They Came in the Morning; Exercise Finished & How We Got The Cat Home

They Came in the Morning; Exercise Finished & How We Got The Cat Home

	THEY CAME in the MORNING Broome WA March 1942 by "XAV"
INSIDE the flying boat I could hear a baby crying and against the windows I could see the faces of half a dozen children, noses flat against the glass, eyes restless with curiosity. "Looks like a nursery," said Harry. "Yeah - only I'd hate my kids to be in that sort of nursery. Running for their lives-and they don't know a damn thing about it." The lighter bumped with the tide against the hull of the flying boat and we waited for her to settle before we slung the fuel-pipe across. The mechanic took it and made the connection. He flashed a grin and said something in Dutch. "O.K.," I said, and let the fuel run. Harry stood beside me, smiling at the kids. "I've been talking to these Dutchmen for the last week and they've been talking back at me and so far the only understanding we've had is 'Good day'. I've said 'Good day' to everything they've asked me. They must think I'm the local half-wit." Harry grinned. "Righto, you needn't say it." A motor boat pushed away from the front of the flying boat and chugged its way, crosswise to the tide, across to the jetty. The tide coming In broke the sun on the water in the bay but out at sea it was just bright smooth light merging with the haze in the bottom of the sky, promising heat. Flying boats, like giant seagulls stretching their wings, rode on the water, floating easily, and against half a dozen of them, like brown tern, bumped fuel lighters. The lighthouse on the point stood out against the sky, now an off-duty sentinel, and back behind the town a plane climbed up from the aerodrome and headed north-east. One of the flying boats started her engines and the sound boomed across the water, frightening gulls into nervous flapping flight. Harry spat into the water. "I wonder how much longer these refugees'll be arriving? There can't be many more left in Java. If there are, they'd be prisoners now." "I don't know." I heard engines again and I looked out towards the point. There were eight planes coming in low above the lighthouse, coming fast and the sun glinting on their wings as they banked to come in over the bay. "Here come some more." But these looked different. "they're fighters! Must be Yanks!" Harry was shielding his eyes, squinting against the sun. "Christ! They're Japs!" Exclamation marks behind his words, I saw the red bursts of the guns from the two leading planes, the white plumes racing across the water. Then there was a roar from a boat between us and the point and I saw flame g(, up in a red and yellow streak, ugly raw colour that fascinated, horror splashed against the clean whiteness of the boat. "The swine! " The planes came on in, flying low, the sound of them hurling itself at you with a roar that was almost a physical blow, making you want to run only there was nowhere to run to, and there were women screaming and Harry swearing loud and blasphemously. The first two planes went over, so low and so fast they seemed shapeless and shadowless, just a swift ear-shattering dark rush of wind and then I saw the white columns magically appearing in the water, coming with terrific speed towards us. "Down! " We dived flat and as I hit the deck between two oil-drums I thought, clear against the shock in my mind, "What a hell of a place to dive for safety!" The bullets chopped the end of the lighter, splintering wood and ricocheting off the ironwork with a horrible short-lived sound, and then I heard the roar again, this time so close I knew this was death. My brain cleared from the loud blankness of the roar and I rolled on my back and saw the last four planes go over, streaks against the sky, and from the boat beside us flame was shooting in angry eruption. The Dutch mechanic was gone from the top of the hull and now the faces at the window were contorted with panic, terror-stricken fingers clawing at the glass, and the crying of the baby was lost in the screams. "Oh, God! I scrambled to my feet, sick and weak in my stomach, not with fear-the shock had allowed no time for fear-but with the horror of it. The lighter still bumped against the boat and I leaped up and tore open the door. The flames were ravenous, eating their way along the hull, and there were only two sounds in the horror, the screams and the flames crackling. The doorway was filled with a struggling mass, insane with fear, fighting each other without knowing it, knowing only the flames behind them and the planes that would come again. They came tumbling out, falling from the doorway to the bottom of the lighter, and vainly I tried to get them into order, shouting myself hoarse but they were deaf to anything but the flames. Harry was picking the kids up and carrying them to the other end of the lighter and he was saying over and over, without expression, like a broken gramophone record: "The swine. The swine . . ." Now some of the women dropped from the door-way, frightened but holding on to their fear, trying to be brave in front of the kids. One last one came out and I yelled: "Any more?" But she just shook her head and mumbled something in Dutch. The flames now were right along the hull and the heat was terrific, tightening the skin on your face. I put my head in the door and at the far end, crumpled over some seats, I could see bodies, two women and four children, but the flames were already starting to envelope them. I heard Harry yell: "Come on, Joe! Here they come again!" I swung out of the boat and dropped down to the lighter. The planes were coming back round the lighthouse but now they were making their run farther out in the bay. We pushed off from the boat, now just fire floating on the water and beginning to spread as the oil ran out. We saw the blunt Zeros go in low over the water, the ominous white marks on the water a hundred yards ahead of them. Then the flame shot up