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AFTER THE
BATTLE
MUTINY ON
CHRISTMAS ISLAND
9
770306 154103
91>
US RANGERS AT ACHNACARRY
No. 191
£5
NUMBER 191
© Copyright
After the Battle
2021
Editor: Karel Margry
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
Published by
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On the world’s stage there are two Christmas Islands, one in the Pacific which
remained in Allied (American) hands, the other — a British possession — in the Indian
Ocean that was captured by the Japanese in March 1942. The attraction of the island,
apart from its location on important shipping lanes linking India and Australia, was it
being a source of high-grade phosphate which Japan seriously lacked as a raw
material for producing fertiliser for its agriculture.
CONTENTS
MUTINY ON CHRISTMAS ISLAND
2
HOLLAND
Resistance Tragedy at Benschop
24
SCOTLAND
US Rangers at Achnacarry
30
Front Cover:
The 6-inch Mk VII naval gun
at Smith Point on Christmas Island in the
Indian Ocean. Installed by the British in
early 1941, it was later used by the
Japanese after they captured the island
in March 1942. (David Mitchelhill-Green)
Back Cover:
The Commando Memorial,
situated about a mile north-west of
Spean Bridge in the Scottish Highlands.
Unveiled in September 1952 by the
Queen Mother, it overlooks the training
areas of the Commandos’ Combined
Basic Training Centre established in
1942 at nearby Achnacarry Castle.
(William Hervo)
Acknowledgements:
The Editor would
like to express his gratitude to Donald
Angus Cameron of Lochiel, the chief of
the Cameron Clan, for allowing us to
take photographs in the grounds of the
Achnacarry estate. He also thanks Astie
Cameron, the estate manager; William
Hervo for taking the comparison
photos at Achnacarry, and Pete Rogers
of the Commando Veterans Archive for
his help with the article.
The Benschop story is based on the
book by Bram de Graaf:
Het Verraad van
Benschop. Verzet en Vergelding in een
Boerendorp, Februari 1945
(Amsterdam,
2015) ISBN 9789026329968.
Thanks also to James Teagle for
photography on Christmas Island.
Photo Credit Abbreviations:
USNA — US
National Archives. Unless specified
otherwise, all illustrations are from the
After the Battle
archive or The Society for
the Studies of the ETO.
2
Christmas Island rises steeply from the seafloor in the north-east sector of the Indian
Ocean. The island’s 80-kilometre coastline is almost entirely a series of sea cliffs, up to
50 metres high. Situated 350 kilometres (220 miles) south of Java and Sumatra, the
island is approximately 1,550 kilometres (960 miles) north-west of Australia. A flag-
pole stands today in the approximate position of the wartime one at Smith Point.
This gun barrel was found by a German tourist in a spoil dump formed from excavated material during a post-war building programme.
MUTINY ON CHRISTMAS ISLAND
Christmas Island, an irregularly-shaped
landmass of some 64 square miles, lies in the
Indian Ocean 230 miles south of Java.
Known to European mariners since at least
the mid-17th century (and not to be confused
with the other Christmas Island in the
Pacific), it was named after the day in 1643
when Captain Williams Mynors of the East
India Company first sighted it. Untouched
and uninhabited, the chance discovery of a
source of high-grade phosphate of lime
increased the island’s potential as it was — as
The Daily Mail
of February 18, 1899 con-
cluded — of ‘considerable importance, as
millions of tons of the phosphates, which are
chiefly valuable as mineral manure, have
already been reported as existing in a
remarkable free condition’.
Large-scale mining did not begin until 1899.
The initial workforce of 160 men soon grew to
1,000 indentured Chinese workers brought in
from Singapore or the Netherlands East
Indies. Exports rose dramatically, from a
mere ten tons shipped at the end of 1899 to
90,000 tons in 1906, and by 1911 a landmark
million tons of phosphate had been extracted.
Two of the island’s primary customers —
Germany and Japan — were at war three
years later. The importance of phosphate to
a nation’s military footing was highlighted in
a 1917 report by American academic Profes-
sor Joseph E. Pogue: ‘The raw materials of
war are men and minerals. The first has
always been recognised of prime importance;
the second has been forced into prominence
only by the unprecedented conditions of the
European contest. The bravest or the most
numerous army no longer wins; the victor is
the army that commands the largest supply
of coal, iron and fertile soil.’
