58 <strong>COMMANDO</strong> NEWS ~ <strong>Edition</strong> <strong>16</strong> | <strong>2019</strong>
THE LAST SIGNALLER COAST WATCHER PART ONE By SGT James (Jim) Burrowes, OAM. – M Special Unit Former AIF Sergeant James Burrowes (now age 96) served four years, including 2½ years as a signaller Coast Watcher in ‘M’ Special Unit of the Allied Intelligence Bureau and nine months with the US 7th Fleet Amphibious Landing Force. He spent ten months in enemy-occupied territory over-looking Rabaul and is believed to be the last signaller Coast Watcher survivor in Australia with the research to tell the story. He is a member of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia, the Box Hill RSL Sub-branch, and a life member of the Australian Commando Association Victoria. INTRODUCTION My name is Jim Burrowes, VX136343. I served as a Coast Watcher in the South Pacific during World War II. I have always been interested to tell the history of the Coast Watchers because their secretive and specialist operations were ‘hush hush’ during the war. I have now decided to publish it, including some of the details of my own role during the war, so that the vital role that Coast Watchers played in winning the war in the Pacific is not lost to posterity. As a Coast Watcher, I was also a signaller and I was proud to play a key role in Coast Watching operations, as acknowledged by Coast Watching founder, Commander Eric Feldt, on page 99 of his book The Coast Watchers. Commander Feldt declared that: “Without a teleradio, a Coast Watcher was doomed and useless. So, knowing their lives depended on it, they learnt how to code and de-code, how to operate a teleradio and effect simple repairs to it”. I am the last signaller Coast Watcher to tell the history of the Coast Watchers. These are my stories. THE ORIGIN OF THE INDEPENDENT COMPANIES AND TRAINING AT TIDAL RIVER Much credit for the formation of the Independent Companies must go to the British Government, when Military Mission 104, led by Lieutenant Colonel J.C. Mawhood arrived in Melbourne, Australia in November 1940, with the idea of raising and training British style ‘special’ or ‘commando’ units, which had proved successful in operating against German-occupied Europe. The Australian Army decided to raise four ‘independent’ companies and train them at the innocuously named No. 7 Infantry Training Centre at Wilsons Promontory, a national park since 1898. It was an isolated area of high, rugged and heavily timbered mountains, precipitous valleys, swiftly running streams, and swamps, sand dunes, thick scrub, bays and cliffs. Given this geography, the Prom was “... ideally suited for training troops who might fight anywhere from the Libyan deserts to the jungles of New Guinea, the only drawback being that in winter ... the climate was Jim speaks at the Commando memorial service at Tidal River, Wilsons Promontory in 2015. often more polar than tropical”, as Captain Freddie Spencer Chapman, instructor in field craft, wrote later. Spencer Chapman was joined by Captain ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert, explosives; Sergeant Frank Misselbrook, signals; and Sergeant Peter Stafford, weapons, to train the first Australian Independent Companies. This training led to the formation of eight Independent Companies – later to be redesignated as Commandos. They subsequently became renowned for their achievements during the war in Timor, Ambon, New Guinea, Bougainville and the Borneo islands. Tragically, however, 300 were beheaded at Ambon and 140 were captured and died when the Japanese prison ship Montevideo Maru was torpedoed and sunk off Luzon. Throughout the years of the war, many surviving soldiers of the Independent Companies were seconded to Coast Watcher parties thus augmenting these parties with their jungle experience. Throughout the years of the war, (following the death of 142 men who were either KIA or drowned on the Prison Ship Montevideo Maru) 120 of the original contingent of 273 surviving soldiers of the Independent Companies were seconded to the Coast Watcher parties thus augmenting them with their jungle experience - many of whom were later awarded Medals of Honour. <strong>COMMANDO</strong> NEWS ~ <strong>Edition</strong> <strong>16</strong> | <strong>2019</strong> 59
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