Invasion Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

The widespread disappointment soon evaporated with the receipt of some good news: the 23rd Brigade was going to Melbourne to participate in a grand parade. Delighted by the prospect of a day in the big city, the soldiers were measured for new tropical-weight uniforms. On the night of February 13, 1941, all three battalions donned their summer battle dress and boarded trains for the five-hour ride to Melbourne.

  The first of five trainloads pulled into the city at dawn the next morning, and by 0800 nearly four thousand soldiers had assembled on Alexandra Avenue. Mobile canteens served hot stew and “pannikins” of tea, and the men washed in a nearby river before lining up three abreast for the parade, held to raise money for the Greek War Victims’ Appeal fund. At precisely 1000 the marching orders echoed down the avenue: “Slope arms! By the left! Quick march!”

  An estimated one hundred thousand citizens, many waving colorful flags, lined the streets of Melbourne to cheer for their boys from Victoria. The parade thrilled the entire city, according to one local reporter:

  Wheeling onto St. Kilda Road, the troops received a great cheer from the crowds on Princes Bridge. The column swung along Swanston Street past the Town Hall, where the Governor, Sir Winston Dugan, took the salute. Confetti and streamers and torn-up paper came spiraling down on the column from shop verandahs and office windows as the men marched smartly by. Keeping good order, knees and arms tanned almost to the deep brown of their boots, the men looked in capital physical condition.

  At the front of the 2/22nd Battalion, the band played snappy new arrangements written by Sergeant Gullidge, including renditions from the soundtrack of the hit movie The Wizard of Oz, released just a year earlier. The lyrics of the theme song were remarkably appropriate: Australians had been calling their country “Oz” for years.

  After the parade the 23rd Brigade returned to Bonegilla, where the routine seemed even harder to endure. However, the outlook for the 2/22nd improved when an advance party departed for Rabaul in late February to set up the battalion headquarters. The rest of the men received a few days of home leave prior to their anticipated deployment.

  As there was no fighting yet in the Pacific, the soldiers tended to be optimistic during their brief visits, though they knew the value of a proper farewell before leaving home. Bandsman Herbert W. “Bert” Morgan, visiting his family in Fairfield Park, Victoria, spoke like a Salvationist in explaining that he was going to fight “for God and the King.” On the morning of his departure he embraced his wife, daughter, and infant son, then hoisted his little daughter onto the mailbox by the front gate. Eleanor Morgan sat there, supported by her mother, and waved a small Australian flag while her father walked down the street and turned the corner with a final wave.

  GRATEFUL FOR THEIR SHORT VISITS HOME, THE SOLDIERS TOLERATED A FEW more weeks of training back at Bonegilla. Once again the tennis players set out to build a court, but no sooner was it finished than orders arrived for half the battalion to embark to Rabaul. The selected troops traveled by train to Sydney on March 11 and boarded the steamship Katoomba, a grand old liner of more than 9,400 tons.

  After departing Sydney, the liner stopped at Brisbane for a day, then steamed north along the coast, giving her passengers a dramatic view of the Great Barrier Reef before crossing the Coral Sea to the south coast of New Guinea. A three-day layover enabled the troops to explore Port Moresby, the hub of Australian activity on the Papuan Peninsula. The town boasted a large anchorage, a seaplane base, wharves, warehouses, commercial shops, churches, government offices, two hotels, a hospital, and an open-air the-aer. But three days were more than enough. The Victorians, unaccustomed to New Guinea’s oppressive heat and humidity, were glad to be on their way to Rabaul.

  The Katoomba steamed into Simpson Harbor on March 26 and docked at the Government Wharf. Representatives from the territorial government boarded the ship to give lectures about the local Tolai natives and the town’s culture, after which the troops disembarked to a rousing reception from the townsfolk. Tanned businessmen wearing tropical suits of white cotton, ladies in colorful floral-print dresses, and pensioners from the Great War turned out in the hundreds to welcome the garrison.

