The Spirit of the Digger

by Patrick Lindsay

  On 1 August 1943, on a pitch-black night, PT-109 was idling on one of its four engines in Blackett Strait, northwest of New Georgia Island, while it waited to intercept Japanese shipping that was rushing reinforcements and supplies to the enemy forces in the Solomons. Without any warning, a 2000-tonne Japanese destroyer barrelling down the strait at about 40 knots collided with PT-109 and literally ran over it, cleaving it in two. Neither Kennedy nor his crew knew what hit them. They were tossed overboard by the impact and when Kennedy gathered them together he found two had disappeared and one of the 11 survivors was badly burned by the boat’s exploding fuel tanks. Kennedy led his crew on an epic swim to a tiny uninhabited island, all the while towing his injured crewmate by pulling his lifejacket with his teeth.

  About 5 kilometres away on Kolambangara Island, an Australian coastwatcher named Reg Evans saw the flash when PT-109’s fuel tanks went up, but he dismissed it as a Japanese supply barge being hit by shore batteries. It wasn’t until he received a signal the next morning reporting the patrol boat missing that he sent his scouts to investigate. Some days later, they stumbled across some of the PT-109’s crew. They brought Evans a message from Jack Kennedy – carved into a coconut – giving his position, advising that 11 crew were alive and requesting rescue by small boat. The Americans could have joined the scores of others who perished in the thousands of uninhabited coral atolls in the region, but some days later Reg Evans arranged for Kennedy to be brought by native canoe, hidden under palm fronds in the bottom of the dugout, to his jungle lookout. Evans subsequently arranged for the entire crew to be rescued by another PT boat and returned safely to their base.

  Ensign Jack Kennedy was elected America’s 35th President in 1960 and shortly after he invited Reg Evans to visit him at the White House to thank him for the rescue. By then a Sydney accountant, Evans was delighted to see the coconut message that had first brought the pair together in pride of place on the presidential desk in the Oval Office.

  As the Allies began to wrest back the initiative from the Japanese, the Coastwatchers were able to play a more offensive role. Ferdinand found his mojo and sniffed the air with some menace.

  One of the survivors of the Lark Force escape from Rabaul, the battalion’s intelligence officer, Peter Figgis, volunteered to return to the island – a fine example of courage and dedication after enduring such a narrow escape and having witnessed the aftermath of the Tol plantation massacre south of Rabaul, where the Japanese killed more than 150 Diggers in cold blood after they had surrendered. Figgis and another coastwatcher, Malcolm Wright, were dropped off the New Britain coast by submarine and, with the help of an outstanding islander leader, a paramount luluai (regional chief) named Golpak, they quickly established an extensive network of coastwatchers, which sent a steady stream of intelligence reports back to the Allies detailing the Japanese movements in and around Rabaul.

  Gradually the New Britain coastwatchers formed guerrilla bands that began harassing the Japanese, taking a growing toll on a dispirited enemy. One of their scouts, Simogun Pita, emerged as a fierce warrior. By war’s end he had been credited with personally killing more than 30 enemy soldiers.

  Overall the Coastwatchers caused serious problems for the enemy behind the lines. Eric Feldt claimed that his teams had killed more than 5000 enemy troops, rescued 335 prisoners from the Japanese, saved 321 airmen, 280 sailors, 190 missionaries and thousands of villagers.

  The Coastwatchers clearly changed the course of the Pacific War. The Americans knew how important their contribution had been. After Guadalcanal, the US commander, the famous Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey, called Paul Mason, coastwatcher from Bougainville, to his headquarters. Mason was waiting in the ante room when Halsey entered. When he made to rise, Halsey held out his hand and said: ‘Mr Mason, when I’m in the room with you, I’ll be the one doing the standing.’ Halsey later went on to say: ‘Guadalcanal saved the Pacific and the Coastwatchers saved Guadalcanal.’

