CHEERFUL WARRIOR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 111, 15 May 1942, Page 6

CHEERFUL WARRIOR

WOUNDED AUSTRALIAN “LUCKIEST MAN IN FORCES’’ Sydney, April IS. With a leg in plaster, snrapnel in ' one shoulder and a blind left eye, Private W. J. Dykstra, ot Sydney, still thinks he is the luckiest man in the A.I.F. He was evacuated Irom Singapore on tne last hospital ship to leave the island, and has arrived home. Dykstra said he was directing a military convoy with two companions at an important Johore intersection when a lomation of Japanese divebombers came over, dropping their bombs, “in the general scatter I hurled mvself into a ditch at the side of the road,’ 'he said. "A bomb landed 30 feet from me, 60 feet from my mates. I was lucky—only a bit of shrapnel in my eye and a flesh wound in my shoulder. Both my mates were killed. The concussion dazed me, and as 1 lay in the ditch wondering what had happened, a dive-bomber returned and blazed away' with incendiary bullets. They whizzed past my ears, kicked the ciust into my face, but 1 was lucky again. Only a couple oi bullets struck one of my legs. They told me in hospital that it was a miracle I had any leg left. “The Japanese were on Singapore! Island when we were taken aboard the hospital ship. That night we moved from the wharf and anchored in midstream. At dawn next day enemy bombers blasted the wharf to fragments. 1 was lucky again. Two days from Singapore, a bomber circled the ship at deck-height and flew off with the pilot leaning out of his cabin and waxing good-bye.” Private Dykstra said the Japanese meticulously observed the Red Cross sign. The only time a hospital was damaged in Malaya military targets were near by He added that when a bomb hit a section of the 10th. Australian General Hospital one night, the Japanese apologised next da.y over the radio for tiieir “mistake.''