Ships
- HMAS Katoomba (J204) Captain from 17 December 1941
The initial P. is Paterson. The London Gazette of 9 October 1945 prints it in full: Acting Captain Alan Paterson Cousin, R.D., R.A.N.R.(S.). The Australian Dictionary of Biography, using the form Allan Paterson Cousin, is the same man: born 29 March 1900 near Clifton, Queensland, Distinguished Service Order, landing ship Manoora, dead at Norman Park in 1976. G. Hermon Gill's official history gives the initials only, and the biographical note that goes with them — Captain A. P. Cousin, D.S.O., R.D., R.A.N.R.(S.), born at Clifton on 29 March 1900 — is the same officer. A Royal Australian Naval College roll of entrants lists Cousin, A. P., 1914 entry, graduated, final rank captain, D.S.O., R.D. The Navy's own ship history of Katoomba commissions her under Commander Alan P. Cousin, R.A.N.R.(S.).
He is not a Cousins. The retired lists of the 1950s, in the optical-character copies used here, print one line as "Alan Peterson Cousin." That line is a captain, D.S.O., R.D., Royal Australian Naval Reserve (Seagoing), with seniority 30 June 1946. Those are his decorations, his branch, and the day the Dictionary gives for his confirmation as captain. Peterson is what the scan made of Paterson. It is not a second officer, and it is not used here as a spelling.
He is not Ralph Wynne Cousins of the United States Navy. He is not Gerald Roger Cousins, nor Sydney John Cousins, nor the other Cousins who sit in the same retired lists under different initials. He is not Lieutenant J. A. Grant, who commanded Katoomba in 1944–45, after this man had left her. He is not Cecil Baldwin, who had Manoora in the second half of 1943, nor Arthur Spurgeon, who had her as an armed merchant cruiser. He is not D. A. Menlove, his own executive officer at one landing, whom a footnote in the first volume of the official history also lists as commanding Manoora for a stretch of 1944. That footnote is a conflict, and it is left as one.
The navy is the Royal Australian Naval Reserve (Seagoing). He had been a permanent-service officer first, and he had resigned.
Origins
He was born on 29 March 1900 at Mount Pleasant, Back Plains, near Clifton, Queensland, the seventh child of John McLean Cousin, a farmer from Scotland, and Jane, née McLean, who had been born in Victoria. That is the Dictionary. Gill's note shortens the birthplace to Clifton and adds "of Toowoomba." Toowoomba is the town of that district. The Dictionary does not use it, and it does not say whether Gill meant a later address. The names of the other six children are not in the Dictionary article. No birth register was opened for this essay, so the clash between Allan and Alan is not settled from a certificate. The Gazette, written while he was alive and styled for a decoration, uses Alan. The Dictionary, written after his death, uses Allan. Both use Paterson.
The father was a farmer. The article does not say when the father died, or the mother, or who raised the boy after that, or what school he sat in before the naval college. Those silences are left empty.
Formation
In 1914 he entered the Royal Australian Naval College at Geelong. The next year the college moved to Jervis Bay, and he moved with it. The college roll places him in the 1914 entry, the class of John Malet Armstrong, Cecil Baldwin, Arthur Spurgeon, N. H. Shaw and H. M. L. Waller. He was awarded colours for cricket. He graduated in 1917.
Promoted midshipman in January 1918, he was sent to Britain and appointed to H.M.S. Agincourt. Gill's note records the same ship and the same year, and nothing else about the Grand Fleet. In 1919 he came home and served in several ships. The Dictionary names one of them, H.M.A.S. Marguerite, and does not name the others. He was back in Britain for courses in 1921, promoted lieutenant in October, and embarked for Australia in November 1922.
On 23 April 1923 he resigned his commission. The Dictionary does not say why. There is no letter, no medical board, no quarrel, in anything opened here. What followed is a merchant-service life, and then a reserve commission that put him back in the same navy on different terms. In 1924 he joined the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand Ltd and worked the trans-Pacific run to North America. The ships are not named. On 1 April 1925 he was appointed lieutenant, Royal Australian Naval Reserve (Seagoing). Lieutenant commander in 1930. Commander on 30 June 1936.
