Voices from the Air (22 page)

Filing from Arawe was difficult, if not impossible, and over the next 48 hours, Lennard made his way as quickly as possible
by small boat, barge and plane back to Moresby where a radiotelephone link with the mainland had just opened. Fortuitously for Lennard, he had missed a cable and a letter from the News editor instructing him not to use the radio link for news despatches because of the high cost compared to cables and, as soon as he returned to Moresby, he made a small piece of history by sending the first voice report by a war correspondent over the new channel. Thereafter the radiotelephone link would be used regularly for Talks and urgent news voice reports by the Moresby correspondents.

Lennard's lucky run continued, but not without cost. On Boxing Day, Lennard and other war correspondents were on board a B-17 Flying Fortress heading off to observe the landings at Cape Gloucester on New Britain, when the plane crashed on take-off at Port Moresby. Two members of the crew were killed outright and two war correspondents, Pendil Rayner and Brydon Taves, died soon afterwards. Lennard and Ian Morrison of the London
Times
were injured. The ageing bomber stalled in mid-air and crashed back to earth tail first into a swamp. Several weeks later on his first day up from his hospital bed, Lennard wrote to Warren Denning and told the story of the crash.

We set off just before dawn in a fortress to cover the Cape Gloucester landing and crashed soon after taking off. The plane seemed to shoot five hundred feet into the air as soon as it left the runway – lost flying speed immediately – and fell like a stone. Fortunately we had no bombs on board otherwise I would not be writing this. We crashed into a
swamp on the edge of the runway and the plane just simply broke into pieces. The pilot in a last desperate manoeuvre somehow managed to prevent the machine from diving headfirst into the ground and this probably saved our lives. I was knocked out by the crash as was practically everyone else and recovered semi-consciousness to find myself surrounded in flames. The heat from the fire and pain of the burns probably woke me up. I still had enough strength left to crawl away from the flames and managed to reach the rear of the wreck where I fell through an opening in the side of the fuselage. By this time my clothes were well alight and a corporal – a member of the crew – grabbed me and pushed me over backwards into the swamp to put me out. He probably saved me from fatal burns. By this time ammunition in the plane was exploding and bullets were whistling everywhere. It's a miracle no one was hit. We just crawled into the swamp and lay behind a thick log and [sic] for help to arrive. Because of the nature of the crash those up on the aerodrome thought no one could survive and they did not come in for us until Ian Morrison and I managed to push our way through the thick undergrowth of the swamp and reach the side of the aerodrome.
⁶⁴

Lennard was burned extensively on his back and suffered other less serious injuries. He was still stunned when his ABC colleague, John Hinde, saw him later that day in an American military hospital, and he could only repeat over and over how lucky he was to be alive. Bill Marien saw photographs of the wreckage of the plane and believed it was a miracle that anyone survived. ‘The Fortress was telescoped to a smashed lump of twisted metal.'
⁶⁵
Many years later Hinde said he believed the cause of the crash was that ‘the bomber had taken off with its
tail flaps locked – somebody had forgotten to take the locking chocks out of the tail flaps'.
⁶⁶

Lennard was forced to lie on his stomach swathed in bandages for several weeks, in the sweltering heat of the Moresby hospital. ‘The pain and agony of the thing has been almost unbearable,' he wrote to Warren Denning. ‘Up to last night I had had no sleep for twelve nights apart from a doze of five or ten minutes after drugs. Last night I got about two hours – thank heavens – as I know I have been getting into an impossible nervous state and was near breaking point.'

Six weeks after the accident Lennard returned to Australia by hospital ship to complete his recovery and for a break from the field.

W
ith the departure of Dudley Leggett and Peter Hemery, and with Haydon Lennard out of action recovering from his injuries, a new group of correspondents were called into the field. Lennard's spirits revived sufficiently for him to complain with typical competitiveness from his hospital bed about the influx of ‘unnecessary correspondents'. Hating to be out of action so soon after his return to the field but too ill to do anything about it, he wrote, ‘I have a feeling I've been left nicely out in the cold although in my present frame of mind I don't care a damn.'
¹

The new group were Fred Simpson, Frank Legg, a popular ABC radio personality who had served as a sergeant in the AIF at Tobruk and elsewhere in the North African and Middle East campaign, and Raymond Paull, an ABC newsman who had been serving in the army as an education officer.

Each day at Port Moresby, ABC correspondents covered the daily release of the GHQ communiqué, summarised it and cabled it to the ABC as a news item. If a correspondent wrote a talk for
News Review
on an immediate news story they read the voice report over the radiotelephone shortwave link.
²
This had
revolutionised the work of the ABC correspondents as it meant their voice reports could be on air only hours later.

Recording was done in the bush behind the war correspondents' house. The technician, Bill MacFarlane, had set up the ABC recording equipment in a small tin shed in a clearing about one hundred metres away. To record, he snaked a rubber-covered cable about 80 metres long through the bush to the microphone on a wooden ration box in another clearing, with a second ration box for the correspondent to sit on. Bill would shout out for the correspondent to take a ten-second cue and then begin speaking, while he dashed back into the tin shed to start the recorder.

