Australian Penthouse

FOR VALOUR

Director: Serge Ou

UMBRELLA ENTERTAINMENT

RECIPIENTS of the Victoria Cross leave behind a legacy worthy of the highest honour. For Valour details the remarkable true stories of these men.

The most coveted and honoured decoration available to members of the Australian Defence Force—the Victoria Cross ratifies the achievements of our most highly decorated soldiers. The iconic cross is made from remnants of a 19^th century canon.

“More than one million have taken up arms but less than 100 have won the Victoria Cross”

For Valour was the highest rating program on The History Channel in 2009. The documentary, hosted by Neil Pigot, is presented as a road trip, taking in the Remembrance Highway from Sydney to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, stopping at the 22 rest areas situated along the route, each featuring a plaque or cenotaph constructed in memory of the few, the fair and the brave—winners of the Victoria Cross.

The rest areas and cenotaphs were erected by the government in lieu of grave sites to represent the thousands of soldiers killed in the Great War who were buried overseas, offering families a site to honour the fallen, whose graves could not be visited.

Featuring dramatic re-enactments and interviews with recipients and war historians,  For Valour explores the mateship, camaraderie and personal courage of our nation’s defenders—from World War I to the Vietnam conflict.

“Courage in support of others is the high ideal”

Victoria Cross stories told include: Neville (later Major General) Howse, who faced enemy fire during the second Boer War to rescue a fallen trumpeter. Despite being shot in the neck and chest John Edmondson risked his life at the siege of Tobruk to aid an officer in distress, and during the Vietnam War Keith Payne entered enemy territory to aid the rescue of “about 40″ injured and lost soldiers.

“One man amidst the madness who hasn’t lost it”

Additional interviews with Keith Payne VC and Ted Kenna VC are especially enlightening. Other war heroes remembered via re-enactment and profile include:

Pilot Officer Rawdon Hume Middleton, VC – died: 1942, in the English Channel

Cpl J.H. Edmondson, VC – died: 1941, Tobruk, Egypt

Arthur Stanley Gurney, VC – died: 1942, Tel el Eisa, Egypt

Percy Gatwick, VC, age 40 – died: 1942, North Africa

James Gordon, VC, age 77 – died: 1986, Western Australia (fought the Vichy French in the Syrian-Lebanon campaign)

Arthur Roden Cutler, VC, age 86 – died: 2002 (artillery’s only VC winner and Governor of NSW for 15 years)

Hughie Edwards, VC, age 68 – died: 1982 (Governor of WA, and the most highly-decorated Australian serviceman of the Second World War)

Charles Groves Wright Anderson, VC, age 91 – died: 1988 (served in Malaya, age 44, Japanese P.O.W. for 3 years, Member for Hume)

Pilot William Ellis (Bill) Newton, VC, age 24 – died: 1943, Salamaua (one of 23 soldiers executed by decapitation on orders of  Admiral Fajita, and the only Australian airman to earn the decoration in the South West Pacific theatre of World War II, and the only one while flying with an RAAF squadron)

Bruce Steel Kingsbury, VC, age 24 – died: 1942 (one of only two Australian VCs of the Kokoda campaign, for the Battle of Isurava, New Guinea)

Lieutenant Albert Chowne, VC, age 25 – died: 1945 (also awarded the Military Medal, buried at Lae War Cemetery in New Guinea)

Cpl John Alexander French, VC, age 28 – died: 1942 (former bodyguard to both King George V1, and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. Buried at Bomana War Cemetery Port Moresby)

Thomas Currie “Diver” Derrick, VC, age 31 – died: 1945 (Australia’s most decorated soldier of WWII)

Albert Jacka, VC, age 39 – died: 1932 (awarded Australia’s first Victoria Cross of the First World War. Won the Military Cross and a bar to that award in 1917. Mayor of St Kilda)

Frank John Partridge, VC, age 40 – died: 1964 (the youngest VC in WWII also one of just three people to win all 40 boxes on 1960s game show Pick-a-box. Hero of Bougainville and the last VC of WW2)

Mark Donaldson, VC, born: 1979 – the first Australian serviceman in almost 40 years to be awarded the VC under its new title of ‘The Victoria Cross for Australia’ for his actions in Afghanistan. Trooper Donaldson is the first VC ever awarded to a member of the Australian Army’s elite Special Air Service Regiment.