Gill's note places him in H.M.A.S. Warrego in 1939–40, and does not say he commanded her. The Dictionary does not mention Warrego at all. It says he was mobilised for full-time service in March 1941. The two statements can sit together if the Warrego time was training or an earlier appointment short of the mobilisation the Dictionary means, and they can also be a flat disagreement about when the war took him. The service card was not opened. No cruise in Warrego is narrated here.
The Dictionary's later portrait belongs to the man these years made, and it is given once, as that biographer's summary, not as a diary. A skilful seaman, respected by those who served with him. Tall, robust, rugged in appearance. A retiring nature. No height, no nickname, no private letter about the resignation, was found to put under those adjectives.
War years as lived
The first command the records agree on is a new corvette. H.M.A.S. Katoomba was laid down at Poole and Steel, Sydney, on 9 September 1940, launched on 16 April 1941 by Mrs Lloyd, the deputy mayoress of the Blue Mountains town, and commissioned on 17 December 1941 under Commander Alan P. Cousin, R.A.N.R.(S.). The Dictionary uses the same day for his taking command. She was a Bathurst-class Australian minesweeper, the first of the name in the Australian navy. He was forty-one.
She reached Darwin on 19 January 1942, escorting a convoy from Thursday Island, and joined the 24th Minesweeping Flotilla. The next morning the war arrived as a contact report. At 6.30 a.m. on 20 January, about sixty miles west of Darwin, a Japanese submarine was sighted and attacked by the American destroyers Edsall and Alden, then escorting the oiler Trinity. Captain E. P. Thomas, naval officer-in-charge at Darwin, ordered Deloraine, Katoomba and Lithgow out to help.
Deloraine, Lieutenant-Commander D. A. Menlove, was already sweeping the searched channel. At 11.55 she was sent to the hunt. At 1.35 p.m., nearing the reported position, she was herself attacked by a submerged submarine and evaded the torpedo. She got a good asdic contact and depth-charged until 3 p.m., when her twenty charges were gone. Oil and air came up. Lithgow joined at 4.20. Katoomba joined at 6 p.m., took over as senior officer, and sent Deloraine in to Darwin to draw more charges from the patrol vessel Vigilant.
At 3.05 a.m. on the 21st, coming back out with fifteen charges, Deloraine found the contact again and attacked at once. Katoomba was with her from 3.56. From then until Deloraine's charges were used up, those attacks were made under Katoomba's direction. Darwin reported, at the time, good reason to believe three submarines had been destroyed, two by Deloraine and one by Katoomba. One boat was afterwards located, sunk in twenty-seven fathoms, in 12 degrees 24 minutes south, 129 degrees 49 minutes east. She was I-124, a minelayer of 1,163 tons, the first Japanese naval unit to be destroyed by the Royal Australian Navy. Final credit was given to Edsall and the three Australian ships. The three boats of the first report were not there. What Cousin had done, on Gill's account, was take the senior officer's duty at six in the evening of his second day on the station, and direct the attacks that finished the hunt. The Dictionary's sentence is only that Katoomba participated.
The collision came immediately. Gill dates it to 23 January: damage suffered against the United States oiler Pecos. The Sea Power Centre dates it to about 2 a.m. on 22 January, just outside Darwin harbour, a hole in the port side, the ship in danger of sinking, then secured alongside Lithgow and towed in, and taken into the floating dock AD 1001 on the afternoon of the 23rd. The Dictionary says three days after the submarine action, rammed by the American tanker Pecos, towed to Darwin, placed in the floating dock. The day of the blow is not the same in Gill and in the ship history. The result is. She was out of the water when the Japanese carriers struck Darwin.
On the morning of 19 February she was still in the dock, about half a mile south of the wharf. Gill lists her there with the rest of the 24th Minesweeping Flotilla, repairing the Pecos damage, and he dates that collision, in this chapter, to the 23rd. The ship history says her commanding officer decided not to land the ammunition, which was the usual practice when a ship docked for repairs. He was the commanding officer. When the raid began, the ship's company manned the guns. Gill's sentence on her part in the fight is one line: Katoomba fought off a dive bomber which attacked the dry dock, and caused him to miss. The ship history adds a near miss on the ship and the dock, and debris from the explosion of Neptuna at the wharf. Katoomba and the dock escaped serious damage. The Dictionary is more personal than either, and it was not checked against his report: Cousin used her guns to harass one plane which attacked the ship and dock. Nineteen ships in the harbour were sunk, put out of action, or damaged. She was not one of them. She also could not leave the dock.
