The little-known organisation that preceded NEFIS special operations
Before the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service (NEFIS) developed its own special-operations capability, Dutch, Australian and Indonesian personnel were already being sent from Australia on clandestine missions into the Japanese-occupied Netherlands East Indies.
Their activities were organised through the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) Section of the Inter-Allied Services Department (IASD), one of the secret organisations established in Australia during the crisis of 1942.
The NEI Section existed for a relatively short period, but it represents an important transitional stage in the history of Dutch intelligence operations from Australia.
It brought together Australian military personnel, Dutch officers and a substantial number of Indonesian and other Netherlands East Indies personnel. They trained together, planned clandestine missions and attempted to establish intelligence networks inside territory occupied by Japan.
Some operations succeeded in reaching their objectives. Others ended in capture, execution or disappearance.
A surviving wartime file in the National Archives of Australia provides an unusually detailed, although incomplete, picture of this organisation and its operations.
The creation of the NEI Section
Following the Japanese conquest of the Netherlands East Indies in early 1942, Australia became the principal Allied base from which attempts could be made to regain intelligence about the occupied archipelago.
At the same time, Australia was rapidly creating organisations capable of conducting clandestine warfare behind Japanese lines.
The Inter-Allied Services Department brought together personnel and capabilities for intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, sabotage and other special operations.
Its headquarters was initially organised from Victoria Barracks in Melbourne. On 17 May 1942 it moved to Airlie House, a large mansion at 260 Domain Road, South Yarra, which became its principal headquarters and administrative centre.
Within this organisation, the NEI Section concentrated on operations in the Netherlands East Indies.
Its activities preceded the formal establishment and subsequent development of NEFIS and should therefore not automatically be described as NEFIS operations.
This distinction is important when reconstructing the history of early missions such as FLOUNDER, TIGER and WALNUT.
A substantial Dutch and Indonesian presence
The NEI Section was not simply a small Dutch liaison group attached to an Australian organisation.
By December 1942, IASD headquarters and training staffs included 40 Australians and 18 Dutch subjects.
Its operational personnel numbered 80: 27 Australians and 53 Dutch or Netherlands East Indies personnel.
In total, 71 NEI personnel were attached to IASD, of whom 53 were engaged in operations, undergoing training or awaiting operational assignments.
They included Dutch and NEI naval and army officers, colonial police, sailors, wireless operators, mechanics and Indonesian operatives, together with Australians assigned to NEI missions.
Personnel were distributed between Airlie House, Darwin, the Z Experimental Station near Cairns and other facilities.
The numbers demonstrate the scale of Dutch and Indonesian participation in Australia’s developing clandestine warfare organisation.
What the NEI Section was expected to do
The NEI Section planned or supported operations into Netherlands New Guinea, Ambon and Ceram, Java, Celebes and the Aru Islands.
Its responsibilities could include gathering military intelligence, establishing clandestine wireless communications, reconnaissance of Japanese positions, distributing Allied propaganda, recruiting local intelligence networks, encouraging resistance and preparing sabotage operations.
These activities reveal one of the organisational problems that would repeatedly affect Allied clandestine warfare.
Was a party entering enemy territory primarily collecting intelligence, or was it conducting special operations?
Often it was doing both.
That ambiguity contributed to disputes about whether the NEI Section should fall under special-operations or field-intelligence control.
Leadership and communications
The NEI Section was directed by Lieutenant-Commander J. J. Quéré of the Royal Netherlands Navy.
Captain J. Jansen was responsible for wireless telegraphy and communications, including communications for parties operating in enemy-held territory.
Captain G. G. M. van Arcken served in a personnel and administrative role. The surviving file describes him as a naturalised Australian of Dutch extraction who joined IASD as a civilian in June 1942 for operations in Java and was subsequently appointed a temporary captain in the Australian Imperial Force.
Wireless communications were crucial. Once a party had been inserted into occupied territory, radio often provided its only connection with Australia.
Z Experimental Station at Cairns
One of the most important centres supporting these operations was the Z Experimental Station at Fairview House, Mooroobool, near Cairns.
Established in 1942, ZES became a training, communications, holding and operational staging facility for clandestine parties.
Australians trained there alongside personnel from the Netherlands East Indies, including a substantial Indonesian contingent.
Among the NEI personnel associated with the establishment was Ambonese KNIL officer Julius Tahija.
Following the reorganisation of Allied intelligence arrangements in 1943, ZES became increasingly associated with NEFIS special operations.
Its history and the Dutch and Indonesian personnel who trained there are examined separately in this Research Portal.
