Fear Drive My Feet (22 page)

I tied up Jock's boxes, marked them, and put them in the store for him.

‘I hope he needs them again,' I said to Watute, who was helping me.

He grinned happily. ‘Japan 'e no can killim Master Jock 'e die,' he said confidently.
‘ 'Em 'e strong-fella man too much.'

Next morning, in bright sunshine, Dinkila and I boarded an empty transport plane
returning to Port Moresby.

Watute and Buka were waiting to see us off.

‘Oh, sorry, master!' they said. ‘Behind you come back lookim me-fella.'

As they saluted I promised to return as soon as I could. Then the plane's doors slammed
shut, and we lost sight of them.

It was Dinkila's first ride in an aeroplane. He was not at all afraid, but rather
excited, and he watched Wau disappear and the mountains slip beneath us, his nose
flattened against the Perspex window. I watched with interest too, for this was
the very country over which I had walked from Port Moresby in the early days of the
war, before we had any aeroplanes. As I saw the incredible succession of precipitous
ridges and valleys pass beneath us I marvelled that every round of ammunition, every
tin of biscuits, every case of meat, had been carried on human shoulders across those
heart-breaking obstacles to the weary, outnumbered troops who had held the Bulolo
Valley all these lonely months. Now we were making the return trip in a comfortable
couple of hours. I remarked on the contrast
to Dinkila, but he was not interested.
He had turned that queer green colour peculiar to a sick native, and I could see
that he was retaining his breakfast with difficulty. He stumbled down the steps of
the plane into the dusty, blinding glare of the aerodrome at Port Moresby, but his
spirits were at their usual high level ten minutes later.

A jeep took Dinkila and me from the aerodrome to the headquarters of Angau (the Australian
New Guinea Administrative Unit), a vast collection of buildings that stretched right
round the beach from Hanuabada native village to the old civil government house.

From here I spent some days visiting various intelligence agencies, answering their
questions as best I could about affairs across the Markham. There was now nobody
in the country behind Lae, and the intelligence officers felt it was important for
someone to be there so that we should not remain ignorant of enemy activity in this
important area. For instance, it was rumoured that the Japanese were opening overland
communications between Madang and Lae, following a track up the Ramu River, over
into the Markham headwaters, and down that river to Lae.

I was keen to return to the Wain country. With adequate supplies and a radio set
it would be possible to hole up there for the rest of the war, provided I got back
quickly, before friendships with the natives had cooled or been forgotten. Various
officers in these intelligence groups said they would support me if I applied to
go back, and offered assistance in supplies, equipment, and information.

The sore on my face was gradually healing, and on one pretext or another I put off
visiting the hospital for a fortnight – until I was nearly better – hoping to avoid
being sent to Australia. When I finally reported at the hospital I found that it
was all under canvas. There were about forty beds to each ward, and they were stretched
out in a great double row on bare dirt floors. Most of the time the sides of the
tents were kept brailed up to let the breeze in. Many of the patients had been wounded
in the Wau battle and in the subsequent pursuit of the Japanese across the ridges
to Salamaua.

While I was sitting in the registrar's office waiting to be admitted a sister walked
into the tent. A white woman! And a girl fresh from Australia at that, a girl whose
cheeks had not yet been stained yellow by constant doses of atebrin tablets. She
must have noticed the astonished look on my face, for she asked what was the matter,
and laughed when I explained that she was the first white woman I had seen for more
than a year.

‘There are plenty of us here,' she said. ‘You'll probably want to go back to the
bush before you've been a patient very long.'

After a week under observation, which I spent resting in bed, I was told by the skin
specialist that I could remain in New Guinea, and was discharged from hospital with
a warning to keep my face always well shaded with a hat.

I went back to Angau headquarters to seek permission to return to the Wain. There
was a delay of a couple of weeks while my plan was debated by my senior officers,
and eventually approval was given.

In the period of waiting I learnt about another phase of warfare – base areas and
headquarters. I was learning that war had no redeeming features; that in its every
aspect it was futility compounded with varying degrees of degradation. I had already
seen something of the physical suffering it entailed. But the dangers and hardship
of active service seemed tolerable when I compared them with the shabby atmosphere
of service base areas.

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.