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loyalty
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Ronald ‘Buck’ Taylor, a gunlayer in HMAS Yarra (II). Attempting to buy time for her tiny
convoy, the 1500-ton sloop mounted a gallant but hopeless defence against three Japanese
heavy cruisers in February 1942. Taylor ignored the order to abandon ship and stayed
alone at Yarra’s last functioning 4-inch gun, firing slowly and defiantly at the enemy until
he was killed. All of these men were at war and accepted that death was an ever present
possibility, but similar displays of loyalty have also occurred outside times of conflict.
In the aftermath of the Navy’s worst peacetime disaster, the loss of HMAS Voyager after
a collision with HMAS Melbourne (II) on 10 February 1964, one of the destroyer’s most
junior officers and her most senior sailor each received posthumous gallantry awards.
Both had lost their own lives while attempting to save others. Midshipman Kerry Marien,
having survived the collision and reached the safety of a life raft, immediately returned
to the water to see if he could help those still struggling. He was last seen heading
towards Voyager’s forward section which floated for some five minutes before it sank.
Among those still trapped within this section were 60 men in the forward cafeteria. Here
Voyager’s coxswain, Chief Petty Officer Jonathan ‘Buck’ Rogers, had been presiding over
a game of tombola. Sailors who did escape, later told how Rogers had taken charge of the
situation. Calming terrified shipmates, he attempted to control the flooding, tried to free
a jammed escape hatch with a length of pipe and a spanner, and organised men to move
into other compartments with unblocked exits. Knowing that he was probably too large
to fit through an escape hatch, Rogers led those still trapped in a prayer and a hymn. His
wife later remarked that these actions were ‘typical of him - he never thought of himself’. 4
Group loyalty clearly suffers if relationships within a Service are not based on trust, and
further strengthened through mutual respect and fair treatment both up and down the
command chain. As the US Army General George Patton once remarked, ‘There is a great
deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even
more necessary and much less prevalent’. 5 Fortunately, the RAN has generally been
well served by its senior officers, particularly in wartime. Cruiser captains such as John
Collins, Henry Showers and Harry Howden, all established reputations as highly skilled
professionals; officers recognised by their superiors as aggressive and resourceful, but
who also earned the respect of their men for not taking unnecessary risks. ‘We swore by
Captain Howden’, wrote one HMAS Hobart (I) sailor about his commander’s performance,
‘The confidence we had in him was as strong as our faith in the ship’. 6 Even so, the most
outstanding officer of his generation was arguably Captain Hec Waller, RAN, who had
earned a reputation as an outstanding fighting captain in the Mediterranean while in
command of HMAS Stuart (I) and the Scrap Iron Flotilla. Waller, as one description has it:
Was fair, serious-minded, and always reasonable. He was an officer
with a profound sense of responsibility towards his job and his men.
He had an almost uncanny ability to make others feel secure and trust
him implicitly, and a way of never varying in his attitude to those under
or above him. Perhaps this, his capacity to be always the same in his