by Peter Ryan
In the morning I awoke to a depressing sight: a packed mass of black, brown, and white humanity lying steaming in their wet, dirty clothes, and a house looking even filthier than it had appeared by torchlight the night before. I sat up and shivered. Bandong, one of the highest villages in the Wain, was about six thousand feet above sea-level. No wonder it was cold. I roused Dinkila and Tauhu and told them to light a fire and prepare some tea. Les woke, and we went outside with maps and compass to plan our next move.
‘This is a pretty remote spot, all right,’ said Les. ‘But if the Nips are visiting all the villages it won’t do to stick round the houses. We must get out among the gardens, disperse our stores, and lie low till that mob at Bungalamba has gone on.’
‘These people grow yams,’ I remarked. ‘They probably have little storehouses scattered about the gardens.’
‘They’re sure to,’ Les agreed. ‘Let’s go and sink this tea, and then we’ll have a look round.’
The sweet black tea, scalding hot, gave us new life. As we drank it, we called some of the Bandong people to us, to explain what we intended to do and to seek their help. They were shy, for they had had very little contact with white men. Only one of them spoke pidgin, and he had to translate for the benefit of the others. They soon caught the idea, and brought us to a spot about an hour’s walk farther upstream, leading into a tributary valley. There was a garden here – it had been abandoned the year before, the Bandong men said. Dotted here and there about it, but hardly visible till they were pointed out, were five tiny shacks used for storing yams and firewood. The valley was so steep that it was possible to approach the houses only by the narrow path we were following. Even if we were discovered there, it would be no easy matter for the enemy to take us while our ammunition lasted. This was an ideal hiding-place.
Les and I decided to sleep in one of the shelters with Kari and Watute, and the other boys, with part of the stores, were to use the other four shacks. They were minute houses: one could not stand upright, even in the middle of the floor, while at the edges it was necessary to crawl. The one we were in, the largest, was not quite seven feet long. Les said that if you even wanted to change your mind you had to go outside the house to do it!
As soon as we had posted a sentry we ordered Dinkila to cook a large meal for us, and told the boys to prepare one for themselves. Then we changed into dry, warm clothes and squatted by the fire to read.
‘We’re safe for the present,’ Les said. ‘And, anyhow, it’s no use trying to think about these things on an empty stomach.’
Dinkila excelled himself, and even made a batch of pancakes. When we had demolished his good work we lay on our blankets, maps spread before us, to make an appreciation of the local situation, and work out what we should do to meet it.
At present we considered ourselves pretty safe from attack, and probably would be safe as long as we remained here. On the other hand, it was too remote a spot for us to hear what was happening. It would be necessary, we decided, to move nearer to some of the more important tracks which traversed the Wain and Naba, but we could leave most of our food here as a reserve.
We were worried about the attitude of the native inhabitants of these parts. It was decidedly disturbing. In 1942 the kanakas would have informed me instantly if even a whisper of enemy patrols had reached them. Now they were at pains to conceal every enemy movement from us. The reason was that they feared the Japanese patrols – which moved in greater numbers than ours – more than they feared us. Stories of beheadings carried out by the Japanese seemed to have had a great effect upon the natives. We would have to try very hard to regain some of our influence with them, partly by propaganda through the local men Les had brought over from Moresby, and partly by judicious distribution of presents to influential natives.
We decided to remain two more days in our present hide-out, then venture out cautiously, ascertain the whereabouts of the Japanese, and if possible reach my old camp at Bawan, where I was better known and had more close friends among the local natives. It was no use, at the moment, formulating a detailed plan, since there were too many unknown factors.
We folded up the maps, opened a cake of ration chocolate, and addressed ourselves to reading again.
‘Ha, what do you know! A crossword puzzle!’ Les exclaimed as he turned over the last page of his magazine.
‘Let’s help do it,’ I begged.
‘No fear – I’ll do it on my own first! But I’ll only write very faintly in pencil, so that I can rub the letters out before I hand it over and give you a turn.’
‘O.K., do that. I’ll have my go tomorrow.’
Trade goods and other supplies had made so many carrier-loads that we had been forced to leave nearly all our books behind at Wampit. We had squeezed in a few paperbacks and a magazine or two, but it would not be long before we had read everything.
Next day brought a surprise visitor – Singin, tultul of Wampangan village. He had been among those village officials who had gone to meet the Japanese party at Bungalamba, and when we heard this we hoped to get some detailed first-hand information, for he was a shrewd, observant man. But we were disappointed, for Singin said that when he and his companions reached Bungalamba the Japanese had left, proceeding down the river through Mililuga and Gawan to Lae. There were about thirty of them, and they had come from Sio, on the north coast. Apparently the trip had been hard, for two of them were sick and were being carried.
