BRUTAL ATTACKS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24216, 6 March 1942, Page 6

BRUTAL ATTACKS

CIVILIANS AT DARWIN ENEMY MACHINE-GUNNERS SYDNEY, Mar. 5 Grim stories of the first two attacks by Japanese aircraft on Darwin were told by 400 evacuees who arrived in Sydney by train yesterday. Most ol the evacuees were men, and some bore scars as mementoes of their experience. According to Mr. P. Murray, the Japanese machine-gunned men in the street. "Three men lay flat in the gutter in front of the Lands Department, but the Japanese returned and had a second go at them," he said. Mr. Murray was wounded in the right arm by a splinter from a bomb. Mr. Raymond Brooks was met by his wife carrying her six months old baby in her arms. He had to tell her that her father, Mr. Catalino Spain, and her uncle had been killed. Mr. Spain was machine-gunned, and his body was hurled into the harbour by bomb blast. Mr. William Harris said it was "hell let loose" when the Japanese came over in waves of nine. "I am not easily put out," he said . "but it thoroughly sickened me when they had a go at everything in sight." Mr. J. M. Boothby, who had sent his wife a telegram, stating he was still alive, but had lost everything, stepped lrom the train wearing clothes supplied by the Red Cross. He was at the hospital being examined before treatment for a minor complaint when the hospital was hit, and he said that the nurses and kitchen staff worked like heroines. He added that, in his opinion, the bombs were not meant for the hospital, because no more were dropped after the first lot. When the first bombs started to fall Mr. Stanley Patterson was working on a, Roval Australian Air Force aerodrome. "The R.A.A.F. boys did all they could, and put up a good show," he said. Hit by bomb splinters in the eyes and on the nose, Mr. Victor Edward Johnson, president of the Darwin Carpenters' Union, said he wa's working on the Waterfront when the raid began. He ducked under the wharf when bombs fell about 200 yards away. ATTACK ON AIR FORCE FIGHTER, AEROPLANES USED CANBERRA, Mar. f> An .official communique concerning the raid on Darwin yesterday says Royal Australian Air Force installations were machine-gunned by Japanese fighter aeroplanes. Some damage was caused, but there were no casualties. It is reported that alerts were sounded later, but no further raids occurred. The Japanese used incendiary bullets and explosive cannon shells in their raids on Darwin, Wyndham and Broome. They were sprayed down from an altitude of about 8000 feet.