Invasion Rabaul

by Bruce Gamble

  Taylor started hiking along the coast to get help, and found two natives in an otherwise-abandoned village. When he reached their hut, located on a tiny island formed by the tributaries of a fast-flowing river, he was pleased to see that they “had very kind faces and were both of a good build.” The one named Lao spoke passable Pidgin English and promised to seek help for Hart in the morning. Meanwhile, they were already caring for an Australian soldier with malaria.

  Later that evening, another soldier was brought to the little hut. Thirty-four-year-old Private George P. Harris of C Company was half-drowned, having attempted suicide in the river. Known as “George the Greek” (his birthplace was Polamon, Greece), he was out of his mind with fever. “He was absolutely exhausted,” Taylor remembered, “so exhausted that a sort of paralysis had set in and he had no control over his limbs… George was delirious and I couldn’t get to sleep because of his cries.”

  In the morning, Lao appeared with six natives. Taylor led them to where Hart lay, and they built a stretcher from saplings and empty copra sacks. The natives stumbled often as they carried the injured man over the rough terrain, but each time someone slipped, the others instantly lowered themselves to keep the stretcher level. At the swift river, they made a crude raft from driftwood and tied Hart’s stretcher to it, then floated him five hundred yards downstream. Later, describing their effort as “the most wonderful piece of teamwork” he had ever witnessed, Taylor felt ashamed at giving each native one coin when they reached the village. They seemed pleased, however, and that was how the system worked.

  Compassion kept Hart alive. The natives reset his broken leg, then Taylor and Hanna nursed him while Lao and others delivered food. For six weeks the three Australians stayed in the rat-infested hut. Hart was immobilized on a bed of bamboo rods, his back tortured by bedsores, his body wracked by malaria. But he survived whereas “George the Greek” died on February 24, just five days after being brought to the village.

  Taylor tried again to compensate the natives for helping Hart. One day, a wounded youth from the Nakanai Mountains was carried down to the coastal village following a Japanese attack. The boy’s knee, filled with shrapnel, was badly infected. With nothing but “great trepidation” and a rusty pair of scissors that he disinfected in boiling water, Taylor dug out the shards. They were accompanied by “heaps of blood and pus,” and Taylor was astounded when the Nakanai people chewed ginger root and then spat it into the wound before carrying the boy back to the mountains. Having gained the confidence of the natives for miles around, Taylor told them to hate the Japanese.

  Eventually, word got back to Father Harris about the three gunners. He sent them tins of sardines, but it was all he could give, his other supplies having been used up long before. Later, Bill Owen conveyed a message to Taylor and Hannah, urging them to bring Hart to Wunung. In early April, they arranged for several natives to carry Hart to a village where they obtained a canoe for a night crossing of Jacquinot Bay. A storm lashed the coast of New Britain that night, terrifying the occupants of the canoe as it bucked across the large bay. The team safely reached the far shore and finished the journey on foot, traveling an estimated forty miles in just seventeen hours. As a reward, the natives received a bag of rice and some tobacco.*

  The three wayward gunners soon learned why Owen had sent for them. At long last, there had been a breakthrough in communications with Port Moresby. It turned out that Ivan Smith and Con Gill had successfully reached the north coast of New Britain, where they found Keith McCarthy. He promptly informed headquarters about the Australians trapped near Jacquinot Bay, to which ANGAU responded by sending patrol officer Allan T. Timperley from the Trobriands in the fast launch Mascot.. Although it was too small for the evacuation of troops, it carried plenty of food and a two-way radio.

  When he reached Palmalmal plantation on April 5, Timperley was met by several ragged-looking men from Lark Force. Thinking the Mascot had come to rescue them, they were dismayed by its small size—though they didn’t hesitate to consume some of the bully beef and tea on board. For his part, Timperley was anxious to contact Figgis and Mackenzie, who had written the original note forwarded to Port Moresby, in order to coordinate the actual evacuation effort.

  FOR THE PAST THREE WEEKS, FIGGIS’S PARTY HAD BEEN ENCAMPED AT BOVALPUN, a native village near the northeastern shore of Jacquinot Bay. Happily distant from the miserable conditions at Wunung and Drina, they tinkered with a steel-hulled lifeboat, said to be a relic from the SS President Johnson, with hopes of sailing it to the Trobriands. “It was all a diversion,” admitted Bill Harry, but the days spent on the secluded beach reaped rewards later.