This was especially true in Japan, which in
living memory had evolved from a tiny feudal
nation, voluntarily shut off from the world, to
the status of a great power with global influ-
By David Mitchelhill-Green
ence. Tokyo had taken advantage of Britain’s
weakness in the Pacific in 1914 to seize Ger-
man possessions in the Pacific north of the
equator including Palau, Truk and the Mari-
ana, Caroline and Marshall groups of islands
— a forewarning of future intent.
Notwithstanding its impressive economic and
military growth, Japan remained vulnerable
from an insufficiency in certain basic raw mate-
rials and, without access to adequate reserves of
oil, bauxite, nickel, tin, rubber and copper, its
war machine would quickly grind to a halt.
Japan’s need for imported fertiliser
stemmed from its geography as two-thirds of
the country is dominated by mountains and
narrow coastal plains. Poor soil quality was
compounded by the problem that less than
one-sixth of the country’s land mass was
arable, with almost half of its agriculture
devoted to producing rice. ‘Next to the sol-
dier, the tiller of the soil is in highest esteem’,
a 1943 US study on Japan’s economic future
concluded, ‘and in few western countries
does the farmer hold as high a place as in
Japan’. Yet despite practicing the most inten-
sive agriculture in the world, with the highest
rice yield per acre, Japan remained heavily
dependent upon imported food and the lav-
ish use of phosphate, potash (a potassium
fertiliser) and fish-meal fertiliser. Japan’s
agriculture also suffered from the mass trans-
fer of horses to occupied China, with an asso-
ciated loss of manure, coupled with insuffi-
cient potash importation. As a consequence,
the 1941 rice crop was 20 per cent below the
planned level, a problem shortly to be com-
pounded by hostilities against the Allies.
3
It is assumed to be from a Japanese
8cm/40 Type 1941 gun that was a
licence-built copy of the British 12-pdr
first introduced in the 1890s and used as
a coastal defence and anti-aircraft gun.
Following the annexation and settlement
of Christmas Island, the working rights to
mining phosphate were held by the Christ-
mas Island Phosphate Company of Lon-
don, a private company controlled by
descendants of the two men — Sir John
Murray and George Clunies-Ross — who
were granted a 99-year lease over the
island in 1891. Six years later they trans-
ferred the lease to the Christmas Island
Phosphate Company. Mining operations
commenced using indentured workers
from Malaya, China and Singapore.
Right:
Prior to the war, most of the island’s
exported phosphate, about 150,000 tons
per annum, was sold to Japan, this rather
poor photo being taken on October 12,
1936 as the cargo steamer
Kurohime-maru
loads phosphate. (She was sunk by the US
submarine
Tuna
in March 1943.) After the
attack on Pearl Harbor, shipments contin-
ued to Australia until March 1942 when
the phosphate company’s staff were evac-
uated after destroying much of the plant.
tunity arises after the close of the auxiliary
cruiser operations in the region of the
Equator, I shall carry out the plan while we
are on our escape route to the south.’ (Ven
Koh
was later seized in Wakamatsu, Japan,
and renamed
Meizan-maru.
She was sunk
west of the Philippines by the submarine
USS
Garyling
on August 27, 1943.)
Left:
The loading dock was located in Fly-
ing Fish Cove in the north-eastern corner
of the island. The triangular jetty, with
its two steam-driven cranes, was demol-
ished in 1951 after a severe storm. In the
inter-war period it was known as the
Japanese Pier because of the high vol-
ume of Japanese shipping. The majority
of phosphate exported to Japan was
mixed with sulphuric acid to produce
super-phosphate which enables it to dis-
solve more readily than crude phos-
phate.
Below:
Russell Payne, who acted
as David’s guide on the island, points to
the site of the former pier.
WAR COMES TO CHRISTMAS ISLAND
Administered by Britain as part of the
Colony of Singapore, the island’s first brush
with war occurred on October 7, 1940 when
the German Hilfskreuzer (auxiliary cruiser)
Pinguin
captured the 8,998-ton Norwegian
tanker
Storstad
off the island. Newly com-
missioned into the Kriegsmarine as
Passat,
the makeshift minelayer successfully laid
minefields off several Australian south-east-
ern ports (see
After the Battle
No. 184).
