THE 2/2 COMMANDO COMPANY’S TIMOR CAMPAIGN 1941-42 - TALK TO TOODYAY RSL, 14 FEBRUARY 2026

[Edward Willis]

THE 2/2 COMMANDO COMPANY’S TIMOR CAMPAIGN 1941-42

TALK TO TOODYAY RSL, 14 FEBRUARY 2026

Good afternoon.  Thank you to Toodyay RSL for inviting Noel and myself to address the meeting about the service of the 2/2 Commando Company during WWII.

Next Thursday, 84 years ago on the evening of 19 February 1942 the unit first went into action against the Japanese on Timor; Toodyay born Private Jack Hasson was in the thick of it.  The Australian Official History records:

“The Portuguese force to replace the force at Dili was about due when, near midnight of 19th-20th February, Private Hasson, one of the sentries on the Dili airfield, reported noises which he thought might indicate that the Portuguese had arrived”.

Pte J. Hasson, WX13535.  2/2 Indep Coy; 2/2 Cav Cdo Sqn.  Truck driver; of Ballidu, WA; b. Toodyay, WA, 17 Dec 1916.

The unit served in three campaigns – Timor 16 July 1941 - 15 December 1942, New Guinea 16 June 1943 - 4 September 1944 and New Britain 10 April - 18 December 1945.

However, the combat intensity of their first campaign and the close bond that was developed between the 2/2 men and the Timorese people who supported them meant that it was primary in their postwar memory and commemoration.
Timor-Leste was in the news two weeks ago when the Prime Minister visited and signed a new partnership agreement.
The PM received a euphoric welcome from the locals and the scenes of him being driven in President Ramos-Horta’s Mini Moke from the Airport to the Presidential Palace with T-L PM Xanana Gusmao standing in the rear exemplify the friendly and informal mateship that is the basis of our two countries relationship.  The welcome would have been the same no matter what flavour of politician was representing Australia.

Xanana commented later that day:
“Our countries enjoy a long history of friendship and solidarity.
Our peoples first came together in World War II when courageous Timorese supported the brave Australian commandos operating across our country”.
I was pleased to note this action was included in the new partnership agreement:
“21. We recognise the enduring bonds between Timorese and Australian veterans, maintained through Timor-Leste’s Council of Combatants of National Liberation.  We will continue to strengthen the Anzac Day commemorations in Dili, and foster collaboration on historical and commemorative tourism to honour and preserve our shared history”.
As regards Anzac Day in Dili and historical and commemorative tourism and, I’ve had the privilege of leading several such tours now with another in preparation for this year.  Two memorable tours were in 2018 and 2019; the former including Geoff Payne and Martin and Deb Morris and the latter having several members of the Harrington family as participants.

Paul Harrington, Roma Parker, Doug Parker, Trevor Harrington, Murray Harrington, Gary Harrington, Desley Harrington and Monica Mullikin

Both Noel and I are sons of original members of the unit.

Most of the men who volunteered from WA in May 1941 and were original members of the unit were training at the nearby Northam Army Camp.

At least two men born in Toodyay were amongst those volunteers: Jack Hasson and Roy Wilkerson; Reg Harrington, while not born in the town, had strong connection with it.

Tom Bateman who served with the 2/2 Commando Squadron in its final campaign on New Britain was also born and grew up in Toodyay.

I would be interested to know of any other 2/2 men who had a Toodyay connection.

Journalist Paul Cleary has written the most recent history of the Timor campaign and the Introduction to his book The men who came out of the ground provides a concise and well-informed summation of key events and their significance.

IN 1941, the Australian Government dispersed more than 22,000 young men to islands in the Asia–Pacific region with little more than light arms to withstand Japan’s imminent onslaught. [1] Military strategists realised the folly of this plan all too late.  The units sent to Singapore and Malaya, Rabaul, and the islands of the Dutch East Indies fell like dominoes when faced with the heavily armed air, sea, and land forces of the Japanese military.  Nearly all of the men in the Australian Imperial Force’s 8th Division were taken prisoner or killed, and over a third later died as POWs.

