SMILER TELLS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 167, 17 July 1942, Page 4

SMILER TELLS

ABORIGINE'S SEARCH

AMERICAN PILOT TRACKED

He is an Australian abo., and on the army payroll he figures as Blanks, and he signs for his pay with a cross, but to the troops he is Smiler, writes Allan Dowes, a Melbourne war correspondent., from somewhere in Australia, concerning the aborigine whose picture was published in Monday night's Star, describing how he searched for an American pilot who was forced down in Northern Australia far from his base.

Smiler can't write, can't read, not even maps, but "I make maps," h told me proudly. And he proceeded to do so.

With a twig he drew in the dust a map showing how he tracked the missing American fighter pilot in his wanderings through swamp and scrub, and how he had nearly come up with him when he saw a small plane pass overhead, and realised that his man had already been rescued from the air.

Smiler's map showed clearly how Lieut. Blank was repeatedly baulked of his objective—to reach the sea coast, where he could be seen from the air—although he travelled perhaps upwards of 20 miles through uncompromising tropical swamp and bush and river, and was picked up eventually about a mile from the plane in which he had been forced down some days before.

One winding river, swarming with crocodiles, ho eventually crossed three times at half mile and one mile intervals.

Smiler is aptly named, and his big white teeth help. He wears military boots, puttees, shirt, shorts, Digger hat and a Rising Sun badge. He is said to be 33, but his black thatch is shot with silver in spite of his young athletic frame, and ho freely admits he doesn't know his age. Wife and Adopted Sons Darwin was his birth place and that of his father, and he spent seven years as a tracker with the police before joining the army three years ago. Incidentally, he likes the army better. "Army look after wife and boys," he told me. His wife and their two adopted sons live at Alice Springs, and write letters that Smiler gets his friends to read to him. The young pilot whom Smiler was sent out to track found native footprints across his path several times.

"Not mine," declared Smiler. "I wore boots. These prints a month old. I saw them."

Smiler has not seen the pilot since his rescue. His story is the more interesting, therefore, as a demonstration of the uncanny accuracy of the native tracker. Arriving three days behind the missing lieutenant,

Smiler could not read the note he left on the plane, but was able to deduce that he had camped the night beside the plane, and that he had pushed off northward, discarding his ration of chocolate.

The long grass had been blown one way by the wind, and pushed another by the pilot's body. It was easy to track him through the bog and to see how. after one upon another of his efforts to reach the foreshore had been frustrated, he wearily tried a new track, a complete circle of swamp and bog and mangrove country taking him back over the river he had already crossed.

His weariness was manifest from the drag mark of his footprints, and by the increasing number of times the mark of his prone body was Wt upon the ground.

There were unseen natives in the vicinity—a score or so of them had gone out of sight when the plane came down. They thought it might be a Japanese.

The lost man missed opportunities for food which the bush-wise native was able to turn to profit.

"I got a geese," said Smiler. "I got two geese and take one back to the boys. 1 had a revolver, but I thought I'd save the bullets, so I killed them with a stick. Cooked His Goose "Nearly got a big tiger snake, too. He moves into long grass. I burn grass, but there isn't a snake, there isn t a hole. But I cook that geese in hot coals. Very good." Still with a stick in the dust. Smiler showed how he was almost upon the missing man where he had at last made the beach, when he saw a plane go overhead, and though he could not see the second occupant and the pilot could not see him—"l was in long grass—head just sticking out," he explained—he guessed he had been forestalled. But he checked up first—followed the marks to the beach and then saw the impress of the under-car-riage on the sand and the footprints of the pilot and passenger. Returning to the plane he found a new note which he could not read, but upon which he recognised his own name. In a couple of hours the plane returned and took him back to his base. On the journev his sharp eyes detected on the ground the wreck of a Zero fighter with what looked to be a body Tying beside it. Does He Like Americans? Asked if he liked Americans, Smiler was enthusiastic. "That feller good," he said with an expressive gesture, but he modified his rapture. "Too much goddam." he said regretfully. "My wife and I brought up mission." In the circumstances I refrained from asking perhaps embarrassing questions about the choice of language of his associates in the army —and the Press. This is his first trip in a plane. "I enjoy myself," he said. "Drop would be nasty, but you soon get over that."

Smiler has been in the news before. Ten years ago he arrested Boot, the native murdered of Jackv, another aborigine employed by Harry Hardy on the very station on which the lost civil plane was found last week.