‘MERCIFUL JOURNEY’ – LIEUTENANT MARSDEN HORDERN, RAN, FAIRMILE PATROL BOATS ML814 AND 815 AND OPERATION ‘MOSQUITO’ – DARWIN TO THE SOUTH COAST OF PORTUGUESE TIMOR – AUGUST 1-3 1943

[Edward Willis]

On the occasion of the 83rd anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Portuguese Timor on February 19-20, it is timely to recognise and acknowledge the service of Marsden Hordern - a surviving Australian veteran (almost certainly the last) of the Timor campaign.  He is 102 years of age in “reasonable health” and lives in the northern suburbs of Sydney.  All Doublereds members and supporters will wish him well.

As a 20 year old Navy Lieutenant he was a junior officer on the Royal Australian Navy Fairmile patrol boat ML814 that, accompanied by sister vessel ML814, completed the hazardous Operation Mosquito (August 2-5 1943) involving the insertion, near the mouth of the Dilor River, of SRD (Z Special) signaller Sergeant Jim Ellwood to join Operation Lagarto, the offloading of currency (silver coins), food, medical supplies, weapons and ammunition and the ‘merciful journey’ - evacuation of 87 Portuguese men, women and children back to Darwin (subsequently accommodated at Bob’s Farm Cadre Camp, the topic of another recent post).

An interesting aspect of the mission was that an NT Force Intelligence Officer gave Marsden a fake Japanese naval ensign to hoist as a ruse de guerre.  He recalled: 

“I was suspicious, even though sailing under false colours sounded better in French.  He did not ask me to sign for the flag and I passed it on to Chips, who was talking signals with D'Arcy on the bridge.  They didn't like the sound of it either, and we decided that if we were to be caught, it would be under the White Ensign and not the Rising Sun, reasoning that the Japs had not signed the Geneva Convention and that if they caught us like that they might use blunt swords.  As there was no need to worry Reg with such trivia, Chips told D'Arcy not to put it with the 'decent' flags but to 'shove it in the potato locker”.

The ensign survived the war and in 1994 was donated to the Australian War Memorial where it is on display in the World War 2 gallery, Fall of Singapore section.

We’re fortunate that Marsden published a memoir of his wartime experiences (Merciful journey, 2005) that includes a full account of Operation Mosquito) – to Marsden’s story follows:

Marsden C. Hordern. - A merciful journey : recollections of a World War II patrol boat man. - Carlton, Vic. : The Miegunyah Press, c2005. [1]

26 July 1943 broke fine and clear, promising a brilliant day.  But, as I was enjoying the morning air on the bridge with D'Arcy Kelly, a light blinked from the signal station '811 811 814'. Reg was ordered to report to the Operations Office 'forthwith'.  Something was afoot.  A special boat collected Reg and a Jeep was waiting for him on the wharf.  A couple of hours later it returned with dust flying from its wheels, and a worried-looking Reg climbed aboard.  Chips and I met him at the gangway, he motioned us down to the wardroom, flopped into his chair, flung his cap onto his bunk, and swore loudly.  'What a job they've got for us.  We're off to bloody Timor and I'll miss the nurses' dance.'  That was pretty rough justice: when invitations came for social functions ashore, Reg generally drew the lucky straw.

Sydney, NSW. c.1943.  Starboard view of HMA motor launch ML814 at speed. [2]

His story was this.  Together with 815, we were ordered to prepare for an operation-code-named 'Mosquito' - to succour our commandos still holding out against the vastly superior Japanese in Timor.  When the Japanese had landed there in February 1942, they had captured and executed some of our soldiers; others had taken to the mountains, where they were carrying on guerilla warfare.  Some Portuguese civilians, hiding out with our men in the mountains, were encumbering them, and our task, arranged by a brave and flamboyant Portuguese guerilla leader, Lieutenant M. de J. Pires, was to go and get these people out.

Operation Mosquito – map adapted from end paper of Marsden Hordern ‘Merciful journey’, 2005.

The Japanese had strong forces in the area, and supporting our soldiers there had already cost the RAN dearly, with the loss of the destroyer Voyager, the corvette Armidale, and many men.  About 6 miles west of our rendezvous there was reported to be an airfield; Dili was a Japanese air base, and there were possibly float-plane bases at Maobesi Bay and Besikama, close to our proposed landing point.