A week later on October 15, Captain
Bernhard Rogge, aboard the sister vessel
HSK
Atlantis,
contemplated a bombard-
ment of Christmas Island (preceding the
successful attack on Nauru by the German
raider
Komet
on December 27, 1940 (see
After the Battle
No. 94)). However, Rogge’s
plan to capture or sink the 5,752-ton Nor-
wegian steam ship
Ven Koh
was abandoned
once the Japanese vessel
San Francisco-
maru
(later sunk at Truk in Operation
‘Hailstorm’) was discovered at anchor in
Flying Fish Cove on the island’s northern
coast. Rogge noted in his log: ‘Although in
the light of the aims of auxiliary cruiser
warfare, an attack on Christmas Island
might be a far more effective success than
the sinking of several thousand tons of
shipping, one may presume that a bom-
bardment of the island would become
known the world over and would spread
fear of a repetition in every small place on
the coasts of Sumatra, Java, Australia, in
Reunion, etc., while the loss of a cargo ves-
sel is known only to those directly con-
cerned. I shall abandon the plan for the
time being. I consider it a greater advan-
tage to appear unexpectedly at the
approaches of the Gulf of Bengal. If oppor-
4
The 6-inch Mk VII gun, together with the 9.2-inch Mk X gun,
were the backbone of coastal defence throughout the British
Empire until the discontinuation of coastal artillery in the
1950s. The gun detachment comprised a gun captain, two gun-
layers, a setter, and eight other ratings. The 6-inch gun on
Christmas Island was manufactured in 1903 by the Royal
To deter future German raiders, a 6-inch
Mk VII naval gun was emplaced on the island
at Smith Point, overlooking Flying Fish Cove,
in early 1941. Royal Artillery gunners were
accommodated in temporary barracks
nearby, the area dubbed ‘The Fort’ by resi-
dents. The remainder of the year passed with-
out incident until December 7 with Japan’s
declaration of war. The island’s first casualty
was the 4,184-ton Norwegian motor vessel
Eidsvold,
which arrived on January 12, 1942.
Having taken aboard 3,700 tons of phos-
phate,
Eidsvold
was forced to wait off the
island for heavy seas to abate before further
loading could recommence. On the afternoon
of January 20, while on watch on the bridge,
Second Mate Sverre Bergendahl reported a
torpedo track on the ship’s port side. Captain
Samuel Fridvold was doubtful that the war
had reached this remote area and instead
attributed the wake to a passing whale while
prudently moving his ship closer inshore for
protection from the Smith Point gun. If
needed, he could also beach the ship.
Some
hours
passed before Fridvold spotted a
periscope to starboard at 1815, moments
before a second torpedo from the Imperial
Japanese Navy (IJN) submarine
I-159,
slammed into No. 4 hold. Fridvold later
explained that the explosion ‘almost bisected
Carriage Factory at Woolwich and installed at the beginning of
1941. It was disassembled and re-assembled after the first
Japanese attack with orders given for it not to be fired during
the subsequent invasion. It would appear likely that it was
later used by the Japanese garrison during several Allied
submarine attacks on the island.
Few of the buildings on the island remain from the pre-World War II era. The Fort,
which was abandoned after the war, was used by the Royal Australian Navy between
1971 and 1978.
the vessel immediately. As it was, the fore
and aft sections were only held together by
the superstructure, the whole body of the ship
having been cut in two by the force of the
explosion’. Surfacing to finish off the
Eidsvold,
Lieutenant-Commander Tamori
Yoshimatsu was driven off by the shore bat-
tery which fired five rounds. Abandoned by
her crew,
Eidsvold
broke in two before drift-
ing ashore, finally settling in shallow water.
Left:
The Phosphate Company’s administration headquarters
pictured in December 1945 with two new tippers.
Right:
In
1958 the United Kingdom handed over Christmas Island to
Australia on payment of $20 million to Singapore as recom-
pense for lost revenue. Re-roofed and enlarged, the wartime
building remains the admin block of the company.
5

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