Harold Guard

by Pacific War Uncensored: A War Correspondent's Unvarnished Account of the Fight Against Japan

  In spite of these terrible conditions, the most positive thing to prevail was the comradeship that existed between both Australian and American soldiers. The battlefield also produced some amazing stories, one of which I remember in particular involved a Lieutenant Richards. He had led a group in an attack on the Japanese, but they were halted after making fifteen yards, and it appeared that Richards had been shot during the attack. A sergeant within the group reported that Richards had gone down under enemy fire. Though several attempts were made to retrieve his body, they were unsuccessful, being thwarted by enemy machine gun fire. All seemed to be lost. When nightfall came, once more the rain started to fall heavily, and amazingly the downpour seemed to have the effect of reviving Richards. He managed to make his way back to his command post, where they would have been less surprised to see a Japanese soldier.

  Amidst all the terror of the conflict there was the occasional respite, and on one occasion I attended a race meeting that was held at an advanced base near the front. It was, I suppose, also a measure as to how confident the Allies were of defeating the Japanese, as all of this took place pretty much right under the enemies nose. The race meeting was organised to celebrate Independence Day on July 4th 1943, and there were seventeen events in all, which included horse, mule and pony races, tug of war, and relay races. All of this went on while fighters and bombers roared over our heads on their way to combat, but those who were left on the ground were more interested in placing their bets, which ranged from five shillings to ten Australian pounds.

  Harold writes his report in the thick of the New Guinea jungle. He is supporting his writing pad on his one good leg, while his stiff right leg is laid out straight. Author collection

  Hundreds of pounds must have changed hands in total, and the activity around everywhere was frenetic. Mounts included those from the British Cavalry, which the Japanese had captured in Singapore, and were then retaken by the Australians around Buna and Sanananda. The track officials rode around in battered up door-less late model Fords that had also been seized from the Japanese. Lightweight carts, called silkies, had been made using the seats taken from the cockpits of downed Japanese Zeros. The race goers were all arriving in jeeps, bomb trucks, and gasoline wagons. Racing attire included American camouflaged jungle suits, Aussie slouch hats, and airmen fur-lined boots. The starting point for the race was a discarded airplane wing, and the finishing post was marked by a log that also doubled as a stand for the judges. The Australians were victorious in the tug of war against the American Air Corps team, who jokingly protested later that they had been robbed of the title. All of this was overseen by a group of puzzled looking natives, who probably wondered why everyone was running around in the mid-day sun.

  Both Japanese and Allied forces were unaware that, while they fought against each other along the Kokoda Track, the Japanese efforts were being sabotaged by a group of Papuan naives. I found this out from talking to one of the natives called Fredrick Boski, from New Hanover in New Guinea, who had been enslaved by the Japanese. He was able to convey his story to me as he had received some education, on and off, for five years, and had also worked in an operating theatre of a local hospital that had exposed him to the English language. When the Japanese invaded they had rounded up many natives, and Boski had been amongst these people. Not all of the natives were captured, and the only reason why Boski was caught was because his own departure was delayed as he had been helping others to escape. The Japanese had forced Boski to act as a liaison between themselves and the natives, and to round up all of the headmen from the villages, who in turn were told to select the strongest of their men from their communities. What was unknown at the time was that these natives were then to be used as labourers and baggage handlers in the Japanese troop efforts to cross over the Kokoda trail and reach Port Moresby.

  The natives had all been loaded onto a steamer with the Japanese soldiers and horses at Rabaul harbour in August 1942, and thought the destination for their journey would be Blanche Bay. Though instead of cruising south, where all the steamers usually went for Salamaua, they turned northwards and then to the west. As night fell the natives considered hatching an escape plan, but were fearful of the repercussions that might befall them and the villages they had left behind. Any thoughts they had of escape were soon dispelled when a storm rose up, and the seas were so rough that many of the Japanese and natives were taken ill with seasickness. Gradually the storm died out, and at dawn they steamed on. Their journey lasted for another two days, as the route needed to be changed once more because of the presence of Australian ships in the area.

  Allied troops take refreshments while gathered round the bonnet of Harold’s jeep in New Guinea. Harold is second row, far left. Author collection

  Eventually they reached what Boski later found out to be Gona. Australian planes passed overhead, but did not attack; Boski thought that was due to them being able to see that the boat contained mainly natives. The natives were pushed off onto launches by the Japanese, and then taken ashore where they straight away started their journey, which first took them up the Gona track.

  Each native was made to carry a pack that weighed in the region of eighty pounds, and had to follow the Japanese troops who had horses and firearms. After two hours of walking, the natives were allowed some rest, and this was pretty much the pattern of things each day. They all rested for the night before continuing their journey the next day. The Japanese thought that they were well in control of the natives as the trek continued, but little did they know that the natives were already finding ways to sabotage operations. When they were on the track that went over the Owen Stanley, the natives would throw food supplies into the bushes when they were not being watched, and make small holes in the rice sacks so that the contents would leek out. Boski also told me how they would deliberately leave supplies behind, and when they were asked where the supplies had gone, they would quite innocently say that they had forgotten to bring it with them from the last staging post.

