“Luck, lads!”
A cloud of smoke rolled down towards them and George ran into the cover of low bougainvillea, keeping well clear of the thorns. A second to look about him, then over to a line of rain trees marking the creek, low down by the bank and into the cover of a banana garden, freshly planted during the Wet Season and the suckers already ten feet high with four feet long leaves drooping and hiding him completely.
There was a sustained burst of machine-gun fire as he ran; a break of a few seconds while the loader changed belts, then another long chatter. He heard a grenade and then an exchange of rifle fire. Then nothing.
An hour later he caught up with Sergeant McGuire.
“Dick and Johnny, sir?”
“They told me I was in the bloody way and sent me back, Sergeant.”
“Good. We need you. You know the bush and might get some of the boys back as far as the goldfields. I’ll pull the backstop up to us here. Can they get trucks this far, sir?”
George pointed – there was flame across half the far hillside. The burning bamboo had dried out dead wood lying on the floor of the bush and that had spread the flames to another clump of bamboo and that had allowed the bushfire to take off.
As they watched a pair of fighter planes came down the valley in a screeching dive and opened fire with cannon and machine guns at a target they could not see. Another pair followed and then a squadron of dive-bombers dropped their loads.
“That was the village, Sergeant. They flattened it because we might have been there.”
The planes flew back to the carrier and the valley became quiet again. After a while they heard truck engines, pulling back towards Lae.
“They’ve reported back that they destroyed the village and us in it. No need to hunt any longer.”
“That’s right, sir. They must need to consolidate in Lae, push out to any other places they want down the coast, then wait for the garrison troops to arrive. These naval troops must be right at the end of their resources, sir; this is the fifth landing they've made. They won’t want to do much for the next day or two. They'll want to wait for the convoys to come and refuel and rearm and make up their losses of men before they do too much more.”
“We should be clear until the land planes fly in, Sergeant. Move the men along the line of the bush until we’re in sight of the track, then we’ll move out at dusk and make our distance through the night hours. Tell the lads to get as much sleep as they can as soon as we’re laid up.”
They spent the rest of the day sleeping, undisturbed, the sentries reporting nothing. As night fell they used the ten minutes of dusk to cross the grassland to the track and then fell into a fast march, up the long hills and to the point at the edge of the valley where the track that eventually reached Bulolo turned off.
The truck was there, the platoon waiting for them. They had seen the aircraft, heard the distant noise and had wondered how much longer they should wait, thinking it probable that all had been lost.
They put a meal together – bully beef, one small tin between two; navy biscuits, a packet to each man; two bananas apiece. They lit a fire in cover and brewed tea, three or four mugs to each man.
George issued malaria tablets, made a show of taking his.
“Any man who gets malaria is dead. We can’t carry you and you won’t be able to walk for at least three days. If you don’t take the pills then you will get malaria – that’s a bloody certainty. You may anyway, the pills are better than ninety per cent good, but they ain’t perfect.”
“What about the blokes who say you end up with a soft nob if you take ‘em, sir?”
“You’ll be stiff enough if you don’t take ‘em. Rigor bloody mortis!”
There was a shout of laughter, but he knew that some of them would throw the pills away in terror for their manhood.
“Can we march the track at night, sir?”
“You might. If the Japs get on our tails we may have to. There’s too big a chance of breaking an ankle in the potholes, or of falling into a ravine, or even of treading on a bloody snake for my liking. Better to see where we’re going, while we can. Particularly where we go down, though the valley bottoms – we’ll be picking through the swamps there, more like stepping stones than a track. We make ten miles a day overall, we’ll be doing well. Keep your water bottles full – top ‘em up whenever we get to running water.”
They set out, a few more than two hundred, at first light, keeping to their platoons, alternately left and right where the track was wide enough, trying to be quiet to listen for aircraft.
George stood at the front, each platoon walking past him.
“If planes come, step into the bush and keep still. Don’t open fire on them. Only if they start shooting at us do you fire back. If you see any kanakas, put the word out and I’ll come to you. Don’t shoot at them!”
The valley bottom was open for the better part of two miles and they hurried across, through the shoulder-high kunai grass, sweating as the temperature rose. They entered a swathe of bamboo, perfect cover but encroaching onto the track, forcing them to single file and slowing them. They gained a hundred or so feet in height and the vegetation changed again, a mixture of trees and cane, damp underfoot. The walking was slower here, crossing a hillside, the track twisting and turning round outcrops of bare rock, some of them a hundred yards across and open to the sky.
Where there was a clearing they could see clouds building to their north.
“Going to piss down through the afternoon, Sergeant McGuire. It’ll keep the planes down, but the walking will be bad and we’ll have no shelter for the night.”
"What do we do, sir?"
"Keep the groundsheets dry in the packs. Tell the blokes not to try to cover themselves as they march - it won't work and they'll just get the sheets saturated. Hour before dark we'll get up into the trees as far as we can, cut branches. The men must pair off - one groundsheet to sit on, the other man's draped over them like a rough tent. They'll be able to sleep in turns. If I can find bamboo I'll get a fire going, get some hot tea at least, but I expect everything will be too wet, sergeant. If it's not raining in the morning then hang the groundsheets out to dry for an hour before we get going. It costs time, but it might keep 'em alive a bit longer."
