The Japanese bombing of Darwin In World War 2 has been well documented in the archives of Australian Military history.
Kathryn’s late father served in Darwin during World War 2 and used to tell Kathryn and her sister stories from the time he was stationed there. To find out more, in 2o19, they took a guided tour of the area, and one of the stories he recounted was the story of Gunner.
The story goes that one day, after yet another Japanese bombing assault had taken place, Percy and Lindsay from the RAAF 2 squadron, were going through some of the rubble left when they came across a puppy that was trapped inside, crying out in pain. They managed to dig him out and could see that he had a broken leg.
They took him to the field hospital so that he could get the treatment needed. The Medical Office on duty threw them a curve ball. He would only treat the dog if he was part of the squadron and given a name and rank. Percy, playing along with his conceit, replied that his name is Gunner and his rank is 0000. The Medical Officer thenn proceeded to reset Gunner’s leg and put it in a cast. This displeased Gunner and he kept licking a way at the cast. That issue was solved when Fred sprayed the cast with cayenne!
Gunner would get in to a state whenever the silver birds (the bombers) would come flying above and try and hurt everybody. It took a while but Percy and the squadron realised that Gunner had freakish hearing and could hear the planes coming before any of them could. Gunner became their early alarm system, giving them a chance to take their positions before the planes were overhead.
This very different man (well more exactly men) and dog story has now come evocatively come in to the light with Kathryn Berryman’s beautifully put together picture book GUNNER featuring Berryman’s warm prose style and fine illustrations by Susan Boyle.
A new discovery for me, Berryman’s book was published in 2022 to mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing in Darwin in February 1942, with the aim to help younger readers get more of a sense of this very vulnerable time in Australia’s history.
GUNNER has been published by InHouse Publishing. ISBN 978-1-922839-21-3 (Hardback). The book is subtable for 10+.
GUNNER is available at QBD, Dymocks, The Nile, Booktopia and Amazon.