Intelligence or special operations?
The surviving IASD records reveal significant disagreement about administrative responsibility for NEI operations.
Intelligence gathering and sabotage could not always be separated in the field. A party sent to establish a wireless intelligence network might also be expected to recruit resistance groups, identify demolition targets or prepare for future Allied military operations.
This blurred the distinction between field intelligence and special operations.
The records indicate that the resulting organisational disagreements contributed to the restructuring of the NEI Section.
Responsibility for Dutch and NEI intelligence operations increasingly moved away from the Australian special-operations structure and towards the developing Dutch intelligence organisation that became NEFIS.
This transition helps explain why the early NEI Section and later NEFIS III are sometimes confused in historical accounts.
They were closely connected stages in the development of Dutch clandestine operations from Australia, but they were not identical organisations.
Operations in New Guinea
One of the best-known operations involved NEI Sergeant H. N. Staverman, Australian signaller Sergeant Leonard G. Siffleet and Indonesian operatives.
The party operated through New Guinea conducting reconnaissance, distributing Allied propaganda and seeking local intelligence.
Staverman and Indonesian operative H. Pattiwael moved towards Hollandia in Netherlands New Guinea.
After learning that Japanese forces were attempting to capture them, Staverman and Pattiwael were ambushed south of Hollandia. Staverman was killed while Pattiwael initially escaped.
Siffleet was subsequently captured and executed.
The photograph of his execution became one of the best-known images of the Pacific War, but the wider context is less familiar: Siffleet was participating in a multinational intelligence operation involving Australian, Dutch and Indonesian personnel.
Operation FLOUNDER
FLOUNDER was an entirely NEI operation intended to establish a long-term intelligence presence on Ceram.
The eight-person party was led by Lieutenant H. P. Nygh and included NEI military personnel, a wireless signaller and members of the colonial police.
An American submarine transported the party from Australia and inserted it during the night of 30–31 December 1942.
The operation ended disastrously.
The party was captured soon afterwards. The surviving Australian record was uncertain about Nygh’s fate but reported that the other members had been executed.
A submarine returned for a planned rendezvous on 5 May 1943 but found no trace of the party.
FLOUNDER illustrates both the ambition and the extreme danger of these early attempts to establish intelligence networks inside Japanese-occupied territory.
The proposed Ambon mission
Another substantial operation was planned for Ambon under Captain W. T. Jinkins.
Jinkins had served with Australian forces in the region, became a Japanese prisoner of war, escaped and returned to Australia.
His proposed party included Australians experienced in explosives, fieldcraft and communications together with Indonesian personnel possessing essential local knowledge.
Training took place at Z Experimental Station.
The party was equipped for an extended deployment but no suitable submarine or other transport could be obtained. The mission was eventually abandoned.
The surviving file nevertheless contains a remarkable planning document, the “Appreciation of Project 23 A-2”, prepared at Cairns on 9 November 1942.
Planning a clandestine base
The Ambon plan demonstrates how ambitious these operations could become.
Rather than simply landing a small party to observe Japanese movements, the planners envisaged establishing a clandestine base from which agents could conduct reconnaissance, create an intelligence network, organise locally supported resistance, undertake sabotage and prepare for an eventual Allied return.
Potential bases were considered on Ambon, Ceram, Haruku and Saparua.
Japanese airfields, wireless stations, shipping, coastal patrols and military installations were assessed.
Potential demolition targets included oil installations, communications, harbour facilities, aircraft infrastructure, coastal defences and Japanese headquarters.
The plan also recognised something that became fundamental to clandestine operations throughout the Netherlands East Indies: technical training alone was insufficient.
Successful operations required language skills, local knowledge, trusted contacts and an understanding of the communities among whom agents would operate.
This made Indonesian and locally experienced NEI personnel indispensable.
Operations into Java
Several missions directed towards Java carried the codename TIGER.
Dutch submarines were used to insert some of the parties.
Several agents disappeared after landing. In one case, wireless transmissions received after insertion were suspected of being under Japanese control, and a proposed extraction operation was cancelled.
Another party involving Captain Van Arcken briefly landed on Java’s south coast but withdrew because of the Japanese presence after collecting an individual named Schenau.
The surviving records are fragmentary and sometimes contradictory. Handwritten amendments demonstrate that the wartime compiler was himself attempting to reconstruct the composition and fate of the various parties.
This uncertainty is one reason why individual missions require comparison with Dutch NEFIS records and later historical research.
The Aru Islands
Operations were also conducted in the Aru Islands.