  When food supplies became very low the Japanese would ask the natives about which berries and vegetation in the forest they would be able to eat. The natives would recommend anything that they knew to be highly poisonous, which the Japanese then ate with disastrous results. The irate Japanese troops would then beat them with either the flat side of their bayonets, or local saplings. Nevertheless, the Japanese were quite optimistic that they would eventually reach Port Moresby. The natives, on the other hand, knew that eventually their path would make it unsuitable for the horses. As the horses began to struggle, the Japanese troops would hand back their packs for the natives to carry, and if any of the natives refused or struggled, the Japanese would just beat them and leave them by the roadside without food or medication. In spite of this, the natives would continue in their efforts to halt the Japanese progress, and talked to each other about their situation using secret codes that the Japanese did not understand. For instance, they would refer to the Australians as “long fellow men.”

  The natives spent about fifty days in the jungle being forced to support the Japanese. It was when they had reached a place called Naoro, which was only about thirty miles to Port Moresby, that the advance was halted due to some very heavy fighting. The natives were told to go back to the last staging post to get further supplies. Boski realised that the fighting was near, as he constantly heard the sound of guns being fired. When they returned they were told that they were all going to have to move back, and from that point they continued to move further back each day. The Japanese told the natives that this was only temporary, that fresh soldiers would soon be coming as reinforcements, and that the plan to capture Port Moresby would soon succeed.

  As time drew on and food supplies became scarcer, the natives lived on wild edible spinach and food from local gardens. Further retreats followed until they were at the Kokoda Trail, where they made camp again for a few days. They then left Kokoda sometime in November, passed Oivi, and camped a few miles from Kumusi River. T
he Japanese then crossed the river in boats and left quite a lot of the natives behind. Boski and some of his fellows decided that this was their moment, and swam across the river. From there he made his way to back to Gona, where he spent a few days living on taro (a type of root vegetable) and coconuts with other natives who had also escaped. They were then surprised to see a party of Japanese coming from an inland track, with apparently half of their party having already been killed.

  On another day, Boski had gone out for a walk around Gona when he saw more soldiers. He hid in a bush because he was not sure whether they were Australians or Japanese; Japanese would often rob the natives, taking any belongings they might have. As they came nearer he could see that they were Australians, so he went to meet them and tell them his story. They picked Boski and four other natives to go with them to their camp, where they gave them food. Boski stayed with the Australians up to January 1943, helping to translate the pidgin English spoken by the natives who were escaping from the Japanese, which then gave the Allied troops valuable information about enemy movements in the area.

  In the middle of my time in the jungle I got a cable over an army land wire from the United Press in New York, asking me to write what they called “a close-up profile” of General MacArthur at the front. This made me feel very angry, because I looked around at what the soldiers had to do and the conditions they had to live in, yet I was being asked to write about General MacArthur. I hadn’t even seen him since I had been there, though I had heard that he had moved up to Port Moresby where he was living in a house previously occupied by a former Australian Military Governor. In my anger I sent a simple terse reply, saying, “You better get Hans Christian Anderson to write this one.” I then had a reply from a Colonel Diller, who was one of General MacArthur’s Chief Press Officers, asking me to get back to Port Moresby as soon as possible.

  After my experiences in the jungle I was only too glad to get back to Port Moresby, and when I arrived I had to go and see Colonel Diller and a General Willoughby, who was the chief in charge of General MacArthur’s Press Division. They both received me very cordially, and asked me about my message that said that Hans Anderson should write the story. I explained to them that Hans Christian Anderson was good at writing fairy tales, and so would be better suited to conjuring up some make-believe story. They listened attentively to what I had to say, and then said, “Oh yes, come on Hal! You know what New York wants. They want a piece on the General up in New Guinea.” As a result, a breakfast meeting was arranged for me one morning with General MacArthur, and I was told I would be able to have an exclusive interview.

  Our meeting was arranged for 8 o’clock the next day, and I promptly arrived for my appointment at his house. In front was a veranda with some cane furniture on it, so I sat myself down and waited for the General’s arrival. Eventually he came along in a black silk kimono, with a gold dragon on the back. When he approached me I struggled to my feet, but he pushed me back into the chair and told me to remain seated. He sat himself down beside me, and then said, “I’ve heard a lot about you. Old submarine man eh?” Then he launched into a long talk about people who served in submarines, and said that they were the “Queen of the service.” It was quite a long time before we actually got around to talking about the current conflict, and even when we did I found him to be very elusive in our discussions.

