NAME: Frederick Quill

DATE: 1944

UNIT: RAAF attached to USAAF

LOCATION: New Guinea

An excerpt from the diary of Frederick Quill, RAAF, describes a patrol with US troops and an ambush by the Japanese.

Fred Quill had been attached to a USAAF group and was on patrol in New Guinea. The patrol of 12 men had gone into the jungle about half a mile when they came to two cross tracks.

Saturday 1/7/1944

"The Yanks had an argument which one to take and seven decided to go along one track," Fred wrote in his diary.

"I was going to go with them but suddenly I heard a voice that said 'Don't go down that track' so I decided to go with the five."

The patrol split up and went in different directions.

"We'd only gone about 10 minutes when we heard a sustained burst of machine gun fire. We made a flanking movement and sneaked up behind a bunch of Japs, nine of them. The party of seven had walked into their hidden machine gun and had been wiped out in that machine gun burst.

"The Japs were examining the possessions of these dead Americans and having 5 tommy guns we wiped them out in just under 30 seconds, every one of them. No waiting to collect any data except pulling out the breach of the gun and taking it with us. We returned to camp for a larger party. I gave the job over to four other men. Had a bit of trouble getting to sleep that night and could not get the scene out of my mind. I can still see those Japs wilting under our terrific tommy gun fire. We got 9 for 7 of our men.

"I know it was (his wife) Edna's voice stopped me from going along with those seven men."

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