by Peter Watt
‘Not much good to an old hand from Papua,’ Jack answered. ‘Unless he has someone to share it with.’
‘Maybe one day,’ Karl said, turning on his heel to walk away. ‘When this bloody war is over.’
Jack watched the young man walk away, trailing his well-used Tommy gun. ‘Maybe one day when the war is over’ echoed in the distance between them.
Jack sat down and continued cleaning his rifle. How much more would the war take from him before it was over one way or the other? he wondered sadly. A giant butterfly flitted across the clearing to land on the edge of an empty ammunition box. Jack stared at it. His thoughts were not looking back but forward as he stripped down his newly acquired weapon. Somewhere in one of Sydney Harbour’s little bays sat his new schooner at anchor. She still had no name.
Ilsa would learn to sail as had Lukas, and the boat would be hers to own, Jack thought. He watched the butterfly flit upwards from the empty ammo box and fly towards the jungle at the edge of the clearing. Before the war came to this landVictoria called it her Eden, he reflected, putting together the last parts of his well-oiled rifle. When he and Ilsa finally got to step aboard the new schooner she would have a name. A name befitting the memory of all those he had loved – and lost. The new schooner would be called the Eden.
EPILOGUE
IORA CREEK
August 1942
The jungle was thick and dank. The forward scout slowly lowered himself to the ground, simultaneously giving the hand signal to the man following him that he had spotted something.
Lieutenant Ian Barnes crept cautiously forward to confer with his scout.
‘Hear it?’ he whispered into the officer’s ear, keeping his gaze fixed forward scanning the heavy rainforest ahead for any movement.
‘Piston, barrel, butt body and bipod,’ came the distinct chant from a thicket of downed trees ahead on the narrow ridge patrolled by the infantry platoon. Ian Barnes knew the litany well. It was the sequence of stripping a Bren light machine gun.
‘Sounds like one of ours,’ he hissed back to the forward scout. ‘Try and get closer. I will make sure you get covering fire from the machine gun section.’
With a nod, the forward scout proceeded to edge forward on his belly, his old Thompson held forward and ready to use. Behind him, the platoon waited in absolute silence and stillness. In this jungle war, battles were often fought from a mere few yards apart, by an almost invisible enemy waiting in ambush.
The forward scout wriggled to the edge of the fallen timber and, through a space between the logs, could see the man talking to himself. He wore nothing but a pair of shorts and an old floppy broadbrimmed hat. In his lap was a fully assembled Bren gun with two full magazines laying beside him. The man was terribly gaunt from the obvious effects of malnutrition. His face was bearded but the scout could see that whoever this madman was, he was at least European.
‘Hey, digger, are you all right?’ the scout asked quietly from behind the safety of the logs. The man looked up sharply and swung the loaded Bren in the direction of the voice.
‘Who the bloody hell is that?’ he rasped. ‘Show yourself.’
‘Aussie, cobber,’ the scout replied. ‘Go easy with the Bren.’
The scout slowly raised his head above the logs to reveal himself and the man under the canopy of the rainforest squinted in the semi dark of the day.
‘Rifleman Lukas Kelly of the NGVR,’ he finally said slowly, lowering the Bren at the sight of the scout’s sweating face. ‘You are a sight for sore eyes, and you don’t have to worry about any Japs for another couple of miles up the track,’ he added. ‘I know, because I have been wandering around this part of the woods for the last few weeks. At least I think it has been weeks. Maybe it was months, I don’t know. But I do know that I would like to get back to Moresby for a cold beer as soon as possible.’
‘You and me both, cobber,’ the forward scout grinned and guessed that this half-mad soldier, whose body was marked by the ulcers of leech bites, had a courageous story of survival to tell.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
If any one year was to be nominated as the most critical in Australia’s short history since the First Fleet arrived in 1788 it would have to be 1942. In that year Australians saw large northern towns such as Darwin, Broome, Derby and others bombed with serious loss of life and property. Not only was Australian soil being attacked as off our coasts German U boats and Japanese submarines sank shipping, but the Japanese navy also infiltrated Sydney Harbour. The tourist walk at Point Danger on the Queensland–New South Wales border provides a plaque describing each sinking in our coastal waters for this generation to view.
That year, 1942, it seemed nothing could stop the Japanese onslaught and many Australians considered it was only a matter of time before Australia was absorbed into the rapidly expanding Japanese Empire.
