It is the 79th anniversary of the Japanese assault on Dili (February 19-20 1942) that began the almost year long Australian commando campaign against the occupying enemy in, then, Portuguese Timor.

The earliest account of the history of the campaign was written by Bernard Callinan and titled ‘Independent Company’ and published in October 1953. The book was reprinted in 1984 and is widely regarded as one of the best of the personal WWII campaign histories genre.

Back in 1966 Callinan gave an insightful address to engineering undergraduates at the University of Melbourne (his alma mater) in which he explained how the book came to be written.

Callinan developed several ‘threads’ in his explanation with the primary one being ‘therapy’ in reaction to ‘the strain of waging a war against an always greatly superior enemy, and of being dependent for our existence upon a large all-pervading population’. He states that ‘We learnt to live with the strain, but there was a pronounced reaction when we were brought back to Australia’.

He goes on to say: ‘Another strand for the thread lies in our success. We had been successful. MacArthur and others had told us so, but much more we knew it; and we knew we had been successful where others had failed – in fact where all others had failed. No other allied troops between the Philippines, Burma, Malaya and Java had met the enemy and survived. We had killed some fifteen hundred enemy for our own loss of less than fifty but, very much more importantly, throughout it all we had remained a cohesive, aggressive fighting force’.

‘Another strand was the desire to get accuracy to the story. I think I am not unusual because I find the part truth difficult to deal with and trying to the patience. This story was front page news when it was released from censorship, many versions sprang up and the emphases were sometimes on the wrong aspects. I wanted to record my version of the true story’.

And finally this tribute: ‘After the Japanese landed there were a few weeks of doubt, but from then on, the Timorese became our supporters and loyal friends. They looked after our wounded, they buried our dead, they fed and housed us’. Over the months I moved, often unaccompanied, along our 60 mile front and I never hesitated to walk into a strange village, ask them to feed me and then lie down and sleep amongst them in a hut. They could have cut my throat without hindrance if they had wished’.

Bernard Callinan was a Captain and second in command of the No. 2 Independent Company on their arrival in Timor and subsequently took over as Officer Commanding in May 1942 with the rank of Major. In November 1942 he was given command of Sparrow Force at the time it was renamed Lancer Force after being reinforced by the No. 4 Independent Company.

Callinan was a peripatetic commander and travelled frequently and extensively visiting the dispersed locations occupied by the Australians. The book reveals that he was an acute observer of the people, terrain and localities over which the campaign was conducted and recorded what he saw with considerable insight and self-deprecating humour. Given Timor’s underdevelopment, especially away from Dili, many of the scenes he describes in his book are still recognisable today.

To see the full post, go to Doublereds: https://doublereds.org.au/forums/topic/286-why-i-wrote-‘independent-company’-bernard-callinan/