DUTCH HEROES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 June 1942, Page 2

DUTCH HEROES

FIGHTING IN EAST INDIES BRAVE EXPLOITS. AMERICAN AIRMAN’S STORY. An American airman has told the story of one of the Dutchmen who has been fighting the Japanese in the East Indies and who has now come out of Java. “After we left Java and landed at an airport in the north of Australia, we heard a single plane coming in at midnight. There was a hell of a crash as an old box-kite biplane zoomed crazily and nearly nosed over. We rushed out and there was an old Curtiss —God knows what model, but it must have been early experimental — smashed badly. None of us would have been allowed to fly it, let alone fight in it. Undei' the plane there lay a Dutch pilot about 40. Fie was beating the ground and sobbing, not because he was hurt but because he had no more tools to fight with. “Well, we were short of pilots and we had a dive-bomber we had to abandon to Jap strafers. So we told this Dutch pilot he could have it. Mind you, he had never flown one before. But the Dutchman’s face lit up like the South Seas’ full moon. He took only 20 minutes’ instructions, and then said he was ready to have the gasoline tanks and bomb boys filled because it was getting late and he had a date at dawn with some Jap transports. He took off to the north, leaving only an exhaust stream visible against the starry sky. I know he isn’t alive now, but I’ll bet he caused a lot of damage before he went down. He died happy.” “There was a Dutchman up in Broome, where the Japs killed so many civilians,” said a captain. “This Dutchman had escaped from Java. During that surprise attack, which caught us on the ground without antiaircraft or pursuit, the Dutchman ran out to one of the Fortresses and wrenched a 30-calibre machine-gun out of it. He started firing like mad, and damned if he didn’t shoot one down. You know, it’s a hellish job even to hold a machine-gun. This Dutchman had held it by the barrel .which was almost red-hot. He held up his left hand. The flesh was burned off. He just smiled and said: ‘But I got him, yes?’ ” Some time after the main forces had left Java, a Flying Fortress landed in Australia. She was filled with Netherlanders. They had patched up a machine abandoned in Java because of engine trouble and they had flown out with it. As the plane landed one jumped out and said to the Australians and Americans at hand: “Can you paint the Dutch flag on this ship and let us have some bombs and gas? We’re going back to Java.” An American correspondent describes his meeting with a young lieutenant of the Netherlands Navy. He was limping badly from a piece of shrapnel in his thigh, a souvenir of the Battle of the Java Sea. “The doctor had forbidden him to leave the ship,” the correspondent wrote, “but he hadn’t been ashore for nine months. After a couple of highballs he had to leave because the leg hurt so badly, but before leaving he told, his story: Since the war started in ’39, he had had seven ships shot out from under him, and the last time only 40 of the 300man crew got away. As he started to go, with pain written deeply in his face, I asked him where his home in the Netherlands was. “In Rotterdam, sir,” he said.