“Ambitious, Curzon, but highly unlikely of success, one would imagine.”
“Intelligence says that the Japanese outnumber British and American forces in the Pacific by a substantial margin, sir, particularly in modern aircraft. It will take a whole year, it is thought, for the Americans to establish parity. By then there is a strong possibility that the Japanese will have established themselves in the north of Australia. If the Americans prefer to talk peace then they will never be expelled, sir.”
“Nonsense, man! They will never pass Singapore. Defeatist tosh!”
“Perhaps we should call for some reinforcements here and in Rabaul, sir. More aircraft, for example, sir.”
“Don’t need them. The fighting, if it ever comes to that, will take place on the ground – you can’t conquer air, you know! Our troops are more than sufficient to hold against a few slant-eyes!”
“Yes, sir.”
Curzon signalled to a mess-waiter; he needed a drink.
The Quartermaster was a reservist, recalled to the colours after years as a factory manager in Sydney. He was not happy to be back in uniform, less than a year before his reserve enlistment expired. He had volunteered as a sixteen year old in 1914 and had spent four years on the Western Front, surviving and rising from private to lieutenant. He had stayed on after the Great War, liking the army life, which was all he had known as an adult; he wore a respectable collection of medal ribbons and had been treated with respect, taking his retirement in 1935 as a contented major. Now he was stuck in a small town in New Guinea, family left behind, and trying to find the stores an active service unit must need. The local businesses cooperated with him, much to his relief, and he was able to keep his two battalions in Lae and Rabaul fed and housed and equipped with a minimum of tropical gear. He knew that the main reason that the local men would help him out was because they had brothers and sons in the Militia, which also drew from his stores.
“Mr Hawkins! What can I do for you today, sir?”
“Major Carpenter! Just a small matter, sir.”
Both laughed – had it been officially sanctioned George would have presented the correct dockets. He had no papers in his hand, was looking for a back-door arrangement.
“Got a small shipment just come in to the firm, Major. Bully beef, rice and dried egg powder. Thing is, Mick sent down to Brisbane for the dried egg as a sort of experiment – never even heard of it before. We ordered four cartons of seven pounds weight each; we’ve got four bloody hundredweights! We’ll argue it by post, of course – take six months before we get a final answer, and by that time the stuff will have gone rotten anyway! We need to get it off our hands, one way or another. Can’t sell it to the locals, they wouldn’t know how to cook it – we couldn’t even give it away to them.”
“We use it in our rations, Mr Hawkins. The cooks can always add a bit more here and there, make up an extra for the men for a Sunday breakfast perhaps. I don’t know that I could pay you for it, though.”
“My Company is short of hand grenades, Major. Used up almost our entire issue letting the lads throw two each as practice. They had to try them out or they’d have killed themselves before they hit the Japs with ‘em.”
“Could be done, perhaps, Mr Hawkins. I have some spare mags for the Brens as well and could come across a few more rounds of three-oh-three.”
“My driver-boy will run the egg powder up from the warehouse today, Major. I’ll tip Mick the wink this morning.”
The Militia trained every other day for the next two months – the other ranks still worked at their ordinary jobs as well. George was the sole full-time soldier. The news of defeat arrived every day as the Japanese raced through South-East Asia; it grew increasingly certain that they were coming to New Guinea.
The adjutant gave a briefing to the officers.
“The Navy has lost everything north of here, gentlemen. A last battle has just taken place off of the coasts of the Dutch East Indies and almost every big ship left to the Dutch, British and Americans went down.”
The colonel could not comprehend the whole affair – the Royal Navy ruled the oceans and now had nothing left in Far Eastern waters.
“We must now expect an invasion, rolling across from the west – Wewak first, then Manus, Kavieng and Rabaul, finally Lae. So intelligence says. It seems the Japanese codes are broken and so some of what they intend is known.”
The adjutant turned to the map on the wall, pointed out the locations named.
The colonel brightened, this was more his sort of thing.
“We must dig more trenches, gentlemen! A set for each possible landing place so that whichever the Japanese choose we shall be ready for them.”
“What if they land in two places at once, sir?”
The colonel ignored the question – childish, trivial, nit-picking. He had thought better of his Regular officers!
“Have we plans for retreat, colonel?”
“We will not retreat, Lieutenant Hawkins. We shall fight them, sir, and defeat them!”
“Two battalions here, sir; one of them only in name, actually two fat companies of Militia armed as light infantry. No artillery, no anti-aircraft, no air support. We will undoubtedly hurt them, but how can we sink their ships and prevent them making other landings to encircle us?”
“I am not here to listen to defeatism, Hawkins! Where is your Australian fighting spirit?”
“I will fight, sir. Given the weapons I will win, sir. Without the equipment I will be defeated, and so will you. We have no aircraft worth the name. You know what happened to Prince of Wales and Repulse, and they had anti-aircraft guns. If we retreat then we can keep fighting, and killing.”
“We have anti-aircraft guns.”
