by Peter Ryan
We reached Boana Mission not long after sunrise. The buildings had the same ill-omened atmosphere about them as ever: even the usually irrepressible Dinkila was subdued. We stayed only long enough to receive the respects of Singin, tultul of Wampangan, and to give him charge of a case of meat to be handed to the next European who entered the area. Then we moved on through Dzendzen, Kasin, and Wasinim to Gain, and at all these villages relays of people were waiting to take over the carrying, while the village officials, complete with hats, were there to salute me at the roadside as I arrived, and then to bid me farewell.
There was an hour or two of daylight left when we reached Gain, and I was uncertain whether to camp or to push on to Badibo. I decided to camp, but sent Watute ahead to warn the people to be ready to carry next day. The old chap was pretty tired, and said his ‘skin was paining’. However, he rubbed nettles all over his arms, back, and chest, and announced that he felt much better. It was not uncommon to see a native doing this. Once or twice I had inadvertently brushed against a clump of nettles, and the pain was considerable, so I do not know how the boys could have borne to rub them all over themselves, bringing up great weals. No doubt it had some beneficial effect, or else they supposed it did.
The track from Gain was a good one, and before daylight next day we had passed through Badibo, and shortly after dawn arrived at Munkip. Watute had done his job well, as usual, and the people were standing by in readiness. He had also sent a lad ahead to Bivoro to warn them of our coming. We reached that village, the last one of our journey, about eight o’clock.
I was feeling sick and weak when the carriers put down the cargo outside the house-kiap, but news travels so quickly that we dared not remain. I told Dinkila to make some beef tea, which I tried to get down, but it was difficult. Then the line moved ahead, out of the last few miles of the Erap Valley and into the bare, stony plain.
Walking in my usual place at the rear of the line to keep the stragglers from falling too far behind, I suddenly felt a wave of great nausea and weakness, and the next thing I remembered was Dinkila and Buka bending anxiously over me as I vomited violently. While Dinkila lifted me into a little patch of shade behind some bushes, Buka rushed ahead to stop the line of carriers.
‘Get my bed,’ I called after him.
‘All right, master. Me-fella savvy,’ Dinkila said, in a tone which implied that all could safely be left in his hands.
Buka was a long time returning. Apparently I had been lying on the ground unable to move for about half an hour before I had been missed, so the carriers were a good way ahead. Buka brought four Bivoro natives with him, the biggest and strongest in the line. They were carrying my bed-sail, blankets, stout poles, and lengths of vine. They set to work at once to make a rough stretcher.
Despite the intense heat of the sun I was shivering, and Dinkila wrapped me in blankets and lifted me onto the stretcher. At a word from Buka the Bivoro natives, one at each corner of the stretcher, picked up their additional burden and hurried down the track after the rest of the line. Every time they stumbled, which was often, I felt as if my frame would jolt apart.
We reached the Erap River and to judge by Dinkila’s shouted instructions they found the crossing hard going, but I was too sick to worry. To have been dropped beneath the cool water would have been a blessing, for the shivering stage had passed and I was now burning with fierce dry heat.
About midday we overtook the main line of carriers. Watute had halted them, out of sight, at the edge of a patch of scrub.
‘The kanakas wanted to stop in some hunting shelters for the night, and continue the journey in the morning,’ he said. ‘But I kept them on the move. The sooner we get out of this the better. We can still reach the Markham by sundown, if we hurry. I’m going ahead to scout,’ Watute added, as he handed cap, rifle, and bayonet to Buka. ‘We are getting near the Markham road now.’ And he vanished silently into the cane-grass.
I called Dinkila and told him to take my maps and papers, which lay beside me wrapped in oilskin.
‘If the Japs attack us,’ I told him, ‘your job is to escape across the Markham with these papers. Never mind about anyone else. You get this packet to the Number One at Bob’s.’
With a muttered ‘Yessir’ he tucked the parcel under his arm and dropped back, while at Buka’s command the line picked up the cargo, which now included me, and resumed the long southward march.
Two hours later, so the watch said, I was conscious of Watute’s voice beside me.
‘We have passed the Markham road, master,’ he said. ‘The Japanese could not have known we were coming, or they would have lain in wait. Unless they see us from behind now, and give chase, we should be safe.’ And he moved away, to exhort the carriers to an even greater turn of speed.
I must have fallen asleep then, for the next thing I remembered was throwing aside the leafy branches with which Dinkila had covered me from the sun, and raising myself on my elbow to look around. The sun was nearly down, and I could see by the slack water surrounding us, and the density of the cane-grass, that our journey was almost ended. The dark forest-covered hills of the south side of the Markham and the kunai spur of Kirkland’s could be seen close at hand. I sank back on the stretcher with a sigh of relief. Almost safe at last! Three shots rang out from Watute’s rifle. He had hurried ahead to give the signal summoning the canoes, and a few moments later the carriers laid the stretcher down at the edge of the muddy, swirling Markham.