  CHAPTER 13

  New Guinea and Beyond

  The Australian 9th Division regrouped after its Middle East triumphs and began training for its forthcoming campaigns in New Guinea and Borneo. There it would fight alongside the Diggers of the 7th Division, who had distinguished themselves on the Kokoda Track and at the beachheads of Buna, Gona and Sanananda. The two forces worked in tandem to cut off the Japanese withdrawal from Lae on the Salamaua Gulf, about 200 kilometres north of Port Moresby. The 9th Division stormed the swampy beaches at Finschhafen, on the Huon peninsula, on 4 September 1943, and the 7th Division was flown into Nadzab, inland from Lae, three days later. The 7th drove up the Markham Valley and the 9th moved up the coast.

  The battle for the Lae-Nadzab area was crucial to establish Nadzab airstrip as a base for the Allies to bomb the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, the capital of nearby New Britain Island, from which Admiral Yamamoto was conducting the entire Japanese southwest Pacific campaign. In this short but decisive battle, the Diggers of the 2/4th Field Regiment, an artillery unit armed with 25-pounders, impressed the Americans with their daring and inventiveness. They were so keen to join the action that they volunteered as a group to be parachuted in, with their guns, to support the American 503rd Paratroop Regiment – this despite the fact that they had never parachuted in their lives. US General George Kenney wrote in his memoirs:

  It’s hard for me to believe that anything could have been so perfect. At the last minute the Australian gunners who were to man the 25-pounders decided to jump with their guns. None of them had ever worn a parachute before but they were so anxious to go that we showed them how to pull the ripcord and let them jump … General MacArthur swore that it was the most perfect example of discipline and training he had ever seen.

  Earlier, after the Owen Stanleys campaign, while the battered veterans of the 2/14th Battalion, the saviours of Isurava, were recuperating outside Port Moresby, a fresh-faced lieutenant from Wollongong, south of Sydney, Nolan Pallier, joined them as a reinforcement. He remembers being checked out by Phil Rhoden, then 2IC of the battalion:

  He would have been a captain then, I was about 23. They didn’t want these young blokes from NSW, they wanted Victorians and their own sergeants promoted, which was only right. And Phil explained that. It was not blunt but right to the point. I was one of three new young officers. From the start, they treated us very well. We were taken into the family. It was like a big family and closer than any militia battalion.

  Then they sent us back to Cairns in Australia, to the Atherton Tablelands. They were reinforced and we trained there and we went back into the Ramu and Markham valley campaigns. I reformed 9 Platoon, a famous platoon from the Owen Stanleys. It was very knocked about. The whole battalion looked knocked about.

  Phil Rhoden recalls meeting ‘Noel’ Pallier for the first time:

  I couldn’t believe he was old enough to shave. He looked so young – the blokes called him ‘the boy’ – but he looked likely and he was keen and willing to learn. We needed new blood and he brought enthusiasm. I knew the old hands would knock him into shape.

  Back in Australia, Noel Pallier remembered the first time he met one of the heroes of the battalion, a youthful-looking, self-effacing man with smiling eyes. Sergeant Lindsay ‘Teddy’ Bear had served in the Middle East and then won a Military Medal for bravery at Isurava, where he had been wounded in the action in which Bruce Kingsbury won his Victoria Cross:

  I didn’t see Teddy until we were back in Australia and he’d recovered from his wounds and he came back to us at the camp at Ravenshoe on the Atherton Tablelands. I can remember the very day I met him. Two or three chaps were there as the reinforcements marched in every three and four days and this bloke came up and gently said ‘G’day’. We clicked right from that g’day.

  The experienced veteran Teddy Bear would serve as sergeant under the tyro officer Lieutenant Noel Pallier. This teaming of the practical, hard-headed and experienced NCO with the young graduate officer is one of the central planks of the sub-u
nit system that has served the Australian Army so well. It often results in a fascinating amalgam of gung-ho exuberance and battle-hardened caution, which provides the unit with a leadership team possessing a combined balance greater than its individual parts. Noel Pallier remembered his early feelings of apprehension:

  Nobody knows how they will behave till they’re confronted. I had a reasonably protected life. I was a shy boy, still a shy nature. I probably thought that at some times but it didn’t worry me, but I didn’t think I was any hero or anything special.

