Invasion Rabaul (7 page)

The eruption forced Lieutenant Colonel Carr to move the garrison to a more suitable location on the northwest side of Malaguna Road. Dubbed Malaguna Camp, the new facility featured wood-frame huts sheathed with compressed asbestos siding. The troops weren’t aware of the dangers posed by asbestos; what mattered was that they were no longer exposed to the volcanic fallout.

The nurses benefited the most. The territorial capital finally shifted over to Lae, leaving Government House vacant, and the garrison converted it into a hospital. Wearing their heavy uniforms, the nurses were grateful to work up on the hill, where the sea breezes felt heavenly compared to the stifling humidity inside the caldera.

Meanwhile, Tavurvur continued to erupt intermittently for months. As additional components of Lark Force arrived by ship, the volcano greeted them with fireworks, almost as if the
kaia
were providing their own special welcome.

*
On July 2, 1937, only five weeks after the eruptions at Rabaul, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Lae and were subsequently lost.

CHAPTER THREE

HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE

“[Make] the enemy fight for this line …”

—Herbert Evatt, Australia Minister for External Affairs

T
o the military planners in Australia, the long string of islands comprising the Mandated Territory of New Guinea and the British-protected Solomons represented a sort of fence. Some in the War Cabinet even referred to it as the “Northern Barrier,” though the islands weren’t fortified until 1941. Lionel Wigmore, an esteemed Australian historian, more accurately described them as
“a slender chain of forward observation posts.”

In the fall of 1939, an officer of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) set out to link the islands with a communications and intelligence network. Over a period of months, Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Feldt traveled
“by ship, motor boat, canoe, bicycle, airplane, and boot” from New Guinea all the way to the New Hebrides, single-handedly enrolling dozens of plantation owners, traders, and assorted civilians into a loosely organized group known as the “coastwatchers.” All of them would perform a crucial role the coming war, many at the cost of their lives.

Simultaneously, detachments of a small militia organization, the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles (NGVR), were established among the major islands. Representing the mandated territory’s only infantry force prior to 1941, the NGVR was authorized the day after Australia declared war on Germany, and many of the region’s able-bodied men were volunteers. Lieutenant Colonel John Walstab, the supervisor of police on New Britain,
trained a unit of approximately eighty men who formed a rifle company, a machine gun squad, and a small headquarters unit.

The arrival of Lark Force in 1941 was a significant boost to the local military strength, and later that summer a commando unit garrisoned New Ireland. The 1st Independent Company, led by Major James Edmonds-Wilson, represented the extent of the War Cabinet’s effort to defend the other islands of the mandated territory, but even that small force was subdivided. Approximately 150 of the commandos fortified the main harbor town of Kavieng and a nearby airfield; the rest defended several remote airstrips scattered among the Solomons and New Hebrides islands.

Additional components of Lark Force were delivered by the
Zealandia
, which returned to Rabaul with a detachment of Royal Australian Artillery to install a pair of 6-inch coastal defense guns. A company of Royal Australian Engineers was also aboard, along with a detachment of communications specialists. Together, the three groups added two hundred officers and men to the garrison.

The engineers’ first responsibility was to construct access roads and emplacements for the coastal guns. Praed Point provided the most commanding view of St. George’s Channel and the approaches to Blanche Bay, but the steep topography of Crater Peninsula prevented the guns from being placed side by side in the conventional manner. Instead, they were stacked one above the other despite
“expert and most urgent advice” to the contrary from several old soldiers. A number of veterans went out to Praed Point and criticized the engineers, but stacking the guns was the only practical solution that allowed both guns a wide firing arc. The bigger problem was the fact that there were only two vintage weapons to begin with.

Likewise, Rabaul’s air defense was limited, the only weapons being a pair of 3-inch guns manned by militiamen. Captain David M. Selby, a slender, aristocratic-looking attorney from New South Wales, led the fifty-four members of the battery ashore from the liner
Neptuna
on August 16. They moved into several huts at Malaguna Camp, then set up their mobile guns near the beach and commenced an almost laughable
training program. Permission to fire the weapons was denied because one of the weapons had a crack in its breechblock. In order to prevent further damage, the crews had to satisfy themselves with merely tracking the weekly mail plane. They pretended to shoot it down twice every Saturday—once during its
approach to Lakunai airdrome and again when the plane departed. The rest of the week, one of the young gunners (invariably the fellow with the most accumulated demerits) supplied the target by running back and forth while holding a model plane aloft on a length of bamboo. Naturally he was the butt of many jokes, and the militiamen as a group endured endless wisecracks from their AIF campmates.

