Table of Contents

Author's note Map of 18th and 120th Squadron: Bases and Flight Movements

1. Java, 1942

2. The dispatch rider

3. Attack on Broome

4. Escape to Australia

5. Stapleton Station, NT

6. The bombing of Darwin

7. Archerfield Air Base, Brisbane

8. Flying under the bridge

9. Fairbairn Airfield, Canberra

10. The making of three traitors

11. Nothing is fair in love and war

12. Picking up the pieces

13. The move north

14. MacDonald Airfield, NT

15. First operational order

16. Across the Timor Sea

17. Batchelor, NT

18. War and horseracing

19. New recruits

20. Death of a friend

21. Moving on

22. The hell of Merauke

23. Island hopping

24. Return to Java

25. Lost and found

26. Message from a Don R

Epilogue

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Marianne van Velzen is a Dutch journalist who lived in Australia for many years. She has a life-long interest in the country. She is the author of Call of the Outback, the story of Ernestine Hill, published in 2016.