A New Place

by Andrew Wareham

  “Seventeen, sir. Made it out just. Took a week to get a bit more than twenty miles.”

  “What about the rest of the family, George?”

  “At our sugar plantation a few miles north of Cairns. Mother, my wife and the baby.”

  “Good. You want to go back?”

  “I own two plantations on the Gazelle and a half-share in a firm in Lae. That’s where I belong, sir.”

  “Fred. We don’t go for ‘sir’ in here, George. How would you go about building a road into the interior from Moresby, George?”

  “I wouldn’t, not until you can build trucks which can climb hills of one in four, and steeper very often, all day, every day, and jump rock-strewn creeks twice an hour. You might be able to get a road out of Moresby through the first hills, up to the foot of the Astrolabe Range. After that, it’s tracks, on foot and muleback. There’s a few roads around Lae, for maybe twenty miles. Same at Madang and Wewak and Vanimo when you get there. You can drive the whole of the Gazelle, but stop at the edge of the Bainings. New Ireland’s different – you’ve got the Bulominski Highway all the way along the island. West New Britain ain’t got any roads at all, but there’s a few places you might be able to build them. As for the Highlands, Christ knows what’s up there, but there definitely ain’t any roads.”

  “Jesus! You’re saying it can’t be done at all?”

  “Mountains covered in rain forest. No place for trucks. Or for tanks, for that matter. Go in on foot over the mountains, get to the valleys or onto the plateaus – there are a few. Carve out an airstrip there and fly in supplies and fresh men. The blokes who’ve walked it in will be knackered and will need six months down South to be fit for anything again, the half who’ve survived. Best bet is to give up on taking back the interior. Hop along the coast. Take the harbours and fort up in them and let the Japs starve inland. Give the natives rifles and shotguns and pay ten quid for every head they bring in. Be cheaper, lose fewer lives and probably be quicker as well.”

  The four shook their heads in disbelief.

  “I go up to the Generals and tell them that, George, and they’ll see me cashiered as a defeatist. They have decided that the Army will take back all of the land the Japs have conquered. The Yanks will do the bulk of the work, they reckon. Our first job is to provide a base and roads to expand out from it.”

  “Get some planes up to Moresby and hold the place first then, Fred. Those Buffaloes I saw there will be gone by now. They’re bloody useless even against carrier planes. Get something better up there quick or the Japs will bomb Moresby flat.”

  “We’ve got nothing better, George. The Yanks are sending fighters across the Pacific, by ship. They will have to be assembled in Sydney and flown up. The Poms are shipping some of their fighters out – the Spitfires and Hurricanes, that is. If they ain’t sunk, they’ll be here sometime, but there’s a shortage of pilots to fly the bloody things.”

  George shrugged, if they had no planes then they must do without.

  “Heavy machine guns and cannon then, anti-aircraft guns. Get a few hundred of them up there and there’s a chance of defending the harbour and airstrips. Don’t tell me, Fred - the Yanks and the Poms are sending them by ship but they ain’t got here yet.”

  “That’s right, George. All we can do is get ready for when we can do something. I’ll get you transferred across to us and then send you back to Moresby. When you get there, pick up some of the boys, is that what you call them? Then go out and survey a route as far as a truck can get out of Moresby.”

  “I’ll need a few soldiers, Fred. The Administration won’t let any of the natives carry guns, except for the police. The men I recruit will act as carriers, but they can’t be soldiers. Bloody good warriors, men who know the country and could fight like hell – but they won’t put guns into black hands for fear that it might give them ideas after the war.”

  They sent George home, told him to stay out of sight for a couple of days, wait for a message to come back into town. He had no objections.

  A couple of days turned into a week and then he received a note telling him to report at the warehouse.

  “G’day, George. You are one of us now, Intelligence and Reconnaissance, officially. Confirmed in the rank as a captain. You are to go up to Port Moresby where there will be an office by now. Then it’s up to you. There will be a dozen men, a thin platoon, to back you and money to hire on carriers. Then you move out to find a route for a road as far as possible into the Owen Stanley Mountains. Identify sites for airstrips up on top. All to be done yesterday, naturally.”