All of them, except for one unit known as the No. 2 Australian Independent Company, later better known as the 2/2 Commando Company or Squadron, stationed in Portuguese Timor, which became the only unit within the entire division to face the Japanese in early 1942 and remain an integrated fighting force.

Bolstered by the remnants of the main units in shattered Sparrow Force in Dutch Timor, and Portuguese and Timorese partisans, the 400-strong force waged a successful guerilla war throughout 1942, despite being outnumbered at times by more than 10 to one.

The scale on the map gives an idea of the compact nature of the Timor battlefield – 100 km north to south and approximately 250 km east to west.
The Japanese declared the 2/2 Company men “outlaws” and warned if they did not surrender they “would not be given POW privileges and, if captured, would be executed”. [2] As the 2/2 men hit the Japanese with relentless raids, they appeared and operated like bushrangers of Australia’s wild colonial past.  Many of the men grew long beards - razors were unobtainable - and resembled the members of the Kelly gang.  As the Oscar-winning filmmaker Damien Parer said after spending 16 days with these forces in November 1942, the men of the 2/2 Company were something special.  “These men of Timor are unique in that they remained an organised fighting body all through the lightning Jap successes ...  These lads are writing an epic of guerilla warfare”.

AUSTRALIAN GUERILLAS IN TIMOR. CPL. J. HAIRE EX SCHOOL TEACHER FROM PERTH. (NEGATIVE BY PARER).

The 2/2 Company men were unique.  For soldiers who had received several weeks training in guerilla warfare the see-sawing mountains of Portuguese Timor proved to be the perfect setting to apply and develop their skills.  Most of these tough, fit, and resourceful men, drawn from the WA goldfields, wheat belt and beyond, were at home in the bush and knew instinctively how to live off the land.

Constructing “Winnie the war winner”

To survive and fight a campaign of David and Goliath proportions required ingenuity, imagination, and mateship on a mammoth scale.  Ingenuity, like rebuilding a radio from spare parts so that the force could contact Australia and tell the army chiefs they were indeed still fighting.

AUSTRALIAN GUERILLAS IN TIMOR. NATIVES BRING IN FRESH FRUIT TO THE TROOPS. (NEGATIVE BY PARER).

Imagination, like mobilising hundreds of local villagers to move supplies out of the enemy’s reach without having the means to communicate with or compensate the willing workers.  It demanded mateship not just among the Australians, but with the local people.  The skill and fitness of the 2/2 Company men would have counted for nothing had they not won the hearts of the hardy mountain people of Portuguese Timor.  After entering the neutral territory uninvited, and then luring the Japanese there, the Australians pulled off a remarkable feat in bush diplomacy and mass mobilisation, despite having little advance knowledge of the people and their language.  Many young Timorese and Portuguese volunteered to serve alongside the Australians.  They became the eyes and ears of the soldiers, and by hauling supplies and equipment as well they made the 2/2 Company a vastly more mobile and effective guerilla force.  Some actually carried arms and took part in engagements with the enemy.  Timorese villagers gave the Australians food and shelter and whatever else they needed, and they refused to inform on them.  The result was a rag-tag army of professionals and volunteers that is unrivalled in Australian military history.

