Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Geoffrey Russell Cary (1916 - 1943)

No 6 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force

Geoffrey Russell Cary was born at Albury, New South Wales on 22 August 1916, the second son of Charles Henry Cary (1883 – 1964) and Stella Mira Pollard (1887 – 1986). Geoff grew up on his parents’ farm ‘Wandene’ at Cullivel near Urana. Geoff was educated at Albury Grammar School for 2 years, at Carlton South Public School in Sydney for 1 year and then for 3 years studying commercial art at Stott’s College in Melbourne. As a young man, Geoff served an apprenticeship as a fitter and worked servicing farm machinery. Geoff had an interest in performance and spent around five years as an amateur magician. Geoff was also a talented artist and photographer.

On 11 July 1940 Geoff enlisted for service in the Royal Australian Air Force and commenced training as an aircraft mechanic specialising in Hudson Bombers.

The Lockhart Review and Oaklands Advertiser of 12 November 1940 carried a small item of news that:

Private Geoffrey Russell Cary, son of Mr and Mrs Chas. Cary is in camp at the Melbourne Showground. His many friends will be pleased to learn that his knowledge of conjuring served him in good stead recently when he appeared at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne on two consecutive nights.

The Melbourne Argus of 6 November explained more:

R.A.A.F. REVUE

"Spitfire," presented for a second time last night at the Princess Theatre by the No. 1 Engineering School Revue Company, R.A.A.F., was again an informal, happy-go-lucky success.

The Individual performers, singers, dancers, magicians, and especially the two or three dozen Air Force men who wandered around the stage, made wisecracks, put an aeroplane together, and generally produced an amusing background, made the whole show a pleasant evening's entertainment.

Graduating from the RAAF Engineering School Geoff was posted to Number 6 Squadron which had begun the war by conducting reconnaissance and bombing exercises with the navy with its fleet of Avro Anson patrol aircraft and flying escort to naval convoys carrying AIF troops to the Middle East. Shortly after the opening of the Pacific War, seaward patrols were being conducted around Sydney Harbour.

The squadron's Ansons were replaced by twelve Mark I Lockheed Hudson light bombers during April and May 1940. These modern aircraft were much more capable than the Ansons and had a longer range, higher speed and greater bombload. No. 6 Squadron continued to be based at Richmond, though detachments were made to other airstrips along the east coast when the squadron escorted troop convoys. In August 1940 the squadron conducted long-range patrols searching for German raiders which were present in the Tasman Sea, but without success.

Geoff did well during his time at Richmond and on 1 January 1942 was promoted to Leading Aircraftsman. On 1 April 1943, he was promoted to Corporal. He was also able to maintain an acceptable social life. It was there he met 20-year-old Irene Roma Poole. For Geoff, working from the security of the base at Richmond must have seemed quiet but the war was catching up quickly. In December 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour opening a new, and much closer, phase of the war. January 1942 showed Australia that it was no longer isolated from a direct threat to its security with the fall of Rabaul and if any doubt remained, the bombing of Darwin in February removed it once and for all.

In July 1942 the squadron was informed that it was to be deployed to Horn Island in Torres Strait the following month. Geoff and Irene were married in Sydney on 8 August and he was given leave until Tuesday 11 August when he was to report back to his unit for embarkation. The couple honeymooned in Melbourne although Geoff did not have permission to go there.

On arrival at Horn Island, No 6 Squadron detached a flight of 4 Hudsons to Milne Bay to perform reconnaissance duties which included their ground crew and equipment along with the aircraft and flight crew. Although the detail of the deployment is not specifically documented it’s likely from photographs taken by Geoff of the ship that he was a member of the ground crew for the detachment and that he travelled to Milne Bay aboard the MV Lakatoi. Geoff carried with him a camera and developing equipment which were in fact not allowed to be carried by servicemen. Later that month the Hudson detachment participated in a combined attack on a Japanese invasion convoy off Milne Bay and also bombed positions on the nearby coast. 

Offering a sheltered harbour, Milne Bay, on the south-eastern tip of Papua was selected for development as an Allied base - the key component of which was three airstrips - in 1942. These facilities also made it a key stepping stone for the Japanese in their drive towards Port Moresby.