In the hottest part of the day at Moresby, the wax on the discs was often too soft for recording and the cutting needle would sink into the surface rather than cut. Recording in the relative cool of dawn was usually out of the question as that was when the bombers took off from the nearby airfield and the thunder of their low flight drowned out the words of the correspondent. As a result, most recording was done in the evening, after five o'clock, when it was cooler and, hopefully, when there were fewer planes.
³

The new leader of the field unit and the ABC recording operations,
Fred Simpson
, had come to Australia from New Zealand in 1939, uprooting his family in search of the best musical education for his three daughters, all of whom were already prodigiously talented musicians. His wife Thelma was a brilliant pianist, believed to be the first student in Australasia offered a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, though she was unable to take it up. In a household full of musicians
Fred was the enthusiastic musical amateur with a pleasant singing voice. This probably contributed to his later skills as a broadcaster but as a young man he first trained as a chemist and served as a medic with the New Zealand 4th Field Ambulance in Europe in the First World War.

He was only ever a reluctant chemist and on his return from the war he studied several courses at university in Auckland, where he captained New Zealand debating teams and at one point was asked to consider running for parliament. He spent almost a decade as sales manager for a national company but changed career again when he became the first station director of a new national radio station in Christchurch. Some time after arriving in Sydney, Simpson became a producer and broadcaster at the ABC. He was now overseeing the work of the ABC mobile field units on the home front and broadcasting from the field. He was also producing programs for the armed forces. Simpson was an experienced broadcaster, and as a veteran of the First World War he had an easy manner with soldiers, and when Dudley Leggett returned to the Army, Fred was an obvious choice to replace him.

Simpson arrived in Moresby at the end of 1943 to confront his first problem: he could not type and for some time afterwards, he had to pay gratuities to women in the Army orderly room to do his typing, while he practised, pecking at the unfamiliar keys. For a while Fred said he found it hard to think and type at the same time and he hand-wrote his early letters to the director of Talks, BH Molesworth – often beginning with the cheery salutation ‘Dear Chief'. George Fenton of Army PR was keen for Simpson to see the forward positions as soon as possible. Fred was willing and on his second day in New Guinea he headed for Finschhafen on the Huon Peninsula and then inland to Mount Sattelberg, which was still held by the Japanese.

The high ground of Sattelberg commanded the area around Finschhafen, and the 2/48th Battalion of the 9th Division, forced at times to cut their way through thick jungle and bush, were now engaged in hard fighting against Japanese positions on the slopes of the main ridge. Simpson began sending telegraphed despatches soon after he arrived. From an observation post, he watched artillery fire striking the slopes of Sattelberg as he talked in whispers with the Australian soldiers because of the presence of snipers and other Japanese who were dug in very close by.

A day later, Sergeant Tom ‘Diver' Derrick led his platoon in a scrambling, clambering assault against Japanese machine-gun posts on a steep, jungle-covered ridge.

He climbed down a less exposed section of the gorge together with his platoon and continued to press on. They met very heavy machine gun fire and grenade assault so serious that they were ordered to withdraw. Sergeant Derrick asked for another twenty minutes. He then advanced up a precipitous slope through thick timber. The platoon cleared out six Jap strong-posts – Sergeant Derrick himself cleared up a Jap machine gun post. The automatic fire and grenade defence was very serious and determined.
⁴

Simpson's spare, telegraphed account from the field, if anything, minimised the extraordinary individual action by Derrick, in which he single-handedly captured several Japanese positions, and for which he was later awarded a Victoria Cross. Sattelberg was captured the day after Derrick's action on the slopes and Simpson described ‘a scene of desolation' as he
walked among the destruction of the Lutheran mission house, school and native huts of the small village.

Rain at this time was pouring down in torrents. Naked men were taking advantage of the downpour to clean their bodies. The numerous defence pits they had dug were already feet deep in water, shell holes made by our twenty-five pounder artillery were everywhere to be seen. The most bizarre note of all was a skull sitting on top of a twelve foot pole. Once again my eyes turned to the flag of Australia, emblem illuminative of the indomitable spirit and fighting capacity of these men of Australia, qualities which as General Lethbridge told war correspondents a few days ago – ‘It was almost an impertinence to praise'.
⁵

Two months later, Tom Gurr, the editor of the
Sunday Sun
newspaper, bumped into Charles Moses and the ABC Chairman, WJ Cleary, in the street in Sydney. Prompted by the chance encounter, Gurr wrote to Moses a few days later, recalling how he had met Fred Simpson in Moresby just after the capture of Sattelberg.

