Het is Zoover

Het is Zoover (See Cover)

The Eastern Theater of war moved on. Americans still held a corner of Luzon, British still held Singapore, but the Japanese had overrun most of the Philippines and Malaya. Now their attack was rolling on toward their third major objective, the Indies --a new terrain with a new cast of defenders, with new military problems --with new and still bigger stakes to play for.

On the morning of May 10, 1940, the scrubbed, immaculate city of Bandung, on a Java plateau, seemed unwarily peaceful. Halfway around the world, before dawn in Europe, the Army of the motherland was reeling from the first sudden assault of the German. But that morning in the white-stoned General Headquarters build ing of The Netherlands East Indies in Bandung --there was a cooling breeze, and negligent ease.

In the office of the N.E.I. Chief of Staff sat the Japanese Consul General, faultlessly dressed, inscrutable Otosugi Saito, talking pleasantries. From the corridor, aides and orderlies heard him laugh, a discreet, flat overtone to the mellow gurgling rumble of their chief, Major General Hein ter Poorten. Then, as an aide in gleaming white duck showed Saito-san from the room the phone rang.

It was the Commander in Chief of the N.E.I. Army, Lieut. General Gerardus J. Berenschot. Hein ter Poorten's beefy, weather-beaten face was impassive, his great 220-lb. body vastly immobile as he heard the message: "Het is Zoover"-This is it. With the economy of movement characteristic of great bodies, he hung up, pushed a button on his desk. N.E.I.'s well-concerted war plans went into action.

Fifteen minutes later, as Saito-san reached the Preanger Hotel in the center of the city, he was shocked and surprised to see armed Dutch soldiers hustling German guests and hotel staff members off to concentration camps. The same thing was going on in all the 3,000-odd islands of Hein ter Poorten's domain. At the seaports, soldiers had seized every German ship, while others grabbed their officers and crews ashore and confiscated bombs (intended to blow up their ships) before there was a chance td use them.* Thus Saito-san saw how quickly Ter Poorten could move.

On Dec. 8, 1941 Otosugi Saito, back home in Tokyo, could not have been much surprised by the first news he heard from the N.E.I.: that within two hours of the attack every Jap in the islands had been interned; that the Dutch were in action and that one of their submarines had started things going by nosing like a blind mud cat through the shallows on the east coast of Malaya and had sunk four Jap transports. For by now he knew that the Dutch in the Indies were, like his onetime friend Hein ter Poorten, pleasant, poker-faced, indomitable, prepared.

They had gone into action at the drop of the Jap's hat in Pearl Harbor. By now Hein ter Poorten was a lieutenant general. He had been Commander of the N.E.I. Army since October, when General Berenschot was killed in an airplane crash. His planes ranged far out to sea, attacked and sank Japanese ships. They worked closely with the N.E.I. Navy, which was at sea. The Navy commander, Vice Admiral C. E. L. Helfrich, a shorter, stubbier, seagoing edition of Ter Poorten, had sent the fleet out days before.

With the uneasy prescience that comes with proximity and imminent danger, mindful of many an instance of bland Jap duplicity, the Dutch, instead of putting faith in the Japanese conferences with Cordell Hull in Washington, had got ready to fight.

Blood on the Moon. Born in Surabaya, Hein ter Poorten, like most other Dutch colonials, had seen blood on the moon over the Java Sea since he was a slim stripling. It was part of life in the underarmed, fabulously rich, strangely strategic Indies, lying like a rich, jewel-encrusted girdle athwart the sea traffic of half the world. Some day the hungry Jap would snatch at that girdle to pilfer its jewels. If he succeeded, that half of the world was his.

Like every other youngster at the Royal Military Academy at Breda, in the motherland, Cadet Hein ter Poorten had to make a choice before he entered. He had to decide where he would serve, and stick to his choice. He chose The Netherlands East Indies, went to his first post in Java rarely well-equipped. He was not only an artillery specialist. He was also an airman. After winning an international balloon race in Germany, he learned to fly an airplane in 1911, was one of the world's earliest military aviators.

At a time when the U.S. Army was making its first tentative experiments with the new military weapon, Hein ter Poorten came to the U.S., bought two Glenn Martin flying boats, took them back to Java. Later, on, flying the N.E.I. Commander in Chief, Pilot ter Poorten crashed, the Commander was killed, and Ter Poorten was so badly hurt that newspapers printed his obituary. According to Army legend, Ter Poorten was billed for a casket he did not need. But beefy Hein ter Poorten was soon on his feet, headed back to the U.S. for more Martins, more of the new lore of military flying. He had no trouble getting either.

After World War I, the moon over the Java Sea grew ruddier than ever before. The Jap had wangled the mandated islands, and soon clamped a fortified strangle hold on the U.S.'s line of supply between Pearl Harbor and Manila. While the Jap entrenched himself he reached north into Manchuria for his supplies against the great war, then crept down China's coast toward Hong Kong. The fearful Dutch did more than the rest of the world to get ready. Dutch diplomacy, dedicated to the proposition that oil to the enemy is poison to the giver, slapped down Japanese demands with no fear of offending Japanese sensibilities. No longer an active pilot, Hein ter Poorten bought airplanes, Martin bombers, Curtiss pursuits, Ryan trainers. The Netherlands East Indies worked to build up an air force.

