Dear colleagues and friends,
At my talks here in North America on the Australian battalion featured in my novel, Lark Force, the lone unit of volunteers facing the wrath of the full Japanese invasion of Rabaul, I ask for a show of hands for audiene members who have relatives who were engaged in rthe New Guinea, Solomon Islands or Rabaul fighting.
I spend half my time in Chester Connecticut and half in New York cuty. The closest I thought I’d ever come to an answer was one reader whose uncle flew 200 bonbing missions over Rabaul.
In this welcoming, elegant synagogue in Chester I got so close to this historic tragedy that I am still trying to wrap my head around the answer. A young man, well young to me, perhaps in his 40s, saud that his relative was a sailor on the USS Sturgeon submarine. This was the US submarine that torpedoed a Japanese ttransport sip carrying no markings that it was transporting POWs. About 1,000 were crammed into the hold, sailing to a labor camp probably in Japan or nearby occupied territory.. The ship, the notorious Montevideo Maru, went down with no survivors among the POWs.
Who were those doomed prisoners? 845 members of Lark Force and 200 civilians from Tabaul. The wreck of the Montevideo Maru was finally discovered in 2023-4 near the South China Sea!
My audience member descris relative worked in the USS Sturgeon torpedo room and had never come to terms with his participation in the devastating “friendly” fire event , described as Australia’s worst naval disaster. All his life he grieved.
On the right, Harry Bernstein, an orderly in the 2/22 battalion, n his 40s, a tailors machinist from Melbourne, and on left, Albert Fernandez, orderly in the 2/10 Field Ambulance unit Company A,inhis 40s, a buyer from Sydney and former member of the medical corps of the civilian miitia. It made my book talk/slide show on the 8 Jewish soldiers in Lark Force, 4 who survived and 4 did not, immediate and intimate.
The event was a dynamic success, thee questions probig. The audience at CBSRZ does its homework before an author steps on the stage. For which I am truly grateful!.
My novel:
