New Guinea Man

On Crete

In “Battle for Crete”, Spence describes how the battle aroun Rethimnon swayed back and fort between the Germans on the hill an the Australian 2/lst and 2/llth wh were trying to get them off it.

Of interest to Papua-New Guine people is this paragraph; “Th Germans broke up the dawn counter attack with a dense pattern* mortar-fire. Captain D. Channel! one-time radio announcer froi NSW, and Lieutenant W. Delves .9 were both wounded. Their mei advanced 60 to 100 yards unde intensive fire and then were drive; back until they were clinging to i precarious foothold on a spur at th western edge of the hill”.

Douglas Channel, who subsequent! became a POW, is now managerljo the Australian Broadcasting Com mission’s organistion in Papua-Ne\ Guinea, although the book does no state this. It gets on with tb war—Captain O. Moriarty and Lieut.

Col. lan Campbell rallying tb remnants of platoons from four com panics and organising them inti groups. . .

“At 8 a.m. the Australiaii attacked,” writes Spencer. “It wa carried out with the dash anc angry, casual-seeming determinatior of the Australian infantryman anathema in his less sober off-dutj moments to some British regulai officers, but here, at his best, in comparable. As the groups met again, 2,000 yards on, beside the main road, these sweating, rangy men found they had collected 59 prisoners and recaptured the 755.®