by Peter Ryan
In a fighting unit in action there was the comradeship of proved friends, the tradition of things endured together, which evoked a very definite generosity and loyalty. In such a unit, however dreadful material conditions might have become, the moral climate at least was fairly healthy. By contrast, base areas, where living conditions were usually reasonably good, seemed to smoulder with stupid and petty personal jealousies. There were all sorts of rackets. For instance, in some places, sick natives, or even ones who should have been at work, were employed by the officer in charge of them to make crude and shoddy ‘curios’, which the officer then sold at fabulous prices to souvenir-crazy Americans. The black market in liquor, smuggled to New Guinea by service aircraft, made the civilian black market appear a gentlemanly affair. More often than not soldiers who were actually doing the fighting and taking the risks seemed to be regarded with aversion, or at best tolerated as inescapable burdens who disordered the even routine of life. The worst of the food seemed to come our way, and we were not welcomed in the mess. To prevent contamination by rude interlopers such as myself a notice was erected at one of the top tables saying: NO OUTSIDERS AT THIS TABLE. At this base camp there were several other ‘outsiders’, whom I had known in Wau early in the war and who were, like me, waiting to return to active service. We retired together to a lower table, which we protected – a little childishly, it must be confessed – with a notice of our own: NO BASE BLUDGERS ALLOWED.
At the quartermaster’s store anybody seeking equipment or supplies was greeted with a mixture of rudeness and obstructionism. The quartermaster, who was enormously fat, glared when I asked for a tin of baking-powder, screwing up his lard-ball face and squinting through his glasses.
‘What do you want that for?’ he squealed.
‘To make scones and damper with.’
‘Humph! I don’t know what’s the matter with you people in the bush. Why can’t you be satisfied with biscuits?’
The question came from a man who ate bread every day of his life to one who had not tasted it over a period of eight months. I stood still and waited without replying. Slowly, grudgingly, as though parting with the elixir of life, the pudgy fingers moved across the counter, pushing a tin of baking-powder. Item by item I squeezed six months’ rations out of him, and every time he handed something over he did so as though it meant he would have to take his enormous belt in another notch. But when Dinkila and I went back to Wau two days later we had nearly half a plane-load of food, arms, trade goods, and medical stores. Dinkila had enjoyed his stay in Port Moresby, but I felt that it would be preferable to live at Bob’s, or even Kirkland’s, than to get caught up permanently in Port Moresby.
VI
I WAS TO wait in Wau for final orders for the expedition, and as I walked into the district office the first person in sight was Jock McLeod. I had last heard of him cut off by the Japanese near Salamaua, and it was good to see him safe. He was noncommittal about his adventures.
‘We got out of it O.K.’ was all he would say.
About the proposed return north of the Markham he was more vocal. He thought things would be more difficult now.
‘If I were the Nip commander I’d have occupied Boana,’ he said. ‘I bet you find Japs all through the Wain.’
‘Well, then, why didn’t they occupy it before? They had just as much reason to do it a year ago,’ I argued.
Jock shrugged. ‘It will have sunk through their commander’s skull now, I reckon. Anyhow, you’ll find out,’ he added with a grin, and he introduced me to Major Donald Vertigan, who had just taken over as district officer.
Vertigan, a government officer in peacetime, was not one of the most popular men in Angau, and at my first interview with him I certainly didn’t like him. He was a thin man with a thin face and a close-clipped moustache. He had a strange way of peering at you unblinkingly as he sat, for quite long periods, silent and unmoving. He told me that I was to have a companion on this trip – a Captain Les Howlett, an old New Guinea patrol officer, who was coming up from Australia for the purpose. He was working for the Far Eastern Liaison Office, and his interest would be largely propaganda among the natives.
Vertigan sat cold and staring as I explained that I would rather go alone. Divided responsibility was bad, I urged, and the larger the party the harder it was for the natives to conceal it, the more supplies were needed, and so on. Finally, I pointed out that two Europeans together in the bush nearly always quarrelled, no matter how tolerant and sensible they might be under ordinary circumstances.
He was unmoved. ‘Howlett will be going, anyhow,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘He’s bringing the radio set for your party, by the way.’
That was all. I got up and went out, feeling that the new district officer was unfathomable. I had not the faintest idea whether he liked or disliked me; whether he approved of my scheme for a patrol into the Huon Peninsula or thought it a hare-brained venture; whether he would support me if I got into trouble, or would let me stew in the mess I had made for myself.