  One day in early April, a charismatic native named Golpak arrived to address the villagers of Bovalpun. They had begun to show timidity in the Australians’ presence, and Golpak, the “paramount luluai” or headman representing many southern villages, was concerned that the people were being persuaded by the increasingly influential Japanese. Calling the natives together, he “jerked them into line with a great demonstration of oratory.” Wiry and strong, estimated to be sixty years old, Golpak wielded enormous influence over the natives. In his youth he had worked as a boss-boy and was loyal to the Allies, a fact that would be invaluable to New Britain’s coastwatchers in the years to come. Soon after Golpak departed, the Australians at Bovalpun were informed of Timperley’s arrival. Immediately they dropped what they were doing and made their way to Palmalmal.

  Down at Drina, Bill Owen had also received an urgent-sounding message on the afternoon of Timperley’s arrival:

  Send all men that can travel over to Wunung, including all sick if you can get them over. They must be here today as tonight is the night. It is imperative that you come and you will get all details. C.E.G.

  The initials were those of Captain Christopher E. Goodman, the ranking officer currently at Wunung.

  With great excitement, speculating freely on what sort of evacuation might be pending, Owen and his men set off for the overnight journey to Wunung. However, the twenty miles separating the plantations began to feel like a hundred. Virtually everyone had malaria, and there were numerous stretcher cases among the men. Enough were capable of walking to provide two relay teams for each stretcher, but the so-called “healthy” individuals could walk only a few hundred yards before stopping to rest.

  The greatest challenge for Owen and his starving group was the ascent of a steep mountain in the darkness. The slope was slick with rotten coral and numerous loose rocks, forcing the men to manhandle the stretchers up one ledge at a time. At the top, the stretcher bearers and relief teams stumbled forward on legs that felt like “brittle sticks.” When they could walk no farther, they sagged to the ground, panting for breath against the damp earth until someone rose and cursed the others to their feet. The trek went on like that for hours: men walking as though in a stupor, falling often, despairing that their progress was too slow, that their opportunity for rescue would be lost.

  Just after midnight, a group of natives carrying flaming torches met the Australians on the trail. They had been sent to guide the soldiers directly to Palmalmal. Grinning with excitement, they picked up the stretchers and led the weary soldiers forward. David Selby was “near to weeping with relief’ as he moved off with renewed energy. At Palmalmal, however, when the soldiers saw the tiny Mascot, their spirits tumbled again. Finally they learned the whole story: Timperley was merely a relay. His boat carried a radio with which to call in a larger vessel.

  On the morning of April 6, a Sunday, Timperley established contact with Port Moresby and was informed that the HMAS Laurabada, the former yacht of the Papuan administrator, would arrive on Wednesday. The three-day delay not only strained the patience of everyone involved, but also meant that the hurried march from Drina and Wunung had been unnecessary. Even worse, three men had fallen critically ill immediately after the march. None had been stretcher cases—in fact all three carried their share of the burden—but the strain had been too great for
their weakened bodies. One was Colin Dowse, the entertainer who had charmed everyone with his animated honky-tonk piano playing back in happier times. He lasted only two days, and died on April 7.

  Then, before the Laurabada arrived, another of the sick men passed away. Death had become almost routine during the past few months, but the men at Palmalmal became intensely frustrated as they grieved for the two latest victims. “They had come so far, and so near to rescue,” wrote David Selby, “only to be snatched away at the last minute.”

  The overall mood improved greatly when Captain Ivan F. Champion, a well-known local explorer from an influential family, brought the sleek-hulled Laurabada into Palmalmal on April 9. He anchored the yacht in the lee of a small island to hide it from prowling Japanese boats and aircraft.

  After a closer look at the yacht, the anxious Australians onshore were skeptical. The Laurabada was certainly larger than the Mascot, but with just four small cabins she couldn’t possibly accommodate the number of people who waited ashore. The diesel-powered vessel was barely a hundred feet long and displaced only 150 tons. In short, a pleasure craft had been sent to rescue the entire contingent. The Laurabada’s only armament consisted of a few Vickers guns arranged on a temporary platform extending fore and aft over her deck from the main cabin. It made the yacht appear top-heavy and spoiled her rakish lines.

