Australia’s guerrilla war on Timor
In 1942 Japanese forces invaded much of Asia and the Pacific. Deep behind enemy lines, a small force of Australian soldiers held the line to delay and frustrate the attackers
A small force of Aussies fought a bold guerrilla war against the invading Japanese
In the night air of a Timorese mountain hideout, a group of bearded Australians watched anxiously as Corporal Jack Sargeant began tapping out a signal in Morse code. Two months earlier, on 20 February 1942, the Japanese had invaded Dutch Timor, and most of the island’s Australian and Dutch defenders were overwhelmed and captured. In Portuguese Timor, the Australians of the 2/2nd Independent Company had fallen back into the mountains overlooking Dili. They were reached in early March by some Australians and a few Dutch troops, who had escaped from Dutch Timor on foot. Among this group was Captain George Parker, Sargeant and signaller Lance Corporal John Donovan. They began working with the independent company’s signalmen Max ‘Joe’ Loveless and Keith Richards to build a radio capable of communicating with Darwin. Loveless had been a radio technician in Hobart before the war, and his knowledge marked him out as the team’s ‘No. 1 man’.
Shortly after work began, an exhausted Dutch sergeant arrived with a broken receiver set he had carried for more than 60 kilometres (37 miles) across the rugged country. Loveless used components from this set, another discarded set and a transmitter set seized in an earlier raid as the basis for his radio.
Their tools were primitive, and virtually everything had to be done by guesswork, even poring through a Portuguese radio manual to determine the colour codes of resistors and condensers. Coils were wound around lengths of bamboo. To charge the batteries for the set, a generator was taken from an abandoned car: it was rigged to a series of wooden wheels
and finally to a master wheel with wooden handles that had to be cranked by hand. Local Timorese did the cranking. Loveless completed a transmitter in late March, but it failed to work.
Australian patrols, meanwhile, continued sourcing potentially useful components. A battery charger previously buried by the Australians was recovered in a daring night raid under the nose of Japanese sentries. Loveless began working on a second transmitter, twice as big as the first, built into an 18-litre (four-gallon) kerosene tin. It was his ‘masterpiece’. When they tested it, the signallers could hear Darwin on the receiver, but the transmitter failed. Unrelenting, Loveless decided to hook his powerful transmitter to a weak existing set that had a range of only about 48 kilometres (30 miles). To do this he needed more batteries, and these were recovered by patrols. Then the petrol for the battery charger began to run out. A raid was conducted into Japanese-occupied Dili to steal tins of kerosene and diesel oil, and these kept the battery charger running once the petrol finished.
Unsuccessful transmission attempts were made during the second and third weeks of April. Finally, on 19 April, Darwin acknowledged. The signallers celebrated by smoking a tin of tobacco they had been saving for weeks, and christened their set ‘Winnie the war-winner’, after British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
They tried again the following day. Parker, Loveless, Richards and Donovan clustered around Sargeant, who tapped out his signal in Morse code. Darwin acknowledged but demanded proof of their identity. By chance, an officer in Darwin remembered meeting a signaller who had been sent to Timor and also remembered the name of the signaller’s wife and their home address. Amazingly, it was Sargeant whom the officer had met. Questions and answers in Morse went back and forth between the Northern Territory and Timor:
“Do you know Jack Sargeant?”
“Yes, he’s with us.”
“What rank, and answer immediately?” “Corporal.”
“Is he there? Bring him to the transmitter. What’s your wife’s name, Jack?”
“Kathleen.”
Once Darwin was satisfied, Sargeant signalled, “Force intact. Still fighting. Badly need boots money quinine tommy gun ammunition.” This was the first news anyone in Australia had received from Sparrow Force since the Japanese had landed on Timor 59 days earlier.
A dark year
The year 1942 was one of the darkest for Australia. Alongside Britain and Commonwealth countries, Australian forces had been at war with Germany since 1939 and later Italy. Australians served in the Mediterranean and North Africa, in the air war against Germany and at sea. Japan’s entry into the war on 7 December 1941, however, changed Australia’s war. It was no longer a distant conflict. The Japanese advanced rapidly through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific. During 1942, the Japanese occupied parts of Australia’s mandated territory in New Guinea; Singapore fell; Darwin and northern Australia came under repeated attack. Japanese submarines attacked Sydney Harbour and Newcastle, on Australia’s east coast. Many people feared a Japanese invasion of the Australian mainland.
