Kokoda (15 page)

Australia’s sudden sense of isolation and vulnerability was dramatically affirmed on the morning of 19 February 1942. The general shock at what was to happen is personified in the young sailors congregated on the deck of the minesweeper HMAS
Gunbar
in Darwin Harbour when they noted a neat formation of planes approaching. They were just commenting on the skill of the pilots in retaining a tight formation, when they noticed the planes releasing tiny silver objects… and then all hell broke loose. Before their very eyes, it seemed like half of Darwin exploded. The sound of bursting bombs rolled to them over the water, plumes of flame and smoke shot skywards and whole buildings fell to the ground.

These were the very Japanese bombers with escort Zeros—188 planes in all—from the aircraft carrier fleet that had destroyed Pearl Harbor, and they were doing much the same thing over Darwin: unleashing death and destruction from a clear blue sky.

By the time the planes had vanished, eight Allied ships lay at the bottom of the harbour, Darwin’s principal RAAF airfield had been damaged, twenty-three planes and numerous buildings were destroyed, 243 Australians were dead and some three hundred were wounded.

Australians in the Territory panicked, convinced that the bombing was simply the classic Japanese softening up of defences before an imminent invasion. The roads leading out of Darwin were clogged with refugees, some of whom were deserting soldiers. Such was the certainty that an invasion was occurring that, before fleeing, many people burnt their houses and sheds to deny the Japanese any succour, and the mood was beyond grim.

Very little of this reality showed up in the public pronouncement of Prime Minister John Curtin, when he said: ‘In this first battle on Australian soil it will be a source of pride to the public to know that the armed forces and the civilians comported themselves with the gallantry that is traditional in the people of our stock.’

It was a pronouncement to allay panic in the country’s main population centres, and Curtin could get away with it because Darwin was so distant and a fairly basic form of wartime censorship applied; but privately his government was worried as day by day the bombing on Darwin continued.

Japan recognised that Darwin was a base for naval and air operations against them, and that it was also an important conduit for transporting
matériel
to Allied troops across Southeast Asia trying to thwart them. Clearly, Darwin had to be destroyed. With its virtual destruction, the situation of the Allied troops became more desperate and the spectre of Japan more threatening.

The day after the bombing, Curtin was even stronger in his resolve, and was quoted in the
Sydney Morning Herald
saying that there was to be ‘no more looking away now. Fate has willed our position in this war. From now until victory, fate and war are the total words. We accept the issue and follow our destiny.’
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In Port Moresby, the Diggers did what they did most nights and gathered around whatever radio was available to get every bit of news they could. This was grim stuff indeed, for if the Japs were hitting Darwin, there were only two possibilities—either they would cop it next, or their families at home would…

More than ever, Prime Minister Curtin was now clear in his mind that it was time to bring the boys home. At that time, both Australia’s 6th and 7th divisions were on their way east across the Indian Ocean, but the issue was their destination. In very broad terms, Britain wanted the Australians to help thwart Japan’s push to the west towards India, while Australia wanted its finest sons to help thwart Japan’s thrust south towards Australia.

Winston Churchill took the view that all Commonwealth countries must do their bit to help further British Commonwealth interests, under British direction, and he had been insistent that the Australian troops be split between bolstering British defence of Burma, and putting garrisons in both Ceylon and Java. In an effort to convince Curtin, Churchill had even engaged the support of President Roosevelt, who sent cables to the Australian leader agreeing with the British prime minister’s line of reasoning.

Curtin was equally insistent that the Australian troops be brought immediately to Australia to defend Australian soil, and even two days before Darwin was bombed, had cabled Churchill to that effect. It was a big step for the prime minister of a country firmly within the British realm to insist on the primacy of his own country’s needs against the demands of a British prime minister, let alone against such a key ally as President Roosevelt, but Curtin had done it, even if the stress of it had been one of the factors that led to his hospitalisation.

What dismayed Curtin as he left hospital and again took over the reins of government, was that his cable had not altered the course of the troopships. At least one part of the problem was that Australia’s representative to the United Kingdom, Earle Page, had told Churchill that he would endeavour to change Curtin’s mind, and indeed tried to do so. Curtin’s reported comment in response to Page’s recommendation was one for the ages: ‘There are numerous geographical centres where an AIF or any other Division would be useful,’ he said, but from the viewpoint of Australia, ‘there is none east of Suez of greater importance than Australia [itself].’
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Curtin, in short, stuck to his guns, insisting that the boys come home to an Australian people who were clearly expecting them.

Churchill was equally insistent. His views had been set in stone when, back on 22 November 1940, he had sent a memo to his First Sea Lord, insisting that there be a concentration of ‘all possible naval and military aid in the European field, to the exclusion of any other interest… ’ If this was followed, Churchill maintained, ‘the defeat of Germany was ensured with certainty, and if subsequently it was in the American interest to deal with Japan, requisite steps would be possible.’
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And the implication of this was that if it wasn’t in the American interest, then countries like Australia would be on their own. The needs of Britain still came first.

The Japanese were now just forty miles from the Burmese capital, Rangoon, and the British prime minister wanted the Australian troops between the two, if only he could get them on site. Thus, in a display of extraordinary arrogance—even for the time—Churchill gave orders that instead of returning to Australia, the troopships were to alter their destination to Burma. It was only after he gave the order that he informed Curtin of what he had done—a full twenty-four hours after the event.

Curtin, shocked that it had come to this, needed time to think. So he went for a walk around Canberra’s Mount Ainslie. A long one. It was in fact so long that his key adviser on defence issues, Frederick Shedden, organised for messages to be put up on screens in the city’s theatres around Canberra, asking that Prime Minister Curtin return to his office or at least contact it. He did return, just after midnight, and sent the cable which fully affirmed Australia’s right as a sovereign nation to determine where its own troops would be sent.

