Time to Recognise Our Naval Heroes

After seventy-eight years of injustice, finally last December eighteen-year-old Teddy Sheean received a Victoria Cross for his heroism aboard HMAS Armidale in December 1942. Two war heroes who fought just as bravely still have nothing. Although retrospective VCs might not be in order for Robert Rankin and Ron Taylor, surely the government should look at Stars of Gallantry for these neglected men.

Imagine today if every approval for an Australian gallantry award had to be ticked off by someone in London. What’s more, unlike Royal Navy commanders, Australian warship captains were not allowed to recommend the nature of the award. That was what our Navy had to endure in the Second World War. The other two forces had their awards approved in Australia. Navies take a long time to grow, and ours had been “parented” by the RN. When war arrived, there was no time for revision. Fighting for its life against Germany and Italy, and later Japan, Britain was under extreme pressure.

Perhaps due to maladministration under pressure, there are at least five Second World War naval personnel, and likely several more, who could have received a VC. Some received a “Mention in Despatches”, not a medal, rather a badge, albeit a prestigious one. Many thousands of Aussies were awarded a Mention in Despatches before it was phased out in 1975. But some of the bravest Navy personnel received no recognition whatsoever.

HMAS Kara Kara’s cook, Francis Emms, fought at his machine-gun against Japanese aircraft until wounded, later dying aboard on board in Darwin Harbour on February 19, 1942. He received a Mention.

Only weeks later, Captain Hec Waller commanded HMAS Perth in battle until it was sunk, losing his life in the process. Fighting alongside the Australian cruiser was USS Houston, which was also sunk. Its Captain Rooks received the very highest American award, the Congressional Medal of Honor. (Why do the Americans reward their people so much more readily?) No one noticed Waller had not been recommended for anything at all, except when—ironically—someone from the RN in Britain after the war noticed the anomaly. The paperwork was hurriedly filled in, only for Waller to receive a Mention.

And at the end of 1942—a terrible year for the Navy—Teddy Sheean manned his 20mm anti-aircraft gun even as the corvette Armidale sank underneath him, having disobeyed the order to abandon ship in an effort to save his shipmates’ lives.

At least these three were given a Mention, with Sheean’s now replaced by the VC. Others received nothing.

On March 4, 1942, Lieutenant Commander Robert Rankin, captain of HMAS Yarra, the sole escort of a small convoy in waters north of Australia, turned and charged the enemy, an overwhelming number of Japanese warships. Rankin was a naval surveyor from Sydney who had been ordered to command a warship. Yarra was a sloop, smaller than a destroyer, and Rankin took it into combat against a combined force of Japanese cruisers and destroyers. He was outgunned, outranged and outnumbered, yet he faced and fought his enemies to try to give his convoy of three vessels time to get away.

The fight was a hopeless one. Yarra made smoke to confuse the enemy’s sightings, and repeatedly fired its guns. The Japanese found the range quickly though, and the Australian vessel was mortally hit. When a salvo hit the bridge, Rankin died at his post, but his ship’s company fought on to the end as the enemy closed the range and poured in fire mercilessly. As the ship sank beneath them, young Leading Seaman Ron “Buck” Taylor, from Carlton in Melbourne, stayed at his gun despite the order to abandon ship, so he could defend his shipmates. 138 men went down with Yarra, and the other vessels in the convoy all sank, few aboard surviving to be either rescued or taken prisoner over the days that followed. Rankin, Taylor and the rest of the ship’s company have received no recognition at all, as once again the paperwork was not done.

The RAN in 1942 was in chaos. Administration was not completed, the force was under-manned and terribly over-committed. If paperwork for the Yarra men was started, it was never finished. It would have been difficult to follow up too, given the distance between Australia and Britain, and with communications not what they are today. Indeed, one of the best-known and most senior naval officers of the war, John Collins, who commanded HMAS Sydney in a cruiser action in the Mediterranean, found when he inspected his own paperwork that it was a mess: “These files are far from complete. I hope that other officers’ files are not in the same state,” he wrote. If one of the most senior Navy people noted that of his own records, what hope was there for lesser mortals?

An inquiry some years ago was not charged with examining the moral situation of the times, merely whether procedures were correctly followed. As a result, Yarra’s people still did not receive anything, although strangely, a commendation for the ship itself was recommended. But there is an award, the Star of Gallantry, which “recognises acts of outstanding heroism in action in circumstances of great peril” which could be given to Rankin and Taylor. It is the nation’s highest decoration for combat bravery after the Victoria Cross.

The system the Navy endured in the Second World War is one of the most unfair ever perpetrated on Australian military personnel. It is more than time it was remedied. Sheean is the best-known of the unrecognised members—the award of a VC to him has at least symbolised the righting of the wrong. The award of Stars of Gallantry to Rankin and Taylor would help further repair this damage.

Dr Tom Lewis is a former naval officer. His work Teddy Sheean VC is an examination of the Sheean case. He has recently released Eagles over Darwin (Avonmore Books), a study of how the United States Army Air Forces provided the fighter defence of northern Australia in the Second World War, and Medieval Military Combat (Casemate Publishing), an analysis of battlefield tactics in the Wars of the Roses