  I went away. I thought I was fairly well trained then as an infantry officer, not brilliant, just an ordinary chap. I went away with a feeling that the Japs had to be stopped. I’d really never known any Japanese people. I was to learn about the Japanese from their army, which I didn’t have a lot of respect for. They were tough, good soldiers from their point of view, but we were a cut above what they did. Their atrocities were beyond belief.

  I used to think what would happen if I lost a leg or an arm. I’m not saying I wasn’t afraid of being killed – I knew that could happen – but I was more concerned if I lost a leg or lost an arm. I might have been thinking of the future but I can remember that well. I never really thought I would be killed but don’t let anybody tell you they weren’t frightened. At some time or another, if they went into real action they were frightened or they weren’t mortal. But being frightened and doing your job is a lot different to being frightened and not doing your job. That’s the difference between heroes and others.

  Once they’d reached New Guinea, Noel Pallier’s platoon was flown up the Markham Valley and they began chasing the Japanese up the valley until they hit Dumpu, a village down from the Finisterre Range, where the Japanese decided to make a stand.

  Earlier, at nearby Wampum, the battalion had been involved in a firefight that ended the brilliant combat career of their commanding officer. Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, formerly CO of the 39th Battalion at Isurava, had led the 2/14th with equal flair and distinction. Ralph had exposed himself to danger many times as he led from the front. As a company commander with the 2/11th Battalion in Syria and Crete and again as CO of the 39th Battalion at Isurava, he had often dismayed his men with his disregard for his personal safety as he moved among them, encouraging and directing them and moving into harm’s way to better appreciate the situation. At Wampum his luck ran out, as Noel Pallier recalled:

  At Wampum we’d stopped for the night and deployed around the track. We heard a few shots and saw two fellows running flat out along a track in the valley. I remember saying, what the hell’s going on down there. They ran into a thicket of jungle and disappeared. We were sitting in the long grass and suddenly there were flop, flop, flop, bullets hitting near us.

  Colonel Honner had taken Gerry O’Dea to have a look at A Company up the track. But A Company had moved to the higher ground above the track. He and Gerry kept walking and the next thing they knew they were fired on by the Japs.

  The ball-and-socket joint in Ralph Honner’s hip was shattered by a machine-gun burst. He was bleeding profusely and could barely move. His companions dragged him into the kunai grass and ran back past Noel Pallier’s position for help:

  So Ralph was in the grass just in front of the Jap positions. He told me later while he was waiting for assistance, he could see the Japs searching for him and he was badly wounded. He drew a pin out of a grenade and lay doggo. If they’d have seen him eye to eye, he said he was going to take some of them with him.

  Alan Avery went up to get the Colonel out and as he got near he wondered how he was going to find him. He couldn’t yell out Sir or Colonel or anything. So he yelled out ‘Honner!’, ‘Honner!’ so the Japs wouldn’t know who we were after. Eventually Ralph responded and when Alan reached him, Ralph was covered in blood and there were millions of little black ants feeding on the blood. He’d been there for some time. He said to Alan, ‘We’re going to attack this position’, and Alan said, ‘I’m sorry, Sir, my orders are to bring you out.’ He knew Ralph was in a bad way. Ralph said, ‘Who gave you those orders, Mr Avery?’, and Alan replied it was Captain O’Dea. Ralph said, ‘Oh I think my orders are still a little bit above Captain O’Dea, so get your walkie-talkie going.’ He called up an attack. It wasn’t until the attack was evidently successful that Ralph would let them take him out. Through all of that Ralph’s voice was calm as always.