During these dark months early in the year, from January to March, the Japanese had also overwhelmed the small Australian forces in Rabaul, New Britain, on Ambon, Dutch Timor and Java in the Dutch East Indies. Those not killed or executed became prisoners of war. The same fate was feared to have befallen Sparrow Force and the 2/2nd Independent Company in Portuguese Timor. Nothing had been heard from them for two months. But once ‘Winnie the war-winner’ made contact with Australia in late April, arrangements were made to regularly resupply the survivors of Sparrow Force.
Built around the Australian 2/40th Battalion with the 2/2nd Independent Company and supporting units, Sparrow Force was sent to Timor to reinforce the small Dutch garrison in December 1941. Sparrow Force arrived in Koepang (Kupang), in Dutch Timor, on 12 December 1941. Several days later, and despite protests from the territory’s authorities, who optimistically thought the Japanese would observe Portugal’s neutrality, the 2/2nd
“‘FORCE INTACT. STILL FIGHTING. BADLY NEED BOOTS, MONEY QUININE, TOMMY GUN AMMUNITION.’ THIS WAS THE FIRST NEWS ANYONE IN AUSTRALIA HAD RECEIVED FROM SPARROW FORCE SINCE THE JAPANESE HAD LANDED ON TIMOR 59 DAYS EARLIER”
Independent Company and some Dutch troops were sent to Dili in Portuguese Timor, the eastern half of the island.
The Australian and Dutch force defending Timor was small and under-equipped. Sparrow Force received some reinforcements in January and February 1942, but these were too few and too late. Japanese aircraft had been bombing Timor since January and had destroyed most of the aircraft from the single Royal Australian Air Force squadron defending the island.
On 19 February the remaining aircraft were withdrawn to Australia, and the Japanese invaded Koepang the next day. Despite fierce resistance, the Australian and Dutch forces were overwhelmed. Most of Sparrow Force, more than 1,100 men, surrendered on 23 February. Those who did not surrender made their way through the mountains to join up with the 2/2nd Independent Company. The Japanese also invaded Portuguese Timor, and the independent company withdrew into the mountains overlooking Dili.
Timorese help
Following the Japanese invasion, as Private Marvyn ‘Doc’ Wheatley recalled, the Australians were initially “not game to go have a crack” at the Japanese, being “too few” and scattered among different villages. They had to live off the Timorese, said Wheatley, and this close support – even friendship – between the Australians and Timorese was one of the defining characteristics of the campaign. The Timorese provided food, shelter, ponies to carry heavy equipment, and information. The Australians paid for what they could, but once their money was exhausted they issued promissory notes.
Young Timorese boys assisted the Australians as ‘creados’, or helpers, carrying soldiers’ non-military equipment and acting as guides. One soldier later remarked, “They were so good, the creados, they risked their lives all the time for us, it shamed you really.” It is not too much to say that the Australian guerrillas were able to operate only because of the Timorese. “The people we are living with are natives and they have been wonderful to us,” wrote an Australian lieutenant to his parents. “They are great friends to the Aussies and nearly all of us have a boy to carry our packs… they are invaluable guides, philosophers and friends here. My little boy has been in action with me and his name is Cris-mo, he reckons he will come back to Aussie with me after the war.”
“THEY WERE SO GOOD, THE CREADOS, THEY RISKED THEIR LIVES ALL THE TIME FOR US, IT SHAMED YOU REALLY”
Harassment and sabotage
After a series of small encounters, by midmarch the company’s remaining platoons had redeployed across the southern half of Portuguese Timor. Despite being hungry and wasted with malaria, and with their boots becoming mere remnants of leather, surrender was “never an option” an officer later commented. Parry believed he and his mates accepted their lot: “We’re stuck here, we’re going to stay here… we had a job to do.” He did not recall ever discussing surrendering.
Although there was later a mid-year suggestion to withdraw the force, American General Douglas Macarthur, the supreme commander of the Allied forces in the South West Pacific Area, wanted the Australians to remain. He felt “the retention of these forces at Timor will greatly facilitate offensive action when the necessary means are at hand. These forces should not be withdrawn under existing circumstances. Rather it is believed that they should remain and execute their present missions of harassment and sabotage.”
Portuguese Timor’s rugged terrain was ideal for guerrilla warfare. “Although they at times cursed the rough terrain,” recalled Ray Parry, a then-17-year-old private who had enlisted in the army underage, “if it wasn’t for the mountains we [wouldn’t have] lasted too long.” Major Bernard Callinan, the company’s commander, wrote, “Ground of itself was not important. The main object was to kill, and our best method of killing was by sharp harassing actions.” The skilful guerrilla campaign waged on Timor by the 2/2nd Independent Company and Sparrow Force has since been widely lauded.