The Spirit of the Digger

by Patrick Lindsay

  I can recall those magnificent young men who never lost hope even as they faded from robust health to walking cadavers.

  Laurens van der Post looked back on the horrors from a higher plane and, in doing so, was able to find meaning:

  … we had discovered a way of living in prison as if it were not a prison and instead an immense opportunity for re-educating ourselves and freeing our minds and imaginations for life in a way they have never been free before. We had discovered, as I put it to the Japanese General who announced his surrender to me in September 1945 in urging him to emulate the example, how to lose in a way that losing became another kind of winning.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Pacific ‘Few’

  In one of his most celebrated speeches Winston Churchill said: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ He was referring to the Allied airmen who saved his country during the Battle of Britain, but he could equally have been speaking about the remarkable exploits of the Coastwatchers during the Pacific War. The Coastwatchers were a select band of men and women who volunteered to stay behind enemy lines in the Pacific Islands after the Japanese invasion to watch and report back on the enemy’s movements. Like the airmen in the Battle of Britain, the Coastwatchers changed the course of the Pacific War. They were the ‘few’ of the Pacific.

  Reading or writing about history, we know how things turned out. The Coastwatchers didn’t have that advantage. When they agreed to stay behind – and thereby forfeit their chance to return to safety in Australia, when all around them were fleeing before the invaders – they didn’t know that the Allies would ultimately prevail against the Japanese. In fact, when they put their lives on the line the enemy seemed invincible: they had stunned the Americans at Pearl Harbor and Guam; they had swept unchecked through Asia and the Pacific; they had trampled over the British and Australians in Singapore; and more than 15,000 Australian POWs were already in their hands. The Coastwatchers knew what faced them if they were caught: execution, almost certainly by beheading. Indeed, more than 30 of their number would endure this fate.

  When World War II seemed inevitable, the Navy was given the task of revamping and modernising an early-warning system to guard Australia, a prodigious undertaking considering our 19,000-kilometre coastline is the equivalent of sailing from Sydney to London via the Cape of Good Hope. They chose well, handing the job to a brilliant organiser and a former World War I naval officer, 40-year-old Queenslander Commander Eric Feldt. After he retired from the Navy, Feldt joined the New Guinea administration, serving as a patrol officer (or ‘Kiap’) and district officer in many posts throughout Papua New Guinea. As such, he came to know the land and its people intimately. He was also well connected with other expats and ‘old hands’ in the islands who understood the land and its people as well as he did.

  In the 1920s the leading commercial wireless operator in the region, Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Limited, universally known as AWA, had established direct wireless telegraph services linking Australia with Britain and Canada. It also secured ownership of the 27 government radio stations in Australia, stretching from Hobart to Thursday Island, from Geraldton to Cooktown and in Papua New Guinea at Bita Paka in Rabaul. By 1928 they had extended the network throughout the southwest Pacific. It was centred on Sydney and linked Suva (and from there Samoa, the Friendly Islands, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, New Caledonia and New Hebrides), Rabaul (and thence to Aitape, Madang, Manus Island, Kavieng, Kieta, Bulolo, Salamaua, Sepik, the Solomon Islands and Santa Cruz Islands).

  When war was declared, the navy took over the operation of the coastal and island radio network and by September that year Eric Feldt was travelling throughout the islands, meeting members of the existing radio network and recruiting new members of his coastwatching team. He called them the ‘Ferdinand Group’, after a Walt Disney character based on a popular book published in 1936, The Story of Ferdinand, written by American author and columnist Munro Leaf. Ferdinand was a pacifist bull who wouldn’t fight in the ring but preferred to smell the flowers. Feldt chose the codename to underline his instructions to his team that it was not their duty to fight and draw attention to themselves; rather they must watch and wait and warn.

  Feldt equipped his team with the state-of-the-art in communications at the time, the AWA 3B teleradio. In good conditions it could transmit voice messages about 600 kilometres and Morse code transmissions up to 1000 kilometres. But, and it was an enormous but, it weighed about 150 kilograms and it took between ten and fifteen hardy carriers to transport it. And this was a portable radio! It came with a separate transmitter, receiver, loudspeaker and massive aerial, and it was powered by batteries – the size of car batteries – that required a petrol-driven motor to charge them. Just the thing to drag through the jungle while being pursued by Japanese patrols intent on eliminating you!

