Fear Drive My Feet
Page 31
‘I never knew there was bears in this country,’ he remarked.
When I told him that the bear tracks he described were in fact crocodile marks, he nearly passed out.
‘Oh goddam!’ he muttered. ‘And to think I swam that river in three places!’
He stayed with me for a few days in the hope that Tex would come in with a plane. One morning at breakfast he held up his hand excitedly. ‘Listen! That’s a Piper Cub!’
The noise sounded more like a motorbike than an aeroplane but I rushed down to the little strip and set fire to a pile of dry grass. The smoke would give the pilot the wind direction, if it should turn out to be Tex.
Just at treetop height the little plane soared over and circled the camp. Tex’s red face beamed down on us as he waved. Then – a perfect landing on the strip.
Tex grinned as he and the pilot stepped out.
‘Plane’s at our disposal,’ he said proudly. ‘I had quite a struggle to get it – had to go over to Port Moresby in the end. It’ll be kept at Tsilitsili, and come out here every day or so.’
The Cub pilot and the fighter pilot were discussing the length of the strip. They didn’t fancy their chances of a safe takeoff. They wanted it made longer for future flights, but told us what to do to help them off the ground on this occasion.
With the help of all the Amamai people we fastened strong vine ropes to the tail of the Cub, and then the two Americans climbed in. The pilot revved his engine as hard as he could, and while the tail of the plane lifted and bucked we held it back grimly with the ropes. Then, at a signal from the pilot, we let go, and the little craft shot forward and into the air, almost as if it had been catapulted.
‘Well, I guess that’s one way of getting that machine off the ground,’ said Tex. ‘But we better lengthen that strip and cut down that line of trees at the end.’
The days passed pleasantly enough. Tex moved to and fro, and extended the drome so that we even had visits from DC-3 planes. Troops moved up – native infantry, and then Australians. They were followed by an American radar unit. All this relieved me of the necessity for patrolling, and I concentrated on collecting native intelligence among the villages, which sometimes yielded information of value from across the river.
Most of the walking was over flat country, but my health was getting worse, with bouts of fever every few days. I could cover only short distances at a time, and had to rely more and more on the police.
One day, after a few days’ absence, Tex flew in and casually handed me a parcel.
‘Many happy returns of the other day,’ he drawled. ‘Just seen your folks in Melbourne, and they said it was your birthday.’
My twentieth birthday had passed the same way as my nineteenth – in the bush and forgotten. But Tex, in the nonchalant way I was now accustomed to, had drifted the several thousand miles down to Melbourne, just for the day, and had called on my family. I had not seen them for nearly two years.
When we heard the news of the fall of Salamaua we issued double rations all round and turned on a party for the local kanakas.
Then the assault on Lae began. Downriver we could hear the bombardment.
A few days later a R.A.A.F. Moth plane landed on the strip. We ran down and the pilot handed me a letter.
‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘You’re wanted pronto down near Lae.’
He would not even turn his engine off, and I had only time to get personal gear, climb into the passenger’s cockpit, and we were in the air.
We landed at Nadzab, a few miles up the river from Lae. I had known the place in the early days of the war when, with Bill Chaffey and others of the 5th Independent Company, I had slunk furtively round its hot grass plain looking for Japanese. Now, from a parachute landing a few days earlier, it had grown to a mighty base, bigger than Tsilitsili. From it the assault on Lae was even now approaching success.
I was rushed at once to headquarters for consultations on the various tracks through the Wain and Naba, paths to Boana and Bungalamba, over the Saruwageds, and also up the Leron.
Lae was found nearly empty when our forces stormed the place. Many Japanese had been drawn off to reinforce Salamaua, and the others had made good use of their prepared escape-routes through the mountains. This was final proof that Watute and Pato had correctly interpreted enemy activity in the Wain. Yet, in spite of the information Les and I had sent from Orin, on 9th June 1943, New Guinea Force had said:
In spite of recent native rumours, there seems to be no good reason, tactical or otherwise, why the Japanese should try to open up a track across the Saruwaged or Finisterre ranges, which are over 11,000 feet high!*
It was not until 15th September that Lieutenant-General Herring said in a signal to Major-Generals Wootten and Vasey:
Indications support your view that enemy may be aiming to withdraw northward from Lae to Sio by routes leading through Musom and Boana.*
Now, if only Jock and I had been equipped with radio and allowed to remain without interruption in the mountains, we could have been of some use, pinpointing for our forces every move the enemy made. As it was, our troops, unfamiliar with the fantastic terrain, had to chase and harry the retreating enemy as best they could manage.
The next day I wandered round among our troops as Lae finally fell to us after nearly two years in enemy hands.
Australians were doing a brisk trade in counterfeit Japanese flags, made by painting a bright red disc on a piece of parachute silk. Some copied characters from Chinese Epsom-salt bottles, and we frequently saw an American proudly displaying his ‘Japanese’ flag, which bore the words, had he known it, ‘Two teaspoonfuls in warm water, followed by a cup of warm tea.’
The next step was at hand in our rapidly developing campaign to push the Japs right out of New Guinea. Kaiapit was our objective. It was to be taken and held, as one move forward on the important coastal town of Madang, which for long had been in Japanese hands. It was also intended to deny Kaiapit to General Nakai, in case he sought to use it as a base for a counter-attack on Lae.
