Serau Island rescue

Recollections Serau Island (formerly Seroea) – personal experience of Deane Lees of Texas, one of the Liberator bomber survivors that we rescued from Seroea Island on the 20th January 1944. This written by him some 50 odd years later.

When we were in the water, our cover/escort, (fellow squadron Liberator) tried to give us some help by inflating and throwing their 'Mae West' jackets out to us. It turned out to be a generous but futile gesture. We could see the jackets falling as they came out of the aircraft, but the combination of their prop wash, us being all beat up, and our bobbing up and down in the swells with only our faces out of the water, we just couldn't find them. In a short while our cover had to leave, we watched the aircraft turning away, and then their silhouette and engine noise fading into the distance, and as they left we had quite some apprehension about our future! Although real, the fears didn't become overwhelming because with our bobbing up and down we could get glimpses of the island maybe half a mile away, with people activity on a beach, then a little bit later we caught sight of canoes coming towards us. When a canoe reached me wearing only my 'dog tags', throat mike and G.I. white undershorts, I probably made about as sorry a looking catch as they had ever hauled from the sea! The big smiles on their faces were very welcome although we were not sure whether we had been captured or rescued!

Immediately after helping us up the beach, they showed some concern for our physical condition and some of the women began very energetically chewing green leaves, after they had a good 'wad' of leaf going, they would spit it out on to their hands and gently pat and pack it into our cuts. Maybe an hour or so later they built a small fire, heated water, and dunked coconut hemp/fibre in the now very hot water. After a bit of squeezing out they would hold the soggy mass on the now nearly dry and crusty leaf wad until we were ready to yell! This soak cleaned up the cuts pretty good. After the clean up, they surprised us again, this time by sprinkling a fine sandy tan and white looking powder on the cuts and gently patting it and rubbing it in. My worst cuts were a 9 inch one inside and above my right knee, a two or three inch on left wrist, (cut off my wrist watch!) and some small cuts around and above my left ear. After this First Aid our cuts now looked clean and dry with the edges all puckered up like roofing metal. At this time I had no real pain, just sore and beatup, to me this First Aid was an amazing and very effective medical procedure.

Our concerns about the question of 'rescue or capture' were happily resolved during the treatment by a couple of occurrences, first the big smiles and gentle handling that we had received, secondly Sawbridge our assistant engineer had been kept busy repeating at our rescuer's request, a pantomime of our mission against the Japanese. This was done with loud oral sound effects, and every time the bombs would drop and go 'boom', they would laugh and cheer and wave for more!

Later in the afternoon one of the villagers brought me a silk shirt and what I would call mission shorts (gray long john material with a draw string at the waist). We concluded that the limited concealment of my G.I. undershorts, were a source of embarrassment to them. Their modest behavior was further demonstrated the next morning when some women came down to the beach to bathe, with one hand holding a spare dry sarong, they walked into the water and splashed around bathing, then walking out of the water, the would squirm around putting on the carried dry sarong, while removing the worn one, all the while with out exposing an inch of skin. I still have the shirt and shorts, a very strong reminder of the tender care by a very special people.

The beach that we were on was not sand, but water washed rock, and very hard to walk sit or lay on, it was formed into two ridges running V shaped from inland to the sea, making a beach 50 to 70 yards long at the water line. These ridges on both sides left us with only a very limited field of view both seaward and upwards. This view restriction became very important the next morning when we heard aircraft engine noise, and couldn't tell who, where or what it was – we didn't think that it was Japanese bombers because the engines didn't have that out of sync sound that the Japanese bombers usually had – but it could have been fighters out on patrol, so we decided to get under cover, then suddenly swoosh, swoosh, and gone, two fighters very low, going from left to right almost directly overhead.

Who they were, we sure didn't know. From the very quick glimpse we had of the wing and fuselage markings, we believed we had the Australian multi-colour, rather than the Japanese solid colour rising sun. A quick consensus that the fighters were friendly got us out in the open for their next pass waving anything that we could get our hands on. Within a few minutes of the second pass by the fighters we spotted quite a ways out, a Catalina flying boat flying directly towards us from seaward. As it came closer we saw a light flashing from the windshield, it was an 'Aldis' signalling lamp flashing us in Morse code. Our radio man Sam Selby, was one of the six men who didn't survive the crash, so the blinking light wasn't telling us very much! Smith and I had some code training, so with Sawbridge we tried to form a three man team, one to call out the dots and dashes, one to translate, and the third to write down or remember what was being transmitted. Even with the slow speed of the Cat, by the time we were organised we only got a partially repeated four letters, RUOK, or UROK – was this a question, or an encouraging statement?

