Weller's War

by George Weller

  Besides being a memorial to the last dive bomber outfit in New Guinea, the Japanese wreck became a kindergarten. It taught fliers—not the veterans preparing the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, but novices fresh from the States.

  The B-26s, a lonely and little-known bunch of specialists who did not even get into the famous battle, used to dry the ears of their fledglings on this wreck. Time after time an excited crew fresh from the States, not too certain of what was where on the deceptively rippled, imperfectly mapped coast of northern Guinea, would come back to Sloppy Joe's at the end of Seven Mile Drome in Moresby to report: “Boy, we got a big 8,000-ton merchantman! Where? Oh, about three or four miles off Soputa or Sanananda or one of those places. We could see the wake—she was steaming along at about quarter-speed. Our bombardier let her have two 500-pounders and then I did a vertical bank and went right down close and she was listing and her crew had abandoned her guns and there wasn't a sign of life aboard! Boy, is that a thrill!”

  The intelligence officer would take the exultant newcomer by the hand and lead him into the photographic tent. “Close your eyes, my friend,” he would say kindly. He would put a photograph in the trembling hands of the novice. “Now open. Did your victim happen to look anything like that?”

  “Uh-huh,” the novice would say. “How'd you get the picture so quick?”

  Then, watching the flush rise rosily into his hair, they would tell him. Once he had been told, he was a different pilot. Scratch one set of illusions. Log up a new kit of skepticisms. … The next Japanese merchantman the newcomers bombed would not be a reefbound cripple.

  At one time MacArthur ordered the Motionless Maru to be blown up and destroyed. He did not claim she was a menace to navigation; indeed, she was an aid. Anything that stuck its head above the labyrinth of reefs was an asset to the uncelebrated mariners of small ships who spent their time listening for the crunch of a stove-in bottom as they tried to keep open the lines of coastal supply. The trouble was this: after enemy bombers were driven from daylight skies by our fighters, they came back at night, when harassing is cheaper in losses though bombing is less accurate. From above at night our bases like Oro Bay and Morobe appeared almost alike, because the coast here is scalloped with identical-looking harbors and pseudo-harbors. MacArthur believed that the Japanese bombers, which were attacking our coastal supply LSTs and vagabond schooners, were orienting themselves by the prostrate merchantman. The current at her stern was often so strong that it showed a white fishtail of phosphorescent water visible at night three miles in the air.

  But soon Lae, Gasmata and Finschafen were taken. We jumped to Cape Gloucester and pushed toward Rabaul. New American night fighters began to make harassing raids unhappy affairs for the Japanese night bombers. If the Japanese pilot tried to beat a course from Rabaul for his old friend the Motionless, he was as likely as not to find a night fighter there in the dark waiting at his altitude for him—with guns primed. So the order to wreck the wreck was not carried out.

  They still squat in mutilated magnificence on their home reefs on the opposite shores of New Guinea, those two old reprobates of wrecks. They will squat there, probably, until the war ends, or at least until the salvage phase hits New Guinea. Then the hairy salvage men, civilian scavengers as rusty as themselves, will go out in stubby Tazzy boats and cut them up into iron. In lighter after lighterful of scrap they will be hauled away in fragments. In some drab foundry in Townsville or Brisbane they will return to the anonymity of melted iron. And once more the waves of the Coral Sea and the Bismarck Sea will suck and draw rhythmically on the two vacated reefs. The bright fishes will move in and out; the submarine weeds will wave, graceful in their dance; and all that happened on the two reefs will be forgotten.

  XIII

  The Struggle for the Islands

  To escape the malarial zone and recover his health, Weller left New Guinea briefly for Australia in June 1943 and set out for five months of incessant wanderings among island groups: the Solomons, site of some of the fiercest fighting in the region; the Ellice Islands; the Fijis; the Tonga Islands; the Society Islands (Tahiti, Bora-Bora); and the Cooks (Rarotonga, Aitutaki). There may have been more, but Weller published fewer dispatches in this period than usual and went silent for weeks at a time. Not all his journeys are documented.

