HEROES OF TIMOR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 December 1942, Page 4

HEROES OF TIMOR

ISOLATED AUSTRALIANS & DUTCHMEN CARRYING ON INDOMITABLE FIGHT. OVER 500 JAPANESE KILLED. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright! (Received This Day. 12.50 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. In the mountain wildernesses of Portuguese Timor, fewer than ”450 miles from Australia’s northwest coastline, an A-l-F.. commando force, together with Dutch guerillas, is today pinning down a big Japanese force denying them the conquest of the island and making hazardous any attempt to invade Australia from that base. The story of the Australians left in Timor, one of the most colourful of the Pacific war, is told by the official war correspondent, Mr W. Marten, who recently visited the island. Against odds of a hundred to one, the Allied troops arc killing Japanese at a rate of much more than a hundred to one for every Australian er Dutchman lost in action. They are ambushing the enemy in the mountains, raiding them in their camps and have even carried the fight right down the main street of Japanese-held Dilli. In rive months ,the enemy has lost at least thirty officers and 500 men. The Australians have lost only three lives. In 59 days during which they were without even wireless contact with Australia they rejected two Japanese demands to surrender and they have been rejecting similar demands ever since. They did not know whether Australia was still at war, but the ingenuity of a young Tasmanian signaller converted scraps of wire, solder end old tins into a radio transmitter, which in April spluttered out dots and dashes telling Australia that A.I.F. commandos were fighting on in Timor. These commandos established their own training school, almost within range of Japanese machine-gun fire. The training was far from theoretical. Every now and then the Japanese would interrupt the course and the trainees would apply the rifle and ma-chine-gun lessons they were learning. These "men are still fighting—an inhuman. unequal, nerve-torturing type oi battle. They are hedged in on three side' by the Japanese. . Night and day they are patrolling. Any twist of track may bring them smack into a superior Japanese force. Death may come fipm the spear of a native who pretends to be friendly. Malaria racks many of them and vile-tasting buffalo meat and monotonously sticky rice are no invalid diet. Their most graceful tribute has been paid to them by the enemy: “You alone do not surrender to us. Commenting on Mr Marien’s story, the “Sydney Telegraph” today says editorially: “Mr Curtin had these hardy fighters in mind when he told the Australian Labour Party conference that it was stupid that men should be sent to Darwin, where they could be bombed, and yet not to Timor where they could - prevent Darwin being bombed. How soon we. will oe able to launch a counter-offensive and so make use of the time these men gained for us by their gallant defence in limor depends, among other things, upon how soon the Government frees the militia to go to the aid of their comrades.” _____