Our orders were precise.  As the Japanese would be listening for radio traffic, we were to maintain strict radio silence.  On the way over, a Beaufighter from 31 Squadron would give us air cover for some of the daylight hours until we were close to Timor; then we would be on our own.  We were to cross the Timor Sea slowly at 10 knots to save petrol for a high-speed dash home.  We were to anchor off an open beach near the mouth of the Dilor River, and would have to row in through the surf to embark the civilians.  As well as getting the Portuguese out, we would be taking in food, medical supplies, weapons and wireless equipment, and also landing one or two brave souls who had volunteered to join our commandos there.

While Reg was briefing us I thought of the fates of the Voyager and Armidale, and I half wished myself back with my friends in the 110th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, now comfortably camped on Queensland's Atherton Tableland.

Next day, Flying Officers Ray Whyte and Bob Ogden from 31 Squadron came aboard for a beer and a chat.  Ogden, known as 'Oggie', sporting a large handle-bar moustache, might have stepped straight out of Biggies.  They would be covering us for about 200 miles and thought it a horrible assignment: their Beaufighters, armed with four 20 mm cannon and eight machine guns, were not designed for this sort of caper.  Their game was to sweep in fast and low, rake their target and get home at top speed, and circling around two Fairmiles crawling across the Timor Sea did not appeal to them.

But talking to them gave me confidence until I asked Oggie what he would do if we were attacked by a Zero.  He took a thoughtful pull at his glass, smiled, and said that all he could do would be to make one pass at it, wish us luck, and go hell-for-leather home 10 feet above the sea.  After considerably more refreshment, the pilots went ashore leaving us in a thoughtful frame of mind.

I watched the preparations with butterflies fluttering in my stomach.  A big wooden skid was built over the quarterdeck for a 28- foot canvas boat.  Outside Timor's surf we would have to push it into the water but, as we would not be able to lift it back and it was too costly to abandon, we must tow it back to Australia, and that would slow us down.  Our depth charges, which weighed 4 tons, were removed to lighten our load.  Most of our secret code books were sent ashore; they must not fall into enemy hands.

Shortly before we left, an intelligence officer came aboard.  I met him at the gangway and he gave me a fake Japanese ensign to fly on the way over as a ruse de guerre.  I was suspicious, even though sailing under false colours sounded better in French.  He did not ask me to sign for the flag and I passed it on to Chips, who was talking signals with D'Arcy on the bridge.  They didn't like the sound of it either, and we decided that if we were to be caught, it would be under the White Ensign and not the Rising Sun, reasoning that the Japs had not signed the Geneva Convention and that if they caught us like that they might use blunt swords.  As there was no need to worry Reg with such trivia, Chips told D'Arcy not to put it with the 'decent' flags but to 'shove it in the potato locker'.

Crew members presenting the fake Japanese ensign [to the Australian War Memorial] yesterday [Friday 7 October 1994] [3]

Cyril Alcorn came on board just before sailing time. Regardless of whether we were Catholic, Protestant or atheist, he gathered us around the 2-pounder gun, and in a moving prayer, committed us into God's hands as we were about to 'pass through the waters'.  One wag made the crack that the waters were passing through him right then.  That raised a nervous laugh, but it helped to know that God was now officially on our side.  Shaking our hands, Cyril gave us each a piece of rather soft Comforts Fund chocolate and, remembering the terrible fate of the Armidale's men who had drifted for days on a raft and died slowly, I put mine away for raft rations.  Taking our few last letters to parents, wives and sweethearts, Alcorn promised to post them 'if necessary', but assured us that he would be giving them back to us in a week or two.  I kept mine for forty years before destroying it, but kept the envelope. 

Finally, a Portuguese pilot, Baltazar, and Lieutenant G. Greaves and Sergeant Jim Ellwood arrived on board.  The two soldiers were members of the SRD, the army's cloak-and-dagger men.  During the next few days Jim and I exchanged the stories of our lives and discussed our hopes for the future.  I admired Ellwood's nobility: he had already been in Timor and was returning voluntarily to join our men there in the mountains.  Soon after we landed him, he was captured and tortured, but he survived the war, and over half a century later we met again and relived old memories.

