Invasion Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  Carr made it sound as though he initially possessed some control over the widely scattered elements of his battalion. To the contrary, the companies fought independently from the moment the Japanese landed, with little or no input from Carr.

  OUT IN SIMPSON HARBOR, LIEUTENANT COLONEL TOSHIHARU SAKIGAWA waited his turn to disembark from the transport Mito Maru. The commanding officer of the 2nd Company, 55th Transportation Regiment, he was awed by the sights and sounds of battle. “The mountain air filled with smoke from the summit of the active volcano Nakamisaki weighed upon us,” he noted. “The flotilla moved into Rabaul Bay, and from then, we understood the magnificence of the battlefield with the roaring noise of the [machine guns] and the sweeping fire of our planes as they flew in formation seeking out the enemy.”

  After the assault troops secured the landing areas, Sakigawa led several Daihatsu craft loaded with light reconnaissance vehicles to the beachhead south of Vulcan Crater. He investigated the surrounding terrain on foot, walking about fifty yards through the jungle before he found a road, then returned to the beach and supervised the unloading of the landing craft. He was concerned that the scout cars and motorcycles would bog down in the volcanic soil, but the crews offloaded the vehicles onto bamboo mats without difficulty. By mid-morning, Sakigawa’s high-speed butai (squad) was ready to scout ahead.

  Soon after the mechanized column started off toward Rabaul, incoming mortar rounds and gunfire forced the Japanese to take cover. They advanced on foot into a coconut grove and spotted a camouflaged truck, which they sprayed with bullets before cautiously approaching. The truck was empty, but the littered ground around it revealed useful information. “At intervals in the grass in this area,” wrote Sakigawa, “large quantities of guns, MG bullets, rifle bullets, and shells had been left behind. In vehicles were abandoned clothes and utensils enough for about one butai. Traces of a hurried flight were clearly evident.”

  The amount of discarded equipment was indeed an indication that the Australians were pulling back under considerable duress. The Japanese needed only to increase the pressure slightly, and the withdrawal would turn into a rout.

  CAPTAIN APPEL’S PLEA TO HOLD THREE WAYS OPEN HAD NOT FALLEN ON deaf ears. At 0900, Mollard personally risked the Zeros and went by car to Noah’s Mission. He ordered R Company and the remaining personnel from the Headquarters Company to evacuate immediately, and vehicles of every description were rounded up for transportation, including a taxi from the Rabaul Carrying Company. Soldiers piled aboard regardless of rank and were sent off with instructions to get through Three Ways as quickly as possible. When they were safely away, Mollard rejoined McInnes and ordered him to withdraw his company.

  The Australians pulled back from Three Ways in an orderly fashion, though not everyone had the luxury of a ride. “McInnes gave the order to retire by way of Malabunga Junction,” remembered Captain Selby, “and most of the company moved off in whatever transport was available. The majority of my men went with them, but rounding up stragglers I found four of my men who had not succeeded in boarding any of the trucks. We set off on foot under heavy fire from the enemy who were now coming through in great numbers, but their shooting continued to be very wild and erratic.”

  Gunner Bloomfield, a member of Selby’s small party, had no ammunition and felt “completely helpless with only an empty rifle and a bayonet” as he advanced cautiously along the Bamboo Road. The five men soon came across a mortar crew who cautioned them “not to stick around.” It proved to be good advice. Moments later three Zeros roared over and strafed the mortar position. Selby’s party dived into the bushes and waited for a few minutes, but heard no further sound from the direction of the shot-up mortar team.

  Rattled by their close call, the antiaircraft men started off again toward Malabunga Junction. It was a harrowing journey, as Selby later described:

  I wondered what a good company commander would do in the circumstances—run, crawl or walk. Running seemed both pointless and provocative, and the silly thought crossed my mind that the surest way of being chased by a fierce dog is to run away from him.

  Crawling was too slow, so we walked at a brisk pace, only taking cover when diving planes roared down on us. Eventually a truck dashed by, then pulled up in answer to our hail and we climbed aboard. At frequent intervals planes would dive on us, their machine guns blazing, and we would leap off the truck and take cover at the roadside.

