GALLANT ALLY

To me, in the past, these words were a commonplace extract from a bleak official communiqué but that day they came alive.

The launch was on its daily run to S--, and I, on military duty, was a passenger for the return trip. Seated on the deck of the launch was a small, slight, tanned youth. 

He had a mop of black, straight hair. With his stockinged feet he was turning over the fly-wheel of the engine, the self-starter being out of commission. 

A small, perspiring, panting form seated itself beside me.

"I gotta get new batteries for that dam' engine," he said. "Look my feet!"

Murmuring my sympathy, I inspected the blistered soles of the boy's feet.

"How you like air raid this morning? he asked me, after he had treated his feet and inserted them into an old pair of canvas shoes. "Whack, bang! And I go very flat. Dam' Japs! "

But he laughed loudly as he spoke, to indicate his contempt f or the enemy. He had a most infectious laugh which showed his small white teeth. A moment later his face became dead serious, as he continued: "Natives go like hell. Very much frightened when bombs come, and no white man there at time. I very sorry for native boys. Good boys. They work plenty hard."

He lit a cigarette and puffed in silence for a while.

"What nation you think I?" he asked me suddenly. "You think I Javanese?"

"Maybe," I said doubtfully. I ran my eyes over his small, lithe form, his browned legs, and glanced at the black-haired head, the bright, almond shaped eyes and comely face.

"No, not Javanese," he said. "I born Rabaul." He paused, to allow me time to solve the puzzle. After a while he said: 'You guess my nation yet? " I had to admit to failure.

"I full Chinese," he announced proudly. "But I born Rabaul. Some try to say I half Chinese. No. I full Chinese. This"-with a flourish at his brown legs-"this sunburn. My name Johnny Wing."

I reflected that he had quite probably told the truth, and I was glad that I had not offended him by risking an incorrect guess.

"How old you think l?"

"Eighteen? Twenty?" I hazarded.

"Twenty-two."

"I been to China," said Johnny reflectively. "I go in nineteen-three-eight. I been to Tokyo. Very great place, but I not like it. Dam' Japs make very bad thing in China. I go back to Rabaul. Nineteen-three-two, nineteen-three nine, I study mechanical boats. I got better launch than this at Rabaul."

Again he paused, and again I kept silent, for I knew he had more to say.

"I married. I only married for three months. Dam' Jap planes come Rabaul and kill her."

Johnny rose and went into the tiny cabin, returning with a slightly crumpled post-card in his hand.

"This my wife's photograph," he said, and I looked at the likeness of a slim and singularly beautiful Chinese girl.

"Only three months we married. Then I get out of Rabaul and come here. I go Moresby first, then join Australian Army and come here working on boat engines."

Before we made the return trip I heard more about Johnny from his Australian comrades in arms, amongst whom he was extremely popular. His single ambition in life now, I learned, was to be up to his eyes in the fight against the Japanese.

We arrived back just before dusk that evening. Johnny and I parted with mutual expressions of goodwill. I had hardly gone three hundred yards along the track back to camp when the sirens sounded. I went to ground and felt the earth shudder as bombs thudded around the wharves and ships. Pursued by an angry trail of ack-ack bursts, the Mitsubishis droned away into the distance.

The "all-clear" sounded, and I turned back towards the wharf. On the way, however, I stopped at the First Aid Post, and I heard a voice groaning "Dam' Japs! Oh, dam' Japs!" Johnny, badly hit, was being loaded on to an ambulance.

"Game kid, that," said the Aid Post Sergeant. "They tell me he wouldn't run when the sirens went. Didn't want to frighten the native boys. He got 'em quietly into the slit trenches, then was too late getting back to his own. I doubt if he'll last the night."

He didn't.

"VX17859"

I HAVE SEEN MEN LAUGH.

• I HAVE seen men laugh in a wilderness of pain 
  • When death was a mushroom from the skies 
  • And black terror leaned from the golden sun 
  • To stroke the yellow sand with blobs of flesh; 
  • When the hell of the expanding roar 
  • As the planes dived deeper crushed hot pincers 
  • On the brain and the stomach turned 
  • From the stink of death.... Then men laughed 
  • Of the air And the laughing was not easy 
    • Nor was the dying.
• I have seen death come in the harlot night, 
  • Boil through the rivets of stars and split 
  • The skull of the moon with screaming, 
  • Reach down and touch off the leaping fires; 
  • I have seen the red flower of agony 
  • Burst from the heart and its testament 
  • Of blood spill suddenly from the nostrils.
  • And still men laughed 
  • Though the laughing was not easy 
    • Nor was the dying.
• Always was laughter, necessary laughter 
  • When death was a ritual and the nerves 
  • Jerked to an unremembered memory: 
  • When life was a statement of murder 
  • And fat little fears stormed the backstairs 
  • Of the mind; and the urgency rose 
  • To beat fists on the dank curtains
  • then there was need of laughter.
    • Only-it was not easy.
• Laughter in the anonymous places of time! 
  • When the mind stabbed guesses at meaning 
  • And the corridors of thought led back, 
  • When from the giggling intimacy 
  • Of mutilation a pattern of reason 
  • Had to be woven and the hysterical 
  • Decibels of terror governed to sanity, 
  • Laughter, laughter was sanity.
  • So men laughed . 
    • Only ... sometimes ... the dying 
    • Was easier than the laughing.

