Fear Drive My Feet

by Peter Ryan

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Les. ‘It seems we might be chased all round the Leron country now.’

  ‘I don’t think I could take much of that,’ I replied. ‘If there’s going to be any rough stuff, I think I’ll look for a quiet, out-of-the-way spot, and hole up there till the bloody war is over – for years, if need be. The war can’t go on for ever – or can it?’

  Les smiled wearily. I could see he felt much the same as I did. All sense of adventure and excitement had long since vanished from this patrol, leaving behind an empty flatness that was only one degree removed from despair. We were just plodding on, in spite of frightful weariness, in an attempt to save our skins. More and more frequently we were coming to doubt whether those skins were worth the agony of sweat and sobbing breath and aching bodies and bleeding feet.

  It was more to preserve the illusion that we still functioned as an intelligence patrol than in the hope of getting useful information that we sent for the few Ewok men who spoke pidgin and began to question them. Strangely, they had no aversion to talking freely, and we discovered a number of useful facts about enemy patrols in the area. They were much more extensive than we would ever have suspected, and everything seemed to point to the establishment of a strong overland line of communication between Madang and Lae. The Japanese had told the natives to be ready at any time to carry machine-guns, food, ammunition, and other stores, and to feed and guide other enemy parties.

  Their propaganda, moreover, was cunning. In addition to the obvious line about all the white men having run away, they pitched the natives a story that won them a lot of service. Briefly, it ran somewhat along these lines: ‘When you native people die your spirits go to live in Japan, our homeland. The spirits of your ancestral dead are living in Japan now. Unless you look after us Japanese well we will see to it that the spirits of your dead get a bad time.’

  One could ridicule this, of course, but it was very difficult to counter effectively, and many natives believed it implicitly.

  After we had sent off a long message to Port Moresby, incorporating all the information we had gathered about enemy patrols in this area, we felt that perhaps, after all, we were still of some use, and not merely a ragged crowd of fugitives.

  Late that night a boy from a nearby village brought us news of another European at Wantoat, not far away. This, we surmised, was Fairfax-Ross, the man being withdrawn from the north coast. He had been expecting cargo to be dropped by plane to him at Wantoat about 17th June, but the cargo had not arrived. As it was now 18th June, and Wantoat was a good two days’ walk away, we felt we had small hope of overtaking him. In any case, his chances of escape were probably better while he was alone. The natives said – though afterwards I was not able to confirm the point – that he was even worse off than ourselves, for he had neither boots nor clothes. We still had rags of some sort. It was strange to sit in Ewok and know that just a few days’ walk, a few valleys away there was another white man struggling on to safety. He did not know it, but our thoughts followed him on his long, lonely walk to the Central Highlands, where he was eventually picked up by aeroplane.

  It was nearly twelve o’clock that night before we finished laying our plans for the next few crucial days. The Japanese seemed to be everywhere, so our only hope was to move with all possible speed. Three rivers flow into the Markham from the north side – the Leron, the Irumu, and the Erap. To have followed the Leron down would have taken us within range of enemy patrols near Kaiapit, the district where Harry Lumb had been killed. The Erap would have led us down close to Lae, and, after my frequent trips on the river the previous year, the enemy would be almost certain to be watching it. Between the two lay the Irumu, flowing into the Markham not far from Chivasing, where we had begun our patrol a couple of months earlier. We decided to move as quickly as possible down this river, travelling mainly at night and avoiding, if possible, all contact with the natives.

  We left Ewok at three in the morning, our immediate object being to get over the divide between the Leron and the Irumu rivers to Bogeba village. We arrived in Bogeba almost exactly twenty-eight hours later, having neither eaten nor slept in that time. When I came to write the official report of the patrol I found that I had no real recollection of this part of the journey, but only a succession of impressions, unrelated in time or space: impressions of villages where we sneaked around in the dark, not waking the inhabitants, of rivers which almost swept us away, of legs which stumbled on, unknowing and uncaring, all feeling gone. I am sure that half the time we walked with our eyes shut from exhaustion.

  At Bogeba we rested for a day and a night and made several good meals on native foods. The kanakas seemed friendly, and said that though the Japanese had never been to the village they knew there were many of them moving about the country. They introduced us to a native of Siang village, farther down the river, who said he could guide us along the Irumu to the Markham, avoiding all the tracks. This seemed a good plan, and we moved to a hamlet a few miles downstream to wait for nightfall. We set up the radio here for what was to prove the last time, asking Port Moresby to inform our forward posts along the Markham that we could be expected either next day or the day after. After a journey such as this had been, we wanted to run no risk of being shot by our own men, which could easily have happened, particularly if we crossed at night.