  His work in the Solomons—he just missed the struggle for Guadalcanal—makes up many of his island stories. He was fascinated by the new questions of terrain, strategy, and supply that island warfare was presenting to the Allies. I have chosen to provide a diverse sense of the dispatches, including a surprising piece from Tahiti on acupuncture. Sadly, there are no portraits of two great literary figures of the South Seas who became his friends: James Norman Hall (1887-1951), longtime resident of Tahiti and coauthor of the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy; and Robert Dean Frisbie (1896-1948), author of The Book of Puka-Puka, whom Weller met on Rarotonga.

  Notable among the stories is a portrait of Tonga, a resolute Polynesian society that maintained its equilibrium through two centuries of foreign designs in the region; and an exploration of the problems of warfare on a naked atoll, with nowhere to hide—the antithesis of a New Guinea jungle.

  BOMBS HIT RABAUL TARGET SQUARELY IN RAID IN PACIFIC DAWN

  An Advanced Allied Operational Base in the Southwest Pacific—August 11, 1942

  There was something unforgettable about this heaviest raid upon Rabaul. Sleeping under the stars in a dust-covered truck with an old potato bag over your knees, hearing the quiet breathing of the ground control men on the canvas cots in the control hut, you had no way of knowing that great events were impending.

  Somewhere far off across the sea, as would be learned two days later, Americans were striking at the southeastern Solomons. But the target was still secret and none of the pilots offered a clue.

  The headlight beams of the bomb trucks poked through rolling clouds of dust as the first planes arrived and departed. The ground control men still slept, for their hour was not here yet. In the darkness a dusty jeep came up and men jumped out and others jumped in and drove away. A shady light was on in “Sloppy Joe's,” where there was lukewarm coffee, crackers and cheese with the pilots.

  The bombers, propellers at rest and their bodies made more massive by the darkness, stood awaiting their crews with that curious nimbleness of great machines when man is absent. Then we saw the first truck loaded with swaying men come out as dawn came up over New Guinea. The covered-wagon-style truck, that saves the men a long weary walk through the ever-rolling dust clouds along the take-off run, appeared at the end of the field and began dropping men.

  The slender waning moon was also fading and the first rim of the sun lifting above the horizon. This was the moment of briefing; the crews gathered in clusters. Their voices were low in response to the majors heading the various groups.

  You went about trying to get some names of those about to launch themselves into the infinite. Names bring you quickly down to earth, and put you instantly in the United States which somehow is more real than the presence of all these boys in the far Southwest Pacific battling for Japan.

  The palms now stood out in sharp silhouette along the rim of the surrounding hills. Men were heading out to meet the most maneuverable high-altitude plane of the war, going over the sea a distance so long that it denied them fighter protection. The bombers were once more depending only on their machine guns, and would attempt to blast their way through to Japan's biggest eastern base in the Pacific.

  One motor far down the line sputtered and you saw it would be impossible to meet them all. It was a matter of running to the next monster ship as the first prop began to throw dust. Another big bomber was already whirring at the runway's end with the last member of the crew jumping aboard as the runway was cleared from the last dust cloud. Men wore yellow swim jackets or simply furred flying jackets.

  By looking down the runway they could see that the raid they were going on was historic. Now briefing instructions were ended, ev
en for the crews scheduled to take off last, and the men were breaking away, walking slowly in their heavy flying boots toward their machines.

  When the bombers left, looking like a musical scale placed against the sky, there began the longest wait in the world. They were not informed until they left, and only afterward did their destination become known to us.

  They were to smash the runway of Vunakananau Field near Rabaul, in the Solomons—smash it, if possible, beyond immediate repair. How important that smashing was we still were not told.

  While a raid is in progress you might as well not ask Intelligence or Operations how things are going. They ladle out silence in bucketfuls—deep, rich, calm silence. They are thinking of the raid as a whole. But you cannot help thinking of the crews as people. Your palm is still warm with their handclasps.

  “The bombers are out,” you comment laconically.

  “Oh,” they say, and sit down.