"QX6905"

AMBUSH

Turning the pages of a recent military pamphlet dealing with the Owen Stanley fighting, I came on those words. I read them again and remembered.

C Company of our battalion had the job. Three days after landing, clad in the new green jungle uniform, we had made contact with the Japs pressing on Moresby. Some of the men had seen action in Syria, but many were new. It was no pleasant baptism of action for them to fight this rearguard-at this time Milne Bay was the only setback to the apparently irresistible Japanese advance. Perhaps it took Australian infantrymen to shatter the subconscious belief in Japanese invincibility; not that we were too sure of shattering it that morning.

Behind the Ioribaiwa Ridge on a miniature plateau not far below the top of the ridge the rough track breaks into two, enclosing a large patch of kunai grass before it falls down thousands of steps to the pit of the valley. Late one afternoon the battalion retreated from the ridge whooping and firing long haphazard bursts in a pretence of panic. Our whole company lay dispersed in this four feet of kunai grass, waiting for the Japs to push up over the ridge.

A hundred and fifty yards up the rise above us on both sides of the track was an abandoned supply dump. Most of us had managed to snatch a tin of jam or baked beans on the way through it. We left a little to interest the Japs, but the tins of bully beef and mutton that we could not carry were spiked with bayonets.

Night fell quickly but still the enemy had not come. In the darkness we lay in this unprotected grassy patch with bayonets or machetes near our hands to stab the swarming devils if they came. No firing-that would reveal our position to their machine-gunners. I imagined my living hours would be terminated at the latest, a few hours after dawn. I said so to my mate on the Bren. He agreed, so we had the last feast as in the condemned man's cell-a few chips of biscuit in a neat tin of marmalade. Home, comfort, the girl-it was a laugh to think of seeing them again!

No sleeping during the night was the order. We cussed those who couldn't sleep without snoring. An occasional fire-fly floated and darted weirdly against the blackness. Perhaps they should have been long anxious hours, but we were tired and fatalistic.

Next morning we cleaned our weapons as silently as possible-rifles, Brens and Tommy guns. And the two 2-inch mortars whose ammunition had been reinforced by a plentiful supply of bombs, which another battalion had donated to our mortar men for our good and to save themselves the carrying.

Peering into the tangle of rotting trees, vines and small palms which sprawled on the slope above us, my first awareness of the Japs came from the sound of their movement in the jungle brushing foliage and their feet slipping in the insecure leaf-mould. Then there was the sound of laughter-that high-pitched, somewhat nauseating Japanese squeak; apparently the ridge was unoccupied. Apparently it was another walk-over for them.

More laughter and cries of pleasure. They'd found the supply dump. "Good tucker, good tucker," some said in English. There was the occasional sound of a tin clashing on equipment as they ate. Meanwhile we waited, and the grass-blades wavered in places as someone turned on his hip.

Some came farther down the hill. A full company of men lying for a space of time must make some noise. They must have thought there were a few stray Australians peering at them between the blades of kunai grass. A coolie walked across the path in full view and back again. A sing-song Japanese voice shouted: "Fire, fire." But we waited. We'd heard of Japanese tricks to draw fire.

Forward of us, one on the left and another on the right flank, they brought up two machine-guns. The one on the right was set up a few yards in front of a burly, black-headed countryman. That was close enough. He fired a burst from his Tommy through the brown man's chest and saw the blood spurt on his clothes and run from his mouth.

That burst was the general signal for an orchestra of fire-Brens, Tommies, mortars and rifles. It was a hell of a din. On the left the other machine-gun was wiped out by a section, sticking together now as they always did. Two mates got the gunner lying behind a tree with two nicely-aimed grenades.

The company poured its fire into the jungle hillside like an infantryman's idea of pattern bombing. I heard the short snap of rifles, the deeper-throated chatter of the Tommies, the sharp bursts of Brens-and the thump of mortars landing up the ridge. Some had to kneel to fire over the heads of their mates.

I fired three mags from the Bren in quick time up the track towards the point where the Japs had been carousing around the supply dump. It was all instantaneous, sudden, surprising! I heard them squealing in the bushes as the bullets found their marks. So cunning little men can squeal -squeal in plenty- not like most Australians.

Then the signal to withdraw sounded on the whistle-out we trotted, man behind man, platoon after platoon, down the mountain track. One man falling over in the tufty kunai grass lost his netted tin helmet. Another cursed as he tugged his Bren free from the stiff grass that had twined around the pistol-grip. The company commander stood with his platoon commanders shepherding us past him. The mortars were still firing up the hill and the bombs were splintering the trees and landing on the hillside with that sharp thump, thump.