Two Bofors and a dozen First World War vintage Lewis guns on high-angle mountings; useless in any real sense, as they all knew. They had six fighters as well, fifty miles an hour slower and less agile than the Japanese carrier-borne planes. There were four Catalina flying-boats moored in the Markham River, each capable of carrying a small bomb load, and so slow that they could not hope to survive long enough to reach any target.
Early in March the news came that a force had landed at Wewak. The wireless went dead before they could learn any details. Manus reported invasion two days later – a fleet including at least one aircraft carrier. New Ireland went in its turn and the fleet was reported as heading towards Rabaul. They had landed at least two full brigades at each port and the sky had been ‘full of aircraft’. George hoped his father had been informed and had been able to get out, the Tses as well.
Word came to Rabaul of the landings at Kavieng and Ned drove into town and escorted Mr Tse onto the small float plane, the last left in the harbour. The luggage had been put on board earlier, including a number of heavy but very small boxes.
“Will you not come with us, Mr Hawkins?”
“I shall take the mission boat out of Vunapope, after dark, with any luck, Mr Tse. Give Jutta and the children my regards, won’t you. Goodbye.”
The little plane took off and flew low down the coast, intending to fly south-about at low speed, conserving petrol, expecting to make Samarai to refuel before turning up the Papuan Gulf to Port Moresby. The weather was favourable and there was no sign of enemy aircraft; they should make it, Ned thought. He turned back to the car, driving past the airstrip and watching the last minute panic as the Administration loaded its clerks and files into an old Ford Trimotor.
‘Not a bloody hope, poor bastards! They’ve left it too late!’
The Ford lacked the range to head due south. It would have to aim for Lae to refuel, particularly as they had loaded it to the fullest, it being vital to preserve the pieces of paper the Public Servants had generated over the previous twenty-five years.
Ned turned onto the coast road around the bay, pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator pedal. It was nearly an hour out to Kokopo and he was not at all sure he had that much time.
Five minutes and the car wa
s hidden by the shade of the coconut palms, far less visible from the air. A quarter of an hour and he heard explosions through the open windows as the first wave of bombers came in. He felt sad for the Air Force boys, knowing that they would have taken off in their under-powered, slow fighters and bombers to attempt a fight. They would be dead by now, and probably would have scored no successes at all.
Thirty minutes later he was driving slowly along the road past Raluana and along the coast to Kokopo. He had seen no aircraft and the sea was empty on this southern side of the harbour. He was waved down by a group of local men, some of the elders among them, pulled into the side under as much cover as he could find, tall hibiscus trees giving enough shade.
He explained what was happening, that the Japanesi were coming and they should keep the girls out of sight and otherwise do exactly as they were told. No arguments, no talking, no complaints. These men were worse than Master Kaiser’s Germans had been, would kill more quickly. They must protect themselves, whatever happened.
“You go where, Master Ned?”
“Vunapope, first. Then take the Missis Nuns onto a boat and off South. They must not be caught by the Japanesi.”
They began to understand that the Japanese were very dangerous.
“Tell the Japanesi that my car drove past. I did not stop. You understand?”
Reluctantly, they did.
“You come back, Master Ned?”
“One day. If not me, Master Georgy, he will come back to the plantations with his wife.”
“God save you, Master Ned.”
They turned away, back to the village, their last farewell made.
Vunapope was calm when he arrived, the work of the Mission sawmill and plantations carrying on unaffected by the war. The hospital was as busy as ever and all was deliberately normal.
Father Joe waved to Ned to come across to his office.
“Herr Ned, I am glad to see you here. The telephone wires are working still. The Japanese have bombed the harbour and the airfield and the Army but have not landed yet. All of the planes are gone.”
“Left?”
The old priest sat down, crumpled into his chair. Ned suddenly realised that he must be nearly seventy – he had been a forty year old, he supposed, when he had first seen him. He looked his age suddenly.
“The fighter planes tried to attack the Japanese. They might have shot one down. The man on the telephone said one of the Japanese went down. All of the fighters were destroyed. The bomber planes – Hudsons, I think he said – flew off to try to find the Japanese ships, before the raid started. None have come back. I think he said that two of them had been sent to Lae to evacuate a few families.”
“We knew that would happen, Father Joe.”
“Old planes and young boys who would do their duty, knowing it must kill them! Damned wars, Herr Ned!”
“The schooner is at the wharf, Father Joe. You should send all of the nuns away now. You know what happened at Hong Kong, what was done to the nurses at the hospital. We hear the same happened at Singapore.”
Father Joe shook his head – they would not go, would not leave their patients without care. In any case, there would be fighting, they must be present to aid the wounded.
“The Japanese kill the wounded, and any doctors and nurses who try to help them. They are dirty dogs, Father Joe. You must order the women at least to go.”
“They will not, Herr Ned. What will you do?”
“Drive the tracks as far as I can, Father Joe. That will take me twenty miles inland. Then I shall walk a couple of days along the coast. There will be small boats coming up, sailing at night and laying up under cover in the daylight, or so they said in Rabaul. I should be able to get picked up. I would rather take the schooner down coast, with the women aboard.”
“I will speak to them, Herr Ned. I shall try!”
Father Joe came back defeated – the nuns had not believed him. They were nurses working in a hospital, they must be safe.