from the first boat as they passed over it. The first two planes pulled up a little and the second two dipped to gun the next boat. It was so efficient and systematic you had to admire it even then. The lighter chugged its way towards the jetty and never had it moved so slowly. The planes finished their run along the bay, banked steeply, becoming almost transparent as the sun caught them, and went diving down behind the town. "They're doing over the aerodrome! yelled Harry. "They aren't missing a flaming thing! " I heard an engine out on the water and I turned my head. A seaplane was skimming along the water and the pilot was doing everything he could to get her off as quickly as possible. He lifted her nose and she climbed steeply and headed inland over the mangroves. "They'll get him! He hasn't got the speed!" The Zeros came down over the bay again but this time one left the formation and went straight across the water, lifting as he headed in over the shore, going like a bat out of hell in the direction the seaplane had taken. I looked at Harry and he shook his head and turned away. The women and children huddled together, some of the children crying, others just staring, shocked into muteness, and the women were talking, seared as hell but trying to soothe the frightened kids. There were fourteen of them, five women and nine children, and only now, looking at them, did I notice that some of them were wounded and burned. I knelt down amongst them but I knew that I couldn't do anything for them. Two of the women and one of the children were badly burned, their clothes flaked and black, their skin cracking and lifting, the flesh shrivelling and turning a reddish-brown. The kid was screaming with the pain and the women were silently crying, biting their lips. I felt helpless and I turned to the two youngsters, both little girls, who had been hit by bullets. One of them had fainted and a woman was cradling her head in her lap. The other just sat and stared at the shattered stump of her arm. I knew she had been hit by a bullet and suddenly I got the sickness back in my stomach again. I stood up as Harry ran the lighter in beside the jetty. Men were waiting there for us and they took the Dutch from us as quickly as they could and hurried them up to some railway trucks standing on the wharf line. "What happens now?" I asked from the lighter, looking up at Mac, my V.D.C. platoon sergeant, who seemed to be running things on the jetty. "I don't know. We'll have to try and get as many of those people in off the boats as we can. The Nips are having everything their own way-not a bit of opposition. They're just flying around in a circle, pasting the bay and the 'drome. We can't do a flamin' thing but watch them. There they go again!" It was like watching a newsreel, something you know is happening but has no connection with you. They came down over the bay again and flame leaped from three more boats. Now there were floating pools of fire about all the boats and we could see figures leaping from the boats into the fire. "Oh, Christ! What slaughter!" I couldn't stand it any longer. I wanted to shut my eyes, shut them for days so that when I opened them I would see only the bay as it used to be, only the luggers, and the single Qantas boat and the gulls, shut them so that I couldn't see this horror that I know now I shall always see even with my eyes closed in the night. But I had to get out there and do something. Just watching, feeling impotent, I was going mad. "Come on! Let's get out there!" Mac leaped down into the boat with us and we swung the lighter out. The lighter was never meant for speed and I felt like jumping over the side and running ahead on the water. There were heads bobbing about in the water and they were lucky the tide was coming in or we might never have caught them. We slowed, and bent over the side, dragging them into the lighter. I was weak inside with revulsion at the way some of them were burned but I tried to make my mind a blank and kept looking towards the point, waiting for the planes again. We kept moving around, picking up survivors. I leaned over and lifted a little boy, whose head was singed bald, from a man who, as soon as I took the kid from him, sank back into the water, disappearing beneath the surface. I put the little boy down and stood up to see the planes coming in again. This time they had broken formation and were coming in in a long line spread out across the bay. I saw the nose of one dip and, standing there, not able to move, stunned by the inhuman brutality of it, I watched him come down, growing bigger fast, blotting out the sky, and I heard the bullets come across the lighter, and then he was gone. I swung my head and like an idiot gibbering screamed blasphemously after him, but the fast-disappearing shape was as impersonal as far-off lightning, ignorant of my fury or that I even lived. I turned and the first thing I saw was the little kid I had just dragged from the water. I leaned quickly over the side and was violently sick. A bullet had hit him in the face. There were other boats out now and we turned for the jetty. We knew the planes had gone now. I leaned against the side, weak with trembling, and looked at those in the lighter, the burned and the wounded and the frightened, and if I live till the kids in that lighter are old men I shall never forget that sight. I had four years in the last war and none of it will ever be as clear as those twenty minutes I had just been through. Back on the water fifteen boats were now just charred hulks and over behind the town smoke wreathed up from the 'drome. The town still sprawled in its dust and early morning heat, an island in the middle of the destruction. We drew in at the jetty and a doctor from the local hospital dropped down into the lighter. Mac clambered up on to the wharf. "Come up to headquarters as soon as you can. They may need us." He went along the jetty and I turned back to help the doctor.

