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Phantom Japanese Column
By
Col. Lionel John Lindsay Hill 77668
.......My
company fared well and had no casualties; C Company were again unlucky. Tree
bursts were becoming a problem, with some enemy shells sending splinters down
on us. We did not have time to prepare headcover for our shallow trenches.
.......During the night an incident occurred which
to this day bothers me. At about 03.00 Cpl White, one of the acting platoon
sergeants, crawled into Company HQ to
tell me that a column of Japanese was passing our perimeter about 60 yards
out in the rather open jungle. He and I crawled in silence some 20 yards to
the forward section post, where the sentry was in some excitement. 'Over there,
sir,' he whispered pointing and, sure enough, I could clearly see a line of
Japanese in single file passing steadily along our flank to our rear. A man
on a horse
could also be seen and, although in uniform, all were perfectly silent. Cpl
White and I counted over 60 men, while the word was passed for all to 'stand
to', that is, to wake up and man the trenches we had dug for the night. The
sentry, Cpl White and I were quite certain that we had seen something which
we had all been expecting: an enemy encircling move to attack us or more rearward
units. Wireless silence was broken as we relayed the news to Battalion HQ,
who in turn passed the information to Brigade HQ. Nothing else happened during
the night. No one else saw this column and when dawn broke Cpl White and I
went to verify the tracks which it must have left in the damp, sparse undergrowth.
The ground for some 100 yards out was untouched and virgin jungle; not a footprint
or hoofprint! No one could possibly have passed! Over-tiredness? Hallucinations?
Or spiritual experience? How could three of us independently have seen what
we saw? The
Japanese were surely not that good at covering their tracks. If
so, we really did have more to learn!
Col. Lionel John Lindsay Hill