  “Can do, Fred. You know that any road will have to be built from nothing, and then rebuilt when the wet comes in?”

  “The Yanks are sending bulldozers. They say they can build roads anywhere. Word is they’re putting railway engines aboard ship as well.”

  “Really? No bullshit? What are they going to do with them? There ain’t five miles of land flat enough to run a track through on the whole Papuan coast. You could run a line out from Rabaul to Kokopo, or down from Kavieng on New Ireland. Trouble is, the Japs are there and they might not cooperate with the building gangs.”

  “You sure about that, George?”

  “Certain, Fred. There’s no railway lines there because they can’t be built. You might get a couple of miles along Ela Beach – Port Moresby harbour – but that’s your lot. Could be a line might be built down the Papuan coast to the east, down towards Milne Bay and the Trobes – but that would take twenty years and cost millions for the swamps to cross and the hills to cut through, and at the end of it you wouldn’t have joined anywhere important. Railways don’t work up there.”

  “So it’s walk everywhere.”

  “If you can’t fly – which we can’t, then you walk. Slowly. Building your track as you go. You can’t live off the land, so you carry all of your food on your back. A good proportion of the clans are cannibal, you know, for lack of any other meat – the land ain’t meant for people.”

  “How would you go about building decent roads, George?”

  “You can’t. You can build bad roads – we do that on the plantations all the time. Down on the coast you need bridges every half mile, at least. Inland you just accept that the Wet will flood out what you’ve got and get the boys out with shovels as soon as the Dry comes in. Using bulldozers, you say? Never tried that… How steep a grade can they climb?”

  “Christ knows! The Yanks say they can do anything.”

  “Leave it up to them, then. I can’t.”

  “What do we recommend for starters, George?”

  “A few thousand tons of canned beef and rice first off. You’re going to need to hire on locals, and that means feed them. Money’s no use to them, because they got no place to spend it. Ship their kai up first of all. Then get a waterworks up there, because Moresby runs short in the Dry with its present population. After that, ship in building timber and corrugated iron for roofs. There’s no spare places for men to sleep and tents ain’t a good idea in the Wet; not much cop in the Dry, thinking on it. Everything you need must be shipped in – there’s nothing up there for you. Expand the harbour – it ain’t big enough for wartime needs. You’ll need oil tanks for bunkering – ships normally refuel down South, not in Moresby. If I was you, I’d carve out two or three extra airstrips as well; the one they’ve got ain’t up to much – all small stuff with a short take off.”

  “So… Let’s just get it right. No food; too little water; shortage of housing; harbour and airfield both too small. Is there anything they’ve got enough of?”

  “Bloody missionaries – there’s more than enough of them!”

  “Point taken.”

  Fred sat back and looked at his initial report, drawn up in the previous week. He threw it in the bin.

  “Fly you up tomorrow, George?”

  “Up Cape York to the navy, maybe. There’ll be nothing alive in the sky over Moresby by now. Fast boat making a run in overnight, I’d suggest.”

 
Fred thought George was exaggerating, suggested they get onto the radio to their contact in Moresby.

  “No point talking to the Army there – they’ll just feed us the official bullshit. Charlie will do that.”

  One of the four, hitherto silent, nodded and walked out to the radio room.

  “The platoon we send up with you, George, twelve men and a corporal. Riflemen?”

  “No. Two at least of light machine guns. Brens if possible, old Lewis Guns if not. Not Vickers, they need too many men in the crew if you haven’t got them mounted in a truck. Thompson Guns for some of them, as many as possible. Hand grenades, all you can get hold of. Rifles for no more than six. One at least of pump action shotguns – the old Remingtons will do; useful for snakes. Bush knives, one apiece. Light folding shovels if you’ve got them. A waterproof groundsheet each, and a light blanket. First Aid kit to each man, and malaria pills and a bottle of kaolin and morph apiece. Two water bottles each.”