As the weeks went by, however, and I saw more of him, I realized what an immensely valuable job Vertigan was doing and how helpful he was. Every instruction he gave me, or suggestion he made, was sound or constructive; he saw that I was given every reasonable thing that I asked for, going out of his way to get me the proper stores for the expedition. Vertigan worked prodigiously hard at his own job, and seemed to have small interest in or energy for the Army’s personal jealousies and feuds. When he was finally awarded his M.B.E. I felt that no man had merited recognition more, for an important job well done in the face of great difficulty and discouragement. It is the greatest thing in the world for the morale of men engaged in lonely bush work to know that their superior officer at headquarters is someone who understands their problems, and will help them if he can. Later in the war, working for a man who did not bother even to acknowledge urgent radio messages, I realized just how lucky I had been to have Vertigan for a boss.
I had to thank him for my superb detachment of police. Corporal Kari, who had taken me up the Erap on my first patrol the previous year, was to command them. Old Watute, and two of Jock McLeod’s former police, Nabura and Witolo, were the others. These were all men of experience and proved integrity. Because of his slowness in the mountains, Buka had to be left behind, to my sorrow. Dinkila, gay as ever, was still my cook, and for my other servant I had Pato, an elderly man from Gumbum village, in the Wain. He was a steady, intelligent man, speaking both Wain and Naba dialects. Moreover, he enjoyed considerable prestige in the country we were going to – there was scarcely a village where he did not have at least one relative. Before the war, he told us, he had had a responsible job as a boss-boy for Ray Parer, the famous aviator.
Being older men than the others, Watute and Pato became very friendly, and with their combined experience and local knowledge were a particularly valuable team.
I had to wait several weeks for Les Howlett, and I filled in the time doing odd jobs: helping to build a native hospital, guiding parties of troops through the bush, sometimes taking native carrier-lines with supplies to our troops in the forward areas. It was during this period that the Japanese made their last big air raid in that part of the island. About thirty planes came over, shining silver specks, very high and in perfect formation. We took cover in slit trenches nearby, and could hear the bombs
whistling overhead as half the raiding force made their run. As the second group of bombers approached, there was a scuttering of earth outside the trench in which I was crouching with another man, and a panting figure tumbled in on top of us. It was Dinkila, and he stank horribly.
‘My God, man, what have you done! Shit yourself?’ I demanded holding my nose.
He gave a quick, nervous grin. ‘Master, me hearim bomb ’e come, now me fall down long house pek-pek.’
He had jumped into the pit of the primitive latrine in his hurry to escape the first of the bombs! We hardly waited for the second lot, which fell harmlessly on a nearby hillside, before we sent him packing to the river to wash. Dinkila never lived the incident down, and was the butt of the natives in our party for months afterwards.
In the second week of April I moved the police and all stores to Wampit, there to await the arrival of Les Howlett. I thought it better to move down in advance of him, since the two of us together would have placed too much strain at the one time on the limited carrier-lines serving the Markham end. After I had been there for a few days a message came through from Major Vertigan saying that Les had left Wau. On the afternoon of 20th April, when I thought he ought to arrive, I went a short way along the track to Timne to meet him. It was a steaming Markham day, and I walked for only half an hour or so, then sat down on a log to wait.
The first hint of Les’s approach was the passing of a line of about forty laden carriers, in charge of four young police-boys wearing their brand-new navy serge uniforms with red sashes. At the end of the line marched a medium-built man of about thirty. When I approached he pushed his battered felt hat off his perspiring brow and ordered the police to halt the carriers for a spell.
‘Are you Les Howlett?’ I asked.
He regarded me with dark humorous eyes. ‘Yes. I suppose you’re Peter Ryan?’
‘That’s right.’
We shook hands, and I said, ‘Wampit Camp is just about half an hour away. What about pushing on?’
‘Let’s,’ he replied briefly. ‘I’m a bit keen on a wash-wash and a feed. All right, walkabout!’ he called to the boys, who lifted the cargo and moved off again down the track.
It was dark by the time Les had had a wash and we had eaten our tea. Heavy rain poured onto the low-pitched grass roof of the hut, and for the first of many nights to come we faced each other across the lantern and planned.
‘What are those police of yours like, Les?’ I asked.
‘Not bad. They’re smart lads, but they haven’t had very much experience yet.’
‘I’ll turn them over to Kari and old Watute, two of mine. They’ll make policemen of them.’
‘Good idea. Now about those stores…’
And so on, planning, scheming, making a hundred suggestions and discarding most of them, and laughing often. Les chain-smoked cigarettes; my pipe was never cold. By midnight we felt we had straightened out a lot of problems, and had got to know each other. I had discovered Les’s quick, quiet sense of humour, and had come already to look for the gleam in his smiling dark eyes across the hurricane-lamp. It was something that buoyed me up often in the months ahead.
