by Peter Ryan
While Jock grumbled, Ian said nothing. He leant back in the shadows on his bed, eyes nearly closed, with cigarette-smoke dribbling slowly from lips that turned slightly in a half-sceptical smile. I looked at Jock’s indignant face and back to Ian’s expression of doubt. Was this story about some of the missionaries true? I was to learn the answer to this later.
The fact that Les had gone back across the Markham to Tungu caused only one slight change in our plans. I was now to send Watute after Les to Tungu, carrying the radio message arranging the dropping of supplies for Jock.
‘It’d be kinder not to take Watute across the range,’ said Jock. ‘He’s probably old enough to be our father. He remembers when the Germans ran this joint. He can attach himself to you when he’s delivered the message, and then you’ll have three police: Buka, Watute, and Achenmeri – if you can call Achenmeri a policeman.’
We set out at dawn next day, stopping for a few moments while Watute rolled his blanket and got ready. He grinned with pleasure at the idea of being on the move – life in this miserable hamlet, perched up in the fog and cold winds, was uncongenial to his old bones. The thought of warmer sun and lower altitudes brought a happy smile to his wrinkled face as he trotted beside me down the steep track.
From the ruined village of Dimini we took the short cut down the river to Karangandoang. We would be saved a day’s walk, and would also avoid another meeting with the Kasenobe kanakas, with their ostentatiously unfriendly bows and arrows. But the walk down the Dimini stream was harder than we had expected, and for a long way we struggled round steep cliffs or splashed knee-deep through the rushing, icy water.
For the rest of the journey I merely retraced my steps of a couple of weeks before through Boana and Gain to Bivoro and across the Markham plain. From Bivoro, Watute struck off across country to the south-west, to cross the Markham higher up and make his way along the Watut River to Ian and Les’s base camp. He would then return to the Wain country and join me, wherever I might be camping.
I slept the night in the house-kiap at Bivoro, and before dawn next day hid all my gear except bed-roll and mosquito-net in the roof of the luluai’s house. A bright, mischievous-looking young man called Dinkila offered to carry the bed-roll to Bob’s, and I took him on, so the party which set out on the final stage numbered four, including Buka and Achenmeri.
The most dangerous section of the journey lay in this final day from Bivoro to the Markham. Gossip travels from one New Guinea village to the next as fast as it moves across any suburban back fence, and native informers had probably told the Japanese commander in Lae of our earlier trip up the Erap. This, coupled with Ian’s sudden appearance on the beach at Hopoi, might persuade him of the necessity to patrol all the country surrounding his base; we might find a Japanese patrol sitting astride the Erap, waiting to intercept any Australian party entering or leaving the mountains by that route. The country was so flat and open that a vigilant enemy sentry would certainly have no trouble spotting a large party. However, we hoped that our small group would be able to slip through.
Buka led the way. He had left his uniform at Bivoro, and instead of a rifle was carrying a hand-grenade in a little string dilly-bag at his side. We walked very fast, breaking into a trot occasionally, just keeping Buka in view ahead of us. If he spotted danger he was to put his hand on his head: we would then find what cover we could in the grass.
The river was less swollen and did not hinder us as it had on the journey up, but a tense moment came when we reached the Markham road. While we others hid, breathless and watchful, in the grass, Buka made a quick search up and down the track, looking for enemy footprints. The grin that flashed across his shiny face told us that he saw none. He beckoned us to follow, and we hurried on, hopeful now of reaching Bob’s safely. About two-thirty, tired, sweat-soaked, hungry, and thirsty, we pushed our way out of the ooze and pit-pit grass of the Erap delta to the edge of the Markham. I searched the low bank opposite through the glasses. Across the rushing, muddy water we saw no smoke from the camp, nor any movement at the canoe landing. I fired the prearranged three shots to summon the canoes, and looked again. There was still no movement. I was going to fire once more, when the tiny figure of the sentry stepped to the water’s edge and waved. He had been studying us carefully before emerging from the bushes. After some minutes the black specks of the crew could be seen launching a canoe. They disappeared from time to time behind the islands, coming towards us so slowly that I kept glancing over my shoulder, kicking at the ground in nervous impatience, afraid that the Japs too might have heard the shots and would hurry to attack us from behind, here at the end of our journey.
We did not wait for the canoe to touch, but splashed out through the shallows to meet it. As we sprang on board with an enthusiasm that almost sank the little craft, I ordered the boss-boy to push off at once for the south bank, and we manoeuvred from island to island in the same zig-zag fashion as we had crossed in the other direction a fortnight earlier.
Tom Lega was waiting as the canoe scraped ashore. He grinned in casual greeting as I dashed the sweat from my eyes and shook his hand. ‘Come up to the hut,’ he said. ‘The others’ll want to hear all the good guts from the other side.’
We crowded into the little wire cage, and I told them first of Ian’s betrayal and escape at Hopoi. They had never seen Ian, but Jock was an old friend, and they bent closer, silent, to hear of his decision to cross the range to the north coast.
They whistled quietly, looking sideways from one to another.