  Just at sunset we moved off, leaving behind everything but light packs and our arms. We followed the Irumu, walking in the water for the most part, for though very swift it was not deep. The valley was a very shallow one in the Markham plain, about a thousand yards wide, and the stream wandered haphazardly from one side to the other, in several channels. As there was a bright moon, we had no difficulty in seeing our way. The country was as flat as a table, and covered with kunai- and cane-grass. Dotted here and there were weird black sentinel-like stumps, the remains of dead palms.

  We were so tense and keyed up with the strain of this final stage that the slightest movement or noise in the shadows made us start, but we felt no weariness, though we walked without rest all night.

  About three o’clock in the morning, as we splashed through the muddy water, we heard a rooster crowing, and then the howl of a dog. The sounds came from the bush on the right-hand side of the river, and we knew we must have passed Teraran village. So far, everything was going smoothly, and another eight or nine miles should find us at the Markham. However, the Irumu started to subdivide into numberless tiny streams, and finally petered out altogether in a tangled swamp of cane-grass, sago-palms, and cruel-thorned vines. Our native from Siang announced himself baffled too. It had not been like this years before, he said nervously, and then, afraid we would vent our concealed wrath on his person, he took to his heels and vanished into the night.

  For a while we tried to cut our way through, moving on a rough compass-bearing. It was a scene I shall never forget: a dozen or so natives and two white men hacking like fury in the moonlight at the wall of jungle ahead of them, knee-deep in the slime, swearing, grunting, whimpering occasionally as bare feet encountered the savage thorns of the sago-palms.

  When dawn broke we found that our progress had been disappointingly slow. Given time, we could have cut a pathway to the Markham, but we had no food and were near exhaustion. We felt our strength would never be enough to carry us through. After consultation with Kari and Watute we retraced our s
teps to the main Markham road, which we had crossed a couple of hours earlier. There were a number of prints of the enemy’s well-known black rubber boots, but none seemed to be of recent origin. We followed the road, scouts well out ahead, as far as the old Wawin rest-house, and then turned south down the track up which we had come on our way out – two months ago to the day.

  The track showed no footprints, and to judge by the way the grass was growing on it had not been used for some time. All the way to Chivasing we saw no people, and the hamlet half-way was deserted. We were weary, sore-footed and aching all over, but we kept kidding ourselves along with the thought of the cup of tea we would soon be drinking at Kirkland’s, and of the European foods we would eat there. ‘Not far now,’ we would murmur each time we crossed a creek.

  The hot Markham sun blazed down on us and the sweat squirted from our bodies. The dust from the dry track rose slowly round our feet, sticking to our wet skins. We did not care. The end was in sight. By about three o’clock we had reached the large coconut-grove at the edge of the village, and looked up longingly at the cool green nuts. A crowd of Chivasing natives, with the tultul and doctor-boy, appeared suddenly at the other end of the grove and advanced to meet us. Some of them climbed the palms to get green coconuts for us to drink. We sat in the shade and let the cool fluid trickle down our dust-filled throats.

  ‘Are there any Japanese about?’ we asked at length, our inevitable question, which we hoped would be for the last time.

  There was a silence. The steaming quietness of the Markham afternoon descended.

  ‘Are there any Japanese about?’ we repeated sharply.

  ‘No-got, master! Me-fella no lookim some-fella Japan!’ The answer came readily enough this time.

  ‘Better make sure,’ Les said. ‘We’ll send Arong into the village to have a look round.’

  We called to Arong, who had had a drink, to move into the village. He was wearing no uniform, and there was nothing to mark him out from the Chivasing kanakas, so he would be safe enough even if there were Japanese there.

  While he was away we tried to make conversation with the natives. They seemed strangely uneasy, but they said they had expected us and had the canoes all ready to take us down to Kirkland’s. We wondered whether we imagined the tension in the atmosphere – whether the long strain now ending had made us over-suspicious. We were cheered when Arong came back a few minutes later with a smile on his face, to say that he had taken a look round the village and that all was as it should be. Then, Arong leading the way, and Les behind him, a few paces ahead of me, we walked into the village. Most of our boys stayed in the grove, still drinking coconut milk.

  As we neared the clear space at the centre of the village there was a sudden burst of machine-gun fire and a volley of rifle-shots from one of the houses. Bullets kicked up the dirt all round us. We both made a dash for the creek that runs through the village, and as I jumped down into it there was another burst of fire from the house. Les gave a cry, fell, and lay still. Japanese – there seemed to be dozens of them – then jumped down from the houses and rushed over towards me. I lost my footing and fell into the water, got my clothes and Owen gun tangled in a submerged branch, and finally struggled across the creek and into the bush minus Owen gun and most of my shirt. Bullets were clipping the leaves all round me. I did not go far, but buried myself deep in the mud of a place where the pigs used to wallow, with only my nose showing, and stayed put.