  Champion was under orders to sail that night, but he decided to keep the boat hidden as long as possible. There was good reason for delaying the departure. A few days earlier, radioman Dave Laws and several other men had departed for Awul, a Roman Catholic mission near Gasmata, with hopes of repairing the transmitter there. The party had not yet returned, and the crew of the Laurabada waited anxiously while scanning the skies for Japanese planes.

  Several Australians tried to convince Father Harris to come with them on the Laurabada. The kindly priest, more concerned with the welfare of the local natives than his own skin, refused. What kind of Christian would he be, he asked rhetorically, if he abandoned his “children” in their hour of need?

  Late that afternoon, Champion moved the Laurabada to the plantation’s jetty to embark passengers. Almost as if scripted, a dark-looking storm approached that afternoon, but boarding was accomplished quickly thanks to a plan devised by Selby. A few civilians occupied one of the four cabins, and stretcher cases went into the other three plus the dining room. The rest of the troops filed onto the outer decks, squeezing into every available inch of space. Ridiculously overloaded, the Laurabada listed to starboard. Built to accommodate eight passengers and a handful of crewmembers, she was packed with 157 escapees, of whom an estimated 135 were from Lark Force.

  As the hour for sailing approached, Dave Laws and his party failed to appear. The radio was pulled out of the Mascot and left with Father Harris, so that when Laws returned he could contact Port Moresby. Otherwise there was nothing for Champion to do but to leave the small party behind. Every minute that the Laurabada stayed at Palmalmal, the risk of discovery by the Japanese increased.

  Providentially, the storm broke at 1700 and pelted the Laurabada with “black torrents” of rain. It was a perfect shroud for hiding the boat, and Champion promptly got her underway. Standing at the crowded rail, David Selby savored the moment as the shoreline of New Britain slowly receded from view.

  David Bloomfield’s parting glimpse of the unforgiving island was more somber: “My last memory of New Britain was the figure of Father Harris … standing on the wharf in the rain, waving us goodbye. Within minutes the rain became so heavy that we lost sight of Father Harris. It was as if a curtain had been drawn between us and our adventures on New Britain.”

  Unfortunately for the priest, Bloomfield’s metaphor proved all too accurate. Sometime during the latter half of 1942, the Japanese came to his Harris’ mission and took him aboard a vessel, ostensibly to send him to Rabaul. Instead, they executed Harris and dumped his body overboard.

  On April 10, mere hours after leaving New Britain, the last of the three men who fell sick at Palmalmal died aboard the Laurabada. Private Ivor P. James had gotten married just before shipping out from Australia, with Bill Harry serving as his best man. Now, the survivors listened as Champion performed a brief memorial service for James. The decks were too crowded for most of the passengers to observe the proceedings, but there was no mistaking the splash as James’ canvas-wrapped body was committed to the deep.

  After a queasy voyage across the Solomon Sea, the Laurabada rounded the tip of New Guinea at Samarai and motored slowly northwestward to Port Moresby. As the boatload of sick and weary troops neared the end of the three-day voyage, Bill Harry found something to laugh about. His haversack still held a few cans of “panic rations,” and for weeks he and Figgis had entertained themselves by trying to guess the contents of a can that had no label. Now that they were safe, Figgis could no longer resist. “Look,” he said, “we’ll open that mystery tin of yours and see what it’s all about. It looks as though we won’t need to keep it.” Harry pried the lid off. They looked inside, then shook their heads with a mixture of amusement and disdain. Tropical fruit salad. The irony wasn’t lost on them.

  IN ADDITION TO THE MEN WHO ARRIVED ABOARD THE LAURABADA, A FEW smaller parties from the south coast of New Britain also reached friendly lines, some after amazing adventures. Their stories are likewise worth noting.