  Meanwhile, the remainder of the 2/22nd at Bonegilla chafed while awaiting their turn to deploy. Even a backwater town like Rabaul would be better than the isolated training base. Another month passed, however, before they finally received orders to entrain for Sydney. Unable to hide their enthusiasm, the soldiers chalked slogans on the sides of the train cars, turning them into rolling billboards. “HERE WE COME,” stated one; “VICTORIA—2/22—LITTLE HELL,” announced another; and someone even paid an indirect tribute to Gullidge and the battalion band: “WE ARE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD.”

  Reaching Sydney on April 17, the second half of the garrison boarded another passenger ship that regularly plied the Pacific trade routes. A beloved member of the merchant fleet owned by the trading conglomerate Burns, Philp & Company (Australia’s equivalent of Sears), the TSS Zealandia had served as a World War I troopship. Not only was she older than the Katoomba, but considerably smaller as well. Throngs of well-wishers observed the ship’s departure, but there were not many relatives of the soldiers among the crowd. From Victoria, the journey to Sydney was simply too far and too expensive for most of the men’s families to undertake. Jim Thurst’s mother was said to be “too poor to cross the street,” but his sister Kathleen did come to see the Zealandia depart. In the years that followed she reminisced about hearing “Now is the Hour,” a touching New Zealand folk song played by the battalion band. Often called the “Maori Farewell Song,” it was known by heart to most Australians:

  Now is the hour when we must say good-bye

  Soon you’ll be sailing far across the sea

  While you’re away, oh please remember me

  When you return, you’ll find me waiting here

  Steaming northward into the Solomon Sea, the Zealandia reached the coast of New Britain by April 24. Passengers at the portside rail could observe the island’s dark, rugged mountains as the ship paralleled its 370-mile length. The next day the shoreline loomed even closer as the Zealandia entered St. George’s Channel, a relatively narrow passage separating New Britain and New Ireland. Rounding Cape Gazelle, the liner turned west and steamed past the wharves and copra sheds of Kokopo (pronounced Cocka-po), a bustling little town on the north shore of the Gazelle Peninsula. The ship continued westward toward Rabaul, which was screened from view by several large volcanoes on a rugged promontory that curved from the north. Another point jutted from the south like an opposing thumb, and the Zealandia glided between the two points into horseshoe-shaped Blanche Bay. Six miles beyond, another volcano off the port rail marked the entrance to Simpson Harbor, at the north end of which stood Rabaul. At last the Zealandia coasted to a stop, her passengers unaware that they were floating inside a vast caldera.

  Those who might have pondered their surroundings were soon distracted by a different sort of spectacle. The minute the ship dropped anchor she was surrounded by a boisterous parade of small craft. The arrival of any large ship was a festive event at Rabaul, but the liner’s welcome this day was exceptionally keen. April 25th was ANZAC Day, a major holiday commemorating the debut of the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli in 1915; therefore, the whole town was in a patriotic fervor when the ship steamed into the anchorage. Private Percy A. “Perce” Pearson, watching with his fellow soldiers from the Zealandia’s main deck, was amazed by the flotilla of schooners, launches, and rowboats that maneuvered around the ship. He was especially impressed by the dozens of outrigger canoes, “paddled by natives and loaded with fruit for sale,” which looked like a scene straight from an adventure movie.

  After clearing inspection, the Zealandia proceeded to the main wharf. As the troops disembarked among throngs of noisy spectators and black-skinned stevedores, they were nearly overwhelmed by the humidity and the dockside din. The air was heavy with unfamiliar smells, and the soldiers sweated profusely as they formed ranks and ma
rched up a tree-lined avenue toward their temporary camp. Along the way, they learned how the locals pronounced the name of their town. One of the marching newcomers playfully shouted, “Is this Ra-ball?”

  To which an onlooker yelled, “No, it’s Ra-baal.”

  As the soldiers would soon find out, there were many things they had yet to learn about their new home—some of which were less than desirable.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EVIL SPIRITS

  “It was a very violent eruption.”

  —Dr. C. Daniel Miller, U.S. Geological Survey

  The troops of the 2/22nd were spellbound by their exotic surroundings, particularly the big volcanoes rising to the north and east. All around Rabaul, the landscape bore the scars of past eruptions, yet much of the evidence was covered by layers of thick vegetation. Few of the soldiers would have recognized the visual clues, and none had the background to fully appreciate the incredibly powerful forces that lay dormant beneath their feet.

