16/08/2024
An emotional trek for one of our Kokoda Spirit trekkers Rick Field walking in the footsteps of his Father and Uncle.
Spy twins' top-secret war
Twins Don and Peter Field, members of a secret team dropped behind enemy lines in WWII to intercept Japanese radio transmissions in the jungles of New Guinea. Source: The Australian .
https://youtu.be/zy33GjBAwqo
After a fortnight on the Kokoda Track, the twins boarded a 10-seater plane at Jackson strip bound for Nadzab in the northeast. "I'll never forget that flight," Field says, shuddering. "The pilot got on and said: 'I've never flown a plane like this before, but we should be right.' He flew the plane so low we could have touched the trees. Luckily, he didn't have to land. We jumped out, then they flew around and dropped our radio sets to us and some food. We were told we'd be there for two or three months, then they'd come and pick us up."
AFTER all these years, Don Field has never grown weary of the siblings' high jinks that landed him and his twin brother Peter at the centre of one of the more extraordinary Australian stories of World War II.
With a mischievous look, he passes over a photograph of two identical teenage Diggers in slouch hats, and challenges anyone to tell which one is which.
The only clue is that one brother is sporting a slightly forced grin. Surely that must be Peter, the one with something to hide?
Don Field, now 88, laughs and takes the photograph back.
It was 70 years ago that the brothers pulled a swifty on the medical examiner at the Ripponlea drill hall in Melbourne's southeast, enabling Peter to enlist despite his history of heart problems and against his father's wishes. As it turned out, neither brother would have any trouble keeping a secret.
The switch, Don Field admits, was his idea. As the would-be recruits were called in alphabetical order, Field, DC presented first and was given a clean bill of health.
THE story of how two brothers helped defeat Japan can be told for the first time.
He then joined Peter in the bathroom, where the brothers quickly changed clothes. When Field, PC was called, the doctor was amazed. "You really are the spitting image of your brother," he exclaimed.
Later in life, the Fields would march together on Anzac Day, carrying the banner for the Australian Special Wireless Group. By then, the story of how they fudged the medical exam had become the stuff of legend.
Ask them what they actually did in the war, however, and you'd be met with a short response.
It was only two years ago, when a brown paper package sent by the British government arrived in the letterbox of Don Field's Melbourne home, that the full wartime exploits of the brothers could finally be told.
Inside the package were three things: a gold medal emblazoned with the words "We too served"; a citation from the head of Bletchley Park, home to Britain's famous wartime code-crackers; and a separate citation from then British prime minister Gordon Brown.
The citation from Mr Brown ran to a paragraph. For Mr Field, they were words he never expected to read: "The government wishes to express to you its deepest gratitude for the vital service you performed during World War II".
Over a cup of coffee at his house in Melbourne's eastern suburb of Nunawading, Don Field yesterday said Mr Brown must have authorised the citation just before he lost his own job. "I don't know if that means it is worth more now or not," he joked. For his wife Patricia, the revelation of her husband and his brother's feats came as a shock. "He never told us anything," she said, shaking her head.
Peter Field died before the package arrived but the recognition from Britain meant that for the first time, Don Field could speak freely about the two years he and his brother spent in the jungles of New Guinea intercepting Japanese radio messages as part of a covert operation overseen by General Douglas MacArthur, the US Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area.
For three months at a time, the Field brothers and other members of a hand-picked group would live in jungle sites behind enemy lines, monitoring Japanese communications around the clock. They were armed with basic infantry skills, high-speed morse code, a working knowledge of Katakana, one of three Japanese scripts, an old Simpson radio and a concealed cyanide pill in case of capture.
The communications they intercepted and sent to London via Brisbane, provided critical intelligence to MacArthur's strategy of cutting supplies to Japanese troops in the Pacific.
The most spectacular success were the intercepts that enabled the US to plan the mid-air assassination of Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese admiral who had planned the Pearl Harbor attack.
From their jungle camps, the Fields could see MacArthur's strategy also working on the ground. "They would come into the camp," Don Field said of the starving Japanese troops. "You couldn't help but feel sorry for them. They would come and raid our cookhouse at night. You always knew when they had been around because they used to wear funny shoes with one big toe. You would see the foot prints in the jungle behind.
"They knew we were there but they didn't know what we were doing. They weren't getting supplies and they didn't have much fight left in them. A lot of them were giving themselves up."
It wasn't just the Japanese who were oblivious to what the Australians were up to. When they were first recruited for their mission, the specially trained members of the ASWG were sworn to secrecy. No records of their mission were kept. "All the young fellas that were in this unit had to sign a statement that they wouldn't divulge what they did to anyone - any of their parents or loved ones - for 60 years," Don Field said.
"Everyone kept that secret. Whenever anyone asked me what I did I just said signals. That was it. For years Peter and I could carry the banner on Anzac Day. But I have never told anyone."
DONALD and Peter Field, identical twins, were born in 1924 in Launceston, Tasmania. "The trouble began when we started school," Don Field recalls with amusement. "After a couple of days a note was sent home to my mother saying: 'We don't know one boy from the other.' So I had a D embroidered on my shirt and Peter had a P."