  The truck, from the 17th Antitank Battery, also stopped a few times for the benefit of other stragglers. During the entire trip, two men rode out on the running boards and kept a constant lookout for enemy planes. They were able to provide ample warning before each strafing attack, which undoubtedly saved lives. One flight of Zeros made three separate strafing runs, according to Bloomfield, but for all their shooting they scored only a single bullet hole in the truck and caused no injuries.

  AFTER THE AUSTRALIANS WITHDREW FROM FOUR WAYS AND THREE WAYS, truckloads of evacuating troops raced toward Toma with an increasing sense of urgency. Those that made it past the gauntlet of Zeros on the Bamboo Road just kept going when they reached Malabunga Junction, the drivers refusing to stop even though battalion officers tried to flag them down. Watching as the trucks sped past his headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Carr heard the occupants shout various warnings and gathered the impression that the Japanese had broken through by the thousands.

  The atmosphere of alarm and the disturbing rumors were more than he could handle. “Carr rushed off telling anyone he met that the Japs were coming close behind—when in fact they were busy settling things down in Rabaul,” attested one officer. Carr’s adjutant, Captain Ivan L. Smith, and the brigade major, Captain McLeod, both attempted to halt some of the speeding trucks, but Carr told them to let the vehicles go. He feared that a traffic jam would block the intersection and prevent everyone from escaping.

  At Tomavatur, Colonel Scanlan could also see the stream of trucks that sped along the Glade Road toward Toma. Thus, when Carr phoned him to report on the rapidly deteriorating situation, he decided that it was “useless to prolong the action” and told Carr to withdraw the 2/22nd Battalion to the Keravat River. The order made no sense. Scanlan knew—or should have known—that Carr had no telephone communications with his scattered companies and could no longer direct their movements.

  Carr suggested that the companies withdraw beyond one of three landmarks, whichever was closest: the Keravat River for soldiers in the northern area of the plateau, the Warangoi River for those in the south, and the Baining Mountains via Malabunga Mission for everyone in the middle. Agreeing to this, Scanlan voiced his opinion that it was now a case of “every man for himself.”

  In hindsight, Scanlan’s comment was nothing short of astounding. Clearly he was frustrated by his inability to stop the Japanese. It is equally apparent that he never anticipated the profound effect his words would have on virtually every soul in Lark Force. For one thing, the unimaginative Carr interpreted Scanlan’s phrase as an instruction. He passed it verbatim to the signalers “for transmission to all companies,” and also sent dispatch riders to make certain the scattered companies were informed of the latest development.

  One of the riders, Private Creed, found a number of stragglers at Noah’s Mission. Not everyone had gotten the word about the withdrawal, and the new arrivals were milling about in confusion, as though waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Among them, Private Fred Kollmorgen was surprised to see his Salvation Army friend pull up near the old church on a motorcycle.

  Austin Creed rode up and said, “I have a direct order from the colonel in charge of the whole area: It is now a matter of every man for himself. Get out of this pickle if you can.”

  If it had been anybody else, I would have thought that maybe he’d gotten things mixed up, and it wasn’t really intended to be “every man for himself,” but to come from a chap that I knew well and believed, he certainly passed that message along to us. There must have been forty or fifty men by this t
ime around Noah’s Mission.

  Some of the older fellows, and those who were not terribly well, decided to surrender. But I was young and very active and strong at that stage. I said, “No, I’m not giving up, I’m going into the bush.”

  All across the plateau, as the word of Scanlan’s “orders” trickled from one scattered group to the next, Australians began to withdraw into the jungle. Some decided to not make any attempt to evade the Japanese, as Kollmorgen indicated, but self-preservation was a powerful motivator among the majority of Lark Force.

  This included Carr. “In view of doubt regarding Colonel Scanlan’s future actions,” he later explained, “I had to give serious consideration to my own.” He rationalized that he “would become commander of the guerilla force” if Scanlan surrendered, but there was no way to organize a resistance movement at this late stage. Nevertheless, he was convinced that his only recourse was to head toward the mountains. His first goal was to find Lieutenant Mackenzie, who was “known to be attempting to go bush with a wireless set from the vicinity of Malabunga.” Carr must have realized that as soon as he left headquarters, all control of his battalion would be lost—but that’s exactly what he did.