  For a few minutes all was quiet, but soon I heard the Japanese calling out to each other, and their feet sucking and squelching in the mud as they searched. I could not see, so I did not know exactly how close they were, but I could feel in my ears the pressure of their feet as they squeezed through the mud. It occurred to me that this was probably an occasion on which one might pray, and indeed was about to start a prayer. Then something stopped me. I said to myself so fiercely that I seemed to be shouting under the mud, ‘To hell with God! If I get out of this bloody mess, I’ll do it by myself!’ It was no doubt a childish sort of pride, but I experienced a rather weary exhilaration that, terrified and abject, lying literally like a pig in the mud, I had not sufficiently abandoned personal integrity to pray for my skin to a God I didn’t really believe in.

  I lay there motionless, buried alive in mud and pig-filth, feeling, or imagining, creatures of unspeakable loath-someness crawling over me in the slime. The voices became fainter and the squelching footsteps died away. I eased my face out, blinked the mud away from my eyes, and carefully pulled some leaves over my head in case the searchers returned.

  For half an hour or so there was no sound. Then several natives walked round the outskirts of the village calling out to me. I heard their voices clearly, just a few yards away through the bushes:

  ‘Master, you come! Japan all ’e go finish!’

  I did not move. They continued to call out encouragingly for a quarter of an hour. Then one of them said apparently to someone nearby, ‘ ’Em ’e no hearim talk belong me-fella. I think ’em ’e go finish long bush.’

  The Japanese started talking to each other again after that, having given up hope of capturing me, it seemed, now that the trick had failed.

  I stayed in the same place until it was nearly dark. The mosquitoes were swarming on my head so thickly, and buzzing so loudly, that I thought they would give away my position. Then I crept out of the mud, wiped the mud off pistol and compass, and began to break bush, moving on a line south and west, which, as I remembered the map, should at last bring me to the bank of the Markham, some distance upstream from Chivasing, more or less opposite the mouth of the Watut River.

  In a couple of years packed with bad journeys, that night’s travel is the worst I can remember. Near the village it was essential to move with absolute quietness, no easy matter when the rows of hooked thorns on the vines caught at me continually and one hand was always occupied holding the compass. It was no use trying to free myself from the vines – as fast as one row of barbs was detached another took hold. It was easier, if more painful, to let them tear straight through the flesh. After the bush came the pit-pit – cane-grass eight or nine feet high, growing so thickly as to make a solid wall. It was impossible to part it and walk through it, and I was forced to push it over by leaning on it, and crawl over the top on all fours. It had leaves like razor-blades, which hurt terribly on bare legs; mine were soon dripping with blood from the cuts. Worse, the flattened grass left a trail a blind man could have followed. Though I had my compass handy the grass blocked all view of any object to sight on, and there were no stars, for it was a cloudy night. The two luminous points on the instrument danced and swung before my eyes. Sometimes I had to pause, close my eyes, and force my nerves to calmness before I could see properly. Every time I tried to march by sense alone, I found myself going wrong.

  Hours later, during one of these pauses, I heard the dull swish of swiftly flowing water. The Markham! I had got there sooner than I expected. It would take every scrap of my energy to swim it, and I removed my clothes, such as they were, and buckled on again the belt which carried revolver, compass, and sheath-knife. Then I stumbled forward, heading for the sound of the water. When I reached it I found it was nothing but a small creek flowing down to the river. I nearly cried with rage and disappointment, and decided to go no farther that night, but lay down naked where I was. The mosquitoes were terr
ible, setting all over my body in swarms, and their bites nearly closed both my eyes. Finally, to escape them, I dragged myself into a shallow puddle of mud at the edge of the stream, and slept there.

  Shortly before daylight I moved on, weak and stumbling, my heart jumping in the frightening way I had noticed in the mountains. The last few miles were easier, for the pit-pit gave place to kunai, through which one could at least walk upright. At any moment I expected a volley of shots, for the country was flat, and if, after sunrise, the Japs had taken the trouble to post a few men in trees, they could not have failed to see me. I crossed one new track through the grass, which showed many enemy footprints, and reached the Markham about mid-morning. As I looked across its swift brown streams I knew that I was too tired to swim it before I had had a rest, so I crawled into a patch of bush and dozed until about midday. Then I swam as silently as possible from one island to the next, resting for a short while on each one. Every time I touched a log or floating piece of rubbish I was terrified it was a crocodile, and struck out with renewed vigour. I really believe it was this fear, coupled with the expectation of a burst of machine-gun fire from the north bank, that enabled me to make the distance.

  On the south bank at last, I lay breathless in a patch of grass. Voices came from not far away. I eased my pistol out of its holster and peered through the grass. Two Chivasing natives, with their women, were walking straight towards me, chattering happily, quite unaware of any alien presence. As soon as they drew level I jumped from cover, shoving the pistol into the ribs of the nearest one. The men trembled, but made no sound, and the women moaned faintly. They were too terrified to shout – apparently they thought I was going to shoot them out of hand.