When "P" was six he contracted rheumatic fever, which caused permanent damage to his heart. "From then on, Peter wasn't allowed to carry anything," Don Field recalls. "He wasn't allowed to play any sport and he wasn't allowed to run."
In 1939, the war began and by 1942 Japan had made spectacular advances, capturing a vast area stretching to New Guinea.
The brothers, then 17, were keen to enlist. "I went home to my father and said I wanted to join the army. We thought it was only a matter of weeks before Australia would be invaded."
Although Don was two years shy of the minimum army enlistment age, his father gave permission for him to sign up. But he insisted Peter would never be allowed to join, "not with a heart like that". On this point, the boys' father underestimated the twins' resourcefulness. On March 31, 1942, the boys presented at Ripponlea drill hall in Melbourne for the military medical examination. The captain in charge worked his way through the alphabetical roster and when he reached "Field, D.C.", Don went forward for the examination. The surgeon captain took careful measurement of his height, noted the colour of his eyes and hair, examined his heart, and finally certified him fit for service. Don emerged from behind the curtain and disappeared into the washroom with Peter. The boys quickly swapped clothing and were back in place before Peter's name, next on the list, was called. When the captain announced "Field, P.C.", recalls Field, "I went behind the curtain again to see the doctor I'd just seen minutes before.
"After several moments, the doctor seemed to have worked out what was going on. 'Gee,' he said, 'you really are the spitting image of your brother.' "
And so both brothers came to be at Park Orchards, a golf course in Melbourne with a chalet converted to host the army's most secret section, the signal intelligence units, which were responsible for intercepting the enemy's coded radio transmissions.
For more than a half century, Field, 88, kept the nature of his work during World War II to himself. His wife of 57 years, Patricia, learned only on his 70th birthday that for three years from 1942 her husband was a member of an ultra-secret elite team dropped behind enemy lines in what is now Papua New Guinea to intercept Japanese radio transmissions.
The Australian Special Wireless Group was so covert that new recruits -- who were sworn to secrecy for 60 years -- were told their efforts must remain unknown and unacknowledged.
That was until 2010, when Field unexpectedly received a citation from the British government, signed by then prime minister Gordon Brown and accompanied by a gold medal engraved with the words "We too served".
Even now Field's humble nature does not permit him to recognise the extent of his wartime contribution, but this Anzac Day he can at last tell the story of a spy's experiences behind enemy lines. Or, more precisely, two identical spies.
Once at Park Orchards, the young recruits were taught to transcribe morse code at high speed. British, US and Australian collaboration on intelligence during the war was so thorough it constituted a joint intelligence effort. The British focused on German and Italian transmissions, and the Americans, who had bases in the Pacific, Japanese.
"Once we could transcribe 32 words per minute in English, we were told to forget all that, we were going to learn kana," Field says. His unit was moved to Bonegilla camp in Albury, NSW, where signalmen were trained in katakana, one of three Japanese alphabets, eventually attaining the same speed as in English.
In April 1942, US general Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific area, arrived in Melbourne and established a new top-secret intelligence unit called Central Bureau, which was eventually housed in a mansion in the suburb of Ascot, Brisbane.
The Australian Special Wireless Group became a member of CB, putting it under direct US command. After four months of training, one group was sent to Darwin, the other to Port Moresby. "One day Peter and I were called in and told we were being sent to New Guinea," Field says.
They touched down on Jackson Strip, Port Moresby, in April 1942. Working eight-hour shifts, four to a tent, at the foot of the Kokoda Track, the signalmen were able to intercept communications from all across Southeast Asia.
"We were given old-fashioned Kingsley radio receivers, wore earphones and recorded what we heard with pen and paper," Field says. The paper records of code jotted down by signalmen -- to them an incomprehensible flow of sounds -- were flown or signalled out by a radio operator to Brisbane for decryption by CB, or to Bletchley Park, Britain's main decryption centre. It was at Bletchley that Britain's finest mathematicians broke Germany's Enigma code.
By January 1942, the Americans had broken JN-25, the primary code used by the Japanese to send military messages. Surpassing even Enigma in its complexity, JN-25 was based on giving each Japanese word a five-digit numerical identification. For example, the string 97850 meant submarine. The formality of Japanese speech had provided the clues. Japanese messages generally contained stylised expressions -- "I have the honour to inform your Excellency", for example -- allowing code-breakers to identify certain ritually repeated words and identify the building blocks of the code.
Transmissions from large stations such as Tokyo could be intercepted from Port Moresby, but to gain access to communications in New Guinea it was necessary for the unit to be within a few hundred metres of the transmitter. For this, signalmen needed to be parachuted behind enemy lines. The signalmen, at constant risk of being captured and tortured for information, kept a small cyanide pill in one heel of their boots and were ordered to commit su***de if they were taken prisoner.
After a fortnight on the Kokoda Track, the twins boarded a 10-seater plane at Jackson strip bound for Nadzab in the northeast. "I'll never forget that flight," Field says, shuddering. "The pilot got on and said: 'I've never flown a plane like this before, but we should be right.' He flew the plane so low we could have touched the trees. Luckily, he didn't have to land. We jumped out, then they flew around and dropped our radio sets to us and some food. We were told we'd be there for two or three months, then they'd come and pick us up."