They passed two villages as they marched slowly though the rain. There was no point to stopping - neither had more than a dozen round huts of ten or twelve feet diameter. They could not all have got inside them.
The Pidgin speakers called across to the men, the women all hidden safely away, and told them that the Japanesi were coming. It would be wise to run away, to keep off the tracks.
They were nomadic to an extent, shifting their villages every year or two to fertile land, leaving their most recent gardens to lie fallow for fifteen, even twenty years. They would find it easy to disappear into the bush.
George told them that the Japanese would kill every man who had helped the white masters to escape them. They would be back, not this year or next, but some time, and when they came they would reward 'good diggers' who had done the right thing. The big men of the Japanese carried 'swords' - long, very sharp bushknives; the Australians would pay them good money when they came back for any swords taken from Japanese they had killed.
"What about heads, master?"
"If you get them, we will pay for them. But they will kill a hundred of you if they find you have taken one of their heads."
"Only if they catch us, master!"
They laughed and George handed them a packet of black rolling tobacco, tarry and appalling to Australian tastes, much prized by the bush clans who liked a cigarette with a bite to it.
"What was that about, sir?" Sergeant McGuire was unimpressed by the five-foot tall, bandy legged, near-naked little men. Their short bows and cane arrows seemed almost toy-like and he did not rate them as fighting men.
"If there'd been only the two of us they'd have put arrows in from ambush. They can hide in the bush and fire from twenty feet away. They migh
t not kill but they'd put us down and then throw rocks at us. When they'd broken us up a bit they'd risk coming in with axes and bushknives. Then they'd have our guns and all the stuff in our packs. Some tribes would have us in the cooking pots as well. I don't know whether this clan is cannibal - some are, some living next door ain't."
"Sod that for a game, sir!"
"Nasty, ain't it? They get the chance, they'll pick up a couple of Japs and get their rifles and then they'll hang about any Jap camps or posts and kill 'em as they can until it gets too risky and then they'll disappear into the bush for a few months. Then they'll use the guns in clan fights."
"Why do they stay here, in this bloody bush? Ain't there any better place to go?"
"She's poor country, but she's theirs. The first of the gold-diggers found that out when they came through. They didn't really count how many came through Lae in the Twenties and early Thirties, so they've got no idea how many died finding this track through to Bulolo, but it was more than one or two."
As they passed the second village a young man came running up to George, told him to turn left uphill round the second bend in the track. He led the way and pointed them into a small cleft in the limestone hills. It looked as if a cave had collapsed at some time in the past leaving an overhanging cliff face sheltered from the rain; there was space for them all to lie down and dry wood sufficient for tea-making, far more comfort than George had expected. There were half a dozen cave openings but the youngster advised them not to go inside - very nasty things lived in there.
"Could be snakes, might be bush-demons, but I ain't going inside to find out. You can if you want, sergeant. If you come out again you can tell me what they are."
"I'll tell the lads to keep out, sir. Is the water safe in the pools, sir?"
"Probably not. I never drink standing water, sergeant. There'll be a stream in the valley bottom when we set out again tomorrow. Safer to use that."
"We made good time today, sir. At least fifteen miles, I reckon."
"Lost no men, either. Better than I hoped for. If the rain holds off, so that the walking's easier, then we might make Bulolo in ten days. It's the Dry Season now, but that don't mean too much up in the hills here. Warn the men about ulcers again - they must cover every scratch. What's that silly bastard doing?"
George pointed to a man who was covering up an opened bully beef can.
Sergeant McGuire walked across, asked what he was doing.
"Keeping a mouthful for later, sir, before he goes on sentry."
"He'll get the quickshits if he does - canned meat goes off in an hour of being opened up here. You've got to eat it straight away and throw out anything left over. Eat it or dump it, man!"
If they had had a week in the bush, training in peacetime, they would have known these things. Simple ignorance was going to kill many of them.
They reached Bulolo in two weeks, one hundred and twenty within reason fit men carrying another forty between them. Another two score lay in graves along the track. One had been bitten by something - snake or spider, they did not know - and had died in the night, his throat swollen closed. Most had gone down to dysentery and then dehydration, unable even to keep water inside them. One had died of a fever of some sort - not malaria, he had taken his tablets - but one of the unknowns that burned a man out from the inside, a massively high temperature ending him, or so it seemed. George thought they had done very well - he had not expected to bring one half of them in.
There were still diggers in Bulolo, working for lack of any other instructions. They were happy, at first, to see the soldiers.
"No bloody planes in for sixteen days, cobber - we're scraping the barrel for food!"
"So are we, mate, and you can see how many of us there are!"
"So what do we do, now, mister?"
George looked about him, spotted one or two familiar faces, nodded to them.
"Is the radio working?"
"Nothing answering, mate. Tried Lae half a dozen times and she was dead. Japanese got there, I suppose?"
"Bloody great fleet of them, mate. Aircraft carrier as well. What about Moresby?"
"Haven't got a radio frequency for Moresby. Never needed to call 'em."