  From the start of hostilities in the southwest Pacific the Coastwatchers played a vital role in the conflict. Even before the Japanese invaded Rabaul, on New Britain Island, and Kavieng, on New Ireland, on 23 January 1942, coastwatchers were reporting on the enemy aerial reconnaissance flights in the region.

  Cornelius Page, known to all as Con, was a 30-year-old Australian plantation manager on Simberi Island, about 100 kilometres east of Kavieng. He had been chosen by Eric Feldt as one of the Ferdinand Group on Feldt’s first recruitment sweep through the islands. Page reported the first sighting of Japanese planes in the region on 9 December 1941, the day after the news of Pearl Harbor filtered through the Pacific. He went on to report a gradual build-up in enemy flights in the area and warned of the first bombing raids headed for nearby Rabaul.

  The Japanese were aware of Page’s signals and, just five days after they landed at Rabaul and Kavieng, sent a destroyer to Simberi Island to chase him down. Page evaded the landing party by heading off into the jungle, then calmly reported on their movements once they had left. Eric Feldt knew Page was in imminent danger and requested him to bury his radio and escape. But Page decided to continue giving his reports, abusing the Japanese at the end of each signal, well aware he was living on borrowed time. Feldt again tried to persuade him to escape but Page responded that he had promised his loyal islander friends that he would not leave them and he was determined to keep his word. Feldt arranged to have Page commissioned as a sublieutenant in the RAN and included badges of rank and uniform with his airdropped supplies, in the vain hope that he would be treated as a POW, not as a spy, if he were captured.

  By June 1942, after almost six months of constant patrolling by the enemy, Page’s position was precarious and Feldt decided to try to evacuate him by American submarine. Page waited at the rendezvous spot for three consecutive nights but, unknown to him, the sub had developed mechanical problems and had to limp back to Townsville. Because of the intricate reefs surrounding the island, Feldt could not call on another sub until the next full moon, a month away.

  On 8 June the Japanese landed another patrol chasing Page. He managed to elude them but his islander wife, Ansin Bulu, was captured as she returned to the plantation unaware of the enemy presence. She was taken to Kavieng. Shortly afterwards, Page reported that he was being hunted by tracking dogs and some of the local natives who had been turned against him by a local mixed-race drifter, trying to establish himself with the Japanese. Eric Feldt arranged for a Catalina flying boat to try to rescue Page. Against standing orders, Feldt even hopped aboard the plane for the mission. Despite an extensive search of the rendezvous area, the plane returned to base without having seen any Europeans nor receiving any signals from the islanders.

  It wasn’t until after the war that Con Page’s fate was finally known. Translations of captured Japanese notebooks revealed details of Page and that of a neighbouring plantation owner, 67-year-old Jack Talmage, who had joined forces with Page in his final days as they tried to evade the Japanese patrols. On 14 June a surprise Japanese patrol, with the assistance of a local tribal chief, had caught Page and Tal
mage as they slept. They took them to Kavieng, where Page found his wife already in custody. He managed to smuggle a note to her, written on a single sheet of toilet paper, and told her to give it to the first European she met after she was freed. About a month later, around 21 July, the Japanese took Page and Talmage to Nago Island, a small island in Kavieng Harbour, where they executed them. Their remains were among 13 sets found on Nago Island after the war. Both men are buried in Bita Paka Cemetery in Rabaul.

  Towards the end of the war, Page’s wife, Ansin Bulu, approached a coastwatcher, Sublieutenant Stan Bell, when he landed on Tabar Island, near Simberi Island. She handed him the note from her husband that she’d managed to keep safe through her many ordeals. It read:

  To CO Allied Forces

  For Lieut-Commander E.A. Feldt, R.A.N.

  From Sub-Lieutenant C.L. Page R.A.N.V.R.