Buka was studying the opposite bank with my binoculars. There was smoke from the camp, he said, but no sign of the canoes.
‘Fire again,’ I ordered Watute, and he let fly another volley of three shots into the air. This time there was an answering shot, and the canoes, Buka told me, could be seen pushing off from the distant shore.
It seemed ages before they grounded, and I heard the excited questions of the boats’ crews asking why I was being carried. While the canoes were coming across, Watute had paid off the Bivoro carriers. They had been wonderful, sharing between them the four extra loads caused by my having to be carried, in spite of which they had made the journey in record time. I told Watute to give them each two shillings and some tobacco, and enough meat and biscuits for a meal, since it was nearly dark and they would not be able to return home until next day.
As I lay on the canoe I felt I did not care how long it took to cross. The Japanese had no hope of catching us now. Dinkila gave me back my papers, and I managed to sit upright to respond to the greeting of the white man on the shore. He splashed into the shallows to help me to the bank.
‘Where are you wounded?’ he asked.
‘Not wounded – just a bad go of gastric fever.’
‘But the blood?’ he questioned.
‘What blood?’
‘On the rag you had round your head.’
For a moment I was puzzled. Then, simultaneously, we caught sight of a red and white towel Dinkila had put under my head for a pillow. Through the low-powered binoculars it had seemed that my head was covered with a blood-soaked bandage.
‘Thank God for that, anyhow!’ he said, laughing. ‘You look as if just about everything else had happened to you, though.’ He pulled my arm round his neck, to help me as we made our way up the track to the camp.
Tom Lega was away at Bob’s for the day, but I said a feeble hullo to the others, and within ten minutes had swallowed a cup of tea and half a papaw and was asleep beneath a mosquito-net.
I woke at midday next day, and we pushed straight on to Bob’s. I could walk only very slowly, and often sat down to rest. We arrived just before dark, and the doctor sent me straight to bed. He told me I must go to Wau as soon as I could travel, for a large weeping sore had broken out on my face, caused by exposure to the sun while I had been lying on the stretcher, and he insisted on my seeing a skin specialist.
During the couple of days I was in bed Jim Hamilton and his brother Rob typed out a copy of my report on the visit to the Chinese compound and sat and talked to me. Bill Chaffey thrust his huge red beard under the mosquito-net from time to time to tell me the latest news. Jock had been sent up to Wau, he said, for the ear was getting worse and causing him severe pain.
The typed copy of the report was sent on to Wau by police-boy runner, and on the third day, accompanied by Buka, Watute, and Dinkila, I set out after him.
While I was sick at Bob’s, and during the three-day walk to Wau, one of the closest battles of the New Guinea campaign was being fought. Japanese troops who had just landed at Lae were brought across the bay to Salamaua, and advanced through the bush to attack Wau.
Our reinforcements had only just begun to trickle in there from Port Moresby, and the attacking Japanese took them utterly by surprise, outnumbering the defenders many times over. The enemy came unnoticed along an old mining track, and were in Wau before their arrival was even suspected. The curious thing is that the existence of this trail was known to many of us who had been around the bush, but was nevertheless left unguarded.
The Japanese entered the streets of Wau and reached the foot of the steeply sloping aerodrome. Overcast weather had delayed the landing of planes from Moresby carrying reinforcements, and it seemed that the Japanese would capture Wau. Then, through slightly cleared skies, Douglas transport planes roared in to land right among enemy machine-gun fire. ‘Right! Where are the bastards? Let’s at ’em!’ shouted one massive infantryman as he jumped down from the plane waving his sub-machine-gun. Crack! went a Jap sniper’s rifle from the end of the drome. They picked up the soldier and took him back to Port Moresby in the same plane, a casualty in thirty seconds.
The new troops were the 17th Infantry Brigade, among the most famous fighters in the whole A.I.F. They had fought in the desert, in Greece, Crete, and Syria, and now they were about to add New Guinea to their honours. They were the wildest and the finest group of men I have ever known, a unit one is proud to have been associated with.
Wau showed me a new aspect of war. Instead of the quiet of the jungle, and outnumbered men spying on the Japs but not daring to attack them, all was hurry, noise, and determination. Gone was the placid quiet of the lovely Wau Valley. Now white men outnumbered black, and the streets were crowded with men and vehicles, field telephone-lines were everywhere, improvised signs and direction posts had been put up at every corner. Mechanics had repaired some of the cars and trucks partly destroyed the year before when, following an unconfirmed and (as it turned out) untrue report of a Japanese attack, orders were given to burn Wau township down to prevent it from falling into the enemy’s hands. I was in Wau at the time and remember the panic that accompanied its abandonment when it was fired.
The most picturesque of the mechanics’ repair jobs was the Stonkered Taxi Service – consisting of a nearly wrecked sedan car which had somehow been put back on the road and which now served as an ambulance.