The Catalina, Australian, after this signalling and visual contact pass, circled left to come around and land in front of our beach. This was the open ocean and the first contact that the Cat made was with a swell that threw it back up, and then it came down with such a splash that we thought that we had company rather than rescue! It turned out that this type of stall landing was the basic norm for the open sea, and was not at all unusual, as they had a kit on board that had wooden plugs for filling holes left by popped rivets in the hull.

After the landing the Cat turned parallel to the shore, and swung nose and waist guns out, and one man got up on top of the wing with a sub machine gun, while they launched a rubber boat, it appeared that they were ready to fight! One of the men who came ashore was from an Australian Government Agency (acronym sounded like ANGOW). We learned later that he had paid the islanders 80 Dutch guilders for each of us, our rescuers had tried but failed to come for us the previous day, but the sea had been running so high at Darwin that they couldn't take off. The next morning it was still rough but they made it after three attempts with the seas breaking over the windshield. (Note, 2002. A different crew had attempted the previous night's rescue.) I don't remember much of the getting to or getting into the Cat, except that it was very hard on Mendish because of the pain from his smashed shoulder. After the take-off, one of the crew, (Note, 2002, me K.E.H.) gave me an onion and cheese heavy white bread sandwich, it tasted very good, I don't remember eating or drinking while on the island.

When the Japanese Liberators invaded Indonesia, they were postulating freedom with prosperity for their little brown brothers in a greater East Asia. Initially many Indonesions warmly welcomed the Japanese as a way of escaping the yoke of Dutch colonialism, but after a time they realised that the Japanese were acting more like conquerors and occupiers, and this freedom was beginning to lose it's glow! Our warm reception by the islanders was very much due to the Japanese taking away their young men as non-voluntary labour! Fortunately for us we were the beneficiaries of this changed attitude, from our group we were the first survivors of a downed aircraft to get out of enemy territory.

The Catalina is a very unique aircraft, capable of landing on the open ocean under reasonable conditions, extended flight times etc., but it is also the subject of barracks humour, 'It takes off at 90, flies at 90 and lands at 90. This slowness with low altitude makes it very vulnerable to enemy attack, and this flight was especially risky because of the distance involved, and lack of intelligence data, relating to the Japanese occupational activity.

Serua is a very small, mildly active volcanic island, once part of an ancient caldera, and is 425 miles from the Cat's forward base at Darwin. Situated at approximately at 130 East, by 6 South (2002. This from memory, I believe it is in the Serwati chain), it is in a chain of islands, then Japanese occupied, running 1500-2000 miles from Java and Timor in the West, to New Guinea in the East. These Japanese controlled islands were a randomly scattered loosely linked volcanic chain, with some islands overlapping in the East West direction. In the mid section none are more than 20 East-West miles apart, a rather solid fence that facilitated the enemy's control and observation, many miles out to sea.

On this rescue mission our Cat had to penetrate deep into enemy territory, find us and land, retrieve us from the beach, take off and fly back, all while under potential observation and/or attack. These gutsy Aussies personify the meaning behind the phrase, 'Comrades in Arms', God Bless Them! Aid and cover support was furnished by two Beaufighters, but they were operating at the limit of their range, so for part of the mission a pair of fighters took off every 20 minutes in order to sustain the two aircraft cover. Typical in war, using equipment designed for different geography, a different war in Europe where the English Channel is only 22-25 miles wide.

Note 2002. This text has been slightly edited in places to correct the context of the event in the light of latter day findings, but there is no alteration to the actual facts. If there is any intention to reproduce this in any way, it would be prudent to try to contact Deane Lee's wife, and/or family, for permission to do so. Deane's wife Hiroko is I believe of Hawiian/Japanese nationality and the last known address is: Hiroko Lees, One Towers Park Lane # 1702, San Antonio, Texas 78209- (6438)