. After his time on the frontlines at Finschhafen, his spirits appeared to drop as he arrived to find the ‘usual dead atmosphere’ back in Moresby.

  Departures – Port Moresby

  Under the ABC’s plan for coverage of the New Guinea campaign Dudley Leggett was not only a reporter but also the de facto administrative head of the group of Moresby-based ABC correspondents. Despite occasional bouts of illness, Dudley kept himself very fit and his daily calisthenics in the showers were an affront to one of the less energetic correspondents in the press quarters. In November, hundreds of Diggers at Moresby were entertained by the exploits of a keen few who competed in a sports carnival staged in the broiling New Guinea heat. Sport was still a part of Leggett’s life and rare surviving film footage shows him competing in the high jump and winning the competition with a precise and lithe scissor jump over the bar.

  Leggett’s direct responsibility in Moresby was field unit recordings, liais
on and co-ordination with the ABC, and with the Army. Haydon Lennard had arrived with GHQ when it moved up from Brisbane for a brief period, and Bill Marien, Peter Hemery and the shortwave correspondent, Gordon Williams, were also variously in Moresby or in the field. If Lennard was not in Moresby, Leggett would channel news despatches as well as talks from the correspondents in the field back to the ABC. Sometimes he would re-write shorter versions of correspondents’ reports and record them to be broadcast with the news bulletins. Neither Peter Hemery nor Haydon Lennard had particularly welcomed Leggett’s arrival and the rivalry between Hemery and Lennard made for a complicated brew of personalities. In one instance the competitiveness between Hemery and Lennard resulted in them both undertaking assignments on air raids over Rabaul and filing almost identical stories.

  Leggett and the technician Bill MacFarlane were now coordinating the recording of voice reports by the others and Leggett was also recording his own interviews and stories. Half of the group could not be accommodated at headquarters and were living four miles away. Communication from the field was slow and on some assignments, like Hemery’s coverage of Finschhafen, there was no contact for many days. Many seemingly routine but important things, like the logistics of recordings and a lack of typewriters, began to wear on Leggett’s patience.

  . . . when much of the material cannot be recorded until late in the day – until all facts are gathered in – and maybe three people are waiting to record – and some coaching is necessary for Lennard for example – and all three screaming for the wrath of heaven on those responsible for delaying the typewriters etcetera – cadging typewriters, thieving paper, carbon and what not – well it’s FUN . . . not to speak of terse wires about routing recordings through Brisbane when the slaves in New Guinea are trying to get the discs on the air in the quickest possible time, for after all that is the essence of our business, Did you say I am liverish? Well, that’s a mild expression.51