Paul Mason, Double DSC

Investiture in Sydney

ONE of New Guinea’s famous war-time personalities—and New Guinea and Papua probably produced more heroes in proportion to population than any other country engaged in World War ll—was specially honoured on August 9 when at a formal function at Govern ment House, Sydney, Lieutenant Paul E.

Mason, RANVR, was invested with the British Distinguished Service Cross. The Sydney newspapers called him “a shy, bespectacled man!”

General MacArthur said of him that he did more to save Guadalcanal than any other individual: and the defeat of the Japs on Guadalcanal saved Australia from direct attack.

When war came, Paul Mason was a plantation inspector in Bougainville. He is a quiet and modest man and, when he joined the Australian navy as a reservist no one took much notice of him, and he was rated as Petty Officer. But the Japs occupied Bougainville, as an Important stage on their way to the Solomons, New Caledonia. Fiji and New Zealand; and then there was a call for men who could keep an unobstrusive eye on the Japs.

Paul Mason knew Bougainville and Buka very well; and, presently, Paul Mason disappeared quietly from Port Moresby.

One heard his name mentioned occas ionally, as one engaged in highly danger ous work. Now. we know he was one of that heroic band who, from 1942 until the Japs were thrown out of the Island, were engaged in espionage far behind the enemy lines. Paul Mason, in his own modest words, “watched enemy shipping and aircraft, and radioed the information to the Australian navy.”

In 1945, Lieut. Mason was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross of the United States for “extraordinary courage in paction.” A few months later, it was announced that he was to receive also the British DSC. for his remarkable per formances in the jungle.

Lieut. Mason, who is unmarried, was accompanied to Government House by two sisters-in-law. He told reporters that he plans to return to plantation work in New Guinea.