  9th July

  Re the female Ansin Bulu, Napakur Village, Simberi Is, Tabar

  This female has been in my service 7 years. Has been of great value to me since Jan. Japs looted all she owned value 50 pounds, put her in prison and God knows what else. Her crime was she stuck. Sir, please do your best for her.

  A few weeks after Con Page was executed, the Americans began their counterattack through the Pacific, starting at one of the islands at the southern end of the Solomons group, Guadalcanal. It soon turned into a life-or-death struggle, with both sides pouring in troops and supplies, knowing that victory there could turn the tide. Two Australian coastwatchers, each of whom possessed the most worthy attributes of the Digger, had box seats in the Battle of Guadalcanal. Paul Mason, 41, and Jack Read, 37, were hidden at each end of Bougainville Island. Read, an assistant district officer in the Australian administration, was based at the northern tip of the island and Mason, manager of Inus plantation, was at the southern end.

  Bougainville stands at the northern entrance of the Solomons island chain. Guadalcanal stands near the southern entrance. Between them runs New Georgia Sound, a body of water bordered on the north by the islands of Choiseul, Santa Isabel and Malaita, and to the south by Vella Lavella, New Georgia and Guadalcanal. During the war and since, New Georgia Sound became known as ‘the Slot’. It was the scene of countless air and naval skirmishes as both sides tried to use it to transport men, munitions and supplies.

  Jack Read and Paul Mason realised that Japanese bombers heading to Guadalcanal from either Rabaul or Kavieng had to pass over their positions on Bougainville. After the first wave of American Marines went ashore at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal Island in the morning of 7 August 1942, the Japanese HQ at Rabaul reacted. About four hours after the landing, Paul Mason heard, then saw, a swarm of silver bombers overhead, heading southeast towards Guadalcanal. He immediately radioed what became one of the most famous messages of the Pacific War:

  FROM STO, [Mason’s codename] 24 BOMBERS

  HEADED YOURS.

  Mason had miscounted slightly – there were 27 Japanese bombers on the raid. Just a handful returned back to their base as the coastwatchers had given the Americans around two hours warning of the raid, plenty of time to organise their anti-aircraft guns, scatter their ships, scramble their fighter planes and send them to high altitudes from where they could attack the bombers from out of the sun.

  The next morning it was Read’s turn:

  FROM JER, [Read] 45 BOMBERS GOING SOUTHEAST.

  That afternoon, Read counted eight bombers limping back to Rabaul. It was the start of six months of almost daily Japanese bombing raids and an unparalleled flow of intelligence from Read, Mason and their Coastwatcher colleagues.

  On Guadalcanal Island, another remarkable coastwatcher, a Scottish-born and Cambridge-educated district officer in the British Solomons administration, Martin Clemens, was providing invaluable intelligence to the US Marines there. Clemens was the centrepiece of a superb group of coastwatchers on the island, including Sublieutenant Don Macfarlan, Henry Josselyn, Nick Waddell, Carden Seton, Dick Horton, Donald Kennedy and Snowy Rhoades. Clemens also developed a tight group of islander scouts who ghosted around the island, reporting on the enemy’s movements and positions.

  Chief among Clemens’ scouts was Jacob Charles Vouza, a 42-year-old former police sergeant in the islands armed constabulary, who had been born in a village just outside the American perimeter. He had already impressed the Marines when he single-handedly found and rescued a naval pilot from the USS Wasp after he was shot down during the landings on Guadalcanal. While out on patrol on 19 August 1942, Vouza realised that he was carrying an American flag, the gift of a grateful Marine. He decided to break away from his patrol and hide the flag in his old village. Finding it swarming with enemy troops, he successfully evaded them but turned back straight into another enemy patrol. They quickly found the flag and determined to torture Vouza until he betrayed the American positions. The Japanese bayoneted him seven times in the chest and throat. He refused to respond. They smashed his face with rifle butts and slashed him with a sword, even tied him over a nest of red ants. He refused to speak and ultimately passed out from the loss of blood. The Japanese left him for dead and moved on.