B Platoon officers and their loyal criados at Hatolia. Lieutenant Tom Nisbet with Rufino and Everisto with Captain Geoff Laidlaw

The running of a guerilla operation involving several hundred soldiers was a significant feat for a conventional army.  The Australians did not look anything like the people around them; they were unable to follow Mao Zedong’s rule that “a guerilla must move among the people as a fish swims in the sea”.  While not being invisible like conventional guerilla fighters, the Australians gained an invisible shield by virtue of popular support.  This enabled them to man observation posts within 2 km of the capital, Dili, making the Timor operation part of the “coast watchers” network.  The information from these posts informed scores of accurate air strikes dispatched from Darwin on enemy shipping and facilities.  The skill and calibre of the individuals in the 2/2 Company and the support of the Timorese explain how this small force was able to kill hundreds of enemy soldiers in dozens of close-quarters actions over a period of 10 months, and suffer an relatively small number of casualties - 26 men killed in action.  Overwhelmingly, the support of the Timorese population who protected this force contributed to this outcome.
Timor was by no means the main game when it came to turning back the Japanese tide in New Guinea and the Pacific, but it was no mere sideshow either.  The 400 Australians in Portuguese Timor - later augmented to about 700 with reinforcements from the 2/4 Company - succeeded in tying up several thousand enemy troops in mid-1942 at a time when the Japanese army was fighting its way down the Kokoda Track and came within striking distance of Australia.  The Japanese deployed to Timor seven battalions plus engineer, tank, mountain gun, and search units, pushing troop numbers to around 10,000 in 1942.  By the end of the war, Japanese sources put their numbers on Timor at 20,000. [3]
Prime Minister John Curtin highlighted the importance of this campaign when he looked back at the long year that was 1942:
“Our guerrilla forces in Timor have been doing bold and courageous work. Though the spotlight has been more on New Guinea because of the larger forces engaged, the people of Australia should not overlook the importance of Timor as a base for operations against the north-west of Australia”.

FAITA AREA, NEW GUINEA.1944-01-07. VX38890 CAPTAIN D. ST. A. DEXTER OF FOOTSCRAY, VIC, COMMANDING OFFICER OF A TROOP AND OF THE 2/2ND COMMANDO SQUADRON RETURNING FROM AN EIGHT DAY PATROL THROUGH JAPANESE HELD TERRITORY.

One important perspective on the 2/2’s guerilla campaign, and how it compared to New Guinea, was provided by David Dexter, a platoon commander with the 2/2 Company who went on to lead offensive actions to recapture New Guinea in the latter years of the war.  After the war Dexter wrote Volume VI of the Official History of WWII, The New Guinea Offensives.  For this senior army officer, diplomat, war historian, and son of a Boer War and Gallipoli veteran, the Timor campaign could not be compared to anything else he had seen or heard of in Australian military history.  “They were a remarkable unit”, he said of the 2/2 Company, “like no other in Australian military history”.  The 2/2’s year-long campaign was fought by a “tattered cavalry of Australians and Timorese” in the “real wild hills” of the colony.  Remarkable too was the war fought in the air and on sea in this campaign, and yet little is known of how the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), and the Naval forces of Australia, the United States, and the Netherlands supported this force garrisoned in an enemy-controlled territory.
Despite the many extraordinary facets to this epic in guerilla warfare, it appears as a minor footnote in most histories of WWII, overshadowed by the New Guinea and Pacific campaigns.  Indeed, Australia’s official history of WWII includes most of the Timor campaign as an appendix.  Few people today are aware that Australian forces fought in Portuguese Timor, and that about 40-50,000 Timorese died as a result of that conflict.

New mural on wall of Sparrow Force House (next door to Australian Embassy) commemorating the INTERFET peacekeeping operations

While the scale of the loss and destruction suffered by the Timorese was likely not well-appreciated by many Australians, their brave support for the 2/2 men was not forgotten.  57 years later, much of the public sentiment in favour of Australia’s armed forces peacekeeping intervention in East Timor between 1999 and 2012 was framed by the acknowledgment of a debt to the Timorese.
The Timor campaign was brought to public attention again in 2012 by the WA Museum’s comprehensive Debt of Honour exhibition that was curated by James Dexter, son of David Dexter.  The Exhibition’s display panels can still be accessed on the Museum’s website ; I’ll refer to some of the panels to highlight relevant post-war developments.
Post WWII
In the immediate post-WWII period, members of the 2/2 re-adjusted to civilian life, establishing careers and raising families.  To remain in contact with each other they formed the 2/2 Commando Association of Australia in 1946.
The 2/2 veterans had a strong and enduring interest in the wellbeing of the Timorese people as result of the invaluable support they received from them during their campaign against the Japanese between February-December 1942; repaying what they perceived as their “debt of honour” as reflected in the Exhibition title.