‘Over those mountains! Jesus!’ one exclaimed.
‘Hell, I didn’t think they could be crossed!’ another muttered.
Tom laughed. ‘In peacetime they used to say Jock was a tough guy, even among all the tough guys on this island. If he wants to get there he will, even if he has to crawl every bloody inch of the way on his hands and knees.’
The others shook their heads doubtfully. Once or twice, for a few fleeting minutes at dawn or dusk, these men had seen the clouds roll clear from the Saruwageds. A couple of bets were made, and the odds all favoured the mountains.
While a billy of tea was prepared, Tom rang through to the orderly-room at Bob’s. I heard him shouting with all his lung-power to Bill Chaffey through the faint and feeble field telephone. ‘That’s right – he’s here now! What? What? Yes, he’s O.K., What? What the hell was that? Jock? He’s gone over the range! Range! R-A-N-G-E! Listen, Bill, ask him yourself when he gets up there. So long!’
Tom came back from the phone groaning in mock despair. ‘What a phone! I’d rather use smoke-signals or native drums, I reckon. Bill wants all the news, but you can tell him yourself. You’ll be up there in a couple of hours.’
I laughed, downed the remaining black tea in my pannikin, and called to my boys to follow as I struck off up the grassy hill towards Bob’s.
IV
IN MARI village, half-way to Bob’s, I paused to drink the cool effervescent milk of a green coconut and swap a little gossip with the people. Mari was almost a model village: it was well laid out, and the houses were large and solidly built, many of them with carefully carved wooden ornaments in the shapes of lizards, fish, and turtles. The bare ground between the houses was swept clean, and a rough fence of bamboos kept the pigs away. However, there was a curious tension in the atmosphere, as if many strange
things were happening beneath the surface, unsuspected by the casual observer.
The village was under the domination of a native of strong personality and character called Kwila. Some of the men at Bob’s suspected him of giving the Japs in Lae information about our movements in the Markham Valley. This was never proved, and in fact he was eventually awarded the Loyal Service Medal. But even if he had been playing ball with the Japanese, who could blame him? The war was not of his making. If, for some reason unknown to him, white men and yellow men wanted to fight like animals in his country, what was more natural than for him to work for the safety of his own people? Until it became clear who was going to win the war, a sensible politician would speak softly to both sides. At that time, however, with our lives at stake, it was hard for us to take this detached and reasonable view, and we treated as traitors all natives who associated with the enemy, no matter what the circumstances.
I talked to Kwila as I squatted to drink the coconut milk. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and impassive of face. His dark eyes flickered – now narrowed to slits, now wide open. The answers to my questions came volubly, and seemed phrased to please rather than simply to tell the truth. He could speak English well, but was careful to use only pidgin, for painful experience among the whites in Lae had taught him that a ‘coon’ who spoke English was ‘cheeky’, and liable to be put ‘in his place’. I finished the coconut milk, and he walked with me to the edge of the village, where we parted with mutual assurances of esteem; but I had learnt nothing, absolutely nothing, from our twenty minutes’ conversation.
The fading light was already shutting us in in an ever-narrowing circle when we reached Bob’s. With its haze of blue smoke hanging in the trees, the camp appeared before us out of the jungle just as mysteriously as it had a couple of weeks earlier. Clammy sweat glued the green shirt to my back, and the mosquitoes hummed and bit. I thought rather wistfully of the Wain country, cool and high, across the river. And yet it was pleasant to be back, to taste the illusion of security produced by the presence of numbers of other white men. Here, too, was a sense of contact with a world outside the swamps, mountains, and jungles of New Guinea, for the wireless picked up the Australian news bulletins, and sometimes letters were delivered. Compared with grey Kasenobe on its fog-smothered mountain-side, the rough camp at Bob’s was civilization.
In the sergeants’ mess they were waiting for tea. The same bearded men sat rolling their own cigars while they cursed the mosquitoes. The gramophone was still playing, in spite of the fact that the only needle had been lost. In its place they were using thorns from a lemon-tree which grew in a native village a few miles away.
The first person to see me as I approached was Bill Chaffey, who was in the act of pruning his red beard. He sprang to his feet. ‘Ha! How was my map? It couldn’t have been too bad, seeing you got back here O.K.’
‘It was all right as far as it stretched,’ I told him, ‘but that wasn’t far enough. I walked right off the edge of it. I’ve just come back for a day or two, to get more stores. What’s the set-up now? Is there plenty of food?’
Bill fixed me with that firm, half-humorous look which must have been such an asset to him in Parliament. Before he could speak, the shattering racket of the beaten kerosene-tin announced tea.
‘That saves me the trouble of answering your question,’ he said. ‘You just come and see for yourself.’
We sat down at the rickety table. Bully beef, pumpkin, papaw, black tea without sugar.
‘There you are, my boy!’ Bill said. ‘More eloquently than words could express, you have before you the whole stores position of Bob’s!’
‘When are you expecting more?’
‘They’re overdue already, but I hear there’s a big carrier-line from Wau likely to reach here today or tomorrow. I hope they do. We’re out of tobacco, and we’ve bought so much brus from the local kanakas that even that’s getting scarce.’