‘[Indonesia] faces imminent invasion,’ he wrote flatly to Churchill. ‘Australia’s outer defences are now quickly vanishing and our vulnerability is completely exposed. With AIF troops we sought to save Malaya and Singapore, falling back on the Dutch East Indies. All these northern defences are gone or going. Now you contemplate using the AIF to save Burma. All this has been done, as in Greece, without adequate air support. We feel a primary obligation to save Australia… as a base for the development of the war against Japan.’

Churchill replied with a cable saying that because of the change in direction he had ordered, the ships would have to stop at Ceylon anyway for refuelling, which would give the Australian government three or four days to consider its position. Curtin replied immediately, informing Churchill in no uncertain terms that there would be no change of heart.

Churchill did the only thing he could do under the circumstances. He acceded to Curtin’s insistence. With the exception of two brigades of the 6th Division that Curtin allowed to stay in Ceylon as a temporary garrison, the rest of the convoys headed home to Australia, to the manifest relief of the troops themselves. Many of them had been away from family and loved ones for as long as eighteen months, and not only were they desperate to see them again, but if the homeland really was going to be under threat of invasion, then there was no doubt where the rightful place of its fighting men was. Crank the engines up, Huey, steer sou’ by sou’east, and let’s get these tubs home!

None were quite sure what their immediate future held, though it was at least a fair bet that it would involve fighting directly to defend home, either in Australia or at least in the region, as opposed to fighting for Britain in some far-flung destination.

As to the prospect of fighting side by side with ‘the Chocos’— the militia—that was a far less thrilling prospect. Everyone knew the militia were pathetic jokes with no guts or gumption, and no one wanted to go into battle with blokes like that guarding your rear or protecting your left flank. You needed blokes you could
rely
on, the
serious
soldiers, blokes like themselves.

This view was so widespread, and so often spoken about by the men, that one military commander, General Ned Herring—the Commander of the 6th Division—decided to address his troops on the subject. Gathering them in front of the bridge as the ship steamed through the Indian Ocean, Herring gave it to them straight.

‘In this fight,’ he said, ‘we are going to be alongside the AMF. I shall be quite honest with you. Perhaps I have said as many rude things as you about the militia. But we must forget about that now. We must help them. We must be a united people in this hour of crisis. We must not only put away all recrimination but we must help them in every way, in battle and out of battle. We have to show what an Australian should look like and how he should behave. You fellows have to remember that you have something to be proud of in the AIF and have to make the best of ourselves and not the worst. If we set the right example, people will stand firm, there will be no panic, and Australia will be safe. If we do not, then God help Australia.’
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Yes Sir, sure Sir, whatever you say, Sir. No one was going to have themselves up on insubordination charges by laughing out loud or cat-calling, but not one took it seriously either. It would take a bit more than a few words from a general to make them change their view about the Chocos.

During the six-week trip home on the Australian troopship
City of Paris
, Stan Bisset, in his role as Intelligence Officer of the 2/14th Battalion, helped pass the time in a useful manner. He taught the attentive soldiers such things as how to use your watch as a compass. If they were in the southern hemisphere, then when you pointed 12 o’clock to the sun, then halfway between 12 o’clock and the hour hand was north. In the northern hemisphere, you used the same method, but halfway between 12 o’clock and your hour hand would show south. You could also find your bearings by using the stars of the mighty Southern Cross, see, drawing imaginary lines in the sky between ‘The Pointers’ and the two principal axes of the cross, and… so on.

All the while, the troops ships kept heading home, home to Australia…

On another Australian troopship heading east was photographer Damien Parer. All the Australian troops had viewed the Japanese landing at Rabaul with alarm, but in the photographer’s case it was more so. For who could doubt that one of the most obvious places for the Japanese to next land would be on the north coast of New Guinea, which was precisely where his parents, John and Teresa Parer, had settled with some other members of his family. They were running a hotel at Wau, a place where the temptations of gambling didn’t just jump out and grab you. Despite the trials of Damien’s youth, and his father’s problems, Damien had remained close to his parents and now feared for their fate if they were caught in Japanese clutches.

When it had become clear that the Australians were pulling out of the Middle East, Parer’s boss, Captain Frank Hurley, had told him that he was himself intending to join the British Ministry of Information, so as to be able to stay there, and why didn’t Damien make the same move? Damien’s response was clear: ‘I don’t want to photograph the bloody English,’ he said. ‘I want to photograph Australians.’
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And even on the ship home, Damien was doing exactly that, capturing them sweltering in the midday sun, doing the odd calisthenics, eating, drilling, waiting, waiting, waiting—waiting to be off the ocean and home again…

CHAPTER FIVE

SWEATING IT OUT

You can have no idea just how hostile aircraft can be until they come to your area…

Aircraft which strafe or bomb your positions should be regarded with suspicion, if not deep mistrust. Aircraft which bomb and strafe your position and wear a red circle should certainly be regarded with deep mistrust. In fact, the deeper the better. A six-foot-deep slit trench is an ideal place from which to mistrust them…

Australian soldier VX116124
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Softly, softly now.

Frank Green, the clerk of the House of Representatives, had heard from John Curtin’s long-time driver—who resided at the Lodge—that the prime minister was getting very little sleep. With that in mind, Green, who was very close to Curtin, dropped into the Lodge late one night to have a chat, to see if perhaps he could calm the prime minister’s troubled spirit. (And that it was seriously troubled there was no doubt. At one point, Curtin’s senior Labor colleague Ben Chifley had returned to his room at the capital’s famed Kurrajong Hotel to find a message from Curtin. It was begging Chifley to come to the Lodge, however late it was, as Curtin felt he was ‘spiritually bankrupt’.
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