  Not even the scientists of the day knew much about the island’s geological history. After a damaging eruption in 1937, the Australian Geological Society had posted Dr. Norman Fisher to Rabaul to monitor the area, but his simple observatory lacked the equipment to thoroughly study the caldera. Not until five decades later would an international team of vulcanologists visit Rabaul with an array of new technologies, including carbon-dating methods and other specialized measurements, with which they uncovered numerous clues about the caldera’s spectacular development.

  New Britain sits on a virtual powder keg, smack in the middle of one of the most seismically active zones on Earth. Just off the island’s northeastern tip, the boundaries of three tectonic plates converge beneath the seabed, their edges constantly grinding against each other with such enormous pressure that sufficient heat is generated to melt rock. The molten magma collects in fiery subterranean chambers, where intense gaseous pressures constantly force it upward, seeking weak spots in the surface. It is no coincidence, therefore, that several volcanoes exist on the northeastern end of the island. Some are ancient and extinct, others are regularly active, and all around them the ground is highly unstable.

  Another geological phenomenon found near the volcanoes is a series of oval-shaped faults called “ring fractures,” which measure several miles in diameter. Occasionally the fractures themselves erupt, not unlike a pot boiling over around the rim of its lid. If enough magma is ejected, the unsupported dome of the empty chamber is likely to collapse, causing a huge depression in the ground. Geologists call this a caldera, Spanish for caldron. Over the millennia, several such eruptions have either formed or modified the caldera at Rabaul, revealing the distinct outlines of two large, overlapping ring fractures.

  The most recent of these caldera-forming eruptions occurred sometime around AD 600, though its exact date is a mystery. The eruption was cataclysmic—one of the most powerful since the time of Christ—and utterly devastated hundreds of square miles of New Britain and the surrounding islands. It likely began with a period of vigorous seismic activity which generated large quantities of magma beneath the existing ring fractures. Numerous tremors shook the island over a period of days or even weeks as pressurized gases weakened one of the old fault lines. The earthquakes grew in frequency and intensity until the conditions underground finally reached a critical state. At some point, the magma chamber not only boiled over, it blew apart.

  The noise must have been stupefying. The ground literally ripped apart around the weakened ring fracture, from which a great ring of fire twenty miles in circumference burst forth. Pent-up gases exploded from below, hurling a thick column of rock, dust, and ash into the sky. The tiniest particles, boosted by heat and convection, soared an estimated one hundred thousand feet into the upper atmosphere. Larger rocks and glowing blobs of magma arced back to the surface, where they splattered against the ground or struck the sea with the sound of thunder.

  The greatest devastation resulted from the terrible cloud itself. Most of the material hurtling skyward eventually lost momentum, then gravity took over and the outer portions of the dark, roiling column collapsed. Superheated to more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, the material accelerated as it fell, and when it hit the ground it burst outward at more than one hundred miles an hour. Known as “pyroclastic flow,” the incandescent cloud spread rapidly over the ancient volcanoes and raced downhill to the sea, boiling the water spontaneously as it blasted across the surface. Outlying islands were wiped clean in seconds. By the time the energy finally dissipated, the fiery cloud had killed every living thing on land and marine life near the ocean’s surface for thirty miles in every direction.

  Other destructive effects reached even farther. The prevailing winds carried heavy accumulations of ash fifty miles southwest of the volcano. Huts collapsed, crops were ruined, and the surviving islanders groped through blinding, polluted air. They too would be wiped out, doomed to eventual starvation unless they could quickly find a source of unaffected food.

  Sometime after the eruption subsided, the unsupported roof over the empty magma chamber caved in. An oblong area approximately seven miles long and five miles wide collapsed suddenly, sliding downward for hundreds of feet. Additionally, the sea breached a portion of the southeastern rim and flooded most of the huge depression.