  One party walked almost the entire length of New Britain’s south coast. Dick Hamill, Fred Kollmorgen, Perce Pearson, and three other soldiers had been part of larger parties led by Botham and Nicholls, but the groups fractured into three smaller parties over a period of weeks. Botham’s and Nicholls’ groups escaped independently by boat, and another led by Lieutenant Edward W. “Ted” Best nearly did. However, Best’s party was captured at Gasmata on February 10, the day after it was occupied by the Japanese.

  Dick Hamill’s group of six men successfully skirted Gasmata and made it all the way to Arawe. “We got down almost to the end of the island,” remembered Kollmorgen, “then faced the open sea. To get across to the New Guinea mainland was about sixty miles over water, but we did get across.”

  In a small launch crewed by several natives, the Australians crossed the Dampier Straits and reached Finschhafen on March 2. After stocking up on food, they split up into pairs—Kollmorgen stayed with Hamill—and successfully crossed the rugged Papuan Peninsula over a period of weeks. All were infected with malaria, and the journey nearly killed them. “On New Guinea more than on New Britain, the mosquitoes were shocking,” Kollmorgen stated. “We finished up, myself in particular, with a very bad dose of malaria coming back. Even when I got to Melbourne, I was sent straight to [the] hospital from the train. I was in and out of Heidelberg, the military hospital in Melbourne, and was never fit for duty after that.”

  KOLLMORGEN, A TENOR HORN PLAYER, WAS THE ONLY MEMBER OF THE 2/22nd Battalion band to reach Australia. At least seven other bandsmen managed to avoid capture on the day of the invasion, but one by one their luck ran out. Bert Morgan (tenor horn), the only band member known to have tried evading toward the north coast, was the first to be taken prisoner. Six others headed south with various parties. Stanley R. Parker (E-flat bass) was hobbled by a leg infection which resulted in his capture at an unnamed mission station. Ronald H. Cook (trombone) and Bill Haines (tenor horn) were captured at Tol and murdered on February 4. William E. Edwards (drummer) was taken prisoner with Lieutenant Best’s party at Gasmata six days later. Austin Creed (trombone) avoided the massacres and made it past Wide Bay, but then fell ill with malaria and died in a remote village on February 20.

  One additional bandsman almost made it off the island. After traveling for a while with Dick Hamill’s group, Frederick J. Meyer (tenor horn) ended up in Dave Laws’ party as they attempted to find the radio at Awul. The group had almost reached the Catholic mission when word came about the arrival of the Laurabada, so they raced back to Palmalmal only to learn from Father Harris that the boat had departed four days earlier. Meyer becam
e despondent, and his health plummeted to the point that he was unable or unwilling to fight off a bout of malaria. He died at Wunung on April 27.

  A month later, Laws finally escaped with seven men. They left New Britain aboard a repaired motor launch and landed on the coast of New Guinea, then walked over the rugged peninsula to Port Moresby.

  But even that amazing odyssey was eclipsed by Ben Dawson. After departing from Marau plantation on the south coast, Dawson and his party walked across New Britain in mid-March. They reached the north coast only to find that the Lakatoi had sailed days earlier. There was no faulting Keith McCarthy, who was unaware that another party was trying to reach him; Dawson’s attempt at crossing the island had been a long shot to begin with.

  With the aid of various missionaries and natives, Dawson and his men moved from village to village until they reached Talasea in late March. There they found Lincoln Bell, who had stayed to serve as a coastwatcher rather than evacuate on the Lakatoi. He transmitted their names and status to Port Moresby, but there was little that ANGAU could do. By that time, the Japanese had captured Lae, Salamaua, and Finschhafen, expanding their influence over the entire Bismarck Archipelago. They also patrolled the seas and skies, making it extremely hazardous for the Australians to attempt a rescue effort.

  Leaving two men to help Bell run his boat and radio, Dawson moved to Iboki, where his party lived off the land for a month. On April 24 they moved out to the Vitu Islands using Bell’s boat. After three weeks at a plantation there, they moved again to Unea Island and were picked up by “Blue” Harris in the schooner Umboi. Harris wanted to take them directly to Port Moresby, but in early May a clash between Japanese and American carrier forces in the Coral Sea turned the entire region into a hornet’s nest. Harris therefore pointed the Umboi westward and delivered Dawson’s party to the village of Bogadjim on the coast of New Guinea.