Osmar White

Osmar Egmont Dorkin White (2 April 1909 – 16 May 1991) was an Australian journalist, war correspondent and writer. He is most famous for his vivid description of the New Guinea Campaign during World War II. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Robert Dentry, EM Dorkin, and Maros Gray. Quotes I had heard a good deal in Moresby about the beauty of Yule Island. It is small, arrogantly mountainous, fringed by noble palms. A handful of native huts is scattered by the anchorage beach. High on the hillside behind them is a little white church surmounted by a cross-strangely out of character, but for all that, a baroque gem in a setting of natural loveliness.    On the landward side is the delta of the St. Joseph River, snaking through crocodile-infested swamps of sago and nipa palm. The dusk this day was mealy and grained, as the schooner stood inshore. Against it, a distant mightiness, was 11,000-foot Mount Yule, clothed to the crown in dripping forest.    All afternoon the sea had been flecked with the white sails of fishing canoes. As the ship came up to anchorage, a canoe slid past, homeward bound. The light dyed its crescent sail blood-red. A man with hair done in a high topknot, wearing a bright loincloth, stood at the steering paddle in the stern. A smoky fire built on a stone on the outrigger glimmered amidship. The grass-skirted woman with rounded legs and bare, retroussé breasts tended it, grilling steaks of red mullet and barracuda for her master's supper.    Darkness was as tonic as a plunge bath. The anchor chain clanked and the silence that followed was broken by the squeak of rowlocks. Onshore a light or two flowered yellow against the gloom of the hillside.    A voice hailed us: "Hi, you, Bill!"    The skipper muttered in the dark: "Och, it's the madman! It's the madman, sure enough! As mad as a cut snake, that one! Three months more and they'll carry him off the island." Green Armor (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1945), ch. 7, pp. 99–100 External links