After the repairs she went to escort work in northern Australian and Papuan waters. The Dictionary puts that deployment under him. In August 1942 Katoomba went to the American submarine S-39, ashore on Rossel Island reef. The ship history, which does not repeat his name in that paragraph, says she sailed on 14 August, arrived next day, failed to refloat the boat, and on 16 August left for Townsville with the whole crew, four officers and forty-three enlisted men. The submarine's commanding officer had burnt her out and flooded her. Gill's second volume indexes Rossel Island only at page 9, and that page was not opened. The rescue is the Dictionary's and the ship history's, not a passage of Gill that was read.
On 26 November intelligence pointed to a Japanese attempt to run troops and supplies into Buna by submarine on the night of 28–29 November. Katoomba, Commander A. P. Cousin, and Ballarat, Lieutenant-Commander Barling, left Milne Bay on the 27th escorting Muliama to Porlock Harbour, arrived there on the afternoon of the 28th, and went straight on to Holnicote Bay, just west of Buna, for an anti-submarine patrol through the night. No submarine was found. For an hour from 6.40 p.m. ten dive bombers attacked the two ships. Near misses jarred Katoomba hard enough to leave boiler and engine defects. Neither ship took casualties or other damage. One Japanese aircraft was shot down and two were damaged. Cousin wrote in his report that the excellent manoeuvrability of the corvettes appeared to surprise the Japanese pilots. That is the first sentence of his that Gill prints. It is about the ships, not about himself.
On 9 January 1943, off Oro Bay, Van Heutsz was discharging while Katoomba patrolled outside. At 2 p.m. six dive bombers hit the Dutch ship with one bomb and two near misses, and machine-gunned the corvette. Some of Katoomba's standing rigging was shot through. Neither ship was immobilised. Casualties in each were two slightly wounded. The attack lasted about five minutes and ended when Allied fighters arrived. Gill does not name the commanding officer in that paragraph. The Dictionary, still inside the period it assigns to him, says she was attacked near Oro Bay in January 1943 and was unscathed. The ship history says superficial damage to Katoomba, and one man killed and three seriously wounded in the freighter. Gill's count is the one taken from the letters of proceedings he was using: two slightly wounded in each ship, rigging cut, not sunk, not stopped. The Dictionary's "unscathed" does not survive that page.
Gill's biographical note gives him Katoomba for 1941–43 and does not give the day he left her. By 1944–45 the same history's footnote on another officer, Lieutenant J. A. Grant, has Grant in command of Katoomba. The months between Cousin's corvette and his next agreed command are not filled by the Dictionary, by Gill, or by either ship history. A compiled list of warship commands puts him in Colac from 21 December 1943 into January 1944. That list was not traced to a Navy List or a report. Colac is not narrated.
On 27 January 1944 he was appointed to command H.M.A.S. Manoora. The Dictionary and the Sea Power Centre agree on the day. She was no longer the armed merchant cruiser Spurgeon had taken to sea in 1939. She had been converted to a landing ship, infantry, recommissioned on 2 February 1943, and fitted first on the British system of mess decks and hammocks, which held her troop capacity to about 850. The other two Australian conversions, Westralia and Kanimbla, were done on the American pattern, with standee bunks and cafeteria messing, and could take about 1,250. Manoora was later altered to match. The three ships carried American landing craft, twenty to twenty-two LCVPs and two or three LCMs. The Sea Power Centre says Acting Captain Cecil Baldwin assumed command on 29 June 1943. Gill, in a sentence the rest of the record will not carry, says that when Manoora recommissioned on 2 February 1943 she did so under Captain Cousin, and calls her the first such ship to join VII Amphibious Force. He was then still, on Gill's own footnote, in Katoomba for a command dated 1941–43, and he was a commander, not a captain. The February 1943 sentence is rejected. The January 1944 appointment is the one that matches the Dictionary, the ship history, and the rank Gill actually uses when he next has Cousin speaking from Manoora.
