by Peter Ryan
Worin looked unearthly in the moonlight. The mists from the valleys which surrounded it had blotted out from sight all the rest of the country, and the village seemed built on an island floating in space. Bananas grew among the houses, and the leaves of the plants, like tattered elephant’s-ears, threw weird shadows on the ground. As we entered the village we eased our Owen guns forward and called to Kari and Witolo. There was no answer. We slipped off the safety catches and looked about uneasily.
‘I left them here,’ the tultul said anxiously, running to a dwelling and peering inside. ‘Master, come lookim!’ he said after a moment.
We went forward and Les flashed his torch inside the dark hut. Kari and Witolo, exhausted by their dash through the forest, lay asleep on the floor. Witolo had slumped forward, his forearm and head leaning in a mess of boiled bananas. Kari, sleeping no less soundly, lay near the door, rifle beneath his hand. We did not attempt to waken them, but moved across to another house. They had ordered the tultul to cook bananas and sweet potatoes for the boys, and two fowls for us. This had been done, and Les and I raised the dirty blackened clay cooking-pots to our lips and drank the soup first. Then we seized a fowl each and, ripping them apart in our hands, wolfed every scrap. We had not had a meal for thirty hours, and had been walking for about twenty hours without a pause. In the morning we woke to find ourselves lying amid the picked bones of our supper, pistols and sheath-knives still on belts round our waists, Owen guns still slung round our shoulders.
We watched the boys as they lay in front of the houses warming their aching limbs in the morning sun. Our bodies had been chilled for days and now seemed to soak up the cheering rays as blotting-paper absorbs water. We did not feel well ourselves, but the condition of our natives caused us more concern. They seemed utterly exhausted both in body and spirit, and by some queer illusion seemed to have shrunk in their misery. Later, Les and I observed the same change in each other. When Les shaved off the beard that had grown in the last three or four days I was shocked to see how thin and bony his face was. I realized later, of course, that I looked just as bad. Fever had been troubling us a lot, and we were very tired from the combination of great physical strain and the worry of the expedition. The safety of the native members of the party disturbed us, for they had all volunteered to come, had served us faithfully, and had stuck to us when they might easily have run away. Now we felt that we had to do something to get them out of the mess into which they had trustingly accompanied us.
We decided it was no use trying to move farther, when nobody could do better than drag himself painfully round the village. The best thing was to stay a while and recruit both our strength and our morale. There was plenty of food about, so we bought a very large pig and decided to have a barbecue that night. This helped a lot, and there was a perceptible lift in spirits as soon as the pig’s expiring squeals were heard.
The tultul of Worin – whose name, to my sorrow, I have forgotten – was a most remarkable man, and we spent the day sitting under one of the houses talking to him. He had for some years been a cook for Leigh Vial, the first patrol officer to penetrate this area, and upon his return home he had been made tultul. He was a person of great strength of character. He told us that mission teachers had been pestering him to get rid of the village book and his official hat, but he had steadfastly refused to do so. Indeed, his was the only village on the north side of the Saruwageds where the book and hat could be produced at our request. In spite of all discouragements he had endeavoured to acquaint his people with the ways of the government, and had taught several of his relatives to speak pidgin, though none of them had ever left the village. He would have liked to come with us to meet Leigh Vial again, whom he obviously admired almost to the point of hero-worship, but the tultul was now a married man with a family, and could not leave. However, he asked if we would take his younger brother with us, for the boy was very anxious to see something of the world beyond his own valley. Les and I discussed this but decided against taking the young fellow, for there was a good chance that before we reached Wampit again we should come in contact with enemy patrols, and we did not think it fair to take him into danger.
Vial was our ‘contact man’ in Port Moresby, and we could scarcely have had anyone more co-operative. Having worked in the bush himself in circumstances of fantastic danger, as the famous ‘Golden Voice’ behind Jap-occupied Salamaua, he knew how much it meant to us to have our signals answered promptly, and to feel that there was someone who would give us help and support wherever possible. It was he, for instance, who had arranged the strafing of Boana Mission. (When finally, some months later, I reached the comparative civilization of Port Moresby, I learnt of a curiously ironic and tragic coincidence: almost at the very moment when we were talking to the tultul of Worin, Vial himself was out on a leaflet dropping flight not far away. His plane crashed into a nearby valley and everyone aboard was killed. We wondered why we no longer heard from him by radio. Quiet, capable, unobtrusive, he was one of the greatest heroes of New Guinea.)
Late in the afternoon, while the pig was being prepared for the fire, we tried to send a message to Port Moresby informing them of our position and asking for any information that might be available about enemy movements in the surrounding country. At first we had some difficulty in passing the message and receiving the signals from Moresby but the trouble was only a flat battery, which was easily changed. Afterwards we heard some of the police discussing this failure to hear the ‘talk’, and were very amused at their theories:
‘I suppose it’s because we are too deep in the valley for the talk to get down to us,’ one said.