  Then you hear the first motor. It is over the mountains. You can count the motors—four. But as the plane moves overhead not all her propellers are invisible, as they should be. One is motionless.

  “Oh, oh, Japs at work,” says a gasoline truck driver.

  The big craft swings around the field and before she has squared away and is sloping toward the runway, another roars over, and another. Each brings its separate joy at the return. They begin coming in, riding proudly in the terrific dust.

  Everywhere are crews that have shot down at least one Jap. Now we have two, three, five. Here come more men clapping each other upon the back. “There must have been twenty Zeros at once,” says a bombardier. Then, using the flier's indication for where he saw them, he says: “I saw two coming in at 11 o'clock and two coming up at 6 o'clock, with a whole bunch coming down at 12 o'clock.”

  What happened begins to assume form.

  “Boy, I'd like to sock anybody who says anything against our bombing after this,” says one officer. “I never saw a better bombing anywhere. We laid three absolutely perfect strings down that concrete runway, one to the right, one to the left, and one in the middle.”

  The door first open, you will later recall, is that of the plane piloted by a lieutenant colonel from Texas, seemingly too young to be a colonel, with a fresh, smiling face and white teeth. Their wings have been severely hit by a Jap Zero's shellfire but the Zero has paid with its life. Lieutenant F. A. Norwood shot him down—a dark-complexioned Southern boy, handsome and lively. His hands are small and his body, too, and he is still trembling with excitement.

  “I saw him coming down with all his guns talkin' and he came right into mine,” said Norwood. “‘Keep a-comin',’ I says, ‘and long's you keep a-comin' I'll keep a-shootin'.’ And just when he passes under us he does a belly roll. That's when I got him.”

  But on the plane's floor there is one good comrade, who must be nameless, who fired his gun until the end and now will fight no more.

  LONG STRUGGLE AHEAD FOR U.S. IN SOUTHWEST PACIFIC

  Somewhere in Australia—October 22, 1942 (Via Honolulu—Delayed by Censor)

  America's struggle to regain the British Solomons is teaching the public of the United States and Australia how long and hard is the task of our Navy and Air Forces in leading the way west to Singapore and north to Tokyo.

  Among the latest announced losses are the U.S. cruisers Quincy, Astoria, and Vincennes, and while personnel losses are still undisclosed, it is possible to examine our sacrifices, together with Australia's loss of the cruiser Canberra, and gauge the eventual cost of mastering Japan. Land forces engaged in skirmishes in the Owen Stanley Range of New Guinea are only fractional as compared with those on the plains of Guadalcanal.

  Several major American naval battles in the Southwest and South Pacific area have been fought in various straits, from Sumatra to the Solomons farther east—the Macassar battle, the Bali Strait battle, the battles of the Java Sea and of the Coral Sea. Now come two bills for the recovery of about a third of the Solomons, the archipelago which the Japs took from the British without resistance. The bills for these successes are not small. Japan's, however, seem greater.

  It is significant that a Navy communiqué states that these losses were incurred partly to protect Darwin, nearly two thousand miles away on the Australian coast. Darwin may be classified as yet another outpost of empire whose strength, when war was declared, was purely potential and hypothetical.

  When it is realized that the American crew of any one of the three cruisers sunk was the equivalent of the total white population of the whole Solomon Islands, some idea can be derived of what disproportions the U.S. Navy is now correcting. The only British force there consisted of the police plus two tiny gunboats used to enforce peace and collect taxes from the headhunters.

  When the Marines plunged through the surf by the hundreds in the face of enemy fire, they were taking back Tulagi, a town with only one 67-foot wharf, and an area where the white population never reached two hundred. In repairing these long-vacant gaps, the American people must be prepared to make even greater sacrifices. Our Navy is essentially creating a system of air and naval bases to replace those forsaken in the retreat before the Pacific fleet arrived upon the scene.

  In this conflict figures tiny Savo, in the Solomons between the northwest extremities of Guadalcanal and Florida Island and within sight of Cape Esperance, where Japanese cruiser and destroyer convoys have been landing reinforcements.