  George ran over the equipment in his mind, remembered his walk out to Salamaua.

  “Socks – six pairs at least. Paraffin tablets to light fires so they can boil water for washing and sterilising. Matches. Salt – each man to have some; pills if you’ve got ‘em. Orange panels – light cotton that can be laid out and seen from the air for dropping more supplies in.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “They’ll die with less than that, Fred. Some of them will die anyway. Some of them will be evacuated after their first patrol out and never be fit enough to serve again. The blokes you give me – all of them to come from the Far North - Cairns or further up the Cape or out towards Darwin. They are halfway used to the tropics. Men of New South Wales or Victoria will be good blokes, no question, but they won’t have the tropics in their guts and too many will go down and die.”

  “You are serious.”

  “I am, Fred. Something else you need in Moresby and that’s a hospital with beds for a quarter of your men at a time. The rest who go sick will be more serious cases who have to be evacuated immediately. You’ll need hospital ships – big and fast and ready to take anything up to half of the men out in the Wet Season.”

  Fred made the note, shaking his head.

  “Why do you live up there, George?”

  “Finest place on Earth, Fred. Apart from almost anywhere else, that is. There’s no other place to be, man; when you’re away from it, that is. When you’ve gone back, you wonder why, but you don’t leave, Fred. It’s home, Fred, and the people are something different. Bastards most of them, but my sort of bastard.”

  “Crazy!”

  “Weird, maybe, Fred. It’s the last place on Earth, and the best and the worst, one and the same time. I’ll go back as soon as I can, but one day I shall be thrown out – I’m a dim-dim, a whiteskin, it ain’t my land and they’ve got the right to tell me to bugger off. I shall regret it, when that day comes, but I won’t fight. It’s their land, and it may be better for us coming into it; might be worse, will be in many ways – ask me again in two hundred years, might be able to give an answer then. My boy, little Ned, will grow up knowing that he’s a Digger first.”

  Fred came from New South Wales, fifth generation Digger – he knew where he belonged. He felt a degree of sympathy for George but wished he had as much money behind him – a man with George’s wealth belonged any place he wanted to be, he thought. He glanced across to the fourth man in his team.

  “What recommendations would you make to the American Army, George?”

  The speaker had sat silent, now introduced himself as Mick. George thought half of the Diggers he had ever met had been Mick.

  “Go home?”

  “Other than that?”

  “Keep your men fit – march them twenty miles a day. Each of them to have an automatic weapon and grenades. Feed them well and rotate them in and out of the fighting zone; one week up, six back. Forget about trucks and tanks and cars and anything with wheels – they ain’t going anywhere. Don’t attack except with aircraft cover, and a lot of it. Keep to the coast, in the range of the guns of the big ships. Hire on the locals as scouts; pay them to do the fighting where possible, they’ll be better at it.”

  Mick shrugged.

  “I’ll tell ‘em. They won’t listen, that’s for certain sure.”

  “They’ll learn. Or they won’t. Then they’ll die. It’s the last land, the furthest from anywhere, and it’s got its own rules – learn them and live.”

  “The Yanks know better. They didn’t like sending me up here to discover the reality of the Papuan Side, but the Australian Army persuaded them to. They won’t listen.”

  “They will, one day. Those who live.”

  Charlie came back.

  “Couldn’t get through on the radio. Picked up messages from overnight and this morning. Twelve air raids since mid-afternoon. No fighters left at the airstrip. Docks taken a hammering. Navy pulled out to sea, the couple of ships was there. Two small freighters in and sunk at their moorings. The four anti-aircraft guns destroyed. Maybe a dozen Vickers still functioning. Claim five Japs shot down. Hospital hit, despite big red crosses. Need for hospital ships in the night.”

  “Jesus! What are they doing here?”

  “The normal. Sod all, for lack of resources. They’ve forwarded the messages to the High Command.”

  “Waste of bloody time that will be.”

  They sat silently for minutes, waiting for Fred to give orders.

  “George, go as far north as you can tomorrow. I’ll organise a fast launch or some sort of ship to get you to Moresby at night. Better you should have a half company with you rather than a small platoon.”