Eden, although a fictional novel, attempts to describe the role played by the handful of unsung heroes – men who held the gate shut long enough to frustrate Japanese plans and thwart the possibility of invasion on Australian soil while we rallied enough troops to fight the Owen Stanleys campaign.
I realised that these brave men had been mostly forgotten, overshadowed by the subsequent fierce fighting by Australian and American troops to push the Japanese back along the Kokoda Track to the northern ports of Buna and Gona. Such military units I identified as operating before the Kokoda Track battles included the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, the Coast Watchers, and the men of the doomed 2/22 Battalion stationed in Rabaul. None of them should be forgotten for the sacrifice they made against overwhelming odds in the opening days of the war in the Pacific.
For Jack and Lukas Kelly’s military background in the NGVR I am indebted to Ian Down, OBE. His book The New Guinea Volunteer Rifles NGVR 1939–1943: A History provided more stories than could be covered in this novel. I only hope that I have honoured the memory of those little-known diggers within the pages of Eden in a way that ensures they will not be forgotten in the future.
Although the I–47 is fictional, the experiences of Leading Seaman Fuji Komine are based on fact. Prior to the outbreak of war in the Pacific, the Japanese navy was already actively carrying out espionage in various forms, including the deployment of supplies into the areas around Papua and the nearby Pacific islands. Their activities were being monitored by the Americans, who had cracked the naval codes and quietly passed on the information to the British Admiralty, who sent a warship to locate and destroy the military dumps before 7 December 1941.
Real names appear within this novel. These are mostly men connected to the NGVR. All the rest is fiction.
The occasional references to the HMAS Vampire and HMAS Hobart are the result of the author’s indulgence; as my Uncle John Payne from Tweed Heads served on both ships during the actions referred to. He was on the Vampire when it was escort to the Prince of Wales and Repulse when those two ships were sent to the bottom, and was himself on the Vampire when it was sunk in the Bay of Bengal. He later served on the Hobart at the Battle of the Coral Sea and was aboard when it was torpedoed during the Battle of Savu Island. These actions are but two historical events in the experiences of a sailor who also saw action in the Mediterranean Sea and who after the war continued his service off the Indonesian coast and into Mao’s China in 1948.
Peter Watt
Papua
‘Papua is a rousing historical adventure’
gold coast bulletin
Two men, bitter enemies, come face to face on the battlefield of France. Jack Kelly, a captain in the Australian army, shows unexpected compassion towards his prisoner Paul Mann, a high-ranking German officer. Neither expect to ever see each other again.
With the Great War finally over, both soldiers return home. But war has changed everything. In Australia, Jack is alone with a son he does not know and in Germany, Paul is alarmed by the growing influence of an ambitious young man named Adolf Hitler …
A new beginning beckons them both in a beaut
iful but dangerous land – Papua.
A powerful novel with ‘plenty of plot twists and sweaty jungle intrigue’
SUN-HERALD
Peter Watt
To Chase the Storm
Major Patrick Duffy is torn by conflicting duties: his oath to the Queen is unwavering as she gathers her armies together to march on the Boers of southern Africa, but his duty to his family is equally clear. But when his beautiful wife Catherine leaves him for another, returning to her native Ireland, Patrick’s broken heart propels him out of the Sydney Macintosh home and into yet another bloody war. However the battlefields of Africa hold more than nightmarish terrors and unspeakable conditions for Patrick – they bring him in contact with one he thought long dead and lost to him.
Back in Australia, the mysterious Michael O’Flynn mentors Patrick’s youngest son, Alex, and at his grandmother’s request takes him on a journey to their Queensland property, Glen View. But will the terrible curse that has inextricably linked the Duffys and Macintoshes for generations ensure that no true happiness can ever come to them? So much seems to depend on Wallarie, the last warrior of the Nerambura tribe, whose mere name evokes a legend approaching myth.
Through the dawn of a new century in a now federated nation, To Chase the Storm charts an explosive tale of lover and loss, from South Africa to Palestine, from Townsville to the green hills of Ireland, and to the more sinister politics that lurk behind them. By public demand, master storyteller Peter Watt returns to this much-loved series following on from the bestselling Cry of the Curlew, Shadow of the Osprey and Flight of the Eagle.
PHOTO: DEAN MARTIN
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Excerpts from e-mails sent to Peter Watt since his first novel was published
Also by Peter Watt
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MAP
PALESTINE
PROLOGUE
Part One: KARL’S WAR
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
Part Two: THE KELLYS’ WAR
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
Part Three: FUJI’S WAR
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
EPILOGUE: IORA CREEK
AUTHOR’S NOTE