MONDAY morning, the 20th July, 1942, dawned bright and clear at our far north-eastern post. A strong south-easterly wind was blowing. Visibility in the cool, crisp morning air was pretty good, and observers, Privates Dave Robinson and Bill Buckle, were on duty some four or five miles from my headquarters.

This O.P. was situated on a ridge skirting the north-eastern shores of Queensland and overlooking that vast expanse of ocean stretching out to the Great Barrier Reef. This post was connected to my H.Q. by a telephone erected by the V.D.C. personnel stationed here, and I was the corporal in charge of the post at the time.

While sitting on the high rocks and steadfastly gazing out to sea, the observers' attention was suddenly attracted by the loud detonation of a 500-pound bomb as it struck the sea. Above the spot of impact a large aircraft could be seen; it was losing height, and a minute or two later appeared to crash on the sea.

The incident was immediately reported by telephone to me, and, realizing the seriousness of the position, I straightway dispatched a message to the Navy reporting the crash, as was my duty. I also instructed Mr. F. A. Krause, the local schoolmaster and scoutmaster, to stand by with his 20400t motor launch, ready to proceed to the scene of the crash if required. Instructions came back to proceed to the spot with all possible speed. Krause took a quick glance at his chart, made due allowance for drift by wind and tide and his position west of O.P. and decided on a course 15' East, as I had told him that the position given by the observers at the time of the aircraft's descent was 20* East and ten to twelve miles or more from shore.

Again the telephone rang, this time advising that the aircraft appeared to be slowly sinking, but what was actually happening was that the machine was slowly drifting over the horizon.

Krause and I, accompanied by the local doctor and an officer from the settlement who elected to come with us, boarded Krause's launch and started for the scene of the crash. These two gentlemen, however, shortly after

wards transferred to another launch which approached us. Before this boat could take part in any extended search it had to return to refuel and secure the services of a white officer as skipper. This was valuable time lost and needless to say this boat failed hopelessly to locate the distressed aircraft.

Meanwhile our launch chugged its way forward through the rough, wind-tossed sea towards the vicinity of the distressed aircraft. It was a trip I shall never forget. The launch lurched and rolled and tossed about, and after one and a half hours' travelling through these crazy waters, to my great delight and astonishment the tail of the crashed aircraft appeared above the horizon, and, more wonderful still, it was directly ahead of us.

The skill of this feat satisfied me of Krause's ability as a navigator. About half an hour later we were alongside the distressed machine. We dropped our anchor, but unfortunately in the wrong place, for the skipper of the aircraft yelled out to us, "For God's sake don't anchor there! We are drifting in your direction very fast."