We heard all this with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was good to know the Japs were out of the way for the moment. On the other hand, if they had really come from Sio, and had crossed over the Saruwaged Range to do it, the mountains had clearly lost all terrors for them, and they would probably be prepared to chase us wherever we went. There was no certainty that the Japs had made the crossing, of course, and we could not understand why they should bother to do so when they could easily have walked round the beach or come by barge. Still, they had gone, and this was our chance to get to Bawan. We gave Singin a very handsome present – a tomahawk – and told him to return to his village and remain there until he heard from us, meanwhile having nothing to do with Japanese patrols. He agreed to do this, saying that he would send all his people into the bush if the enemy approached Wampangan.
We watched his long, lean figure disappear up the hillside.
‘Too smooth by half,’ Les said, shaking his head.
‘Yes. He saw the Japs all right, I bet. All the same, I don’t think we have anything to fear from him. He’s shrewd enough to realize that we might win the war. He knows that if he tipped us off to the Nips and we were the victors he’d be in bad. I think he’ll play a politician’s game, but will see nobody gets hurt – as far as he can.’
That night Les went down with a sharp attack of fever, and we had to wait two days, until he was well enough to travel. The little houses were so cold that it is remarkable we were not all laid low with fever or pneumonia.
On 7th May we set out for Wampangan, travelling round the head of the Bunzok River and passing through the villages of Kawalan, Ganzegan, and Kwamboleng. Although the country was wild and steep, we moved much more quickly than before, because we had left more than half our cargo hidden in the garden at Bandong.
The road showed signs of recent maintenance work. But it wa
s the villages that astonished me. In each case, including Wampangan, the old site had been abandoned and a new village of model houses had been built. There was also a great increase in the area of cultivation.
Singin greeted us effusively and announced his intention of co-operating whole-heartedly. His was not a very convincing performance, and one could quite easily have imagined him saying the same thing to the Japanese. However, we thanked him and gave him a small present, telling him to have carriers ready in the morning.
As we sat down to eat our tea by lantern-light Dinkila asked whether we would consider going to the mission, seeing we were so close, to shoot a bullock. He hinted that, though he was equal to the task if need be, it placed a strain on even the best cook’s ingenuity if the meat always came out of a tin. A piece of nice grilled steak, now, he said…
He had struck the right note. Les and I looked at one another, our mouths watering.
‘I’ll go down there in the morning if you like,’ I said. ‘You can go straight to Bawan with the cargo. If all is well I should be there almost as soon as you are.’
‘Do you think it’s worth the risk?’
‘I’m pinning my faith on Singin. I don’t think he would let me go if the coast weren’t clear. It’s pretty safe, I reckon.’
In the morning Kari, Watute, and I set off for Boana, having received Singin’s assurance that the mission was deserted. On a hill overlooking the mission station we hid for half an hour or so in a clump of bamboos, watching. One or two natives moved about the grass houses, but the usual brooding quietness lay over the iron-roofed ones. Of the enemy there was no sign, but we approached warily, Owen guns cocked. The mission schoolhouse seemed still to be in use, though we got the impression that it had been hurriedly vacated as we approached. As before, the feeling that hostile eyes were watching our every movement assailed us. Kari, who had been with me the first time I visited the mission, said he still thought it was ‘place no good’. I agreed with him.
In the mission house various signs of the enemy visit remained. The organ had been broken open, and there was a pile of cigarette-butts on the veranda, as though a sentry had been posted there. All small pieces of cloth had been removed – presumably to patch clothes with, for native reports all agreed that the clothing worn by the Japanese was in an extremely tattered state. In their usual filthy way they had covered the veranda with excreta not six feet from where they had slept.
There was nothing of real interest to be seen, so we hurried across the now much overgrown and boggy aerodrome in search of the cattle, which we found grazing at the edge of the bush. It seemed as though the Japanese had tried to round them up: they had been very tame and quiet before, but now they fled as soon as they heard us approaching. Kari dropped to his knee and shot a big black bullock clean through the head as it ran. I looked at him approvingly. ‘A good man to have around when the Nips turn up’ was my unspoken comment on his marksmanship.
We skinned and quartered the bullock and hung the meat up under the trees. It would be brought on to us at Bawan by some of Singin’s men. Then with a quick backward glance at the mission we hurried off to catch up with Les.
As we strode along the track I saw that it too had been cleared and levelled and that my last orders to the people – to let the roads revert to bush – had been ignored.
When I reached Bawan village Les had already arrived and told the people that I was following. They were standing about waiting for me, and though some of the older men greeted me with some show of affection, the tultul and the younger men made no attempt to conceal the fact that our presence would be a serious embarrassment to them. The camp itself was unchanged. Les had quickly installed himself, and out in the kitchen I could see a fire blazing, and Dinkila and Tauhu at work with billies and frying-pans.