By the time I arrived the Japs had been driven off from Wau itself, but twenty-five-pounder guns right in the heart of the town were pouring shells onto nearby Wandumi Ridge, along which the enemy was retreating. The enemy suffered frightful privations on the march back to Salamaua, and in some cases ate their own dead. I saw one corpse with pieces hacked off the thighs to feed the survivors.
At the casualty clearing station set up in one of the few houses which the torch had spared, the doctors took one look at the sore on my face.
‘Over to Moresby, and then to Australia for you,’ they said.
I went back to my headquarters, the district office, to wait for a plane back to Moresby. Jock, whose patrol gear and maps I had brought from the Wain, was out with the troops near Skindiwai, on the road to Salamaua. He was in charge of their native carriers and was also acting as guide. These troops had been cut off from Wau by the Japanese, but the latest information was that they were fighting on, and it was hoped that they would soon be relieved.
I tied up Jock’s boxes, marked them, and put them in the store for him.
‘I hope he needs them again,’ I said to Watute, who was helping me.
He grinned happily. ‘Japan ’e no can killim Master Jock ’e die,’ he said confidently. ‘ ’Em ’e strong-fella man too much.’
Next morning, in bright sunshine, Dinkila and I boarded an empty transport plane returning to Port Moresby.
Watute and Buka were waiting to see us off.
‘Oh, sorry, master!’ they said. ‘Behind you come back lookim me-fella.’
As they saluted I promised to return as soon as I could. Then the plane’s doors slammed shut, and we lost sight of them.
It was Dinkila’s first ride in an aeroplane. He was not at all afraid, but rather excited, and he watched Wau disappear and the mountains slip beneath us, his nose flattened against the Perspex window. I watched with interest too, for this was the very country over which I had walked from Port Moresby in the early days of the war, before we had any aeroplanes. As I saw the incredible succession of precipitous ridges and valleys pass beneath us I marvelled that every round of ammunition, every tin of biscuits, every case of meat, had been carried on human shoulders across those heart-breaking obstacles to the weary, outnumbered troops who had held the Bulolo Valley all these lonely months. Now we were making the return trip in a comfortable couple of hours. I remarked on the contrast to Dinkila, but he was not interested. He had turned that queer green colour peculiar to a sick native, and I could see that he was retaining his breakfast with difficulty. He stumbled down the steps of the plane into the dusty, blinding glare of the aerodrome at Port Moresby, but his spirits were at their usual high level ten minutes later.
A jeep took Dinkila and me from the aerodrome to the headquarters of Angau (the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit), a vast collection of buildings that stretched right round the beach from Hanuabada native village to the old civil government house.
From here I spent some days visiting various intelligence agencies, answering their questions as best I could about affairs across the Markham. There was now nobody in the country behind Lae, and the intelligence officers felt it was important for someone to be there so that we should not remain ignorant of enemy activity in this important area. For instance, it was rumoured that the Japanese were opening overland communications between Madang and Lae, following a track up the Ramu River, over into the Markham headwaters, and down that river to Lae.
I was keen to return to the Wain country. With adequate supplies and a radio set it would be possible to hole up there for the rest of the war, provided I got back quickly, before friendships with the natives had cooled or been forgotten. Various officers
in these intelligence groups said they would support me if I applied to go back, and offered assistance in supplies, equipment, and information.
The sore on my face was gradually healing, and on one pretext or another I put off visiting the hospital for a fortnight – until I was nearly better – hoping to avoid being sent to Australia. When I finally reported at the hospital I found that it was all under canvas. There were about forty beds to each ward, and they were stretched out in a great double row on bare dirt floors. Most of the time the sides of the tents were kept brailed up to let the breeze in. Many of the patients had been wounded in the Wau battle and in the subsequent pursuit of the Japanese across the ridges to Salamaua.
While I was sitting in the registrar’s office waiting to be admitted a sister walked into the tent. A white woman! And a girl fresh from Australia at that, a girl whose cheeks had not yet been stained yellow by constant doses of atebrin tablets. She must have noticed the astonished look on my face, for she asked what was the matter, and laughed when I explained that she was the first white woman I had seen for more than a year.
‘There are plenty of us here,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably want to go back to the bush before you’ve been a patient very long.’
After a week under observation, which I spent resting in bed, I was told by the skin specialist that I could remain in New Guinea, and was discharged from hospital with a warning to keep my face always well shaded with a hat.
I went back to Angau headquarters to seek permission to return to the Wain. There was a delay of a couple of weeks while my plan was debated by my senior officers, and eventually approval was given.
In the period of waiting I learnt about another phase of warfare – base areas and headquarters. I was learning that war had no redeeming features; that in its every aspect it was futility compounded with varying degrees of degradation. I had already seen something of the physical suffering it entailed. But the dangers and hardship of active service seemed tolerable when I compared them with the shabby atmosphere of service base areas.