Late on the night of 25 August 1942, a force of 2,000 Japanese marines was landed to capture the three airstrips at Milne Bay. From the beginning, the Japanese were at a disadvantage. The marines were landed 11 kilometres east of their intended landing area, and their intelligence had significantly underestimated the Allied garrison. Whereas the Japanese believed there no more than a few hundred troops defending the airstrip, there were actually almost 9,000 Allied troops including two Australian infantry brigades - the 7th and the 18th. The Allies had the additional advantage of having air support close at hand because the 75 and 76 Squadrons from the RAAF, both equipped with P-40 fighter bombers, were also based at Milne Bay. Initially, however, the Japanese met with their accustomed success. Supported by two light tanks, they advanced steadily westward.

The Australia 61st Battalion was first into action and slowed the Japanese, although unable to hold them back. The 2/10th Battalion was moved up on the night of 27 August, but faulty dispositions and other command failings meant it was brushed aside by a renewed Japanese thrust and disintegrated in a confused withdrawal. Reaching the edge of the easternmost airstrip on 28 August the intensity of Japanese operations fell away as they made preparations for their attack, which included landing 800 reinforcements. In the early hours of 31 August, they charged the defences manned by the 25th and 61st Australian Battalions and the United States 43rd Engineer Regiment and 709th Anti Aircraft Battery. The Japanese suffered grievously, largely due to machine gun and artillery fire, and withdrew by dawn. Throughout their operations, the Japanese were constantly harassed during daylight hours by the P-40s.

With the coming of daylight on 31 August, the commander of Milne Force, Australian Major General Cyril Clowes, seized the opportunity to counterattack and ordered the 2/12th Battalion to pursue the retreating Japanese. Clowes was in a difficult position throughout the battle because, although he outnumbered the Japanese, he received multiple reports indicating other Japanese to his flanks and rear. It was for this reason that initially only a single battalion was sent after the Japanese.

Despite the skilled and determined rearguard action that was characteristic of the Japanese at this stage of the war, the 2/12th, supported by the 2/9th Battalion from 2 September onwards, steadily advanced along the north shore of Milne Bay.

Although the Japanese high command advocated a reinforcement of the force at Milne Bay, its commander, noting increasing sickness and exhaustion among his troops recommended an immediate withdrawal. Between 4 and 7 September, the Japanese were evacuated at night from around their original landing areas at Waga Waga and Wandala. Of the 2,800 Japanese landed, only 1,318 re-embarked. It was estimated that up to 750 lay dead around Milne Bay and the majority of the remainder were killed trying to escape overland to the Japanese base at Buna. Allied deaths included 167 Australians and 14 Americans.

Of great significance to the air effort was the work carried out by the RAAF ground crews. Despite suffering attacks by Japanese aircraft, the work of the maintenance and support personnel at the Milne Bay airfields was magnificent. Repair and maintenance work was a continuous round-the-clock operation, rectifying damage caused not just by the enemy, but by the persistent rain that found its way into fuel systems and electrical systems, and mud that tore away undercarriage components and damaged flight controls during landings. Working out in the open, under fire, and with the most basic of tools, the ground crews consistently made sufficient numbers of aircraft available to fight on every day of the battle.

Milne Bay was the first comprehensive defeat of a Japanese landing force during the Pacific War. Despite an oppressive combination of extreme humidity, voracious insects, and the tropical disease both combined to create, Milne Bay remained an important Allied staging area until victories in New Guinea made other more suitable areas available from September 1943 onwards.

During October No 6 Squadron completed its move to Wards Strip near Port Moresby and continued to carry out seaward reconnaissance, anti-submarine patrols, and other tasks over enemy-held areas. During the campaign on the northern coast of New Guinea, 6 Squadron dropped supplies to Australian troops at Buna, Ioma, Kakoda, and Baibara Island. Medical evacuation sorties were also flown from the Wanigela Mission to Port Moresby. As the raids on Buna, Gona, and Sanananda intensified in December the unit relocated to Milne Bay and commenced night bombing raids against enemy positions. The squadron also made attacks on Japanese naval vessels off the Buna coast but a Japanese bombing raid on Turnbull airfield in January 1943 caused damage to many of the squadron’s Hudsons.

