Paddy Kenneally (1916–2009) quit his job as a wharfie the day Japan bombed Pearl
Harbour in 1941 and enlisted in the Australian Army. One month later,
after undergoing minimal training, the tough Irishman was on his way
to join an elite guerrilla unit in East Timor.
While more than 20,000 Australian soldiers were captured by the Japanese on
islands to the north of Australia, the unit in Timor known as the
2/2nd Australian Independent Company fought a successful guerrilla war
in the mountains.
As the Oscar-winning filmmaker Damien Parer noted at the time, the
men in this unit were 'unique in that they remained an organised
fighting body all through the lightning Jap successes ... These lads
are writing an epic of guerrilla warfare.'
Kenneally took part in two of the defining actions of this campaign
during his year of service there.
On the night of 14 May 1942 he was one of 13 men who mounted a raid
into the heart of the Japanese headquarters in the capital, Dili. The
men shot up the barracks and escaped without suffering any casualties.
Kenneally, and his platoon commander Geoff Laidlaw, were the last to
come of the town that night.
One week later, when the Japanese came looking for the raiders,
Kenneally was there again. He was one of six men who ambushed about
100 Japanese soldiers near the village of Remexio, in the hills above
Dili.
The Australians were armed with 303 rifles and one sub-machine gun,
but they used the terrain of Timor to their advantage and took more
than 20 enemy casualties. One of those killed in this attack was a
senior Japanese officer who had been brought to Timor to drive out the
bandits in mountains.
All of this would not have been possible without the support of the
local population. Kenneally and other veterans said they would not
have lasted a week had the Timorese not protected them.
The Timorese paid dearly for their support, with an estimated
40–60,000 perishing in the conflict. As Kenneally often said, all they
got from supporting us was misery.
Kenneally served with the 2/2 for the rest of the war and saw action
in New Guinea. He also returned to PNG after the war and at 75 climbed
Mt Wilhelm, the country's highest mountain.
John Patrick Kenneally, always known as Paddy, who has died aged 93,
was born in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland, son of Michael Kenneally
and his wife Mary Ellen Morrissey. The family migrated to Australia in
1927.
By virtue of his energy and longevity, Paddy Kenneally probably did
more than any other person to remind Australia of its debt