That was a problem.
"Sergeant McGuire - have you got any signallers in your lot? None of us in the Militia did anything with radios."
One of the soldiers was of the right sort, and he had kept his listings in his notebook, fortunately written on pages which he had not yet used for other purposes.
"Now all you need is bloody luck, sir. Getting a signal across the mountains to Port Moresby is going to need a lot of it!"
They made contact in the evening - apparently conditions were better on a dry day after dark, for reasons they none of them understood. Voice signals were weak and frequently broke up but Morse transmissions were generally successful.
The news was not good.
"One bloody Junkers that can make it into Bulolo. They won't risk their Dakotas on this landing strip, for which I don't blame them, I suppose. A pair of little De Havillands that will carry eight passengers apiece. They can get the casualties out tomorrow, and enough food in to keep us going. A week, at least, to evacuate. They want to know if can demolish the dredges and stop the Japs from getting into the gold"
They were very willing to destroy the dredges, but had no means of doing so. A slow radio discussion brought the decision to send explosives in on the first flight in the morning; a longer debate added a sapper to the load as none of them knew how to set a charge or detonate it.
"What about the boys, George?"
Jacky was still there, one of the longest-serving prospectors on the fields, working for the Company now. George assumed he had not made his pile yet or, more likely, had no other life to go to. Possibly there was a warrant out for him Down South in Australia; just as probable was that he had no family, no reason to be any place else.
There were at least five hundred labourers still in Bulolo, all from distant clans from the lands closer to Lae. They could not be sent home, and would not survive left in Bulolo - they could not grow food in the barren lands around the workings and the local clans would make war on them, being outsiders and therefore enemies.
"They must go to Moresby, Jacky. Christ knows how I can persuade them to find planes for 'em. Twenty flights, at least!"
George spent nearly two days on the radio, arguing and finally making veiled threats. If the army left the labourers to die, then it would be a war crime and the news would certainly 'get out, somehow'. As well, he argued, there was normally a shortage of workers in Port Moresby, there being few plantations around the town. The army would need hands to build roads, to extend the airstrip, to perhaps cut a track up the bluffs behind the port - the boys would not be a useless drain on resources.
They agreed in the end to requisition a pair of the ration carrying planes that were building up supplies in Moresby, to give the extra flights they needed.
"Tell them to bloody hurry, Fred," George told the radio operator. "If the Japs get land planes down and make patrols out of Lae then our planes won't be flying into here much longer."
The sapper was sent in on the first flight with his explosives and was taken down the hill to the river and the sloughs where the dredging barges lay idle. He was a skilled man and put small charges into the engines, into the winding gear and along the hulls. He destroyed the four barges within a day and hopped on the last plane out; he was too valuable a man to lose and had priority.
The air lift had started two hours after dawn, the Junkers first then a pair of De Havillands and an old Douglas; between them they took out all of the sick and a dozen of the least fit men. They managed three runs on the day, lifting just over one hundred and fifty of the nearly eight hundred waiting men. It would take almost a week to complete the job and they could not be sure they had that amount of time, and the transports were all unarmed.
"The boys and the Diggers tomorrow, Jacky. We ai
n't going to get everybody away and the soldiers have got to be the rear-guard."
"They ain't going to like that in Moresby, George. They need trained soldiers."
"Sod 'em. I ain't running and leaving any poor bugger behind."
The planes took off from Moresby before dawn next morning and risked the night flight across to Bulolo, knowing that if it had been raining when they got there they would be in trouble, almost certainly unable to land before the sun had dried off the strip, forced to circle and possibly draw attention to themselves.. They got in, turned round and loaded and were off the ground again in less than half an hour. Soon after that three Australian Air Force transports, ancient converted biplane bombers familiar to George, staggered in, having left Moresby in the small hours; each squeezed fifteen empty-handed men into their cargo compartment and took off down the hill. They said they would be back again in the morning.
"Three more days, Jacky."
Next morning a shiny bright young officer, a captain, stepped off the first plane in, bringing a radio set with a long aerial and a ton of rations in cans.
"Lieutenant Hawkins?"
George saluted, suspiciously.
"We need four volunteers, Lieutenant Hawkins. You are forbidden to be one of them, sir. The General said that we have too few officers with experience of the bush, sir, and you must return to Moresby. On this flight, sir."
George tried to protest and was handed a ready-prepared written order.
"You must go, sir. You have a Sergeant McGuire as your second, I believe? He is to take command from you. May I speak to him, please?"
McGuire was building a dry-stone gun pit for the Lewis, two of the gold miners with him and hammering out a mounting from angle iron. It was better than nothing and gave them something to do while they waited.
"You have been commissioned Lieutenant, Mr McGuire, and you are to take command here, leaving with the last flight - which, I know, would have been your intention in any event. If the evacuation is interrupted then you must try to walk up into the mountains with all of the men you can get away. If you cannot fly out then you must take this radio with you and keep in contact with Moresby so that arrangements can be made to get you out. If the evacuation is successful then I am instructed to order you to leave the radio with a party of four or five volunteers to act as Watchers. You should not be one of those left behind, sir."
A Place Called Home (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 2) Page 22