As senior naval officer of the Australian landing ships he also had charge of Kanimbla and Westralia. That is the Dictionary, and it is how Gill styles him by the end of 1944: Commander Cousin, Senior Naval Officer, Australian Landing Ships. The three ships were not air-conditioned. They were usually crowded. Tropical service in them was, in the Dictionary's word, arduous.
In April 1944 Manoora and Kanimbla were at Goodenough Island, training with units of the 24th United States Division, while Westralia loaded at Cape Cretin for the same operation. Manoora sailed in Rear-Admiral Barbey's western group for Tanahmerah Bay. The passage was quiet. At 6 a.m. on 22 April, under the bombardment, Henry T. Allen, Carter Hall, Manoora and Kanimbla lowered their boats. The main landing, two regiments of the 24th Division, went in on schedule with negligible opposition. The ship history says the landing was without incident. Gill does not quote Cousin at Tanahmerah.
At Wakde he did write, and Gill kept it. Before dawn on 17 May, north-west of the island, Manoora lowered boats and embarked the assault troops. By 6.18 a.m. every boat was lowered and manned, and "Ready to Proceed" had gone to the commander of transports in Henry T. Allen. Cousin afterwards gave the credit to his executive officer, Lieutenant-Commander D. A. Menlove: all the boats and the assault troops away in twenty-seven minutes. Henry T. Allen had taken forty, and later congratulated Manoora. At 6.31 the two transports left for Humboldt Bay. The first wave was ashore at 7.15. Isolated sniper fire was the opposition on the beach.
From 28 June to 19 July 1944 Manoora was in Sydney because the main refrigerator had to be repaired. Gill prints what Cousin wrote in his letter of proceedings. Three weeks in Sydney during the month, in cold weather, proved a veritable God-send. All skin irritations vanished, and the officers and the ship's company were in high spirits. He then asked for something, which is as close as these reports come to a judgment about how the work was wearing the men. Because of the arduous nature of the work in the Australian landing ships, particularly in long training periods, he strongly recommended at least two weeks of recreational leave, if operations allowed, at least every six months, at a mainland port where the weather was cooler. Navy Office noted that the commander of the Seventh Fleet had already laid down a recreation period at least every six months for American ships employed in the New Guinea area. The Dictionary uses the God-send sentence and the cooler weather. It does not mention the refrigerator, or the recommendation, or the American rule he was measuring his ship against.
She was back in New Guinea, training and transporting, until 3 September, when she anchored in Maffin Bay at Wakde and loaded for the Red Beach attack at Morotai. On 10 September she embarked 130 officers and 1,142 men of the 31st United States Division. The ship history's figure of 1,272 men is the same total without the split. She sailed just after 10 a.m. on the 11th with the Red Beach force. One engine was enough, in a strong favourable drift, to keep station. Kanimbla found the same.
At 0100 on the 13th Able Seaman R. R. Moon fell over the side. Cousin recorded it as somnambulism, and recorded that Moon was fortunate to be picked up by the United States destroyer Stack. Gill's note on Moon gives him an official number, S7044, later service in Gladstone, Sydney-born on 21 October 1924. He was nineteen, and not yet twenty, when he walked over the side in his sleep. The approach otherwise was quiet. Cousin reported that D-day, Friday 15 September, dawned bright and fine with a very smooth sea, and that the whole assault was carried out according to plan. Kanimbla and Manoora did not carry the immediate assault troops. They stopped to let the rest of the force clear, then moved to a transport area about a mile and a quarter south-south-east of Cape Gila. Opposition ashore was light. On the 16th the two ships left for Humboldt Bay.
In October the three Australian ships were in the Panaon attack group for Leyte. No Japanese resistance was met at the landing. Gill has Cousin, still a commander in this report, describing the canoes that came out: food, cigarettes and clothing were handed out to these people, whose gratitude at deliverance from the Japanese was most sincere and moving. This day was a real red-letter day in their lives. Cargo was finished soon after 4 p.m. At 5.51 Manoora, as senior officer, weighed and proceeded with Westralia, Kanimbla and a destroyer escort. A single Japanese aircraft was driven off during the next hour and did not get in close. He commended the three ships for their excellent performance, and of his own he wrote that the landing of assault troops and cargo was done to schedule, the cargo discharged at a high rate, averaging ninety tons an hour, working three hatches into nothing larger than LCMs and LCVPs. He thought that the maximum possible, and gave the credit to the landing-ship detachment of the Australian Imperial Force and to Lieutenant R. F. Jelley of that force, the officer in charge of the stevedoring.
