大象传媒

Chapter 6

The next day we sailed for Sydney. Surprisingly we could detect the smell of the eucalyptus trees before seeing the coast of Australia. The entry into Sydney Harbour as we sailed through the Heads into the extensive system of minor bays and promontories was fabulous. The famous "coat hanger" Harbour Bridge came into view and we dropped anchor close to the Governor's house.
We disembarked and were sent to Bradfield Park, a little way North of the city, which was a holding unit, before moving out to the airfield at Camden, some 35 miles SW of Sydney. Bradfield Park was a pleasant surprise, despite the straw palliasse bedding, the first we had encountered in service accommodation. The climate in July was very comfortable, with warm sunny days and cool nights. The vegetation was different from anything we had seen before. Gum trees and bottlebrush shrubs grew around us. There was a tame kangaroo and mynah birds in a small menagerie and the apostle birds and kookaburras were all new to us.
After a few days we set off from Sydney to Camden which we reached by train, passing through places with the familiar names f Liverpool and Campbelltown. The latter part of the trip was on a small train that we referred to as the Campbelltown Flyer. The rolling-stock was old and quaint with open ended passenger coaches and the engine driver sat on a saddle that could swivel out to give him a better view of the line ahead. The train huffed and puffed up and down the inclines and finally reached our destination, quite a small town, where we got out and were driven a short distance to the airfield.
The Officer's mess had been converted from part of a farmstead that belonged to the McArthur Onslow family one of the original sheep farming settlers. It was not a large camp and I don't think there were more than 6 or 8 aircraft based there. We were shown our Dakota planes that we would fly as members of 300 Wing attached to the British Pacific Fleet under the command of Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser. I was to fly as second pilot and was allocated to a crew with Dan Capel as pilot and Clive Ball as navigator plus a wireless operator. Our flights would take us up to "The Islands", as anywhere North of Australia was referred to. This really meant transporting men and materials to and from New Guinea and The Philippines.
We would usually fly to Mascot airport, 20 minutes away on the outskirts of Sydney, to pick up our passengers and freight. From there it was a 3 hour flight up the coast to Archerfield an airfield close to Brisbane, then on to Garbutt airfield at Townsville in Northern Queensland which would take another 4 hours. Here we would spend the night. Townsville was a semi-tropical location with a very pleasant climate during the Southern winter. Going to the open-air cinema was one way of spending an evening. The edges of the seating area were decorated with large clam shells, as big as washbasins. If we had time, we could swim in the sea but only if we used the shark-proof areas protected by nets. We were also warned to watch out for bluebottles or Portuguese men of war, a sort of small jellyfish that could inflict a very severe sting.
Next morning we would set off early to fly the next five and half hour leg up to New Guinea. We passed over Magnetic Island a heavily wooded island that had become a holiday resort with attractive tropical beaches. The view of the Barrier Reef was remarkable. The various hues of green, turquoise and blue as the coral showed through the shallow water. It was quite unlike anything I had seen before and the small islands made me wish that I could visit them by boat and see if they were true "Robinson Crusoe" islands.
New Guinea was a mysterious island. Approaching it was a somewhat threatening experience due to the fact that the mountains were always shrouded by large cumulus clouds that rapidly grew as the day warmed up, to form thunderheads. It was therefore essential, as we headed North, to cross the mountain ranges as early in the day as possible, especially as the maps that we used were unreliable in marking the heights of the peaks. The two highest points in the Owen Stanley Range were Mt Victoria and Mt Suckling and as they were around 13.000 ft it was quite a struggle for a heavily laden Dakota to clear them with much to pare. Looking down on the thick jungle it was not difficult to believe that below us there were unexplored areas where there ere natives who had never seen a white man and where head-hunting still occurred. We could see small clearings with huts surrounded by stockades and wondered just how different life was down there.
We did not carry oxygen for our passengers and therefore tried not to spend too much time at these heights. On one flight we happened to be carrying a Naval surgeon and he was fascinated to observe the effects of oxygen deprivation on his fellow passengers. Most of the aircraft we were flying were tripped of interior fittings apart from a row of stretcher seating running down either side of the aircraft and on one occasion, we on the flight deck, were concerned that the aircraft as undergoing a slow pitching movement. On further investigation it was found that two Naval Officers were calmly marching slowly up and down the centre aisle of the aircraft unaware of the effects of their movements on the balance of the aircraft. It was not unknown for pilots to give individuals a hard time by waiting for them to visit the elsan toilet at the rear of the aircraft and then putting the aircraft into an abrupt dive, whereupon the person, sitting in contemplation, rose into the air!
To begin with our route to the Phillipines was via Lae in New Guinea and then to Momote strip, 3 hours to the North on the island of Manus. This tropical coral island was a major fleet anchorage in the Admiralty Islands. The runway was made of compacted coral and ran from sea at one end to sea at the other. The accommodation was in Quonset huts, the American equivalent to our nissen huts but larger. Swimming was possible on a brilliant white coral beach nearby, or from a boat over the rough coral but there we were warned to beware of deadly coral snakes amongst the rocks. Tom Collins drinks made with crushed ice were a real luxury available at the Officer's bar and this made it my idea of a perfect tropical island. A large naval camp lay not far away and the drive in tropical heat at night in a jeep was quite an adventure on a road through thick jungle with the track swarming with land crabs together with the deafening noise of the jungle night life.
From here we would fly West for 4 hours along the North coast of New Guinea, past the small port of Hollandia, at one time a strongly defended Japanese airbase. I recall one occasion when flying this leg of our journey and whilst admiring the wonderful site of fair-weather cumulus cloud scattered about the blue Pacific below us, listening to a forces' radio programme from somewhere in the region, playing the 鈥� Warsaw Concerto鈥� composed by my father's cousin Richard Addinsell. It seemed so incongruous and yet so peaceful and so far from home.
The next staging post was Biak Island, in the Schouten Group, a busy American airbase but a place of little character and very hot. This was one place that I found that butter came in tins and contained something that prevented it from liquefying in the heat. It was so hot that we invariably had to strip off our shirts in the cockpit before taking off and were very relieved to get into the air and cool off. I was surprised one day to see in the mess there, Tyrone Power the American film star. He was serving as a pilot on a Curtis Commando transport aircraft We then headed NW to Peleliu Island in the Palau Group. Only a tiny island but well placed as a refuelling point en route to the Phillipines. Here there had been very heavy fighting when the Americans captured the island and the ground was littered with shattered trees and covered with tropical creeper. The triangular shaped island was only a few miles across but there were numerous campsites set up around the periphery and it was possible to attend 7 open air cinemas and see a different film each night of the week. I was always amazed at the comforts enjoyed by the American forces soon after they had established a base. There were reputed to still be a number of Japs living in limestone caves on the island and there were certainly a number holding out on the neighbouring island of Babelthaup. That island had been isolated and the men there left to starve. I was surprised one evening to see for the first time a number of Japanese prisoners sitting alongside us at an open air cinema. They were neatly dressed in American army issue with helmet liners painted with the letters POW. On the island there was a beach where we swam known as purple beach, the colour being provided by the predominance of purple sea shells. At another shallower coral sand beach the sea was too warm to be pleasant.
From Peleliu to our final destination at Tacloban on the island of Leyte was another 4 hour flight across open ocean. Tacloban at this time was reputed to be the busiest airfield in the world and was being used as the base for the assembly in Leyte Gulf of the invasion force, known as "Tiger Force". If the atom bomb had not brought the war to a rapid conclusion, this force would have set sail for the final assault on Japan itself.

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