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Description
ORO BAY IS A COVE in Papua New Guinea, where I, and a mixture of experienced soldiers, many from the Middle East, together with a crowd of greenhorns just nineteen years old, were disembarked. Fighting was going on further up the coast, but our part had been cleared of Japanese, and there was a working port, into which we sailed. There were five merchant ships in the harbour at the time. We were told that the Japanese were expected to bomb that night. So, we must best dig in, on a hillside, looking down on the harbour.
The experienced chaps had been sent to other parts of the area, to set up, among other things, our wireless equipment. So a group of us young ones were left, together with the sergeant, to dig in and pitch our tents.
I don't know why they picked that place--at least where we were--for very soon we struck rock, and with only picks, shovels and crowbars it was slow work. We were all very excited--first day in New Guinea, a rite of passage--but also, the chance of being attacked from the air! And we hadn't dug the slit-trench yet.
A raid started. We couldn't see any Japanese planes, or any Americans. But the anti-aircraft opened up; obviously there was something up there. This was light ack-ack, manned by the Americans, but with a range of only 10,000 feet. Nevertheless it blazed away. Where the resulting shrapnel fell, I know not--we were just glad it wasn't on us. But where were these dangerous Nips?
Then, we could just hear a very faint sound of a plane. It was a Jap, up above 20,000 feet. None of our planes turned up to take it out, so they must have known something. The Nip wasn't the precursor of a big wave to follow--there was just him, right up there, to be safe, with a load of bombs to drop--somewhere. Later, the rumour went that one of the ships, American, had a cargo of mustard gas, and it was that which he was looking for. Who knows? More likely, it was ice-cream, tinned ham and aftershave lotion: Uncle Sam's sinews of war. Incidentally, in earlier savage fighting at Buna, Gona and Santander, 1300 Australians had been killed, but also 1000 Americans.
At any rate, our visitor dropped his bombs as quickly as he could: some... |
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