Tony Booth was from a different squadron to that of Geoff Cary but it’s likely that the two knew each other because they both possessed photographs of the same subject. His account provides a vivid description of the life of an aircraft mechanic at Milne Bay. Booth H E. The Dry Gullies I Have Crossed. Quoted in Living Through 'Friendly Fire' in New Guinea. (www.australiansatwar.gov.au)  

Being shot at by planes and having bombs dropped near you was a fairly common occurrence in New Guinea during World War II, as Tony Booth would be the first to tell you. But when the bullets and the bombs came from Australian aircraft, it was a bit hard to take.

Tony Booth was an aircraft mechanic, a job that had its dangerous moments; especially when guns were fired accidentally while the planes were being serviced or the bombs were dropped as they were being mounted under the aircraft.

A plane would be allocated generally to two men, a mechanic and a rigger, but quite often only to a mechanic. It was then their responsibility to see it was in 100% order at all times and the aim of the serviceability was to ensure that as many as possible would be available in the shortest possible time.

First thing every morning the mechanics would do their daily inspections, which was a very thorough visual inspection to see that nothing was broken or displaced. They would then ‘pull the motor through’ which involved turning the propellers over a few times and draining the petrol tanks via the drain cocks under each tank. The mechanic would let petrol run into his hand to see if any water had mixed with the fuel through overnight condensation.

40-hourly and 80-hourly inspections were done on each aircraft and if an inspection was due on an aircraft it would be taken to an inspection bay over which a camouflage net was stretched. It was during one of these inspections that Tony had a scare.

He was working on an engine on an 80-hourly inspection and just beside him was another mechanic, Neil Phelan, taking an oil cooler out of the leading edge of a wing.

Tony had another thrilling few minutes one day at Milne Bay. Tony was working on his plane and in the dispersal bay opposite was a new armourer being shown over a plane and getting some practice. The next moment Tony heard ‘Clatter! Clatter!’ He looked out of the corner of his eye to see the last of the plane’s bombs hitting the metal matting across from him. Instinctively Tony dropped and hugged the ground without feeling how his heart pounded. He just listened for the end that fortunately didn’t come.

The armourer had told the new armourer never to press the jettison button, but as he did so the armourer had mechanically pressed the button and the bombs had fallen out of their mountings. They had not exploded because, even though they were fused, they had fallen on their side and had not landed on their points to activate the detonators. Some time later Tony was in the vicinity when another bomb fell to the ground accidentally and it remained intact also.

During the wet season it was not unusual for planes to get bogged. Many times the ground crew were hauled out of their beds at sunrise to get a plane out of a bog. It was too wet to get a tractor in so they would get as many bodies as possible to get a purchase on the plane and to push.

The pilot would start up and ‘gun’ the engines while the men pushed. They had the slip stream to push against as well as an unsure footing underneath and a bit of flying soft mud, but they would eventually get the planes out onto firmer ground."

One night Tony was woken by a loud crash, followed by a burst of ack-ack fire. He could not make it out at this time in the morning but at breakfast he found out all about it. The planes had gone out on a ‘bash’ and a Japanese aircraft followed the last one in to avoid being detected by radar. It let some bombs drop and had got one aircraft in its dispersal bay just as it taxied in and the anti-aircraft fire was more or less a token shot in the dark.

The ground staff duty crew had been lucky that night as it was part of their duty to be at the dispersal bay to check the crew and plane on parking but their truck had broken down and they were delayed getting there. When they did arrive, they found the pilot sitting in front of the plane in a dazed condition, one of the crew was lying near the aircraft with shrapnel in his leg and another was taking ‘a nervous leak’. The observer was found to be dead when they opened the underneath hatch to look for him.

Tony had a particular interest in the plane that morning as it was his and it presented quite a desolate sight next morning. The bomb had been a ‘daisy-cutter’ that landed alongside the plane, puncturing all the tyres and rupturing the oil tank. Even though there was oil everywhere, there was no fire and the self-sealing petrol tanks did their job to perfection.

Tony had another narrow escape when bullets from a Kittyhawk of 75 Squadron came flying through the air. The plane was having its guns synchronised so the bullets crossed at a certain distance in front of the plane when the electric firing mechanism jammed. They did not stop until both magazines were empty. Tony could see the tracer bullets flying past him at only chest height long before he registered the sound of the guns as once more sought refuge on the ground until the firing finished.