Krause and I moved as if we had been stung, and in quick time had the anchor inboard again and we were moving forward to another position. We were none too soon, for as the aircraft, which proved to be a Catalina forced down through lack of fuel, rolled and tossed in the big seas its starboard wing just missed crashing down on our deck by a few inches.

We again dropped anchor and Krause clambered into his eight-foot flattie, and rowed over to the "Cat." Several times he looked like being swamped, so rough was the sea and when alongside the Cat. he narrowly escaped being pushed under by the steps on the port side of the plane.

The skipper of the Catalina, Flight-Lieutenant Brian Higgins, told Krause that he was not certain whether or not a supply of fuel was being brought to him in a crash boat or mercy boat, and on being asked if he could take off in such a sea should he receive fuel, he replied, "Not in this rough sea. We need calmer water."

When asked what would happen if the aircraft were left to drift about in such a sea, Higgins, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, said, "If the floats don't get bashed off by the waves we may survive; but if they go, your guess is as good as mine as to what- will happen to us, as our rubber boat is useless. It's been badly punctured."

So as to prevent the floats from being broken off their struts, several of the fourteen men on board were spread out on the upper part of the starboard wing, thus keeping the port float above the tops of the big waves.

The Catalina seemed, on the whole, to be in a pretty hopeless situation unless something could be done, and done quickly, and the lives of fourteen men, among whom were a number of casualties from a forward operational base, were in grave jeopardy. Moreover, the aircraft itself was worth £60,000 or more, and her loss would be serious.

Krause didn't hesitate. He offered to tow the giant machine and its complement back to safe anchorage, some seventeen or eighteen miles away.

"What! With that little boat?" came the surprised exclamation. "Have you enough power? "

Krause assured the Catalina's commander that he was quite confident he could do it.

A towrope was produced and made fast to the Catalina and the stem of the launch, and then came a moment of terrific suspense as she began to forge slowly ahead and take up the strain. As the towline tautened the men on board the plane stood and watched every move.

To their relief, as the water began to foam under the launch's counter the io-ton Catalina began to move for-ward in her wake.

It was now just after midday, the sea was still very rough, and our small boat was bobbing about on the sea like a cork, while the giant plane at the other end of our towline surged and swayed as wave after wave swept past her.

There came a sudden crack. The towing post had snapped through. Quickly the towrope was passed around the two uprights that supported the sundeck. That worked well enough until it was discovered that the rope was cutting through the uprights. Old rags were stuffed between the rope and the stanchions, but eventually the rope did break. We picked it up and bridled it securely around the stanchions and had no further trouble from that source.

The sea was so rough that it was impossible transfer any men from the Catalina to the launch, so that she was very light in the water, and it became necessary to have more weight in the stern. Krause decided to move a drum of oil fuel from the forepart to the stern, and while he was doing that he handed me steering wheel. I was proud to be doing this and so long as I kept the boat headed into the seas I was all right. Quite unexpectedly, however, a cross-wave hit the launch, where-upon she rolled and plunged and did everything but capsize. When this happened Krause was just stepping into the cockpit, and he slipped and fell between the engine and cabin bunk, hurting his back severely. He recovered quickly, however, sufficiently at least to be able to carry on for the rest of the trip, though he was in considerable pain.

As the sun was dropping toward the distant hills on the mainland we approached the channel at the northern entrance to our anchorage, and the sight of a 20 foot launch towing a huge flying boat with a wing-span of 104 feet must have been very like watching a beetle trying to drag along a dead bird. However, as dusk was falling, after six hours of thrills and hard, strenuous towing, our little launch gently glided the Catalina to a safe mooring in front of the V.D.C. post.

The darkness was deepening when a boat's light was seen scudding across the calm waters of the bay. Was it the crash boat with the expected supply of fuel? A signal flashed from the Catalina's Aldis lamp brought her to the flying boat's side, and such she proved to be. And how surprised were her crew to find the distressed aircraft safely moored in harbour! And how relieved, for they had expected to spend the night anxiously searching the sea for her.