Life in the jungle was hot and exhausting, and the malnourished signalmen suffered severe malaria. Combat surrounded them "all the time, all around". The trees provided camouflage for snipers and the ground was laden with b***y traps.
"My grandchildren would love to know how many people I shot," Field jokes. "I didn't shoot anyone, but we saw people being wounded, and we watched the fuzzy wuzzies (indigenous New Guineans) bringing the bodies of those killed back down the track."
The brothers' next landing, in Finchhaven, was a breeze. "In just two weeks at Finchhaven, the Americans had constructed an airstrip made of metal strips that linked together and lay on the coral," Field says.
Nor did the Americans allow their remote situation to dull Independence Day. "We went down to the mess with our plates and we'd never seen anything like it. The Americans had turkey, cranberry sauce, apple jelly, an ice-cream machine, everything they loved in the middle of the jungle."
The Australians were not the only ones who were creeping down to the US canteen at night. With intelligence on Japanese movements, the Allies had managed to cut off Japanese supplies, leaving their troops starving.
"At night they'd make a beeline for the cook house. Every morning a big truck would go past full of Japanese captured (in their midnight raids) by the Americans," Field says. The Americans treated their prisoners humanely, he says. Indeed, he suspected some Japanese deliberately gave themselves up. On the other hand, he witnessed from a distance an instance of atrocious treatment of Australian prisoners at the hands of the Japanese. The memory, still too painful for Field to recount in detail, involves Australian prisoners being led to a cliff edge, forced to their knees and pushed forward so they were face down on the rocky ground. There they were executed with swords, their heads rolling down to the sea.
While Peter Field, with his ailing heart, had survived in New Guinea so far, even overcoming a bout of dengue fever, one night on the peninsula he got hiccups after dinner (a classic symptom of pericarditis and heart attack).
At first his friends thought his violent gulping was a joke, but the hiccups became so severe that he collapsed and was taken to a US hospital near the camp.
"The surgeon called me in and asked, 'This brother of yours, how did he ever get into the army? He's got a terrible heart,' " Don Field says. The hospital was not equipped to perform surgery and the doctor advised him to write and tell their parents that Peter was in a serious condition.
Don Field decided he could not upset his parents with such news. During their time away from home, the brothers had each written weekly letters to their parents. If Peter's letters stopped, his parents would fear the worst, but Don also knew his parents would detect any attempt by him to forge his brother's handwriting.
Before being sent, all letters had to go before the captain in charge, who used a razor blade to cut out sections deemed to reveal sensitive information. "I thought, 'I can do this,' " Don Field recalls. "I'd get one page, and on the top I'd write 'Dear Mum', and at the bottom I'd put 'love, Peter'. Then I'd cut out the whole middle section and send what was left away. The next week I'd do it to Dad. They never woke up to it."
After six weeks, Peter Field was released from hospital, but he was never allowed back on shift again. "He got the most wonderful job: writing the numbers on trucks and painting luscious girls on them."
Armed with ULTRA, as decrypted intelligence was known, the Allies were gradually able to push the Japanese back into the Pacific. The most famous example of intelligence changing the course of the war was the Battle of Midway. The Japanese plan was to stage a diversionary raid off the Aleutian Islands, luring the US Navy to Midway Atoll, where the Japanese navy would be waiting to crush them. But from messages intercepted in Melbourne and Washington, the Allies had learned that the Aleutians were a feint and that the Japanese were planning a major strike elsewhere. The only clue to the location in the Japanese communications was the abbreviation AF.
The Americans conceived a clever trick to determine the meaning of AF. First, their forces stationed on Midway Atoll sent an internal message informing their superiors that they were running out of fresh water.
Then, Allied signalmen monitored Japanese communications until they finally intercepted a message: "AF is running short of water", linking the abbreviation to Midway Atoll.
Having determined the actual target, the US Navy was able to ignore the diversion at the Aleutians and sail straight to Midway, where it caught the Japanese off guard and devastated their unprepared fleet: a defeat from which they never recovered.
Another spectacular achievement of intelligence, which was attributed to the Australian Special Wireless Group, was the assassination of Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The Americans had discovered from a message intercepted in Darwin that Yamamoto was due to inspect a Japanese naval base in the Solomon Islands on April 18, 1943. He was surprised by 18 US P-38 fighters, which shot down his plane as it made its descent into Bougainville.
It is estimated that intelligence, to which the Australian Special Wireless Group was central, shortened the Pacific war by six to 10 months. Harry Hinsley, official historian of British intelligence in World War II, has said that intelligence from the Pacific was also of immense value in the war in Europe -- itself shortened, in his opinion, by two years. This is because while the Germans were careful not to convey their plans over the radio, the Japanese would often transmit their knowledge of German strategy.
In 1945, the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to an end. Peter Field found work as a commercial artist and lived a healthy life to the age of 80. Don Field became an accountant and is marching in today's Anzac Day parade in Melbourne.
Sarah Lucas is an Australian journalist based in Paris. She is distantly related to Don Field
