HISTORY: Z men flew under radar

Now the ranks of these forgotten World War II soldiers have thinned and with most of their exploits officially erased, their heroism is recalled in a gripping, three-part documentary starting tomorrow night on SBS TV.

The aged veterans, some speaking publicly for the first time, relive their harrowing wartime experiences in the series, Australia's Secret Heroes.

The programs also take six descendants of Z Special operatives on training missions.

It's to give them a taste of what their relatives went through on undercover operations to safeguard Australia in the dark days of WWII when the nation looked liked being invaded by Japan.

The Z men, often mavericks from Australian military units, were trained in explosives, camouflage and silent killing behind enemy lines. They carried cyanide pills in case of capture.

Today they're best known for a 3000-kilometre voyage to stage a daring 1943 raid called Operation Jaywick. Seven ships were sunk in enemy-held Singapore Harbour, but a follow-up mission, Rimau, was an abject failure with all 23 participants killed.

At a time when the White Australia policy ruled, the Z unit actively recruited soldiers of Asian heritage, so they could blend in and help train the native guerillas.

They trained initially in Sydney's Pittwater (later on Fraser Island) and paddled their collapsible canoes as far as Lake Macquarie's Cockle Creek on training missions.

It's claimed Z Special Unit carried out 284 missions in the Pacific, sneaking into places like Timor and New Guinea. By war's end, 32 Z men were in Borneo, working in four areas against 30,000 enemy soldiers.

One of the Borneo campaign's few survivors and featured in the TV documentary is former Z unit sergeant Jack Tredrea, now aged 94 years.

Another soldier who sadly doesn't feature was fellow "unknown" Z special operative, Sergeant Fred Sanderson, of Charlestown, who was also one of the original eight Z men parachuted into Borneo in March 1945. Few might remember his role in Operation Semut I there because Sanderson died in 1997 at age 87.

I'll concentrate on him today because he was from the Hunter and his wartime experience was extraordinary. He led a team of 500 headhunters against the Japanese army in the Borneo jungles. Later, in recognition, he was awarded a distinguished conduct medal (DCM).

Originally Sanderson was a nursing orderly with the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) in the Middle East at the Siege of Tobruk, before being selected to join the obscurely named Services Reconnaissance Department (or SRD) to become a Z man.

The Bangkok-born Sanderson told me about 20 years ago he tried to write a book in 1950 about his unknown war with Borneo natives who harassed the enemy with blowpipes, poison darts and machetes.

"Remembering it disturbed me," said Sanderson, who impressed me as a modest, intelligent and sensitive veteran of great integrity.

"I put my notes away, but then had to spend three months in hospital."

Years later, another breakdown occurred.

Then about 1982, Sanderson was amazed to discover Canberra archives holding records of Z Special Unit were incomplete.

"We were recorded as being killed after the war," Sanderson said.

For some, records about the Z Special Unit are still highly sensitive. The only people interested in that jungle campaign these days seem to be a small group of SAS soldiers and those interested in Borneo's history.

Sanderson said he and his natives were haunted by nightmares. "I was always thinking what it was going to be like when I was hunted. I always thought the Japanese would get me one day."

He was awarded his DCM for clashes directly related to killing at least 75 Japanese.

In battle, the exuberant Iban tribesmen under his command quickly reverted to pre-colonial ways, lopping off the heads of Japanese soldiers with razor sharp parangs (machetes).

At war's end, the tally was 102 enemy heads hung as trophies in the native long houses. It seemed Sanderson was almost too successful. His superiors, while acknowledging his valuable work, said he had probably undone 50 years of British good work earlier in finally civilising the Borneo headhunters.

"Before I left, the Iban natives complained to me that they only had 102 souvenir heads and demanded one each for every one of the other [398] natives," he told me.

Sanderson's nerve-racking jungle campaign began when he and seven others were parachuted into Bario, Sarawak (Borneo) on reconnaissance missions.

Soon, however, the group split up to individually recruit tribesmen for raids to divert the Japanese before Australian troops could land to re-take Borneo.

Operation Semut (a Malay word for ant) soon became one of the most successful sorties of WWII, crippling Borneo's Japanese army of occupation.

Led by an eccentric, British Empire officer Major Thomas Harrisson and with about 2000 native fighters, Z Special men were credited with killing 1500 Japanese and auxiliary troops. Another 240 were taken prisoner.

And it was a bizarre, savage five-month campaign. Sanderson once described the aftermath of an engagement in which he hesitantly killed his first Japanese soldier.

"As the Ibans stepped over the dead [man] they christened their spears by jabbing them into the body," he said.

"Someone at the end of the line took the head.

"The Ibans were now excited; all were dressed in their colourful padded war coats and head gear.

"One chap had an orang-utan scalp on his head, while another wore a rusty old fowl-feathered pisspot."

And so exceptional was the work of Malay-speaking "Tuan Sandy" ( Sanderson) that 20 years later, in 1965, he was called back to assist British intelligence counter a Communist threat in Borneo.

Yet absolutely no trace could I find of his exploits in research earlier this week. Even his name eluded me and it took many hours of searching. Herald chief librarian Grahame Marjoribanks then finally tracked down my original 1980s story.

Australia's Special Forces Commander Colonel Don Higgins once even had the same frustrating problem researching.

In 1996, he then sponsored "Exercise Semut Retrace" to gather oral histories in Borneo itself to be later written up as a monograph by Major Jim Truscott.

The conclusion? There was never a comprehensive attempt to document Semut's activities, despite US General MacArthur's involvement in the special operations.

Scant field records were only released in the 1980s.

"The official files were sanitised at the end of the war to protect the operatives involved and the clandestine nature of the organisations involved," Truscott wrote.

And Fred Sanderson, the man who became a legend in a unique wartime campaign?

There's a sad aftermath.

As I left him years ago after my interview, he confided why he'd really joined up for active service after Tobruk.

Racism had raised its head because he was Asian-looking, so he looked for any dangerous mission to dispel any doubts where his loyalties lay.

"Parachuting into Borneo was a way of proving myself," he said.

"I think some military people did not fully trust me beforehand.

" You know, I even think they sent me in there to have me killed."

Australia's Secret Heroes starts on SBS TV on Sunday at 8.30pm.