  At Tomavatur, Captain Selby requested a meeting with Scanlan to discuss options. The NGA adjutant entered Scanlan’s tent, then emerged a few minutes later and said, “The colonel’s orders are that each man is to fend for himself.” Shelby was stunned, not only by the message but by Scanlan’s refusal to see him in person.

  News of the encounter spread quickly among the troops gathered nearby, and many felt a sense of bewilderment. “Were it not for the seriousness of our situation, one could have been excused for thinking that this was some sort of a joke,” recalled Gunner Bloomfield. “Here was the CO only a few days ago issuing the orders, ‘EVERY MAN WILL FIGHT TO THE LAST’ and ‘THERE SHALL BE NO WITHDRAWAL,’ telling us now that it was ‘EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF.’”

  At approximately 1100, Scanlan and a party of five left Tomavatur and began walking toward the Baining Mountains. Carrying the colonel’s large kitbag was Tovakina, a Tolai native who had waited on tables at the officers’ mess before serving as his personal houseboy. The adjutant and a few other members of Scanlan’s staff, including his regular batman, Private Eric A. Angwin, were also in the entourage. Scanlan even invited Bill Harry to accompany them, but the latter declined. Believing the colonel’s departure was “somewhat premature,” Harry decided to wait for friends.

  The battle for Rabaul was not yet over when Scanlan quit the field and left his troops to fend for themselves. Weeks earlier he had called some of his subordinates “defeatist” because they wanted to hide caches of food in the jungle. More recently he had deliberately misled his men, telling them they were going on an exercise and preventing them from being adequately prepared to face the enemy. And now, mere hours after the invasion commenced, Scanlan abandoned his headquarters and walked into the jungle. For a veteran commander who had earned a DSO for gallantry in combat more than twenty years earlier, it was a spectacular capitulation.

  Was Scanlan a coward? Probably not. His actions, however wrong, were preordained from the day he arrived at Rabaul. He was doomed to fail, thanks mainly to the War Cabinet’s disregard for Lark Force and the other outlying garrisons. The unavoidable truth was that none of them could withstand the overwhelming power of the Southern Offensive.

  AT VUNAPOPE THAT MORNING, THE ARMY NURSES SLEPT FOR A FEW HOURS in a nuns’ dormitory while the orderlies monitored the patients in the native hospital. When the nurses arrived for duty shortly after dawn, they made two shocking discoveries. “We found there were only two orderlies left,” Lorna Johnson remembered. “All the rest and the two doctors had gone. And we saw ships coming up Rabaul harbor; I can’t remember how many, but there seemed to be thousands of them. There were about three aircraft carriers, and submarines, and troopships, and battleships, all together in this huge convoy. I don’t think any one of us girls had ever seen an aircraft carrier or a submarine in our lives.”

  The nurses hardly knew which was more distressing—the sight of the invasion fleet or the sudden departure of the doctors. They could scarcely believe that Major Palmer and Captain Robertson had skulked away in the middle of the night. Even more insulting, the doctors had taken the two ambulances, eighteen orderlies, and a few patients with them. They knew Palmer had never fully approved of them, and his silent departure came as a bitter pill.

  In actuality, the doctors’ motives were anything but sinister. Palmer and Robertson knew there were plenty of good medical personnel at Vunapope, whereas the troops withdrawing into the jungle would have almost no help. Furthermore, Palmer had asked John May to stay at Vunapope and look after the nurses. The chaplain immediately agreed, though he knew it would guarantee his own capture.

  Some seventy-five patients remained in the thatched-roof hospital by the beach, along with two orderlies from the 2/10 Field Ambulance who had volunteered to stay, Corporal Laurence A. Hudson and Private Reginald M. “Max” Langdon. No one had time to fuss about the situation, because a multitude of Japanese landing craft suddenly approached the beach. Chaplain May and Kay Parker walked outside to meet the enemy.

  Later, Lorna Johnson described the first stressful hours of captivity:

  The Japanese jumped off the landing barges, ran up the beach, and came up to the hospital. They dragged all the boys out of the hospital; told them all to get out. The sun had started to come up, and it was getting very, very hot. They lined us up for about two hours. These soldiers looked like hundreds of little monkeys, with the shoes they used to wear, like sand shoes, with the big toe separated from the other four toes. They had these little khaki pants on, and khaki shirts, and funny little hats. They each had a gun with a bayonet, and they lined us all up.