2/2 veterans at the opening of the Dare Memorial and Resting Place, April 1969

The 2/2 Commando Association decided to build a memorial to honour the wartime assistance.  A fundraising campaign raised $4,000 which was matched by the Federal Government.  The Association built a large resting place and wading pool at Dare, in the hills overlooking Dili for Timorese travelling to and from the city markets.  It was opened in April 1969.
Individual members and their families continued to directly support Timorese friends and families.  The Association continued to sponsor shipments of medical equipment, school and office furniture and vegetable seeds.  By 2006 an Independent Trust Fund had raised over $60,000 and overseen the collection and distribution of goods valued at over $300,000.
In April 2000 six members of the 2/2 returned to Timor to re-dedicate the refurbished Timor Memorial at Dare, in honour of East Timorese wartime assistance.  The memorial was later rebuilt in 2009 by the Australian 1st Combat Engineer Regiment to include a café, museum and a school built on the site of the old wading pool.

The Keith Hayes Building, St Anthony’s International School

With the passing of the veterans, the old Association was wound up in 2014 and new Association established.  The current Committee is mostly made up of family members of the unit veterans who maintain a strong commitment to helping the people of Timor-Leste.  To this end, over $150,000 has been donated to support the construction and maintenance of school classrooms and toilets, teacher professional development training, water supply and purification and girls sanitary products.
In addition, the Association had been working on a project to survey and record information about sites connected with WWII in East Timor.  The main objective of the project was to economically assist Timor-Leste by encouraging tourists with a connection to the 2/2, 2/4 or Z Special, INTERFET veterans or those with a more general interest in WWII history and heritage, to visit the country and thereby foster awareness and better commemorate the service of our soldiers and the invaluable support that they received from the Timorese people.  It released a publication “WWII in East Timor: an Australian Army site and travel guide” documenting the outcomes of the project in August 2024.
Units wartime achievements not adequately recognised – they alone did not surrender in 1942 – longest front line service.
Unsuccessfully lobbied successive federal governments seeking award of unit citation – regulations under relevant act place 20 year bar on making retrospective awards – though the minister has discretion to direct the Awards Tribunal to investigate claims in special circumstances – discretion exercised on several occasions – most notably awarding VC to Teddy Sheean for his heroic action defending HMAS Armidale – recall this was part of the Timor campaign – Armidale was part of a three ship group tasked with, amongst other things, evacuating the 2AIC in early December 1942 - interestingly a previous Tribunal panel had rejected the claim 18 months earlier – so, if there is a political will to make a retrospective award there is a way.
Not being awarded a Unit Citation by the Australian government was somewhat compensated by the Association’s efforts to assist the Timorese people being recognised by the Timor-Leste government awarding it the prestigious Order of Timor-Leste in November 2024.

Royce Wilkerson flagpole and memorial, St Saviour’s Anglican Church, Katrine

To conclude on a local note, as some of you may know, Toodyay born 2/2 soldier Royce Wilkerson is commemorated by a memorial flag and plaque at St Saviour’s Anglican Church at Katrine on the old road to Northam.  He was an original member of the unit and also served in New Guinea and New Britain.

This flag pole is dedicated to Royce Barrows Wilkerson and the brave men of the 2nd/2nd Independent Company who fought in Timor 1941 - 1942
Never surrendered
Never forgotten
Lest We Forget

An appropriate summation for the individual veteran and the unit in which he served.

Ed Willis
Vice President
2/2 Commando Association of Australia
14 February 2025