The 6th Independent Company, one of our crack commando units, was to perform this task. I was to go in with them, organize a native labour force from the local inhabitants for carrying supplies and for aerodrome construction, and assist with reconnaissance and native intelligence.
An American flew me up the Markham in a Piper Cub. A high wind was tearing down the valley, and we made such slow progress that at times we seemed to be hanging motionless above the jungle. When we reached the rendezvous beside the Leron River a crashed DC-3, flat on the kunai, showed where the 6th Company had already landed.
The pilot found it difficult to put the light craft down in the gusty wind, and a driving rain made visibility bad. When at last we touched down, after many attempts, there was less than an hour to dark.
‘Good luck, buddy!’ bawled the pilot, and he took off again, back to Nadzab, whisked out of sight in a moment by the powerful wind behind him.
The 6th Company men were huddled under groundsheets and one-man tents dotted all over the kunai. Their stores and ammunition were also scattered in heaps among the grass. Portion of the unit had already moved forward a few miles to Sangan, on the
road to Kaiapit. I ran after them, across the flat country, and managed to collect enough Sangan kanakas to bring to the Leron to carry the ammunition and stores forward. We made several furtive trips by torchlight, and had all the cargo in Sangan before dawn.
I collapsed with fever in Sangan, and remember nothing until the following night. I had made my bed under a native house, and one of the 6th Company men shone a torch under the mosquito-net.
‘Sorry to wake you up, mate,’ he whispered, ‘but there’s a Yank called Tex blown in. Says he wants to see you. Do you know him?’
There behind him was Tex, a grin all over his red face.
‘Looks like they’re going to need us,’ he said. ‘Going to be a powerful lot of airstrips needed between here and Madang. I’ll find the drome sites, you work the natives.’
I shook hands with him, but it was hard to find anything to say. Dinkila, who had accompanied him, told me severely to get back to bed. His expression said clearly enough: See what a mess you get yourself in when I’m not there to look after you!
Kaiapit was taken in the next two days, after a fierce and bitter battle by the 6th Independent Company assisted by some troops of the Papuan Infantry. For the loss of ten men they killed about two hundred of the enemy. In the end they sent him reeling back with a bayonet-charge when their ammunition was almost spent. Tex went into action with them.
I lay under the house while the battle raged, too weak to move, whether forward with our troops, or backwards to escape the Japs had they won the day. While I shivered, the sweat ran out the end of the bed-sail, drip, drip, drip upon the ground.
It took me nearly two days more to hobble yard by yard to Kaiapit, leaning on a stick like an old man, and sometimes holding on to Dinkila. We had to pick our way between the Japanese dead, who still littered the ground. Bloated by the tropical sun, some of the corpses had burst right out of their uniforms. Near Kaiapit some of them had been hastily buried. From one of the shallow graves, at the side of the track, a stiffened hand and forearm reached over the path.
I watched, propped with my stick against the trunk of a palm-tree, as a number of soldiers passed. With macabre, unsmiling humour, which some say is typical of the A.I.F., they bent down one by one and shook the hand of death. ‘Good on you, sport,’ each one said gravely to the hand as he moved on towards…perhaps just as rough a grave of his own.
Kaiapit Mission House, on an eminence above the kunai plain, looked to me just like Boana Mission. Tex helped me onto its wide veranda, and got some food, but any attempt to swallow even a mouthful made me vomit.
Later in the day a doctor came, who said that I must be evacuated to Nadzab in the morning.
‘Nadzab nothing, doc!’ Tex drawled. ‘I’ll have a special plane take him straight to Port Moresby.’
I dropped off to sleep on the floor of the veranda, Dinkila squatting on his heels nearby, watching.
Next day, with Tex’s help, I walked down to the strip. On the way we passed a Japanese soldier lying mortally wounded beside the track on a stretcher. He had been revived by one of our medical people, and was now being badgered for information by an interpreter and some intelligence men. As far as I could see he was saying nothing.
As I looked at his face, wasted with fever and suffering, I suddenly felt more akin to him than to the Australians who would not let him die in peace. His eyes, wonderfully large and soft, met mine. In that brief second I hoped he could read the message in my face.
I realized then that I did not really hate the Japanese – that I did not hate anyone. I realized that war accomplishes nothing but the degradation of all engaged in it. I knew that Les Howlett’s death had been in vain, that the loneliness of spirit and suffering of body I had forced myself to endure had been to no end, and that the selfless devotion of my native companions had been, in the final analysis, purposeless.
I said goodbye to Tex and Dinkila. The doors slammed shut between us, and the plane took off.
We turned up the valley of the Wampit River, flying very low. At Kirkland’s the kunai was already silently covering the place. At Bob’s the jungle creepers would, in a few months, drag the houses down and smother them with their weight.
In a year there would be nothing – no mark or vestige to show where they had been.
As we flew across the land which had soaked up the sweat of two years, I could drag one mouldy crust of comfort and of hope from the events of 1942 and 1943:
Man is very brave. His patience and endurance are truly wonderful. Perhaps he will learn, one day, that wars and calamities of nature are not the only occasions when such qualities are needed.
* * *
* I am indebted to Mr Gavin Long, General Editor of the Official War History, for making known to me the existence of the two extracts quoted above, and for allowing me to see the text of a volume of the Official War History—David Dexter’s The New Guinea Offensives.
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