Through November the three ships carried troops from Humboldt Bay to Leyte. They were at Torokina, in Empress Augusta Bay, on 30 November. On 15 December the roadstead was full. Transport Squadron 13 included Manoora (Commander Cousin, senior naval officer of the Australian landing ships), Kanimbla (Commander Bunyan) and Westralia (Lieutenant-Commander Livingston). Between them they had embarked 191 officers and 3,032 enlisted men of the 37th Division: Manoora's share was 55 officers and 958 men. They rehearsed on a beach between Lae and Salamaua, reached Manus on 21 December, and left on the morning of 31 December. Cousin's report, as Gill quotes it, says they left with six destroyer escorts en route to execute assault Mike I in Lingayen Gulf.
On 9 January 1945 Manoora called all hands at 3.30 a.m. Troops and ship's company breakfasted at four. Action stations an hour later. At 7 a.m., just after the Deploy signal, operational action stations. Paravanes were recovered. At 7.30, on schedule, two minutes after sunrise, she anchored in 21 fathoms, 12,500 yards from Crimson Beach, about midway between Lingayen and Dagupan and some 5,000 yards from each. The boats went away. Cousin wrote that the din of the pre-landing bombardment was terrific, and that fire was directed by float spotter planes. Westralia finished discharging at 5.30 p.m., the best part of an hour ahead of the other two. Manoora's figures, which Gill uses as the measure of what the Australian ships did that day, were 4,652 tons in 219 lifts, five hours and one minute, about 93 tons an hour, or 31 tons an hour for each working hold. Kanimbla and Westralia did as well. Cousin, writing as senior naval officer, said they had performed their assault landing in an exemplary manner, and that the commanding officers, officers and ships' companies of those two ships were a credit to Australia. He did not, in the sentences Gill prints, describe the suicide aircraft that were hitting other ships in the gulf the same morning. Australia, in that bombardment group, was being hit while his boats ran. His report as quoted stays on the discharge.
The ship history says that after Lingayen a camouflage scheme was ordered for the three Australian landing ships, and it prints a February 1945 report under the name "Commander Cousins, the captain of Manoora." The surname is wrong, and the rank fights the promotion the Dictionary dates to February 1945. The report itself was not opened. Those sentences are not used as his.
The Sea Power Centre, still inside his command, tells a different Morotai story from the assault. Ratings, unknown to the authorities on board, persuaded RAAF pilots at the Morotai strip to take them on operational sweeps. A Beaufighter of No. 31 Squadron, with Sick Berth Attendant Alec Hill aboard, was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. The pilot, Pilot Officer William McGuigan, and Hill survived a forced landing in the sea. Flight Sergeant Allan Lewis did not. McGuigan and Hill reached shore, were captured, and on 19 June 1945 were taken from the naval prison at Manado and executed, with two Dutchmen and two Indonesians. The ship history says the killing was by bayoneting. Hill was buried, later moved, and now lies in the war cemetery at Ambon. The same history calls him Manoora's only death by enemy action during the war. Cousin's report of it was not read. What is on the page is that it happened from his ship, and that the ship's authorities had not known the men were flying.
By Tarakan, Gill calls him captain. Planning for that landing began on 26 March 1945. P-day was put back from 29 April to 1 May. The attack group was the flagship Rocky Mount, two landing ships — Manoora (Captain Cousin) and Westralia (Commander Livingston) — and about 120 other ships and craft. The Dictionary's list of his landings includes Tarakan. Gill does not quote him there.
At Brunei on 10 June, Manoora was in the main body that went to Brown Beach, on Labuan, with Westralia, Titania, Carter Hall and thirty landing craft. Kanimbla went to Green Beach. The attack-group commander's report, not Cousin's, says Manoora lowered boats at 7.08, troops were boated, and the boats stood by. A Japanese aircraft dropped one bomb into the transport area at 6.51, between Titania and an LST, and did no damage. The beaches were taken without opposition. The three Australian ships were unloaded that day. At 2.26 p.m. on the 11th, Manoora, Westralia, Kanimbla and Titania sailed for Morotai. The ship history's dates of 11 May and 14 May for that return are a slip. Gill's June dates are the ones that fit the landing.