‘That isn’t the reason,’ another replied. ‘It’s because those high trees up on the mountain won’t let the talk past.’
A third boy staggered them all with his superior knowledge. ‘If you knew anything about wireless, you would have noticed that the wind was blowing the wrong way. How can the talk get all this way from Port Moresby if the wind is against it?’
Afterwards, whenever I built a new post, I put the house-police close to the house-kiap, for it was lots of fun at night-time to listen to the conversation, which was usually dominated by the ‘old soldiers’ telling extravagant lies about their deeds in the peacetime police force before the war spoilt things.
Feeling much refreshed by our day’s rest, we left Worin about seven o’clock next morning, and at about eleven reached the village of Moren. There was a fine church here, but all the natives had run away, so after a short spell we followed the track down into the deep gorge of the Uruwa River, where our tultul said there was a bridge. He confirmed our belief that there was a place where the range could be crossed easily into the head of the Leron River, which flowed into the Markham, and agreed to come with us as our guide as far as Ewok, the first Leron village. He had made the same journey some years before with Leigh Vial.
The bridge over the raging torrent of the Uruwa was nearly broken, and we had to wait over an hour while the boys cut vines in the bush to repair it. While we sat in the shade waiting, we took note of the unusual rock formations exposed by the river. They were all manner of brilliant colours, varying from a rich ochre, through red to pale pink. They were very soft and chalky, which no doubt accounted for the fantastic shapes into which the water had carved them.
The country we were now in (and through which we were to pass for several days) was r
ather different from any I had seen hitherto. It was undulating, and the greater part of the ground was covered by kunai-grass, forest being confined to the hilltops and watercourses with the exception of a few patches here and there. For the first time since leaving the Markham it was possible to command a fairly extensive view of the surrounding country as a whole. Even in the most open parts of the Wain and Naba one was restricted to a view of one valley at a time. This Uruwa region was rather hot and dusty, but we welcomed the free feeling of open spaces, a contrast from the shut-in sensation we had had in the jungle.
We climbed up the steep western bank of the Uruwa, passed through a small hamlet set in a banana-grove, which the tultul said was called Sugan, and reached the village of Sindamon late in the afternoon.
This village, we were told, had never been visited before by either missionary or patrol officer, and of course it was not shown on our map. There was a legend that the people had fired such a number of arrows at the only missionary who had dared to approach that they were left in peace thereafter. Whether any of the arrows found their mark I was never able to find out.
Although they spoke no word of each other’s language, our tultul and the Sindamon men soon established friendly relations. They were big, upstanding, dignified men, their bodies painted red with clay and their hair tied up tightly in dome-shaped hats of bark. Keeping a tight hold on their bows and arrows, they willingly exchanged food for razor-blades, which they had never seen before but for which they developed an instant liking. All our bargaining was done by signs, and we soon became very friendly.
When we indicated (again by signs) that we wished to sleep in one of the houses they nodded politely, removed a rotting corpse from the veranda, and motioned us to enter. It was apparently the custom here for a dead man to be left in his house until he had decomposed, when his bones were interred in a shallow grave beneath the veranda. Naturally the stink still clung to the place, but heavy rain fell and we were glad enough to be dry, though a large number of fleas did nothing to improve our night’s rest.
We left Sindamon early next morning, really sorry to part from these friendly savages, and struck straight across the grassy hills to Kundam. There was a track we could have used, but it would have taken us through Goriok: with our binoculars we had seen a wide road leading into that village from the south, so we decided to avoid it. Though it was more difficult walking, the line we were taking across country was at least more direct. The Som River, swollen from the heavy rain the night before, was difficult to cross, but we joined hands and plunged through, a human chain.
At Kundam village, one of the most primitive I had ever seen, there were extensive gardens. We were unable to establish any contact with the people, who stood silhouetted against the brassy evening sky, black forms lining the crests of the nearby ridges, hurling their choicest terms of abuse at us. Now and again one more impetuous than the rest fired an arrow at random, though the range was much too great. Since nothing would persuade them to come down and talk to us, we had no choice but to help ourselves to the produce of their gardens. When they saw their bananas and taro being plundered their fury knew no bounds. ‘Hopping mad’ is the only expression that describes it. They screamed and danced with rage, and with loud yodelling cries discharged a whole cloud of arrows in our direction, though they must have known that their chances of hitting anyone were remote. In case they made a night attack, we doubled the sentries before rolling in our blankets on the ground at the edge of the village. Here again the fleas were too plentiful for a really restful night.