  Unlike the cannibals of the other Solomons the Savo natives are peaceable. Their midway location made their islet a frequent calling post for trade schooners.

  At Savo's northwest, facing Cape Esperance, a Roman Catholic mission has long been situated. Two Catholic priests and one sister identified with these missions were found dead, bayoneted in the throat; another sister escaped. There was another Catholic mission on the slopes of Mt. Veisali until the Japanese landed.

  This part of the Solomons is swept year-round by southeast trade winds, but when these begin to clash around Christmas with northeast winds, the general weather conditions become worse, with rain falling half an inch daily.

  As at Milne Bay at the southeast corner of New Guinea, MacArthur's strong point guarding China Strait's coconut-covered islands, the principal exploiting agency is the Lever Brothers Pacific Plantations Proprietary Ltd. which, until the Japs came, maintained an engine and boat repair shop.

  It is noticeable that when American Flying Fortresses drive across Buka and Bougainville (where the Japanese have built bases and airdromes), they are hitting two islands which, though geographically part of the Solomons, were mandated to Australia as part of New Guinea. This was done under the Versailles Peace Treaty, the Pacific lines of which were arranged at the imperial conference of June, 1918, six months before World War I ended.

  AUSSIE OFFICER DETESTS NOISE, BUT GRENADES ARE SWEET MUSIC

  Somewhere in Australia—November 21, 1942

  How fantastic a figure—compounded of daring, resourcefulness and hair-trigger sensitivity—an Australian guerrilla leader can be is illustrated by a story about one of these officers in Timor.

  A Digger who accompanied a guerrilla officer on patrol through a Japanese-occupied town related this tale:

  The officer had his finger inserted through the ring in a Mills hand grenade and kept twirling it carelessly around. The Digger kept wondering whether the grenade might not explode accidentally.

  As the scouting party moved through the streets of the town, the officials of which had been banished and replaced by the Japanese military, the Australian officer suddenly whirled upon his companion and exclaimed: “Will you stop that bloody racket?”

  The Digger discovered that the “bloody racket” so offensive to the keen leader was nothing but the gurgling of the water in the Digger's army flask.

  “But he made more noise than I at the next corner,” said the Digger. “A Jap sentry challenged us. And my commander said, ‘There you are,’ and gently tossed him the grenade.”

  ISLANDERS
TAKE UNWARY IN WITH SQUARE HERRING

  Somewhere in Australia—December 2, 1942

  Horn Island in the northeastern corner of Australia, occasionally mentioned in Allied communiqués when the Japs attempt bombing raids there, is now known as a place of “square fish and mustache wax.”

  Americans and Australians, who have been quartered on Horn Island for several months, have set themselves the task of “selling Horn” to the rest of the Allied forces. Their favorite method of accomplishing this is by returning to the Australian mainland on leave and persuading the ignorant continental yokels to bet that there is no such thing as a fish that is square in shape.

  After the money is deposited with neutral parties, the Horn Islander returns to camp and then sends to the referee a peculiar fish found there, which is actually square in form.

  Through long semi-isolation, Americans and Australians on Horn Island have achieved what amounts to a new insular consciousness. The other day the supply department was puzzled to find an order for several cases of mustache wax. The Horn Islanders had passed a new law whereby all residents, whether American or Australian, must grow mustaches and wax them daily.

  Life on Horn gets queerer and queerer as the weather gets hotter.

  YANKS PIERCE JAP RING TO RIP MACASSAR

  Somewhere in Australia—June 24, 1943

  Yawning crews of American heavy bombers awoke in their frosty camps in northern Australia this morning to find that yesterday's raid against Macassar at high noon had broken every long-distance record of the war for land-based planes, save the single stroke dealt some months ago from Hawaii against Wake Island.

  As the news that Macassar had been struck flashed across Australia, it electrified not only experts who know the intricate charts of enemy bases in the Indies but especially Dutchmen whose hope of recovering their lost empire lies in such super long-range stabs of surprise.