They were at Morotai from Brunei in time for officers of the 7th Division to come aboard Westralia on 19 June and say what the next beach was. Manoora's troops at Balikpapan were for Green Beach. Gill prints the Sunday morning orders for that landing as a timetable: the morning watch called at 0315, all hands at 0330, breakfast at 0400, action stations at 0500, operational action stations at 0635, anchor at 0700, away all boats. He does not say the words are Cousin's. The first wave from Manoora, led by Lieutenant L. J. H. Cantwell, found the swept channel clearly marked, and for some minutes had the undivided attention of a 3-inch gun ashore. The shells fell close on both sides of the boats in column. There were no casualties. Commander Green, R.A.N. liaison officer with VII Amphibious Force, went in with that first wave. The ship history, not Gill, has the three ships sailing for Morotai at 7.30 that evening and back with reinforcements on 7 July. The Dictionary's list ends there: Tanahmerah Bay, Wakde, Morotai, Leyte, Lingayen Gulf, Tarakan, Labuan, Balikpapan.
The London Gazette of 9 October 1945 made him a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. The citation is not a story of one beach. It is the group's. For gallantry, fortitude and skill whilst serving in H.M. Australian Ships Manoora, Kanimbla and Westralia, in numerous amphibious assaults in the South-West Pacific area, including operations in New Guinea, the Philippines and Borneo. These extensive operations covered more than two years of service. He is the only D.S.O. in that list. Under him, in the same paragraph, are a DSC for Commander Andrew Veitch Bunyan, one for Acting Commander Eric Walton Livingston, and others for officers and ratings of the three ships, and mentions in despatches. The Gazette styles him Acting Captain Alan Paterson Cousin, R.D., R.A.N.R.(S.). The R.D. was already his. The date he received the Reserve Decoration was not found. A photograph in the Australian War Memorial, which the ship history captions and dates 9 October 1945 — the day of the Gazette — shows Captain A. P. Cousin with members of his wardroom. The print was not opened.
The Dictionary dates the acting rank to February 1945, and the confirmation as captain to 30 June 1946. Gill is consistent with the first of those: commander at Leyte in October 1944 and at Lingayen on 9 January 1945, captain at Tarakan on 1 May. A compiled rank table gives 15 February 1945 for the acting promotion. That day was not read in a Navy List. The month is what is used.
After the fighting stopped, the Dictionary says, Manoora repatriated prisoners of war and took men of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force to Japan. The ship history spreads the repatriation from New Guinea, New Britain, Morotai and Borneo through to April 1946, and then four trips to Japan, and pays the ship off on 6 December 1947. Gill's note gives him Manoora, and the senior naval officer's appointment over the Australian landing ships in the South-West Pacific, for 1944–47. It does not say he was still in her on the day she paid off. The Dictionary says he remained with the landing ships until he was demobilised on 10 May 1949. Between December 1947 and May 1949 the appointment is not named.
After
He settled in Brisbane and worked as a clerk in the war service homes division of the Commonwealth Department of Social Services. On 22 December 1949, at Mowbraytown Presbyterian Church, East Brisbane, he married Cena Ethel Gundry, née Christesen, a divorcee. He was forty-nine. The Dictionary records her death in 1974 and does not record children. It does not record an earlier marriage. If there was one, it is not in the article.
He died on 7 January 1976 at his home in Norman Park, and was cremated. The Dictionary is the only source opened here for the death, the address, and the cremation. No newspaper notice was retrieved. The college roll's final rank, captain, matches the rank he held at the end of the war and in the retired list.
What the reports preserve of him is not a speech and not a nickname. It is a senior officer's habit of putting the credit on someone else in the ship: Menlove for the twenty-seven minutes at Wakde, Jelley and the army detachment for the ninety tons an hour at Leyte, Bunyan and Livingston and their companies for Lingayen. The one recommendation that is his own asking is the two weeks of cool weather every six months. The Dictionary's "retiring nature" is a biographer's phrase. The reports are the evidence that phrase is reaching for, and they are more precise than the phrase.