After the Catalina had been refuelled her officers, crew and wounded soldiers came ashore and were afforded the hospitality of the settlement's officers and billeted in the staff houses. There were at least fourteen thankful hearts that night as the rescued men laid their weary heads upon the pillows and fell asleep.

And at least there were two men who felt that they had done their bit for their fellow men and for their country, having accomplished what at first appeared to be an impossible task. I for one, felt proud to have had a share in that memorable exploit.

The rescued men paid a high tribute to the very skilful way in which Flight-Lieutenant Higgins and his co-pilot, Pilot-Officer Cowan, had brought the Catalina down on such a rough sea, and it is all the more to be regretted that such a brave and skilful pilot as Brian Higgins should have lost his life some months later when attempting to make a similar kind of landing along the New South Wales coast.

Q140627

FOR VALOUR OR SOMETHING

EVERY large body of men has its individuals who stand out above their fellows by reason of some remarkable personal trait or virtue (or lack of it) and the V.D.C. is no exception.

Here is a list (entirely unofficial) of decorations that have been awarded to V.D.C. men, together with their citations, and we congratulate the men concerned on the distinctions they have earned:

Pte X. Hibitionist; Conspicuous Service Medal

For bravery above the call of duty, in repeatedly walking through the scrub in the most conspicuous manner, regardless of cover, and displaying himself fearlessly at all times to the imaginary enemy, without a thought of concealment.

Pte John Careless; Long Service Medal

For presenting himself on parade no fewer than two consecutive Sundays, on one of which he was correctly dressed in every detail, except that his hat was on back to front.

L/Cpl Iva Drought; Order of the Camel, 2nd Class

For colossal corn-carrying capacity and unfailing attention to the important detail of never undertaking the slightest operation without an adequate supply of liquid fuel. This N.C.O. empties his water-bottle immediately the command "March at Ease!" is given for the first time, and thereafter falls out at every public house for restocking.

Pte Fugh Coopons; Home Guard Cross

For reckless disregard of Battalion Routine Order No. 6o6 forbidding the use of Army equipment off parade, by constantly wearing his green pants about the house, his boots in the garden and his greatcoat about the village on cold nights.

L/Cpl. I. Diehard; Extinguished Service Order

For remarkable stamina and endurance in deferring token death until he had reported vital information. In the battle of Swan View, his entire section was obliterated by an imaginary mortar shell, but he, shockingly mutilated, strolled back to Platoon H.Q. through heavy token fire, and gave valuable details as to enemy strength before lying back with a cigarette and reporting himself dead.

Cpl Thynne Fathom; Conspicuous Service Order

For consistent outstanding service. On every parade this N.C.O. attends, he is absolutely outstanding compared with the remainder of the section. With a height of 6 feet 2inches he can be seen from a distance Of 4,000 yards, provided he doesn't stand sideways.

Pte Walter Welter; Extinguished Service Medal

For endurance. Private Welter for his size carries more foot-pounds of equipment to the cubic centimeter than any other man in his section. When fully laden with all regulation accoutrements and paraphernalia, this soldier emits a loud creaking sound, and it is only regretted that he cannot turn out on wet Sundays, since there is a limit to his strength, and a Mark VII greatcoat is the last straw.

Pte Dooper Snooper; Conspicuous Service Medal

For scouting. This soldier, by reason of his comparative youth, has been repeatedly selected, much to his own disgust, for advanced scouting and reconnaissance. His section has become so accustomed to the sight of his lofty form blundering through the scrub, that his disappearance down a sand-pit on a recent manoeuvre left them at the mercy of the enemy. The section is lost without Private Snooper; Private Snooper is lost with or without his section.

L/Sgt P.R.O. Crastinator; Medal of Honour

For exemplary keenness and leadership. By his constant inquiries during parades as to the time, so that he will know when to knock off, he displays forethought not only for himself, but for his men. In attack, he takes up a commanding position in the rear, so that he can see what is going on; while in retreat, he leads his men rapidly and without hesitation to the previously prepared positions which he is adept in selecting.