L to R: John Dowey, Jim Ellwood and Marsden Hordern, 2010 [4]

At about midnight on 27 July 1943, the two Fairmiles slipped out of Darwin and next day anchored in Kings Cove on Melville Island, close to the ruins of Fort Dundas.  We found there a former coaster, HMAS Terka, under the command of Lieutenant Ken Shatwell, who later became Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney.  He hailed us cheerily as we berthed alongside him to replenish our petrol tanks from drums on his deck, and full of bonhomie and chat, superintended the business with a glowing pipe in his mouth.  This shocked us, for we had rigid safety rules about fuelling: rubber-soled shoes had to be worn, lest a spark from a nail on the armour-plated deck should start an inferno, all electrical switches had to be broken and smoking was absolutely taboo.  Noticing our concern, Shatwell airily waved his pipe at the Terka'sfunnel, and we took his point.  By comparison with the smoke and sparks belching from it above the fuel drums, his pipe seemed innocuous. 

Kings Cove was a haven of peace, its air full of bird songs, and the next twenty-four hours there were balm for our taut nerves.  Three Aborigines arrived in a dugout canoe, inviting us to go crocodile shooting, and Jim and I took a couple of rifles and joined them.  Once ashore, they treated us to a memorable display of the hunting skills which had fed their people for millennia.  They brought down birds with stones, and showed us how to make little cakes by knocking the  tops off an ants' nest, removing a handful of eggs and rolling them in wild bees' honey.  We were suitably impressed:

... there is here too a fat grub that lives in the mangrove root and in truth - with sharks, snakes, crocodiles, fish, birds, mussels & roots, this apparently inhospitable country to white men's eyes, can be a veritable larder ... 

Although these Tiwi islanders-some naked, with tribal cicatrices on their bodies and front teeth knocked out-looked alarming, they were friendly, and anxious to show us the sights.  They took us to see a crashed Japanese Zero and the ruins of Fort Dundas, built in 1824 by the order of Earl Bathurst in the hope that Melville and Bathurst Islands would become another Singapore:

... the remains of the fort were a deep moat, square and wide, & an old well and a stone blockhouse now crumbling in decay amid the silences of the Melville Island bush.  We found some old glassware and bottles over a hundred years old.  At the Mission we met a bluff R.C. Father who teaches these natives a rough and ready form of Christianity.  He had brewed some beer of wild honey, hops and yeast-a very potent and unpalatable concoction & quite black.  We savoured it without too much enthusiasm, but he knocked off a large tankard and slapped his belly in appreciation.

That night the islanders staged a corroboree.  Met by furiously barking dogs, we about twenty men from the three ships in the cove-were led into a clearing and sat down to wait:

… before long the dancers with balls of eagle feathers about their necks began to arrive.  The women and children sat in an outer ring & the show started.  The . . . spectacle was accompanied by a rhythmic clapping & a low guttural sound for musical background. The dancing, with wild screams, furious twirlings, and frantic stampings of bare feet on the ground, raised clouds of dust which dimmed the brilliance of the fire and made the trees appear to recede and assume the proportions of ghostly figures, and all the time the clapping and stamping continued.  Most of the meanings behind the dances were fairly evident but a bright lad ... translated some for me. There were buffalo, crocodile and shark hunts.  Then the dance telling of the coming of a ship, and the women entered the firelit circle and joined the ecstatic dancing of which they never seemed to tire ... towards midnight we made our way back to the boats and out to the ships swinging quietly to their cables in the stream.

One of the dances portrayed dog fights between Zeros and Spitfires.  Arms outstretched to represent aircraft wings, the dancers made passes at one another, uttering staccato sounds like machine-gun fire.  Occasionally one would be hit and would start spinning, still with arms extended, until he lay a crumpled heap on the ground, the firelight flickering on his body.  That remains one of the most memorable theatrical productions I have seen - its stage a dusty fire-lit circle, its sound effects the actors' voices, clapping hands, stamping feet and barking dogs.

About noon next day we left Kings Cove on our 300-mile crawl across the Timor Sea, the cloudless sky offering perfect visibility for any Japanese reconnaissance pilots.  At night, the constellation of Scorpio with its great red star, Antares, arched above our mast.  It also shone on the nurses and soldiers dancing and drinking beer in Darwin, and Reg cursed his luck.

Shortly after 1 a.m. on 29 July our wireless began buzzing: it must be something important, for we were on radio silence.  Tensely, we waited some minutes while the telegraphist consulted his code books and deciphered the message.  It finally came as an anti-climax: we were to return to Melville Island to await further orders.  We learned later that the Japanese had been closing in on our men on Timor, and Pires, fearing an ambush on the beach, had broken radio silence and deferred the operation.  He also asked for desperately needed food. 

