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[Page 14]
[Letter (undated) from Leading Stoker, William Kember, to Dr F.A. Pockley]
Copy
Bulls Road
[indecipherable]
Canley Vale
N.S.W.
Sir
As you requested me to give you my account of what I know of the operation in New Guinea I will try my best to do so in the most natural way. Well, on landing from the "Warrego" with another section two seamen & a leading seaman we moved forward & I was the first man dropped for communicating [indecipherable] with orders to follow & keep in sight the next man ahead. We kept advancing until I noticed the next man ahead signalling the advance at the double when I realised [indecipherable] Williams, AB, of the Naval Reserve – he told me he had seen a lot of natives in amongst a cocoanut plantation at the right hand side of the road, he thought he saw some of them with rifles so I told him to cover them & went up to see what they were. They appeared to me to be hoeing amongst the palms so I left them.
Williams went ahead to his original position still advancing not long afterwards I heard a shot & doubling ahead found Williams lying in the road shot, & think the shot entered in right breast & out of left side, he cried out for water which I gave him & he asked me to carry him back which I did for about 8 or 9 hundred yards. Before carrying him back & took bolt out of his rifle & hid it in bush I then bandaged him up as well as I could & waited for Doctor, who was ahead. By that time reinforcements were coming up from destroyers, some armed with rifles some with revolvers & others with cutlasses. I asked for the