Before leaving Kundam in the morning we tied several pieces of cloth and a dozen razor-blades to a tree in the middle of the village, by way of payment for the food we had taken. There was now no sign of the inhabitants, and we hoped this did not mean they were lying in ambush for us somewhere along the track.
We could see the village of Ganma, the next on our route, about four miles away across the valley, but though we spent two hours searching for a path, there was none to be found, and we had to march on a compass-bearing, cutting our way through the bush and secondary growth. When we arrived at the village shortly after midday we found that it consisted of two or three very poor houses. At first none of the natives was to be seen, but about three o’clock a party appeared on a hill nearby and made a hostile demonstration. We could not understand a word of what they said, but their gestures, obscene and defiant in turn, left nothing to the imagination. We called to Nabura, the best shot in the party, to climb quickly onto the roof of the tallest house, from where he would be able to detect anyone crawling through the grass. He was told to keep the people just out of arrowshot, and not to fire to kill or wound unless the situation seemed dangerous. We asked the tultul what our chances were of making friends with them, but he did not seem to think it worth while trying, saying that they were notoriously bad hats and that it would take us at least several days even to open a conversation.
The next day we were to cross the mountains once again, onto the Markham fall of the Huon Peninsula. We expected to reach Ewok village in the afternoon, for according to the tultul the crossing was nowhere near so high as the one we had made over the Saruwaged Range proper.
The tultul asked to be allowed to return home from here, though the other Worin boys would stay with us until we reached Ewok. We let him go. He had done us good service: none of the other natives would have directed us to this easier crossing, and we would merely have blundered along, hoping to find it by good luck. The only other person who might have been able to advise us was Vial, and he, though we did not know it then, was dead.
We abandoned most of our gear at Ganma – keeping just the wireless, our personal packs, and a small parcel of trade goods. We gave our shotgun to the tultul, together with a packet of cartridges. He was doing a fine job, preserving government authority all on his own, and the fillip to his prestige from the possession of a shotgun would greatly ease his unenviable burden. He asked whether he could also have two empty cartridge-boxes in which we had kept tobacco. We gave them to him and asked why he wanted them.
‘It’s like this,’ he explained in pidgin. ‘If I go back home with a carton of a dozen cartridges they will spy on me when I am hunting, and every time they hear a bang they will say “Another one gone”, until they know I have used them all up and the gun is useless. However, when they see these three boxes they will think I still have plenty left.’ With a sly grin he filled the empty cartons with pebbles, and then closed them securely.
We also gave him a bottle of oil and told Kari to show him how to care for the gun. I never saw a man so proud of a present. He would allow nobody to take it from him, and as he lay down to sleep that night the gun lay beside him.
This place was the worst for fleas that I had ever been in. The whole surface of the dusty ground seemed to be crawling with them. During the afternoon Les and I amused ourselves by seeing how many of the pests could be caught in one blanket, killing upward of seventy before tiring of the game. The sort of night we spent, lying on the ground, is better left to the imagination. In the morning it would have been literally impossible to put a pinhead between the bites anywhere on our bodies; we had the appearance of suffering from some skin disease. Even the police, not unduly fussy over a flea or two, said they had spent a sleepless night.
Shortly after sunrise we shook hands with our tultul and turned our faces towards
the mountains. The crossing was not really difficult, and was lower than we had dared to hope – scarcely above seven thousand feet according to our estimate. The worst part came when the mountain had been crossed and we had to follow a rough, stony riverbed down to Ewok. My bare feet were pretty much cut about, and Les, who put on again the tattered remnants of his last pair of boots, did not fare much better.
The country as we approached Ewok was more like the Wain – country of luxuriant growth and heavy rainfall. It was a change from the arid grasslands we had left behind, and, moreover, we would probably secure much better food. We were sick of the taro and hard cooking-bananas which seemed to be all the Uruwa country had to offer. Boiled bananas are the most unpalatable and uninteresting food one could have – looking and tasting like a piece of grey stodgy clay. The only result of eating them, as far as I was concerned, was an unsatisfied hunger and a bellyful of wind.
Ewok, to all appearances, was a model village, set on a lofty, narrow ridge. It was clean, well laid out, and abounded with neatly arranged trees and shrubs, some decorative and some useful. The mission seemed well entrenched, to judge by the excellent state of the church and school. Although the mission teachers hurriedly vacated their houses and disappeared, the other natives greeted us in tolerably friendly fashion, answered our questions, and brought us food – including a dozen eggs which we ate at a sitting.
Being well into wild mountain country we were surprised and disappointed to hear that the Japanese had twice visited this village. While there, they had been informed of the easy route to the north coast over which we had just come, and their leader had announced that another patrol would soon come to investigate it.