For two days we lay in Kings Cove, biting our fingernails, while the Japanese maintained their pressure on Pires's men.  On 1 August, with an easing of the situation on Timor, we sailed again, this time refuelling at Snake Bay on the north coast of Melville Island, and once more launched out across the Timor Sea in perfect visibility.  At length Timor's towering mountains loomed on the western horizon, and when an aircraft appeared, we trained our guns on it, challenging it with the Aldis lamp.  It was our friend Ray Whyte in his Beaufighter come to hold our hand, and as we trudged slowly on he circled above us.

As the long afternoon wore on and the two Fairmiles crept closer to Timor, we draped sacks over the wheelhouse windows to prevent the westering sun flashing warnings to the Japanese.  Thinking of the men on Armidale's raft, we also stowed extra cans of water and tins of bully beef in the Carley rafts.  The escorting Beaufighter, now over 250 miles from home and getting low in fuel, came round for his final sweep.  As he flew about 50 feet above the bridge, the roar of his Hercules engines drowned all conversation, and the roundels on his wings and his cannon muzzles seemed larger than I had ever seen them before.  He banked steeply, and a light blinked from his cockpit window.  Eight letters only, but all that he could say: 'Good luck'.  Then he levelled out, opened his throttles and sped off over the south-eastern horizon to Darwin, leaving the two Fairmiles alone on the Timor Sea.

As it was now late in the afternoon, we began to breathe more easily, reckoning that the Japanese air patrols would have gone home too, and I went below to get some sleep in preparation for whatever the night might hold.  I had just dozed off when the strident clatter of the alarm bell jerked me awake and the ship shuddered as she increased to fighting speed.  Grabbing my Mae West and helmet, I scrambled on deck to find all eyes focused on a Japanese aircraft circling over the northern horizon.  Making a leisurely turn, it flew straight towards us.  Then, as we watched breathlessly, it turned and flew off towards the island.  The pilot had not sighted us in the gathering dusk and was going home.

When we were close enough to pick out individual trees on the island, and were, according to Baltazar, heading directly for a Japanese position five miles south-west of the rendezvous, we turned and ran along the shore.  Soon we saw a faint blue light flashing the secret letter; then three fires, 50 yards apart, erupted on the beach.  This was the final signal our men were to make, but could we trust it?  What if someone had been caught and tortured, revealing the secret?  What if this was an ambush?  The first boat ashore would find out.

We anchored just outside the surge, using a Manila line rather than our chain cable, and leaving an axe beside the winch.  At the first sign of trouble ashore we would have to cut and run-and bad luck for anyone left on the beach.  The engines stopped, and we could hear surf breaking on the sand and smell the spice wafting out from the shore.

Chips was the first to go in.  We pushed the heavy boat over the stern and he went off with four sailors to land Jim Ellwood and assess the situation.  For about fifteen minutes we waited, peering anxiously through the dark.  Then he was back, with word that the commandos were ready and waiting for us.

Now it was my turn.  We loaded the canvas boat with tommy guns, ammunition, food, medicines and tins of two shilling pieces - Australian silver to pay the Timor natives who had lost confidence in Japanese printed currency.  I climbed down the scrambling net into the boat and grasped the long steering oar.  We wore heavy army boots in case we were stranded ashore and had to take to the mountains; despite my nervousness, it flashed across my mind that we looked like the pirates of Penzance.  But no one was singing.

Standing in the stern of this heavily laden 28-foot wood-and-canvas contraption, my anxiety was increased by the prospect of having to steer it safely through the surf.  Since my boyhood days on Pittwater I had never beached a boat of any kind in such conditions, and I dreaded capsizing.  The first surge lifted the boat, hurried us forward and slipped away under the bow, breaking ahead.  Several more followed before we were into broken water and, although the surf was low, it was still a job to keep her running straight.  Then wild-looking naked figures rushed into the water and hauled us on to the sand.  We shook hands and, as the Japanese were thought to be near, exchanged guarded greetings, keeping our voices down.