Milne Bay was one of the worst places ever discovered for malaria and although malaria was known to be endemic in the Milne Bay area, precautions taken against the disease were haphazard. Men wore shorts and kept their sleeves rolled up. Their mosquito repellent cream was ineffective, quinine was in short supply and many men arrived without their mosquito nets. They were stowed deep in the ships' holds and took several days to unload. A daily dosage of quinine was prescribed but Field's troops were told not to take their quinine until they had been in the area a week. By this time, many had become infected with the disease.

The Director of Medicine at Allied Land Forces Headquarters was Brigadier Neil Hamilton Fairley, an expert on tropical medicine. He visited Port Moresby in June 1942 and was alarmed at the ineffectiveness of the measures being taken to combat the disease, which he realised was capable of destroying the entire Allied force in Papua. He made sure that when the 110th Casualty Clearing Station left Brisbane for Milne Bay it had a fully equipped pathological laboratory and a large quantity of anti-malarial supplies, including 200,000 quinine tablets. Unfortunately, some equipment was lost or ruined in transit and the danger from malaria was not yet appreciated at Milne Bay.

Mosquitoes were as dangerous as what the Japanese were and put the lives of the fighting men in the tropics at great peril. Allied scientists and the medical services conducted a vigorous war-within-a-war, one against the Japanese and another against diseases that flourished in the jungle. Malaria, dengue fever and other afflictions killed as many men as the bullets of the Japanese and only constant war on them made fighting possible at all. More than 80 per cent of the Allied forces in New Guinea was attacked by malaria.

It begins with a bite, a painless bite. The female mosquito comes in the night, lands on an exposed patch of flesh, and assumes the hunched, head-lowered posture of a sprinter in the starting blocks. Then she plunges her stiletto mouthparts into the skin.

The mosquito has long, filament-thin legs and dappled wings; she's of the genus Anopheles, the only insect capable of harbouring the human malaria parasite. And she's definitely a she: Male mosquitoes have no interest in blood while females depend on protein-rich hemoglobin to nourish their eggs. A mosquito's proboscis appears spike-solid, but it's actually a sheath of separate tools—cutting blades and a feeding tube powered by two tiny pumps. She drills through the epidermis, then through a thin layer of fat, then into the network of blood-filled micro-capillaries. She starts to drink.

To inhibit the blood from coagulating, the mosquito oils the bite area with a spray of saliva. This is when it happens. Carried in the mosquito's salivary glands and entering the body with the lubricating squirt are minute, wormlike creatures. These are the one-celled malaria parasites, known as plasmodia. Fifty thousand of them could swim in a pool the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence. Typically, a couple of dozen parasites slip into the bloodstream in a single bite but it takes just one. A single plasmodium is enough to kill a person.

The parasites remain in the bloodstream for only a few minutes. They ride the flume of the circulatory system to the liver. There they stop. Each plasmodium burrows into a different liver cell.

Geoff Cary was probably not aware that the mosquito that infected him had bitten him. Almost certainly, a person who has been bitten hardly stirs from sleep. And for the next week or two, he would have had no overt sign that something in the body has just gone horribly wrong.

The signs and symptoms of malaria typically begin 8–25 days following infection. Initial manifestations of the disease are similar to flu-like symptoms and can resemble other conditions such as septicemia, gastroenteritis, and viral diseases. The presentation may include headache, fever, shivering, joint pain, vomiting, hemolytic anemia, jaundice, hemoglobin in the urine, retinal damage, and convulsions.

The classic symptom of malaria is paroxysm, a cyclical occurrence of sudden coldness followed by shivering and then fever and sweating, occurring every two to four days. Geoff was hospitalised in December 1943 due to the onset of chills plus rigour, high fever, jaundice, vomiting, rapidly progressive anemia, and dark red/black urine. Geoff had contracted Blackwater Fever, a complication of malaria in which red blood cells burst in the bloodstream (hemolysis), releasing hemoglobin directly into the blood vessels and into the urine, frequently leading to kidney failure.

While in the hospital Geoff managed to entertain the boys with his conjuring tricks.  On 14 December 1943, however, his kidneys gave up and he died. He was buried at Milne Bay but was in 1944 he was re-interred at the Bomana War Cemetery at Port Moresby.