  Vouza regained consciousness shortly after, chewed through his bindings and crawled through the Japanese lines, then staggered almost 5 kilometres back to the American position. Before he again passed out, Vouza told Clemens of the Japanese positions and of their plans for an imminent assault. Forearmed, the Marines inflicted a decisive defeat on the Japanese. After 12 days in hospital and almost 8 litres of blood transfusions, Jacob Vouza was back on patrol. The American Commander on Guadalcanal later awarded Vouza the Silver Star for gallantry and made him a sergeant major in the US Marine Corps.

  Not far away from Guadalcanal on New Georgia Island, another fascinating individualist established an island fortress where he commanded a private guerrilla army. Donald Kennedy was a New Zealander and the prewar District Officer of Santa Isabel Island in the Solomons. When the Japanese came he elected to stay, but moved to New Georgia where he took over the old Markham plantation at Segi on the island’s south coast. He chose it because it was protected by a maze of coral reefs and uncharted channels that made it unapproachable by any craft bigger than a canoe unless skippered by a local expert. Kennedy created a loyal band of scouts and lookouts, which not only gave him a reliable early warning screen but also acted as a deadly guerrilla band striking swiftly against any enemy patrol unfortunate enough to stray within their reach. His Segi stronghold boasted its own wharf and armoury, and a purpose-built POW compound where Kennedy held Japanese prisoners until he could hand them over to the Americans for interrogation.

  Kennedy loved his creature comforts: he delighted in surprising downed fliers or visiting Marines with a silver-service high tea in the plantation homestead. He was also rumoured to have a local teenaged mistress and to occasionally behave like a martinet. But he was an inventive expert in radio repair and maintenance and was widely respected for his accurate intelligence as a coastwatcher.

  At one stage Kennedy was joined by a fellow Kiwi, Merle Farland, a nurse who stayed behind to continue running the mission hospital at Bilua on nearby Vella Lavella Island. Farland had refused to leave her patients when the other civilians and missionaries escaped. She continued to serve as a casualty doctor, midwife and dentist, and also helped the resident Methodist missionary, Reverend Silvester, as part of Kennedy’s extended coastwatching network.

  Farland took a three-day canoe journey through enemy-held waters to Kennedy’s Segi fortress to relieve him on the teleradio while he checked out the changing situation in the area. She already spoke all the local dialects, was a seasoned radio operator and Kennedy found her to be an expert shot with a pistol. Unfortunately, her stint on the air attracted the attention of the British Resident Commissioner of the Solomons, William Marchant. He ordered that Nurse Farland be evacuated urgently. The Americans agreed with Marchant and, against Kennedy’s and Farland’s wishes, she was picked up from Segi by a Catalina covered by an
extraordinary 17 fighter planes and taken to Guadalcanal, where she overnighted before being ferried on to safety. Her one night as the sole female among 30,000 Marines on Guadalcanal ignited a rumour that swept through the Pacific – the missing American air heroine Amelia Earhart was alive and well!

  Kennedy continued on his merry way. Three times Japanese barges strayed into his area; each time his guerrillas attacked them, wiped out their crews and sank the craft without trace. Eventually the Japanese tired of Kennedy’s impact on their operations. First they sent in a 25-man patrol overland, aiming to catch him unawares. Kennedy’s men attacked the patrol, drove them off and captured documents showing they had orders to find and eliminate him. By mid 1943 the local Japanese commander directed an entire battalion to find and destroy Kennedy and his guerrilla band. Kennedy knew the Japanese were serious this time and called on the Marines for help. The Marines understood how valuable Kennedy’s intelligence was to them and they responded quickly, sending two companies of the US 4th Marine Raiders to meet and drive off the approaching Japanese.

  US engineers built an airstrip at Segi in an astonishing ten days. By this time the tide was beginning to turn against the Japanese. Kennedy continued to supply Guadalcanal with his usual reliable flow of information, but the war was moving away from the area and his private army.

  One of the most important individual actions by a coastwatcher involved another Kennedy, a young American naval ensign named Jack Kennedy. The son of the millionaire and former US Ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy, Jack Kennedy commanded PT-109, a souped-up, wooden-hulled speedboat carrying torpedoes.