Two days later the new rations arrived on the sweating shoulders of a long line of carriers. I persuaded Major John Taylor, the officer commanding Bob’s, to give me a month’s stores for one man. It was a generous gift, for his own men had long been on short rations, and it was not his responsibility to provide for those across the river. The people who should have supplied us apparently thought we could live on grass or air, for they never once sent us so much as a single tin of bully beef. Even the special Christmas parcels provided for each soldier were not sent on to Jock or me, or kept for our return. Somehow they just vanished mysteriously.
Bill Chaffey and John Clarke helped me again with trade goods and other valuable stores. There were two large drums of salt and a good supply of stick tobacco and newspapers, all of which would buy more local produce and thus help to spin out the rations. Bill supplied me with a couple of gallons of kerosene, a case of hand-grenades, and some gelignite with fuse and detonators. The gelignite would be useful for setting booby-traps, to protect us against enemy patrols which might try to surprise us in camp.
As soon as all this gear was put together and made up into fifty-pound boy-loads I sent Achenmeri to Mari village to ask Kwila to send up twenty men to carry it as far as Kirkland’s. From Kirkland’s, Buka crossed the Markham alone, to bring boys from Bivoro to continue the carry for me, because the Mari natives were too afraid and suspicious to go farther, and I, in turn, was suspicious of them.
Tom Lega gave me a spot for the night in one of the crowded little sleeping-huts. I expected Buka back next morning with the carriers, but it was not until after midday two days later that the sentry on the canoe landing reported a group of natives across the river, and we heard the three shots from Buka’s rifle. They had been two anxious days, for we were afraid Buka had been captured, and perhaps forced to reveal the movements of Jock and Ian. However, the delay had been caused by difficulty in locating the natives’ houses, which were scattered among the gardens on the hillsides.
Only two canoes were serviceable, one having been dismantled for repairs. Two trips were needed to ferry over our gear, and it was nearly four o’clock before it was all piled among the cane grass on the north bank.
Making so late a start, we could not reach Bivoro that night, so we camped in the hunting shelters halfway up the Erap, where I had met the luluai on my first trip. They were dirty, ramshackle affairs, but we were glad to be out of the light rain which fell during the night. So far there had been no sign of enemy activity, and we left before dawn next morning, to get away from the flat country. In the mountains one felt reasonably safe, but here the line of heavily laden carriers would be visible for miles as it snaked slowly across the grassy plain.
We stayed in Bivoro only long enough to pick up the gear I had hidden on the way down. Dinkila, the boy who had carried the bed-roll, said goodbye here, because he wished to remain in his village.
By nightfall we were in Gain, where we slept, and the following day moved to Boana, where I took up my quarters in the smaller of the two iron-roofed houses. I did not know where Ian was camping, for when we parted he had not decided on a place. It was arranged merely that I should meet him ‘somewhere in the Wain’. I had thought Boana, in the heart of the Wain country, would be the best place to pick up news of him.
My night at the mission was restless. Full of wreckage and smelling of decay, the house creaked and groaned rheumatically. The unaccu
stomed softness of a proper bed drove sleep away from me rather than induced it. There was a cuckoo clock in the room, which I had wound up for fun and then forgotten. When its sudden sharp note struck in the darkness I jumped to the floor and grabbed my revolver, ready to blaze away at the first thing that moved.
Next day was cold and dreary, and when the chill wind blew aside the veil of mist I saw the silent, watchful mountains staring balefully at us all around. I went into the big house and gathered up a bundle of papers from the piles which littered the floor. There was also a copy of the German-language edition of Hitler’s Mein Kampf which I took with the papers over to my ‘bedroom’ in the other house. I intended to pass the time reading as much of them as I could with my scanty knowledge of German. My room had two windows: one was shattered and the other one was jammed open, and I was soon shivering. As I already had my warmest clothes on, I could only pull my blankets round me as I settled down to read.
Almost all the magazines were filled, from cover to cover, with Nazi propaganda articles, and elaborate gravure pictures of Nazi rallies featuring Hitler, Goering and Goebbels. None of the publications seemed to deal with missionary activities. I mumbled aloud as I read, skipping the most difficult passages, but I got the gist of things. Some of the papers and circulars were easier to read than others, for they had been typed on a machine with ordinary roman letters, unlike the difficult German black-letter of the printed books.
There were several letters referring to the establishment of a branch of the Nazi Party in New Guinea, and in one of them the writer warned that the activities of the party should be carried on with discretion, ‘lest we should lose the great freedom of action which the Australian government has so far permitted us’. In case I had misunderstood these letters, I took some of them back to Bob’s on my next visit, where Jim Hamilton, who worked in the cipher office, and who spoke German well, confirmed and amplified my rough and incomplete translation. I was glad that I had shown them to him, for I then sent them, with a report, to the district office in Wau, but a year or so later, when I tried to follow the matter up, nobody seemed to have seen either the documents or the report, and I could never find out what had happened to them.