  After the dust finally settled and the sea calmed, a large portion of the island resembled a bizarre moonscape. The pyroclastic flow had deposited grayish veneers of ash and pumice on the steep slopes of the old volcanoes, and low-lying areas around the caldera were buried under a hundred feet or more of the stuff. Based on vulcanologists’ estimations, the eruption had disgorged ten cubic kilometers of magma and debris from the earth. (By comparison, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 displaced only three to four cubic kilometers, and the explosion of Mount St. Helens in 1980 displaced less than one cubic kilometer of material.)

  Thanks to the tropical environment, the devastated landscape began to show signs of life within a surprisingly short time. Fast-growing kunai grasses and other vegetation thrived in the mineral-rich volcanic soil, and people eventually returned as well, most migrating from distant islands. They built new villages and resumed the familiar patterns of their ancestors, tending simple gardens, defending their homes, and practicing tribal rituals passed down from generation to generation. Stuck in the Stone Age, the primitive islanders did not develop a written language. Thus, they never created a permanent record of the disaster, and the great eruption gradually faded from memory with the passing of each generation. For almost a thousand years the island remained largely hidden from the outside world.

  THE FIRST EUROPEANS TO APPROACH THE CRESCENT-SHAPED ISLAND WERE Portuguese and Spanish seafarers who explored the region in the early 1500s. By 1545 the Spanish had claimed New Guinea, the world’s second-largest island, but most of the neighboring islands remained undiscovered for another 150 years. The underlying reason was fear: early explorers developed a strong aversion to malaria and cannibals, and rightfully so.

  No one knew what caused malaria, only that if it didn’t kill a man, it usually drove him to madness. That it entered the bloodstream by means of tiny female mosquitoes would not be discovered for centuries. In the meantime, treatment in the form of quinine was developed, but its source—the powdered bark of cinchona trees found only in the Andes mountains of South America—made it extremely hard to obtain. The early explorers didn’t have it, and even much later the drug was often unavailable.

  As for cannibals, the stories about shore parties being killed and eaten were frequently true. Cannibalistic tribes lived on many of the islands, as did fierce warrior clans which routinely attacked rival villages. After slaughtering the inhabitants, they made off with their victims’ food and weapons—and often their heads. Believing firmly in sorcery and the supernatural, the smallish tribes held a common distrust of virtually all outsiders. Rival tribes were blamed for bringing evil spirits, considered the root of all unpleasant occurrences such as disea
ses, earthquakes, and volcanoes. It was not a moral issue, therefore, to kill a person or even an entire village if a threat was perceived. Indeed, knocking off rivals was one well-accepted method by which a tribe could assert its power, there being no better symbol of achievement than to put a collection of the enemies’ heads on prominent display.

  Finally, in 1700, English explorer William Dampier sailed completely around the crescent-shaped island and charted its coastline. Realizing that it was the largest island in a closely grouped archipelago, he christened it New Britain in honor of his homeland, then continued with the Anglican theme for the other important islands and waterways: New Ireland, New Hanover, the Duke of York Islands, and St. George’s Bay.

  However, even after Dampier contributed to the nautical charts, explorers avoided New Britain for the same reasons as before. Perhaps some captains took their ships into the flooded caldera, but they were satisfied to observe the volcanoes from a safe distance. Shore parties searching for water did not stray far from the beach, and for many years the island remained mysterious, a place where no man who valued his head should wander.

  Captain Cortland Simpson of the Royal Navy sailed the HMS Blanche into the caldera in 1872 and claimed its “discovery.” Ironically, another Englishman, Philip Carteret, had explored the protected waters a hundred years earlier and even named the biggest volcanoes; however, he did not name the various bays or natural harbors, and so Simpson claimed the privilege. In honor of himself he named the inner anchorage Simpson Harbor, and the large outer caldera became Blanche Bay.

  Carteret’s biggest contribution was to name the ancient volcanoes ringing the caldera. He named the dominant volcano, soaring 1,600 feet above the harbor, the North Daughter. The South Daughter anchored the southeastern tip of the peninsula, and between them stood the Mother, her twin peaks resembling breasts. Carteret also surveyed much of the surrounding archipelago and correctly changed the name of St. George’s Bay to St. George’s Channel.