‘Rather cosy set-up,’ Les said approvingly as he looked at the double roof and the canvas-lined walls. ‘It’ll keep pretty snug even on the coldest nights.’
‘Yes, it’s warm and comfortable, all right. When we get a fire going it’ll look fine.’
Les examined the unorthodox architecture of the fireplace.
‘Does it really work?’ he asked.
‘Most of the smoke goes out. After all, you aren’t staying at the Ritz!’
Les grinned. ‘No. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Ought to be glad to have a camp like this all ready made.’
For a few days it seemed that our routine at Bawan would be very much the same as it had been in December. Food was good and plentiful, and the people came every day to sell it. By ten each morning the grassy space in front of the house was filled as usual with chattering women bearing string bags of potatoes, bananas, beans, tomatoes, and every conceivable kind of vegetable. On one occasion, while buying food, I made one faux pas which might have spoilt our relations with the people. One woman stood a little apart, holding her string bag on her back, while the others had spread their bags open on the ground to display their wares. I bought all the food on the ground and then approached this woman.
‘What have you got there?’ I asked, peering at the indistinct shape in the bottom of the bag. ‘Potatoes?’
‘Potatoes!’ she exclaimed indignantly. ‘Piccaninny belong me!’ And she produced from the bag her first child, a fine little boy about three months old. She was as proud as could be of him, and I hastily gave her a little present of salt to soothe her outraged feelings.
‘Potatoes!’ I heard her snort as she walked off down the hill with the others.
While I did medical work Les talked to the natives of the surrounding villages about the war, telling them of the ever-increasing air raids on Lae. As he spoke, planes were passing over the camp making their runs on the township, and the sound of bombing and anti-aircraft shelling could be heard clearly.
There was a series of earth-tremors while we were at Bawan, and a lot of heavy rain, resulting in numerous landslides. Often as we lay in bed at night we heard a loud crash followed by a thunderous roar, lasting sometimes for a couple of minutes, while the whole house trembled and creaked. And then in the morning there would be a huge piece of the mountainside lying in the valley below, often with trees still growing on it much the same as when it had been a few hundred feet higher up and part of the mountain.
At night, after Dinkila had placed the little kettle of black coffee on the table and fastened the canvas cover across the door, Les and I drew closer to the fire and, to pass the time away, played the old children’s guessing game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral. We attained a high degree of proficiency in detecting such improbable objects as ‘the left boot of the Japanese commander in Lae’.
Another little game after lights-out was to make up limericks about young girls from Bawan,Wampangan, and other villages in the district. Many of them were rather ingenious and amusing, but I cannot recall any which could properly be printed here.
Unfortunately this pleasant existence was not to last. On 12th May, just at dusk, two exhausted natives staggered into the camp, having run almost all the way from Samandzing. We helped them up into the house while, between great sobbing breaths, they told us that a Japanese party had arrived in Samandzing from Lae and had announced their intention of proceeding to Boana via Bawan. In 1942 this would not have been very serious news. The camp was some litt
le distance from the main track, and I would merely have kept a very good watch and let the Japanese go past, secure in the knowledge that the local natives would not betray me. Now the situation was different. The attitude of the natives, though becoming friendly again, was far from certain. Worse still, they had been so busy with their road-building that a newly made track from Samandzing, twelve feet wide and as smooth as Collins Street, lay right in front of our door.
As Les set up the radio to tell Port Moresby of this latest development we wondered what to do next.
‘We have to get out of here, that’s certain,’ Les said. ‘You’ve been all round here before – where do you reckon is the best spot?’
‘I think we ought to keep as close to the centre of things as we possibly can. There’s plenty of villages where they would never find us in ten years, but which would be no good to us because we wouldn’t hear a word of what’s happening. I think if we go to Orin, a couple of hours away, we’ll be safe enough for the present.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Les said as he plugged in the ear-phones. ‘Get us a lamp, will you? I can’t see what I’m doing.’
I told Dinkila to get Les a light, and ordered the rest of the men to prepare everything for the road so that we could get out of Bawan first thing in the morning. Kari doubled the sentries and sent one man to watch the track from Samandzing about half a mile out of Bawan. I was not seriously worried about an immediate attack, for if the Japanese had only just arrived in Samandzing it would be a good two days before they reached Bawan. But we would take no chances.
At first light next day all the men of Bawan came to carry our gear to Orin. I looked sadly at the vegetable garden I had planted in January. It was showing great promise, and we had already eaten in imagination the succulent peas and beans it would soon produce. I cast several regretful glances backwards as we moved up the hill to Gewak village, an hour away, and then round the hillside to Orin, a further hour.