HUNDRED DAYS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 119, 22 May 1942, Page 3

HUNDRED DAYS

SOUTH PACIFIC WAR

U.S. FLYER'S IMPRESSIONS

(0.C.) SAN FRANCISCO. April 24.

Fresh from his 100 days of war. Captain Lee Coats, of the United States Air Corps, veteran of many a battle for causes that seemed lost from the very start, has arrived in California. A decade ago he was the stalwart centre on the noted Bruin California football team, but that was before he joined the Air Corps and piled up his thousands of hours at the controls of Flying Fortresses.

Why he is back in California and much of what he did in the recent fighting in the Pacific must remain a military secret—but he could tell some lively tales if this were not war! From the bombing of Clark Field, Luzon, in the Philippines, oil the opening day of the war, until the soggy, sweltering, hopeless defence of Surabaya in the Indies, he was in the thick of it, and you don't go through that sort of man-made hell without having something seared on your memory. But war is war, Coats is an officer, and such matters are not for the columns of newspapers.

But Lee thinks that Australians would be almost like Americans if it were not for that distinctly British Empire habit of knocking "off at a certain hour of the dav for a spot of tea! How men, lighting for their lives and the life of their country, can stop work with a new motor hoisted and almost ready to put into position in a plane— stop for a spot of tea —is something no American can understand. The Americans solved the problem to some extent by carrying the tea to the Aussies on the job, he says.

Like all Americans, Coats is a great admirer of both Australians and New Zealanders, and he spoke of the magnificent bravery of their pilots attacking overwhelming odds and coming out best. Coats says the Aussies love to grouse about the British, but they reserve that privilege for themselves. Just let an American chime in with his shilling's worth about the faults of the British and the Australian will promptly turn on him and champion old John Bull until he is red in the face. Anything for an argument is the motto.

What does war do? Well, in the first place, says Coats, it scares the daylights out of you, and don't let anybody tell you it doesn't. Although scared you are not paralysed. Then, too—it breaks down peace time nonsense such as the niceties of proper dress for officers First thing the American flyers did after the destruction of the Yankee fighter force had forced their withdrawal from the Philippines to Australia was to get an issue of Aussie uniforms—shirts shorts and shoes. A batch of American flyers, fresh from the battle front in the Indies, landed down in Melbourne to get supplies to ferry back to the front. In their sweatv grimy, nondescript shorts, red-eved from lack of sleep, they staggered into a hotel in Melbourne to be confronted by a newly attired Arperican colonel all prettied up in his dress whites. He was horrified when informed that these intruders were American officers and demanded an explanation for their dress—or lack of it. "Sir," he was informed, !'ud Qj|j® re we come from there's a war

Coats says a few hundred fighter planes would have held Java and probably would have held the Philippines, he thinks. Just after he arrived in California he met Colonel Eddie Kickenbacker, the celebrated American ace of World War 1., and thev chatted of the flyers of the present and past of the United States of America. Coats agreed that the Yankee flyers of this day dash into almost impossible places in the Japanese conflict and by their daring bring off remarkably successful exploits. After they have had more experience he foresees great trouble from them for the Japanese in the Pacific Ocean battles.