“I shall wait here until we hear that the Japanese have actually landed, Father Joe. They will probably be a couple of days getting this far.”
Ned spent a few hours on the mission schooner, working with the two crew boys to fill the fuel and water tanks to their fullest and to stock the pantry with tins of bully and packets of biscuit. He carried two dozens of blankets aboard hopefully. Just before dark he drove up to Vunatobung and pulled his police uniform out of the cupboard and then opened his locked sheet-metal cupboards and took out his rifles and pistol and spare ammunition. It was pointless, probably, but he felt happier with the weapons to hand. He thought a few minutes then went to the other cupboards and pulled out the pair of shotguns and their cartridges; he set them out on the verandah, knowing he was being watched and that the boys would pick them up as soon as he was out of sight.
The telephone at the Mission was busy at dawn. The Japanese had landed overnight and had driven the Australians back into the bush, overwhelmed in a few hours of massive onslaught. They had taken over the town and were rounding up the Chinese and herding them into a detention area at the big park, but they had left the local population strictly alone.
A force of infantry had marched out of town and was proceeding up the North Coast Road while another battalion or so was heading round the Bay.
They would be at least two days walking to Kokopo and Vunapope. Their caller, a mixed-race young man working as a clerk for Steamships was about to go bush and would hopefully make his way along the tracks unscathed; he had his bicycle.
The phone rang again in late afternoon, the wires still uncut by either side. Father Joe took the call and came out to Ned, weeping bitterly.
“It was one of the Bishop’s boys from Rabaul. He saw what was happening at the park. They are killing all of the Chinese men – bayoneting them or cutting them to pieces with their swords. The women and the children have been given to the soldiers – all of them, no matter how young or old, every single one. All have been assaulted, time after time. The bodies are being thrown away into the harbour. The boy says that the screams can be heard over half of the town.”
“They are animals, not human beings, Father Joe. They say that Nanking saw one hundred thousand women and girls treated that way. Will the nuns go now?”
Father Joe insisted that they must, physically pushing many of them onto the boat.
"All of the Chinese and mixed race as well, Father Joe. You know what will happen to them."
They packed the schooner full and sent it off. There was no room aboard for even one more man. Ned stayed on shore.
They heard gunfire as the schooner slowly made sail, discovered two loads of Japanese drawing up at the wharf in confiscated plantation trucks, and firing their rifles at the distant boat, watched from inside the warehouse as they dragged out a machine gun and set it on its tripod on the wharf. An officer carrying a sword strutted across to the gun, estimated the range and clearly decided it would not do the job. He called men down from the back of one of the trucks, ordered them to raise a radio aerial.
"Get out of the way, Father Joe. Run. Back to your office. They are going to call planes in."
Ned checked his rifle, rested it on the sill of a front facing window. He was no great hand with a rifle but at less than one hundred yards was able to hit the radio first shot. His next pair put the officer down.
The Japanese were crazy. Ned had expected them to seek cover and return fire, giving him a last chance to get out. Instead they charged under cover of fire from the machine gun. He hit two more as they ran, dropped the rifle and pulled out his revolver. He killed the first man into the warehouse and then went down under the bayonets of the four who followed him, stabbed repeatedly and lucky enough to die quickly.
They dragged Father Joe from his office and found the time to be more inventive with him, but he died eventually.
The message reached Lae at much the same time as the first raids came in.
"Rabaul's gone."
George swore.
"Nothing from me father, so he hasn't got out."
The Militia sergeants said nothing, they knew what the chances were. They ducked deeper into their slit trenches as another bomber crossed the barracks, the Japanese planes unopposed as far as they could tell. They had watched the Buffaloes go down in the first minutes of the raids, achieving nothing at all. Their anti-aircraft fire had stopped after five minutes, all of the guns destroyed. They thought that one of the bombers might have taken a few hits.
The planes pulled away, returning to their carrier to refuel and rearm and giving them a respite for an hour or two.
George made his way back into the barracks area to discover what if anything their orders were.
The Japanese had had good intelligence and had targeted the barracks as well as the wharves and the Administration headquarters. There were a dozen and more craters in the area of the regimental offices. George spotted Captain Curzon standing on the parade ground, the RSM and a few of the sergeants nearby.
"They hit the shelter by the Officers Mess, Mr Hawkins. No survivors. I suspect we are the only officers left, except perhaps the Quartermaster. I have sent a runner down to stores to discover if he remains. What are your losses?"
"None reported, sir. We dug slit trenches like the new manual said, sir."
There had been a recent report on British experience during the airfield raids in the Battle of Britain; the new opinion was that large shelters were less safe than narrow, deep slit trenches spread at a distance from each other. The colonel had disagreed on the grounds that Japanese bombs were smaller than German and that in any case the Japanese were known not to be able to aim straight with their slant eyes.
"RSM?"
The sergeant-major saluted and said that he believed they had lost very few of the Other Ranks. They had dug slit trenches, 'as an exercise to simulate field conditions, sir, the colonel having ordered us to keep with the old shelters, sir'."
They heard aircraft engines and ran for cover, quartering the sky.
A Place Called Home (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 2) Page 19