It took some time to clear the boat of its cargo, but while they were working I saw an astonishing sight: two of the men grabbed tins of bully beef, hacked them open with knives and wolfed the contents down like half-starved dogs.  Then, ponies appeared on the sand and, while the commandos were loading the supplies onto them, a number of men, women and children walked out from the trees behind the beach and began climbing into the boat.  They kept coming until there were too many for safety; with the boat already dangerously low in the water, I told the soldiers 'no more', and standing waist-deep in the water, they pushed the crowd back.  Just as we were about to leave, I glanced along the beach, and there, in the shallows, stood a tall old man in a white suit and Panama hat.  In my mind's eye he stands there still, dignified and authoritative.  He did not call to me, or make any effort to save himself-he just stood staring at the boat, and watching his people go.  I could not leave him: I waded quickly back and grabbed him.  J-le was thin and frail, I could feel the bones through his shirt. We did not speak: there was nothing to say. Hampered by my weapons and our soaking clothes, I dragged him through the surf, shoved him over the side into the boat beside my oar, and jumped in.  The commandos pushed us forward, the sailors bent their backs to the oars and pulled us through the surf, and soon we were into calmer water.  Once there, the old man turned and looked back at the island in the starlight.  Then he took something from his hand and, giving it to me, spoke for the first time in precise English: 'If you ever go to Portugal, show this.'  It was a handsome silver ring inlaid with a rampant gold lion on a field of jade green -perhaps the armorial bearings of some family with centuries of service in the East.  Now nothing remained for him but memories.  He had lost everything except that ring, and that he gave away.  I did not ask his name and I have never been to Portugal, but I still treasure that memory and his ring.

After several more boat trips, having embarked all the people we could take, we headed for home, engines at full throttle, using 90 gallons an hour of the precious fuel we had saved by our slow crawl across the Timor Sea.  With the heavy canvas boat bouncing astern, we flew along at 17 knots, hoping by dawn to be a hundred miles from the Japanese airfields.

Daylight revealed a pathetic sight on the crowded deck: our human cargo were huddled around the guns, lying in their own filth, vomiting and soaked with spray.  We cleaned them up as best we could and gave them tea from our chipped China mugs.  Soon after dawn a black dot appeared in the sky, and once more we went wearily to our guns.  But as the dot grew larger we recognised the stubby hunched-up look of a Beaufighter, and then the blessed blue and white roundels on its wings: our friends from 31 Squadron had come to shepherd us home.  At last the low brown blur of Australia appeared on the horizon.  We shot through the boom gate, landed our wretched cargo, and returned gratefully to No. 5 buoy.

For this operation MLs 814 and 815 were mentioned in despatches and received a salute from the acting Portuguese governor in Timor:

Profoundly grateful to Sea Land and Air Forces Darwin for Gallant and Splendidly successful rescue my Nationals under extremely trying circumstances all concerned Stop We are yours to command for the duration to help against common enemy Stop Viva Australia Viva os Aliados.

Fairmiles memorial – grounds of the Australian War memorial, Canberra [5]

REFERENCES

[1] Copies of the book can be purchased from:

·      https://www.mup.com.au/books/a-merciful-journey-paperback-softback

·   https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Marsden_Hordern_Merciful_Journey?id=ZwWODwAAQBAJ&hl=en_AU

[2] https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C236293

[3] Ian McPhedran “The ensign they refused to fly” Canberra Times, Saturday 8 October 1994: 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118290116 .  See also:

·      “Fake Japanese naval war ensign : Sub Lieutenant M Hordern, Fairmile Launch” https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C286097

·      “Meeting the history makers, 27 November 2013” [interview with Marden Hordern] https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/meeting-history-makers

·      “HMAML 814, RANVR - Sparrow Force – Timor 1942-1943 – under false colours?” December 1994 edition, Naval Historical Review https://www.navyhistory.org.au/sparrow-force-timor-1942-1943-under-false-colours/

[4] Nicholas Seton “An essay on the Royal Australian Navy’s involvement in support of the compromised SRD Operations in Timor 1943-1945” September 2019 edition, Naval Historical Review https://navyhistory.au/an-essay-on-the-royal-australian-navys-involvement-in-support-of-the-compromised-srd-operations-in-timor-1943-1945/

[5] https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1222515

ADDITIONAL READING

Fairmile ships of the Royal Australian Navy / edited by Peter Evans. - Loftus, N.S.W.: Australian Military History Publications [for the] Fairmile Association, 2002.  Ch. 10 “Timor rescue”: 142-148.

Hillar Poder “A Merciful Journey …” Ku-Ring-Gai Historical Society Newsletter 40 (4) May 2022: 4.

John Perryman “A Fairmile’s secret war” in The Territory remembers 75 years : commemorating the bombing of Darwin and defence of Northern Australia / Northern Territory Government. - Darwin, N.T. : Northern Territory Government, [2017]: 57-65.

“ML 814” / Sea Power Centre.  https://seapower.navy.gov.au/ml-814

Marsden Hordern “Touching on Fairmiles” in The Royal Australian Navy in World War II: essays on the Australian experience in naval war / edited by David Stevens. – Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996”: Ch. 15, 166-170.