  “Only if they’re equipped and armed up like I said, Fred.”

  “Sod it. Cancel that order. I’ll get the men up here and you can take two or three days to get them right. From the Fifth, and they’ll do what’s needed.”

  George raised an eyebrow, wondering just how he would work that set of miracles.

  “I’m a major-general by rank, George. When I say ‘jump’ that prat Patterson asks how high. End of story.”

  “Glad to hear it. Can you make him train his men so they’ll be useful?”

  “No man on Earth could do that, George. But I can and will bust the bastard right back down to Sydney and get a useful replacement in for him, after I’ve got your blokes.”

  “Good on yer, mate. I won’t hold me breath while I’m waiting for something useful to happen.”

  “Bugger off home, George. Back here for seven in the morning. Fully equipped, ready to go.”

  George appeared at seven, and sat down with a mug of tea and waited. Two hours later a pair of lorries pulled up and dropped forty men and a lieutenant and a noisy sergeant who formed the men up, parade ground style, in three ranks.

  George stared as they stretched their arms out and set themselves at their correct distance from each other and from the markers at the end of the ranks. Fred came out of his office and watched in disbelief.

  “Very pretty, Fred. Where’s their tutus? They dance beautifully.”

  The lieutenant stood to one side, silent, cane in his hand.

  Fred put his tunic on and walked out, waited for the sergeant to notice him and his badges.

  “Parade! Parade will…”

  “For Christ’s sake shut up! Lieutenant, here.”

  “Jerningham, sir. Fifth Battalion, sir.”

  “Are you now. What are your orders?”

  “Report to Major-General Higgins, sir.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing, sir. Just to report, sir.”

  “What have you got with you?”

  “Oh! Half company, sir. D Company, sir. Riflemen.”

  “Where are their rifles?”

  “In the armoury, sir. I was not ordered to bring rifles, sir.”

  George started to laugh, quietly but audibly in the background.

  “Hopeless! How many men?”

  “Four corporals, sir; four lance-corporals
and thirty-two riflemen, sir. Four platoons.”

  “And a sergeant?”

  “No, sir. Sergeant Baker is part of the training cadre, sir. He is to return with the lorries, sir.”

  “I need a sergeant with these men. He will stay. Captain Hawkins!”

  George walked out into the sun.

  “Sir.”

  “Take your men to the QM and change their uniforms for tropical issue. You are expected. You will then proceed to the armoury and draw light automatic weapons and rifles and ammunition and hand grenades. I will order that now. You will then proceed to familiarise your half company with their weapons. Today is Tuesday. On Thursday you will be flown to the north of Cape York where you will take ship for Port Moresby. Training will continue aboard ship.”

  “Sir.”

  Fred nodded to his orderly to lead the way to the Quartermaster’s stores.

  George turned to Lieutenant Jerningham.

  “Bring the men, Lieutenant. Without shouting.”

  Sergeant Baker instantly bellowed for attention and ordered the men to form fours and quick march.

  George waited for Lieutenant Jerningham to speak, took over when he remained silent.

  “Sergeant Baker! Halt!”

  Baker screamed the order and then began to abuse two of the men who had not performed the evolution to his satisfaction.

  “Sergeant! To me.”

  George walked a few yards away from the men, carefully remaining within hearing range.

  “I ordered there to be no shouting, Sergeant. Disobey my orders once more and you will lose your stripes. Wartime conditions, Sergeant Baker. You are on active service and the general will back me because he needs us to be busy in Papua by the beginning of next week. You will accompany the men, and you will be useful, Sergeant. If you refuse to do your duty then you will be broken, and you will still come with us. I am sure the men will enjoy the sight of you marching in their ranks.”

  “Beg pardon, sir, but the men are not ready to go to service, sir. You saw the way they marched off, sir. Not ready at all.”

  “They are going to fight, not to march and look pretty on the drill square. You too. Follow the orderly to the QM. Do not shout. Do not play at parades. Go!”