John (Paddy) Kenneally, 2/2nd Independent Coy
One mate, Keith Hayes, was shot in the neck and a Jap bayoneted him in the neck as well as took his watch. Keith was still alive and when the Japs went he got up and staggered down the road where he met a Timorese woman who helped him. The Japs must have got word of it because they came looking for him and that woman risked her life to save him. You can imagine how much furniture is in a native hut, but she had some old mats which she threw over him... Those sort of instances were common.
Once our section had been patrolling all day and hadn’t seen a Jap... I finished guard duty at midnight when the Japs started, a war chant. It was to work up their bloodlust, quite terrifying. We’d been in Timor fighting for six months but still it chilled your blood. The officer would lead and hundreds of voices would reply. They just completely wrecked the nearest native girl, ripped her straight up the stomach and disembowelled her. She was a bonny little girl about seven years of age...
They were so good, the creados, they risked their lives all the time for us, it shamed you really...
One of the new company’s (2/4th Independent Company) sections did a rotten thing, they raped a native girl. That was just after they got on the island and that wouldn’t have been a great help to them... There wasn’t anything done about it, no complaints from the natives that we heard of, but as one of our blokes said, ‘The bloody fools, they want to realise they are going to have to depend on these people.’
(Michelle Turner, Telling East Timor, Personal Testimonies 1942 - 1992, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1992, pages 14, 16, 17, 18)