One party led by Captain C. R. Sheldon was sent to investigate conditions and gather intelligence while maintaining wireless communications through Darwin.
The surviving file is unusually critical of aspects of the operation’s planning.
After landing, the party reported hostile local conditions and considerable difficulty establishing itself.
Sheldon was captured, while other members attempted to survive in the jungle before they too were overwhelmed.
The Australian record states that Japanese interrogation of captured personnel produced significant information about IASD and Australian clandestine organisations.
The episode illustrates the enormous security consequences that could follow when an intelligence party was compromised.
Other missions
The surviving file refers to numerous other operations and proposed operations, including MACKEREL, WALNUT, SCHNAPPER, KENDARI, LION and APRICOT.
Some were undertaken; others were abandoned or remain poorly documented.
In several cases little more than a codename, destination and approximate personnel list could later be reconstructed.
This fragmented record is itself part of the history.
When responsibility for NEI operations changed, records and personnel moved between organisations. The Australian officer later attempting to reconstruct IASD’s operational history found that important documentation and knowledgeable personnel were no longer available to him.
Dutch naval and aviation support
Personnel were only one part of the Dutch contribution.
Transport was one of the greatest difficulties confronting clandestine operations.
Submarines, aircraft and suitable small craft were scarce and required for conventional military operations as well as intelligence missions.
Dutch naval authorities nevertheless made submarines and small craft available for some NEI operations, while Dutch flying boats also supported clandestine activities.
American submarines were used for other missions.
Without these transport resources, even fully trained and equipped intelligence parties could remain stranded in Australia.
From the NEI Section towards NEFIS
The NEI Section represents an important transitional stage in the development of Dutch intelligence operations from Australia.
It began within an Australian-led special-operations organisation at a time when the Allies were hurriedly constructing new intelligence capabilities following the Japanese victories of early 1942.
Dutch, Australian and Indonesian personnel worked together because each brought capabilities the others needed.
The Australians provided facilities, communications, personnel and access to the developing Allied intelligence structure.
The Dutch brought military and administrative knowledge of the Netherlands East Indies together with naval and aviation resources.
Indonesian personnel supplied languages, cultural understanding, local knowledge and operational capabilities that were indispensable inside the occupied archipelago.
As the intelligence system became more organised, Dutch authorities assumed greater responsibility for operations concerning their former territory.
NEFIS consequently became the principal Dutch intelligence organisation in Australia, while its special-operations capability developed further through NEFIS III.
The NEI Section therefore provides the bridge between the improvised multinational intelligence operations of 1942 and the more structured Dutch intelligence organisation that followed.
A dangerous experiment in Allied cooperation
The surviving record does not present a story of uninterrupted operational success.
Many parties were captured or disappeared. Some missions were abandoned because transport was unavailable. Others encountered local conditions very different from those anticipated in Australia.
But judging the NEI Section only by operational success or failure misses its wider historical significance.
It demonstrates that Dutch and Indonesian personnel were substantial participants in Australia’s secret war from its earliest stages.
Long before the better-known NEFIS operations of 1944–45, Australian, Dutch and Indonesian personnel were already training together and attempting to penetrate Japanese-occupied territory.
Their experience — including the failures and heavy losses — helped shape the intelligence and special-operations system that followed.
The original archival file
The principal source for this article is the surviving National Archives of Australia file:
The file is a wartime compilation containing operational accounts, planning documents and later attempts to reconstruct what happened. It contains handwritten corrections, uncertain names and dates and acknowledges gaps caused by the transfer or loss of records. It should therefore be treated as an exceptionally valuable primary source rather than an infallible official history.
It also contains terminology concerning ethnicity and colonial populations that reflects contemporary wartime and colonial attitudes.
Sources and further reading
- National Archives of Australia, Item 235327 — Official History of Operations and Administration of Special Operations – Australia (SOA), Vol. 2 Operations. Particularly useful for comparing the surviving NEI Section record with the later official reconstruction of operations.
- Nationaal Archief, The Hague, Access 2.10.62 — archive of the Marine and Leger Inlichtingendienst, NEFIS and Centrale Militaire Inlichtingendienst. The inventory specifically includes wartime material on intelligence collection, security and counter-intelligence, special operations, military intelligence and civil-affairs intelligence.
- Peter Dunn OAM, research on Dutch involvement in Allied special operations, based on Australian wartime intelligence records.
- Jonathan (Jack) Ford, Allies in a Bind: Australia and the Netherlands East Indies in the Second World War.
- J.J. Nortier, Acties in de Archipel: De intelligence-operaties van NEFIS-III in de Pacific-oorlog.