Next morning, in front of the hut, Corporal Kari paraded our little squad of police – eight in all. There was a striking contrast between my boys and those Les had brought fresh from the depot at Port Moresby. Mine, wearing patched and faded khaki loincloths and battered peaked caps, lacked the parade-ground smartness of the recruits. But they were tough, steady, and reliable, old soldiers tempered in the fire of many campaigns. The difference in the faces was interesting, too. My boys looked like a bunch of thugs compared with the fresh-faced youthful recruits. However, the newcomers seemed keen and eager, and I felt that with experience, and after a spell under the stern hand of Kari, they would be as good as any. I watched them drill for a quarter of an hour or so, till Kari dismissed them.
Les had brought six other boys over with him – they all came from various parts of the Huon Peninsula. With them to help us there was a good chance that wherever we might go we would be able to make ourselves understood. And they would be most useful for propaganda purposes, for they had seen the tremendous progress made since the early days of the war, and the huge aerodromes and enormous troop concentrations at Port Moresby, and would be much better able than we were to convince the people of their own villages that the Allies were now possessed of real military strength. It was easy to understand the scepticism of the natives in the villages when I, a single white man, talked about our enormous resources. They used to retort that they had only my word for it that we had large numbers of troops, while they could actually see, not far away, thousands upon thousands of Japanese. Now, they would listen with much more attention to our story, for it would come from the lips of one of their own people.
Although we firmly rejected all equipment that was not absolutely essential, our combined stores amounted to nearly seventy carrier-loads. Most of it was either food or trade goods. We were gambling on being able to sneak this very substantial quantity of material into the Wain, for we wanted to be independent of cargo-dropping from aircraft – as well as being unreliable, it was likely to betray our position to the enemy.
The large supply of trade goods comprised knives, axes, beads, mirrors, calico, matches, tobacco, newspaper, salt, and a thousand razor-blades. This last item was a rare prize, for razor-blades were highly valued by the natives, and were very easy for us to carry round in our pockets. A couple of packets represented payment for food for our whole party for days. At that time they were very hard to get, even for the troops, and the Army was reluctant to part with such a large number ‘just to issue to natives’. It had taken a good deal of persuasion on Major Vertigan’s part to get them.
I looked at the pile of trade goods with satisfaction. For the first time I could go into the Wain without being a beggar and depending for charity on the good nature of the natives. Now, I thought, I would be able to give things away with a lavish hand, mindful of the anthropologists’ warnings that natives despise nothing so much as meanness.
Our wireless set, an Air Force job, was a masterpiece. It was light and compact and could be unpacked and set up quickly. Moreover, it operated on dry batteries, which was an advantage; an accumulator set would have needed a charging unit for the batteries and petrol to run the unit on, both of which would have added to our problems. The noise of a recharger’s engine would have echoed for miles round those hills, too. When packed into the special padded box Les had made for it, and complete with spare valves, batteries, headphones, tools, aerial, and other spare parts, our wireless set could easily be carried by two men, and though it was often severely battered during carries through rough country it never once let us down. Les and I thought of it with the affection one bestows on a faithful friend.
Because of rumours circulating among the natives that the Japanese were making regular patrols from Lae to the Erap River, we decided not to go by my usual route up the Erap Valley, but to cross the Markham higher up, opposite Chivasing, on the north bank. Chivasing was one of the bigger villages, and we hoped to get enough carriers there to take us across the uninhabited stretch of the Markham plain to the villages of the more densely populated Middle and Upper Erap, through which we would pass to the Wain. This route would take several extra day
s, but it was safer, and would enable us to visit many villages that had seen no European since the last peacetime patrol, in 1941.
We sent a message to Mari village telling all the able-bodied men to present themselves for carrying next day, but only twenty-five of them turned up, and it was clear that we would have to make two trips to get all our stores to the Markham.
We decided to make two short carries the first day, moving all the gear as far as Kirkland’s. By three o’clock the carriers, under the leadership of a native called Sela, had returned from the first trip. Picking up the remaining cargo, they set off at once on the second trip. I walked at the tail of the line, intending to spend the night at Kirkland’s. Les was to follow in the morning.
Half-way between Wampit and Kirkland’s I called in at Bob’s. Although I knew the camp had been more or less abandoned, it was a shock to see it manned by only four men. The long huts were empty, the door of the store lay open and broken, and the sergeants’ mess where I had eaten so many happy, if frugal, meals was falling down. Without any laughing, chattering natives, the silence was more unearthly than ever; and the smoke from the single cooking-fire still hung motionless among the trees. I asked the four men, all of whom I knew from those earlier days, whether they felt the same sense of awful desolation as I did at this moment.
‘Feel it!’ they exclaimed. ‘You notice it just by walking in here. You can imagine how it’s affecting us after all these weeks.’
