The Lombok on average about one thousand feet in depth, it is much lower, although some places is. And not only deeply the street, it's tricky. The southern entrance of Nusa Penida and Lombok Bangko-Bangko guarded, where the Japanese placed their big guns in the Second World War.
Today surfers, against the big waves of Desert Point mine, described as one of the longest breaks on the planet and an "evil place". Between the two points reduces a threshold, the depth of about 0 meters, running streams and dramatic conditions to create, as the warm waters of the Pacific rush through the cooler in the Indian Ocean to join the south.
The Lombok Strait is the only deep-water channel from the Indian Ocean to the Java Sea in this part of Indonesia, and was of great strategic importance during World War II. Most underwater sequences of American, British, Dutch and Australian submarines from the large base in Fremantle were performed. The rapid and turbulent flows sometimes these submarines forced to the surface. The Japanese navy knew, and patrolled the channel. Her three six-inch guns were produced in Germany in Bangko-Bangko (also known as Cape Pandanan known) positioned where they could pick Seas as they negotiated the treacherous passage. Similar gun placements on Gili Trawangan and Bali could triangulate their defense of the channel the Japanese.
A portrait of Malcolm Gillies, who was captured in 1945 by the Japanese Navy in Lombok and killled
During the last months of the war, a gang of four young men - Australian and British commands Z-Force - went behind enemy lines in the south of Lombok scout: Lawrie Black, Alex Hoffie, Malcolm Gillies and James Crofton-Moss. Four went and two back. An air operation had tried to destroy the weapons. Your mission codenamed Starfish, was the condition of the guns to determine, collect intelligence on enemy defenses and, if necessary, to lay the ground for a demolition team that would destroy the weapons follow. In March 1945, the men from Australia traveled to Lombok on the Rook, a US submarine. Tensions and youthful spirits were high when a fight broke out between the Australian Commandos and American sailors in the narrow space on board. The stoush involved apparently a lot of a talc powder and ended up with a few bruises, a little blood and sore heads -. But no disciplinary action
was allowed the team south of Cape Sara fall, near the beautiful Selong Belanak beach. While the submarine waited in the darkness, the Australians struggled over the reef and made it to land in the east of the point in a dinghy, always flooded thoroughly in the surf along the way. Stores were buried in pigs holes where allegedly not find the Japanese them, although it turned out that the local Sasak cache were well aware. The team returned to the submarine. According to a second landing in Pengantap Bay, to the west of the first landing, more shops, the dinghy, outboard and fuel cave were stowed in a sea cliff. Exploring the team on the way to the area to find water and make camp before in Germany and in the northwest is toward the gun emplacements.
The four men were about six weeks on the island to make the friendly contact management locals with whom they often met to share propaganda materials and cash for information and fresh supplies in the form of chicken, eggs and vegetables , collected a significant amount of information and later returned command in Darwin. After about three weeks, they moved their camp to Batugendang Point, south of gun placements with Pandanan Point. A spare Radio was burned requested after the power supply for the first set. It was correctly with more stores in a nighttime airdrop in the bay supplied under the new stock
Approximately one month after they first arrived, divided the party, black and Hoffie with some locals on a recce position while returned to the first camp to collect Gillies and Crofton-Moss shops and log home wirelessly. The two were separated, always ready-made in the thick undergrowth. James Crofton-Moss never saw his friends. The remaining three managed to avoid the Japanese until the end, when they are eventually discovered. They were sitting in the early morning hours around their camp, their food for breakfast cleaning when a cracked branch one of the men pointed.
The alarm was raised, there was a rattling fell dixie cups and how the three ducked, seized their weapons and ran off into the bush, a storm of gunfire followed them.
Malcolm Gillies was taken wounded and captured. The remaining two, black and Hoffie, it took a few days later revealed to have found their way back into the first bearing and the south to the coast. After several attempts, they made radio contact with the base in Darwin. Restoring the dinghy out of the cave, she rendezvoused with a Catalina seaplane offshore and were sure to Darwin back.
A studio portrait Gillies in uniform on the Special Forces 'Roll of Honour' site. The thoughtful looking young man stares at the right side of the frame. One wonders what he endured during the month between his arrest and execution. Tales of derring-do, nightly escapades in dinghies and talcum powder battles faded slightly when the eyes look as it was, this young man.
It was only three months later, the Americans dropped their bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war and the lives of one-hundred-and-twenty-nine thousand Japanese citizens. Lest we forget ...
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This story is an excerpt from Mark's new book, a work in progress. Timid entitled The glass islands , the book in 2016 will be available and is more feature of unique style Mark, stories of travel in eastern Indonesia with anecdotes and personal reflections on the people, cultures, politics, History weaving, environmental and myths of the region. He can be contacted at mark.heyward@gmail.com
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