  The General would regularly go off on tangents; he talked about Hannibal crossing the Alps, Alexander the Great, and even about General Alexander who at that time was having great trouble in commanding the Allied troops in North Africa. In fact, he managed to talk about everything apart from the topic of the war in New Guinea. Despite that, I came away from the interview and faithfully wrote down every detail—about the cane furniture, the black kimono, the golden dragon, what we had for breakfast and Hannibal crossing the Alps. It was of no surprise to me that none of the story was ever printed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lae Landings

  It was now approaching September 1943, and the next part of the war that I was involved with was an amphibious landing craft attack at a place called Lae, which is about halfway up the northeastern coast of New Guinea. It involved a large number of craft, called Landing Craft Tanks (LCTs), which were sailed across the Pacific from San Francisco and down to Brisbane where they were given minor re-fits. The operation was fairly big, which I think was part of MacArthur’s so-called “leap-frogging” operations along the coast of islands in the South Pacific.

  On September 1st, I was among a group of correspondents who boarded a C47 Douglas troop carrier plane that was on its way to New Guinea, in the first stage of what we had been told was to be the single biggest assault operation that there had been anywhere in the South Pacific area. After landing on a very muddy landing strip, I got a sense of the scale of the operation being planned, as there were more Australian soldiers than I had ever seen before in one place. Floundering in and out of trucks and sliding down slippery planks, I tried to keep up with the troops, who made their way in single file down to the waterside where the Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs)—a large craft used for hauling and launching the LCTs—were waiting for us with what appeared to be great gaping jaws.

  With our exact destination still unknown, an Australian general explained that security was the strongest part of the whole operation, and that “we hope to catch the Japs with their honourable pants down.” With this news the soldiers filed aboard the LSTs, laden down with all the necessary equipment needed for jungle warfare, which included the inevitable billycan. Those men were the heroes of the desert, and did not lack in enthusiasm, believing that the Italians and Germans were far harder opponents than the Japanese. One of them commented to me, “The Jap isn’t as good a soldier as the ‘Jerry,’ in fact he isn’t any better than the ‘Eyeti’ as far as I can see. The only thing I hope is that the little bastards are there in strength wherever we land. We want to polish them off straight away without the trouble of chasing them through the hills. Maybe then we shall have a Christmas at home for the first time in four years.”

  I waded through about two feet of water and boarded one of the LSTs, which was quite a struggle with a stiff leg, as the ramp leading up to the craft was set at a forty-five degree angle and was very slippery. Managing to wedge myself in between the Aussie soldiers for support, with my feet already sopping wet—which one of my comrades told me was fine as long they did not get cold as well—I managed to get onboard. I considered his observation as someone then cried out, “All aboard for the Skylark! Next stop Tokyo.” We then set sail for our destination, still unknown to us, but with the certain objective to defeat the Japanese.

  On September 2nd we were somewhere between Lae and Finschaven. It turned out that our vessel was carrying more than twice her maximum capacity, with both American and Australian troops onboard. As a result, the amount of cabin space available was limited, and some of the Australians who could not be allocated bunks camped on deck, making improvised tents from tarpaulins. I was invited to share a cabin with an engineer lieutenant called Michael Baughman Gill, who was from Miami, Florida.

  On the table in his cabin was a photograph of his wife and two-year-old daughter Janice. He told me that he once assisted the United Press Miami bureau during the 1935 hurricanes. “There isn’t much glamour about these vessels,” he observed. “Boys aboard somehow feel they are forgotten, but many of them don’t realise the important part they play in this war. I don’t think they realise what a gigantic job they’ve got before them in this area, but I do know they’ll do the job well even though they are brand new sailors.”

  To my surprise I was able to help Gill out with a problem he had with the steering gear on the landing craft. These vessels were driven by massive diesel machines that needed a lot of hydraulics to work the big ramp at the end of the boat and also the steering gear. During the journey it broke down, and Gill was full of dismay, as it meant that it would now take us five days to get to Lae; plus, we would need to r
esort to hand steering to keep station with the rest of the fleet. He and the chief mechanic were studying the blueprints of this steering gear, trying to find the fault, when just out of curiosity I looked over their shoulders at the plans. Suddenly I found my mind going back to the time I spent on the K22 submarine, when there had also been trouble with the steering gear. Laid out in front of me in the blueprints was the same type of machinery, and I asked Gill if he would let me take a look at the engines. Initially he was taken aback by my suggestion, but became more enthusiastic after I explained to him my background; he readily agreed, especially given the desperate nature of the situation.

  Harold, back row, fourth from left, with other correspon dents waiting to board a Douglas C47 troop carrier plane in New Guinea. Author collection

  Gill took me down to the engine room, and when we got there the engines were just as I had imagined them, with two rams and big springs for the steering gear to turn either to port or starboard. I knew exactly where to put my finger on the problem and asked Gill for a spanner. Within ten minutes I had managed to put the trouble right, leaving Gill completely amazed. “Good Lord!” he said, “A bloody correspondent has put the steering gear right!”