Australia awarded four more VCs in Vietnam: two posthumously.

Rayene Simpson, VC, age 52, – died: 1978 (Did three tours, and was renowned for his “conspicuous gallantry”. For his actions during fighting on 6 and 11 May in Kontum Province, near the Vietnam/Laos border, Simpson was awarded the Victoria Cross. For actions during fighting near Ta Ko on 16 September, 1978, Simpson was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.)

Keith Payne, VC, born: 1933 – for rescuing wounded soldiers in Vietnam, moving more than 40 men to safety, Payne was awarded the Victoria Cross. He received the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star from the United States. The Republic of Vietnam awarded Payne the Cross of Gallantry with Bronze Star.

Major Peter John Badcoe, VC, age 33 – died: 1967 (led his company in an attack that turned what seemed certain defeat into victory, at Huong Tra, Vietnam)

Kevin Wheatley, VC, age 28 – died 1965 (joined the armed forces at 19 and died protecting his wounded mate. His Victoria Cross was personally approved by HRH Queen Elizabeth.

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FIVE MINUTES WITH… DR PETER EWER

Dr Peter Ewer explains how Australia’s infatuation with the British Empire, poor command decisions and secret government agendas resulted in the undefended bombing of Darwin by the Japanese in 1942

Interview: Ben Smithurst

What piqued your interest in the bombing of Darwin and prompted you to write a book about it?

I’ve had a lifelong interest in the politics and history of the Australian military, particularly the Air Force, and I had this kind of boyhood enthusiasm for the aeroplane, so I decided I’d look at the politics of Australian aviation in the 1930s.  I’m a Republican, and the further I got into it, the more outraged I was by the extent to which men of empire undermined the interests of the country.

Can you sum up your book’s findings?

That a group of, well, they would probably call themselves ‘British Australians’, such as Robert Menzies, actively undermined the policy decisions of their own cabinet, ignored the advice of the head of the Australian Air Force, and pushed aside local aviation heroes like Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in an effort to ensure that Australian aviation, both militarily and in civil air transport, conformed to the interests of Britain.

What exactly were the consequences of their irresponsible actions?

The consequences were that in December 1941, when the Japanese entered WWII, there was not a single fighter aircraft in the whole of Australia, there were no radar sets to warn of the approach of enemy aircraft, there were no heavy bombers, and those combat squadrons that did exist only had half their trained personnel.  So the fierce determination to build the Australian aviation industry in the image of London had very sharp consequences in early 1942.

What difference would it have made, having those defences?

Firstly, the Australian defence system would have known that Japanese reconnaissance flights took place over Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart two days after the fall of Singapore.  The Japanese were able to mount reconnaissance flights over those key Australian cities without the Air Force even being aware of the fact.  On February 19, 1942, Darwin was bombed unopposed by any Australian aircraft—more than 250 people died.

Would it have been practical to arm Australia to a reasonable extent in the time frame you’ve described?

Absolutely.  Arguably the best military mind that Australia has ever had, a chap called Richard Williams—who was the head of the Australian Air Force in the 1920s and ’30s—had advanced plans for the construction of an Australian fighter aircraft in 1938.  And it was that kind of rational, national-interest planning that Menzies and his colleagues pushed aside.

Did they have a stated reason for doing so?

One of Menzies’ colleagues in this was a chap called Stanley Melbourne Bruce, who was a conservative Prime Minister in the 1920s, and then went on to be the Australian High Commissioner in London.  Bruce advised the government in 1937 that the Australian people had to be convinced that only Britain could defend them.  What we see at this time is a competition between those like Menzies and Bruce, who had no belief in Australia, and those like Richard Williams and Charles Kingsford Smith, who had a positive vision for Australia.

But without the backing of Britain, Australia would have had a hard time standing up against almost anyone, wouldn’t it?

Australians have a sense of insecurity because it’s a big place and there’s few of us, in relative terms. But from a military and geopolitical point of view, those problems are much more profound for an aggressor against Australia.  A successful invasion of this country would be a very difficult thing to mount because there are huge distances involved and we’re a long way from any kind of supply base that would support an invasion force.  The Japanese did consider an invasion and discounted it precisely because of the reasons I’ve just indicated.