With it, the N.E.I. Army and Navy grew. When Hein ter Poorten took command last October he had around 100,000 soldiers. Motorization was speeding along. Artillery, another Ter Poorten specialty, was heavily increased. For defense against the inevitable attack, oil wells were mined. Around airfields and open spaces were set poles tipped with poison which slant-eyed Malayans constantly renewed.

When the Jap struck, the Indies were as ready as could be expected. Admiral Helfrich had a respectably equipped Navy: five cruisers, more than 20 submarines, a well-trained but small fleet of destroyers (six to eight), torpedo boats and auxiliaries. He also had a vastly strengthened base at Surabaya, where everything but capital ships could be overhauled, a good secondary base on Amboina.

Blood on the Islands. The Jap's furious assault on the Philippines and Malaya has worked better than anybody but the Jap (and perhaps the Dutch) had expected. The Jap has knocked out Hong Kong and Manila, immobilized the great base at Singapore and grievously threatened its possession. Already his pathway to the Indies has been opened.

The Japanese front was moving relentlessly south To Hein ter Poorten, as to most of the Dutch, hints that the U.S. and Britain might not oppose this relentless movement with equally relentless defense were alarming and maddening.

Hitler must be kept busy and Hitler must be beaten. Beating Hitler would not necessarily mean the collapse of the Jap. But if the Jap can once call Singapore and the Indies his own, he can feed on the Indies--its oil, strategic metals, foods--growing new muscles on his runt-sized economic frame. Meantime the democracies would be cut short of rubber, tin and other strategic metals, tapioca (for sizing cotton and for abrasives), copra (for fats) and all the other vital supplies that the Indies supply.

More crucial for the N.E.I.'s allies, the Jap would control one of the world's most important seaways. From Java and Sumatra his raiders could range into the Indian Ocean, slash at supplies bound for Suez and India.

The U.S. route to Rangoon and the Burma Road, now 11,100 miles would be stretched to 14,300 because it would have to go around Australia. If supplies are cut off from the Chinese, China's resistance will be so reduced the Japanese can withdraw troops from China for use elsewhere--1;including an attack at Russia's rear.

Thus Hein ter Poorten now holds a line which, if lost, will set back all the enemies of the Axis--set them back so far that if it does not endanger their chances of winning the war, may well make their job twice as hard and twice as long.

The Jap has already struck at the Indies, hard, viciously, successfully. He has landed troops in Sarawak. He has put down three landing parties on the northern handle of Celebes, from which he may well establish some sort of control over sea traffic in the Straits of Macassar and Molucca Strait to the east and west of Celebes. He has also grabbed the little Dutch island of Tarakan (off Borneo), where the oil flows from the wells so pure that it can be pumped into the fuel bunkers of ships without refining.

On Tarakan, the Dutch preparation for the Jap's coming was good as could be made. Tarakan was reportedly garrisoned by around 1,000 crack Dutch colonials. Hopelessly outnumbered by the Jap landing party, they fought hard, while behind them other Dutchmen blew up the wells and pipelines, did a thorough job of demolition. The Jap had to pay well. He took hits on a cruiser, two destroyers, four transports, suffered some sinkings. But Tarakan was overwhelmed, nevertheless. The Jap brought drilling equipment with him. The Dutch feared that in a few months he would be getting oil out of the ground.

Meanwhile the enemy's aircraft ranged far & wide over the 3,000-mile girth of the Indies. Lean, weathered Major General L. H. van Oyen, commander of the N.E.I. Air Force, did not have enough planes of his own to meet him at every point. This week Washington announced that he had got something more than token help. Five U.S. bombers raided a Jap base in northern Celebes,* were speedily jumped upon by Jap interceptors. Without pursuit support, the bombers fought it out spectacularly. They reported they had knocked down nine Jap fighters. They lost two ships, brought home a third damaged, with four crew members wounded.

Last week as the battle for the Indies was joined, the U.S. and Britain had tacitly acknowledged the importance of the struggle. In command of the defense was General Sir Archibald Wavell, with Hein ter Poorten working under his command. In command of the sea forces--the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, the N.E.I. Navy and British units--was Admiral Tommy Hart, assisted by Admiral Helfrich.

To the Dutch this is more than a little galling. But they did not publicly complain. What they need now are reinforcements of ships, planes, fighting men. Reinforcements can come only from Britain or the U.S.

Unless they come soon, the Jap has a good prospect of winning the Indies and riveting his hold on the most vital sea routes still held by the Democracies off Asia.

*According to one account, the Nazis' cable to the German Consul General in the Indies, notifying him to warn German ships of the impending invasion, was held up by the Dutch in Batavia.

*U.S. Army airmen also jumped into the Malaya fight, burned grounded planes and a hangar on a Jap airdrome 300 miles northwest of Singapore.

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