DARWIN RAID

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 50, 28 February 1942, Page 6

DARWIN RAID

HEROISM OF NURSES

AND PUBLIC REACTION

(0.C.) SYDNEY, February 25. Australian nurses lived up to the traditions of .their profession for courage and devotion to duty during and after the air raid on Darwin last Thursday. While the civil hospital was being bombed, the nurses, assisted by doctors, carried patients 200 yards to the beach and hid them under bushes. In the evacuation of the civil population from the town later, even wounded nurses stoically attended the injured in jolting trucks and trains for hundreds of miles down the centre of Australia. The scene at the hospital was described by Captain A. H. Koch, who was pilot of the Qantas flying boat shot down by Japanese fighters on its (light from Darwin to Kupang on January 30. Captain Koch was one of five survivors, 13 occupants being killed. Captain Koch, with bullet wounds in the legs, was recovering in the Darwin Hospital when he heard the sirens and the roar of the Japanese planes almost simultaneously. "I knew what it meant," said Captain Koch. "I had been bombed before. I got out of bed and crawled" underneath it. I thought the bed might save me from splinters. Three bombs landed very close. The walls shook and pieces of the ceiling fell in. One of the bombs hit a wing of the hospital. The nurses saw me under the bed, and knew I had oeen through it before. They followed suit. They stayed under the beds only a few minutes. When the first shock was over they returned to their work and started getting patients out. OPERATION INTERRUPTED. "After the first wave of bombers j passed 1 decided to make for the beach, about 200 yards away. I could only just walk. I hobbled out, with assistance, to a clump of bushes on the beach. Some of the Jap machines were diving low and machine-gunning I buildings. J could hear the crump of J bombs in other parts of the town. The machines were sweeping over ships in the harbour. "When the first raid ended a nurse brought me a mattress and something \ to eat She told me an appendix operation had been interrupted by the raid, j Some of the patients wanted to re-1 turn to the hospital, but I warned | them that the Japs would come back, j Some of them didn't believe me and ■ went back to the hospital. I didn't see very much of the second raid. I kept low in the bushes in case the Japs machine-gunned ftthe beach." Stories of the heroism of other Australian nurses were told by travellers: who arrived from Singapore. The j nurses were on evacuation ships leav- } ing Singapore. When the ships were attacked by Japanese bombers and fighters, the nurses lay on top of children to protect them. Several of the nurses were hit. According to the travellers only half the Australian nurses in Malaya got away. The others volunteered to stay behind to care for the wounded. THE PUBLIC REACTION. At the back of the public mind is the question: "Can our capital cities and industrial towns of the east and I west coasts be taken unawares?" The Sydney "Sun" has asked other pertinent questions. "Why should Darwin have been caught flat-footed?" "How could an aircraft-carrier have got within fighter range without being detected by reconnaissance planes?" "Was there no radio detector?" "Have we not learned the lesson of Pearl Harbour?" "Have we a proper system of shore patrols and searching air re- | connaissance?" j No doubt these questions will be sifted by senior Army and Air Force officers dispatched to Darwin from headquarters immediately after the raid. The Government ordered a full! inquiry into al] aspects of the attack, j' including any suspicion that the j Japanese may have been aided by I fifth column activities. j

Darwin today is a "ghost town." All civilians not engaged in essential .work have been evacuated. Houses and shops are empty. The town is under military control.

Darwin residents who had no opportunity to insure property under the War Damage Insurance scheme, not yet in operation, have been advised to file claims. The commission will honour them after the war.