  John May, who was our padre, stood with Kay. They had a white handkerchief tied onto something to say, “We surrender.” There was nothing else we could do. The Japanese rushed up and down and they dragged the boys out of the hospital and slapped them across the face. Then they found the only lot of food that we had taken from Rabaul—a couple of cases of bully beef and things like that. They brought this food out in front of us, bayoneted it all, then made the boys dig a hole and throw it into the hole. We couldn’t understand their stupidity.

  The patients were forced to remain standing in the hot sun for about two hours. There were malaria cases with high fevers, burn victims from the Herstein, and soldiers who suffered from tropical infections, including Sergeant Gullidge. Several men collapsed, but the Japanese prodded them back on their feet with bayonets. Finally, the patients and most of the medical staff were allowed to return to the hospital. John May and Laurie Hudson were taken away by the Japanese, one of whom drew his sword.

  Horrified, the nurses presumed the two men would be executed. A few hours later, however, May and Hudson returned unharmed. They had been driven a short distance down a side road to Vunapope’s refrigeration building, where they were made to sit in the sun. The escorts gave them menacing looks, and the officer holding the sword demonstrated how easily he could slice an inch-thick branch from a tree. But it was all an act of intimidation. Nothing was done to physically harm the two Australians, and they were given some lunch before the Japanese returned them to the hospital.

  ACROSS THE HARBOR, THE CIVILIANS IN REFUGE GULLY ENDURED A frightening night. “[We] had little knowledge of what was happening along the beaches; only the incessant rifle firing and bomb explosions indicated that the invasion had started,” recalled Gordon Thomas, editor of the Rabaul Times. “Overhead, planes were zooming, and occasional bursts of machine-gun fire, raking the hillsides where we were in hiding, showed how trigger-happy were the Jap airmen.”

  At daybreak, Thomas set off with Nobby Clark and Hector Robinson, the senior government official at Refuge Gully, to find the Japanese. Carrying a white flag, the three men planned to lead a patrol back to the shelter, their hope being that a voluntary surrender w
ould prevent the enemy from gunning down unarmed people. In that regard, their mission succeeded. “Later in the morning,” Thomas continued, “all civilians were mustered onto the baseball oval, where we remained for the rest of the day, foodless, and under a strong-armed guard, with machine guns trained on us from every angle.”

  The civilian captives, more than two hundred in all, were made to swelter in the hot sun while the Tolai natives sat in the shade. It was an obvious manipulation by the Japanese to embarrass the former colonials. Everyone was compelled to listen while a Japanese officer loudly read a proclamation in English. It, too, was a piece of propaganda meant to curry favor with the Melanesians. “The soldiers of Japan,” the officer stated, “have arrived here in order to improve your condition …”

  After listening to the speeches, the captives were taken to the large Kuomintang Hall, headquarters of the Chinese Nationalist Party. Most had not eaten at all that day, nor were any meals provided during the night. Just twenty-four hours earlier, they had represented the upper echelon of their society; now, their lives turned suddenly upside down, they squabbled like children and scrounged for food.

  THE LAST FIREFIGHT OF THE DAY WAS ONE OF THE FIERCEST. AT 0300 THAT morning, in compliance with orders from Colonel Scanlan, Captain Travers moved D Company to defensive positions astride the Kokopo Ridge Road near Taliligap. Upon arrival, he realized the Japanese could get behind him from Vulcan Crater, so he decided to concentrate his platoons on a ridge near the home of Albert Gaskin. Owner of the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Gaskin had joined the RAAF evacuation the previous afternoon and was currently at Wide Bay. Thus, he was out of harm’s way when his handsome bungalow was shot to pieces.

  The combat began at approximately 1130, when two natives wearing white mission garb led several Japanese soldiers out of the jungle directly in front of Lieutenant Alec Tolmer’s platoon. Private Holmes, Tolmer’s batman, saw the enemy and called out a warning, and Tolmer shot one of the natives dead. The rest of the platoon immediately opened fire, killing the second native and possibly a few of the soldiers. The surviving Japanese sought cover inside Gaskin’s house, and dozens more attacked the ridge from several directions simultaneously.