But the Japanese certainly had very advanced plans to bomb the east coast of Australia and destroy the industrial infrastructure.  Had that happened, we’d think back on 1942 in very different terms, and the only reason it didn’t happen was because of an accident of history that Australia had no control over, and that was the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Were the upper echelons of government really convinced that Singapore wouldn’t fall, as the population was?

No, not at all.  The Australian military through the ’30s was telling the Australian Government that relying on Singapore was not a viable national defence strategy.  Those propositions were put by a chap called John Lavarack, who was the chief of the general staff through the 1930s.  He was kind of the Army equivalent of Richard Williams.

Did the Japanese know that Australia had no air defence?

Presumably they did because one of the things that I uncovered in the book is that the Japanese actually undertook reconnaissance of Australian air bases six months before the outbreak of the war.

And in June 1941, the Australian Army recorded that a Japanese reconnaissance flight had taken place, but that there was nothing on hand to oppose it. When they bombed Darwin, the leader of the Japanese attack formation—who incidentally led the attack on Pearl Harbour—described the air defences as “contemptible”.

Why bomb Darwin? It was hardly an eastern seaboard industrial hub…

You’re right; Darwin was more of a tactical target for the Japanese. In February 1942, the Japanese had conquered what was then called the Netherlands East Indies—now Indonesia—and they were in the midst of invading Java, Sumatra and Borneo, for their oil reserves. Darwin was the last supply stop for the Allies fighting in Java and Timor, so the Japanese mounted that raid on February 19, 1942.

“The greatest failure was a political one: the Menzies government of the late 1930s refused to take the advice of its military professionals”

And Darwin was completely defenceless?

Completely defenceless in the sense that there were no Australian fighter aircraft there.  There were a few anti-aircraft batteries, but they didn’t get into effective operation until well after the bombing started because there was no radar warning set.  There was subsequently a Royal Commission into the Darwin bombing, and it concluded that at any time a radar set could have been installed in Darwin.

One of the reasons they weren’t installed was that the Australian Air Force was then headed by a chap called Charles Burnett—a British officer whom the Menzies government appointed to get rid of Richard Williams.  Burnett had absolutely no interest in local defence, and the radar sets that were delivered to the Australian Air Force in 1940 were delivered to the University of Sydney so they could be studied by physics students.

In the meantime, our first-line defence bases, such as Darwin, made do with the human eyeball and a pair of binoculars.

I understand that there was some warning of the impending attack, but that went unheeded as well…

Yes, that’s right.  It was a bit like Pearl Harbour.  An American fighter squadron was staging through Darwin to go to Timor, and it turned back because of bad weather.  The Australian Air Force commanders thought the incoming Japanese might have been those American fighters, so the base wasn’t put on high alert.

You’ve said defence personnel based around Darwin were more concerned with their own welfare than that of the civilians they were there to protect. How so?

Without effective leadership, because few of the Australian commanders had been in action, and indeed the Air Force base was commanded by a reserve officer who had no combat experience, command and control broke down, rumours got around, and there was an exodus of service personnel into the interior because of the fear of Japanese invasion.  If there were some failures among the rank and file, there were many more failures of command and, of course, the greatest failure was a political one, in that the Menzies Government of the late 1930s refused to take the advice of their military professionals.

Had the Battle of the Coral Sea not gone the way it did, what do you think would have happened to Australia?

The Japanese were committed to cutting the supply route between Australia and America through the invasion of New Caledonia, Fiji and Samoa—there were very advanced plans for the Japanese to do that in the middle of 1942.  But for the Battle of the Coral Sea, we’d have had Japanese aircraft carriers off Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong, and probably Melbourne, bombing industrial sites that were irreplaceable.

How come, 70 years on, the average Australian doesn’t know about this?

There are a couple of reasons.  Immediately after Darwin, the Curtin Labor Government wasn’t keen to publicise Australia’s vulnerability, so there was a measure of censorship, and the Royal Commission reported in Canberra, so I suppose the worst defects were not released to the public.

After the war, interest in the dark hours was probably less than it might have been, so there was little reflection until quite recently, with this re-emergence of debate over whether 1942 really constituted a defence crisis.

Wounded Eagle: The Bombing of Darwin and Australia’s Defence Scandal by Dr Peter Ewer (New Holland Press) is available in all major bookstores nationally.