He had just come into Moresby from the Finschhafen area, where he had been with a unit which was surrounded for five days by the Japanese, and which had a pretty thin time. Simpson returned with an infection of the ear and looking a little battered. He quietly admitted that the day after reaching New Guinea he had gone into the Finschhafen show. He sat right down and wrote without ceasing for some hours, ill though he was, and had to be dissuaded from going back the next day. I, myself, went into the Finisterres that day and did not see him again, but
I do want you to know that the courage and real devotion to duty of your man Simpson were remarked upon with admiration everywhere.
⁶

Simpson wrote two stories about the high points on the ridges near Sattelberg – Pabu Hill and Pino Hill. One was about the Australian unit at Pabu that was cut off for several days and forced to live on emergency rations and supplies dropped by parachute. At Pino Hill, a little further from Sattelberg, Fred recorded his experiences of several days and nights in the Australian dug-outs – or doovers.

I try to get some rest in my pit but before lying down I look anxiously through the thin screen of undergrowth to the enemy position – 150 yards away and across the open kunai stretch – my cape is in the bottom of the doover – my hat is my head cover and pillow in the same way as it is for my mates. But there is no rest. The rain now begins in a devastating downpour . . . I call in a whisper to Stan Robinson. ‘How's she going, Stan?' ‘Pretty wet, Fred, how are you?' It looks as if we are all in it together tonight. Silence for a while – then another voice ‘What's the time, Fred?' I've got a luminous dial watch and we've got to know the duty hours. Most of the boys have lost theirs [watches] in long campaigning. I answer – there's a bit of time to go yet before we're relieved – and I give the time. Silence, long silence. Broken only by the torrential downpour and the heavy drops from the foliage overhead hitting the soft ground with a put, put, put. I've long since been standing up. I peer through my sheaf of undergrowth. Nothing seems to be stirring. Suddenly above the sound of the storm is the shattering sound of explosive – silence for seconds –
My voice! ‘What's that, Stan?' ‘One of our booby traps gone off, Fred.' The rain probably has caused part of the gadget to slip. Again a deep throated boom. Our artillery again. The shell whistles overhead. It's dead of night and the Japs must not be allowed to rest. As if its rest has been disturbed, a night bird flying low, slowly wings its way across my night vision. A single firefly very close to me sheds the radiance of its golden light even in the rain. I look at it fixedly – it looks to me from its movement up and down that it might be caught in some spider's web. And I think of my mates round and about, all of us enmeshed in this gigantic web of war.
⁷

Simpson became closely involved with the soldiers in the field and he was often impressed by the fortitude and dry humour of the men he met – ‘Ah, a man ought to pack up and go home,' was one comment he heard as the Japanese were shelling the positions at Pino Hill. He revealed a little more of his own experience at Sattelberg in a brief personal letter to Molesworth soon after he returned to Moresby.

Dear Chief, I have just returned from the lines . . . In Pabu and Pino I fought and lived with the men. To get into Pabu they loaded me up with grenades, rifle and rations – These were the terms upon which I was able to get in with a small patrol. On Pino I did night picket-duty – In broadcast material I shall not dwell on these matters.
⁸

Although he had yet to master the typewriter and was still writing by hand, Simpson was organised and disciplined and made quick progress in assessing the situation at Moresby – ‘Moresby is a very considerable base. For
action
material it is limited where Australians are concerned . . . The real stories are
only to be obtained at the fighting fronts – That is the kind of material we want.'
⁹

He pushed for the delivery of long-promised lighter recording gear to overcome the transport difficulties in New Guinea but even then he did not discount the problems for the correspondent reporting and recording from the field. It would be a ‘very arduous job. I should like to be clearly understood that I do not exaggerate this. His work all day over the distances involved is heavy, his writing and recording would be under serious difficulty – But again – I
know
it can be done.'
¹⁰

Simpson would eventually manage to get recording equipment back to the frontlines and over the next two years would spend probably more time than any other correspondent reporting and recording in the field. Much of this field recording would be with the technician Len Edwards. They had worked together back on the mainland and got on well and Fred found that the younger Edwards matched his own hard-working style. ‘It does not matter how many hours I have thought it necessary to work, Mr Edwards has also thought it necessary to work at the same time.'
¹¹
Simpson's stories of the war would be marked by his engaging first-person narratives, but also for their focus on the men, their own words and voices, often told with a light and engaging touch. He explained that, in reporting war, he was interested in ‘the attitude of men rather than the analysis of events'
¹²
– the ‘human experience' was most important.

As the technician, Len Edwards's work ranged from the grim realities of the battlefield to lighter fare, and even a fleeting contact with Hollywood. In 1944, the world premiere of the Bing Crosby film,
Going My Way
, was held in a kunai grass paddock adjoining an American military hospital in New
Guinea. ‘The first-night audience comprised American nurses and sick and wounded soldiers. Dress circle seats ranged from borrowed camp stools to empty bully beef cases.'
¹³
Edwards recorded the views of the soldiers in the audience at the bush screening and the voices were later played at the American premiere of the film at Radio City, New York.