We were sudden in attack and sudden in withdrawal and the dazed Japs did not follow us with a shot. There wasn't a casualty. One man slipped down the hillside from the narrow track, but rejoined the company three hours later, and we passed through the next companies hidden in succession at different points to the rear.

A few days later rumour told us that a patrol from an independent company had visited the scene of our ambush and counted a hundred dead bodies on the hillside. But when we came again over that part the bodies had been burned or buried. Whatever the truth of the rumour, the Japs came no nearer to Moresby than that point along the Owen Stanley trail and from there started the push that drove them to Buna and Gona and annihilated them.

"NX9717"

"It's No Good Gus, They've Got Too Much Start".

DITCHED

Wiping the sweat and grime from our hands and faces we commenced the tedious task of wrapping our cigarettes. 

The sweat still oozing from the skin made it very difficult. 

The papers rubbed through wherever a drop of sweat fell on them.

Here was an open tract of kunai grass, while towering above on either side was dense jungle. It was the same for miles. Neither the jungle nor kunai grass appeared to have any intention of encroaching on the other's share of the poor sandy soil.

My meditations were interrupted as the commander's voice broke the quiet of our rest. "Start up! The gunners will drive !"

Reluctantly casting aside half-smoked cigarettes we wriggled down into our seats, which squeaked in complaint. The gunners ground in the gears and the column again pitched forward.

Smoke billowed up behind and a startled flock of blackish coloured quail whirred up in front. But the run was of short duration. Something had gone amiss on the left flank.

Ho, who had taken over the controls of the outside tank, was gone-not a sign of him to be seen anywhere.

But the mystery was quickly solved. Before us yawned a large bomb crater in the kunai grass, and down at the bottom was the tank. Ho with the rest of the crew was on top of the tank helplessly watching the quicksand and water oozing in through the driver's flap. Certainly it was a mess for a tank to be in.

Only yesterday-all day-we had practised ditching and unditching, till utterly sick of it, and now here it was again-this time no shamming and to be done right away.

Three tanks were coupled up, but in vain they strained at their cables. Four tanks were put on, then six-but still the honours were with the quicksand which stuck to its prize like glue. Every time the tanks pulled, its unseen, elastic grasp hauled them back again.

An attempt was made to bucket the water out of the crater and get a hole dug under the tank to break the suction. But it was just like digging a hole in a pot of porridge. Other ideas were called for, given, tried out, and failed. Further attempts were made the next day and the day after with no success.

Then during a rest came the bright idea "What about getting the Yanks to bring over their biggest bull-dozer?"

"By gosh! That's our only chance," was the prompt reply. "If that won't do it the tank is a wipe off."

The Yanks were approached and after hearing the tale, agreed with-"All right! We'll drag around the big fellow to-night when we cease work. By the time we arrive it will be dark, so get plenty of flashlights."

With renewed hope we toiled in the boiling sun, digging and corduroying a track down to the bottom of the crater. Our electricians worked overhead erecting poles and installing electric light.

Night fell and a roar in the distance told us the Yanks were on their way. The roar grew louder and finally the Yanks were on the scene with a giant machine, the biggest on the island.

It nosed down to the bottom of the crater and stopped within a few feet of the tank. Cables were soon secured joining them together.

"O.K., guy! Give her hell," came a Yankee voice from below.

The cables tightened, the ground trembled, and the full-blooded diesel, king of the island, heaved and reared in its fight to win the tank from the laws of the quicksand. Backwards and for-wards they see-sawed, neither giving in to the other.

"Get more cables! Feed her more gas! Stand back from those cables!" Advice was coming from all directions. The pressure was on and the excitement was intense.

Again the monster reared and this time hung to the tank - almost free. A gurgling noise came from underneath, the quicksand lost its hold and out came the tank. A spontaneous cheer went up. Our work was done, at least so we thought.

But surprises lay ahead. The Yanks told us their story: "Fifty of you guys are to do three days' work to compensate us for bringing over this plant, and to make up the work it's done." What a sock in the eye! The tank was out and we were in. Next morning in pouring rain three big American trucks pulled into our harbour area.

"Hey! You're off your course," yelled out one of our boys from underneath a tarpaulin.

"This is the Second Blank here."

"That's right!" came the answer. "We're over here to pick up you guys to do that little job." There wasn't a chance of backing out of it.

We packed our eating irons, water bottles, wrapped our ground sheets around us and climbed aboard. An hour later the trucks stopped and we hopped off to be presented with an axe each. A guide led us into the heart of the jungle to a spot where big timber was unlimited.

"There you are," he said. "Mow them down as fast as you like. There are tractors coming in to haul the logs out."

We stripped to the waist and commenced to blaze into the big trees.

A tank is not a very safe place - but it's far more healthy in one than in that jungle with fifty men learning by experience how to fell big timber in the right direction.

Anyway we stuck to it and felled enough timber to keep the Yanks hauling for a month.

While still suffering from sore hands an order came through for the bomb crater and cutting we dug to be filled in immediately. Just another three days' work.

Ho hasn't lived down the ditching of that tank yet and he never will.

"VX53397"