  The young Noel Pallier remembered being overwhelmingly impressed by the demeanour and the professionalism of Ralph Honner, Alan Avery and the others during the drama:

  Anything these men did they would try to do well, no matter what it was. Whether it was playing up, they’d play up well. If they were fighting, they’d fight well.

  Just as he’d done at Isurava, Phil Rhoden took command of the battalion. He would lead it with wisdom and courage until the end of the war. Noel Pallier’s greatest test was rapidly approaching. The young officer was about to grow up in a hurry.

  On patrol near Dumpu, Noel’s platoon had taken a brief meal break after a long morning’s trek when they were caught in a hail of fire from the high ground above them.

  It was too steep to get up and there were big rocks in the flat part of the valley and you could hear the bullets ricocheting off them. The natural reaction was to grab your gear and run for the cover of the riverbanks about 100 or 150 yards away. That we did and when we got to the riverbank it was a sheer drop where it had been carved away by the fast-flowing river. But we soon got down there, climbing or jumping and we took cover.

  We could see the Japs’ smoke firing at us from up in the hills. Georgie Pottinger was a Bren gunner and when he appeared next to me he didn’t have his gun with him. I said in army language ‘You didn’t leave your gun out there did you?’ and he said nothing, just slumped against me. When I grabbed him, the blood just came through his shirt and I knew what was wrong.

  You couldn’t see where the bullet went in but it blew a big hole out the back. We made a stretcher and gave him a morphine needle and wrote the time in indelible pencil on his forehead, so they’d know later.

  We then had a firefight with the Japs and they had the knocker on us – they had the surprise on us and the high ground. But, for some reason, I wasn’t going back without that Bren gun. The bullets were flying everywhere, off the stones and through the trees. I decided I’d go out and get the Bren gun. I didn’t know how I’d find it but I crawled until I could stand up and run to the area we’d run from. I told them what I was going to do and ordered them to cover me and I crawled out and I expected to be hit any time – this is for a Bren gun, mind you, not a man!

  I stood up and ran and when I got there I couldn’t see the Bren gun. I ran about and then I caught sight of it, just where George had dropped it because he was too badly hit to carry it. I was running across to the gun and had almost reached it when, my God, somebody spoke behind me: it was Teddy Bear.

  He’d followed me out. He was the 2IC of the platoon and I’d told him not to but I reckon he thought, Noel will get hit and I’ll be there to pick him up. I got the gun, Teddy picked up a couple of magazines and we ran back and scrambled down the bank to safety. That was Teddy Bear. That was the feeling in that platoon.

  Noel Pallier and his men carried George Pottinger through the rugged 10 kilometres back to their base camp to the Casualty Clearing Station. He rallied there but he died some days later when they tried to put him on a plane to evacuate him.

  Noel Pallier’s greatest challenge had now arrived. His platoon was ordered to take a razorback ridge high in the hills around the famous Shaggy Ridge. Alan Avery’s mob was on the next hill and the 2/22nd Battalion was deployed up in the mountains near Shaggy Ridge. This is some of the steepest country in New Guinea: all single-track ridges plunging to deep ravines and valleys. By this stage Noel’s platoon had been reduced to 28 men. Noel recalls:

  My orders were very brief: ‘Capture the hill before dark.’ Couldn’t be briefer.

  If you’d have
seen that hill and how steep it was! We were hanging with our heels dug in so we wouldn’t slide back down the mountain. The Japs had moved in and they dug in. It was part of their system of trying to cut you off. That’s why I was ordered in to take the hill. I could see it through field glasses. We didn’t know how many were up there. They’d dug in the day before along the razorback track. Alan Avery saw it from his standing patrol below.

  An assault along the razorback track would have been the last resort and we wouldn’t have got there. The only way was around the sides, up the razorback, digging in our heels and climbing up yard by yard.

  Noel Pallier’s artillery support only had 19 rounds left for their 25-pounder gun. The plan was to fire one shot every minute: