Diggers given up as lost fought on in Timor’s mountains

Malcolm Quekett, The West Australian

This book continues to serve as an important record of the actions of Australian commandos who fought on Timor in 1942. 

The West Australian newspaper quoted the book extensively in a detailed report on  ‘Untold Stories of Western Australia’:

In 2025, student Dylan McKenzie from Kalbarri in Western Australia won the 2025 WA Premier’s ANZAC Student Tour after submitting a proposal based on The Men Who Came Out of the Ground. Dylan wrote about this in the November 2025 edition of the 2/2 Commando Association Courier: ‘I wrote my essay about the 2/2nd Commando Squadron’s incredible efforts in Timor, and the “memorial” I related that to was the book The Men Who Came Out of the Ground by Paul Cleary. I decided to write about them because two of my family members served in that squadron: my great, great uncle Gerry McKenzie, and my great grandfather Bob Palmer.

At an April 2026 ceremony in West Timor to mark the opening of a refurbished monument to Sparrow Force, the extract from the chapter “The Last of the Bayonets” was read by AVI volunteer Scott Brunnero. A second volunteer, Shelley McPhee, read an extract from the book Straight Left by war veteran and Labor legend, the late Tom Uren. The extract deals with the attack by the 2/40^th Battalion on Japanese paratroopers that had been dropped to encircle the Australian troops at Oesau ridge, about 30 km east of Kupang City:

Captain Norman Johnston, 38, a salesman from Launceston led A Company’s attack on the left flank and quickly achieved its first objective, capturing a knoll near the entrance of the village from where they were able to direct fire onto the ridge and support B Company. Sergeant Reg Hay, 21, of Launceston, led a party across open ground to take the knoll from which the enemy had inflicted heavy casualties on A Company. Hay and his men charged the position and killed many of the enemy with bayonets. After this breakthrough, Leggatt approached the knoll and ordered his mortars to come forward and target the side of the ridge where the enemy had fired on C Company, killing many of its NCOs and soldiers.

The photos below are from the ceremony and showed the renovated monument. The restoration work was organised by Michael Kramer, of Friends of Sparrow Force Monument.