The final component of Lark Force, the 17th Antitank Battery, was delivered to Rabaul by the
Zealandia
on September 29. Commanded by Captain Gwynne Matheson, the battery of eight 2-pounder guns was served by six officers and 104 men. Unfortunately, like the other components of Lark Force, the weapons had serious limitations. The only ammunition shipped with the guns was solid-steel shot—good for target practice but almost useless in battle—and there were only twenty rounds per gun.

With the arrival of the antitank battery, Lark Force was complete. In addition to the 2/22nd Infantry Battalion, the hodgepodge of support units brought the garrison’s total to approximately fourteen hundred men—and six nurses.

T
HE MILITARY WORKDAY AT
R
ABAUL NORMALLY CONCLUDED WITH AN
afternoon parade at 1600. Passes were usually available for those who wanted to leave camp, and if a bloke was lucky, he might get to accompany one of the nurses to a film at the Regent. Fraternization was frowned upon, but not everyone abided by the guidelines.
“The nurses were not supposed to go out with the troops; we were only supposed to mix with the officers,” recalled Lorna Johnson. “But that never troubled Kay [Parker]. If she saw somebody that she liked, and he came up and asked her to the pictures, it didn’t matter if he was a private—she would go.”

Rabaul offered several attractions besides the theater. Troops who had never traveled far from home marveled at the shops in Chinatown, exotic beyond anything they had ever seen. In the center of the neighborhood was the “Bung,” a colorful, noisy market crowded with dark-skinned “marys” in Mother Hubbard blouses and bare-chested Tolai men wearing colorful sarongs around their hips. Rows of stalls were piled high with pineapples, coconuts, shellfish, betel nut, papaya, sugar cane, or fresh fish. Dogs scurried underfoot, and it was not unusual to see a domesticated fowl perched atop a mound of vegetables. Visiting the market for the first time, Private Pearson was enthralled by an old native woman who watched her stall
while
“sitting placidly by, smoking a filthy old pipe with the stem broken off near the bowl.” Pearson also admired the strength of the native women. They worked harder than the men, and he observed one Tolai woman who walked eleven miles while carrying a load of heavy wares “plus a picaninny on her hip.”

Sometimes the natives’ appearance and customs shocked the Australian soldiers. A great many of the adult Tolai had open sores on their legs and feet, and more than a few suffered from grotesque ailments such as elephantiasis or gout. Men and women alike chewed betel nut, the intoxicating juice of which stained their lips and teeth a hideous red. Wherever they congregated, the dirt around them was splotched with red spittle.

S
OLDIERS WHO LACKED EITHER THE FUNDS OR THE INCLINATION TO VISIT
Rabaul made their own entertainment in Malaguna Camp. The canteen offered Castlemaine Beer and Fosters Export Ale for a shilling a bottle (about fifteen cents in 1941), and if the beer wasn’t always cold, the men drank it anyway while playing two-up, their favorite coin game. Aussie soldiers had few equals when it came to gambling. They were known to wager on just about anything, from dice to cards to
“which of two flies will rise first from the bar.”

Even when they weren’t gambling, the soldiers tried to outdo each other at every opportunity. Participation in sports was compulsory, with the battalion’s various companies and Lark Force support units rotating between cricket, tennis, baseball, golf, and swimming. Saturday afternoons were set aside for boxing tournaments in camp or swim meets at Rabaul’s modern concrete pool. The competition was fierce yet good natured, which added to the foundation of camaraderie that no amount of formal training could instill. One could not help but admire the soldiers’ enthusiasm.
“They were all outstanding young men, lots of them country boys, just bush boys,” remembered Lorna Johnson. “All had a good sense of humor; all loved their glass of beer; all loved their fun. They would take on anything and anybody. They were a great band of boys.”

She was correct in the sense that there were plenty of youngsters in the garrison—Private Andrew B. Bishop, a native of England, was only seventeen—but Johnson was looking through a prism of several decades in
remembering them all as boys. Considering that the average life expectancy in 1941 was only about sixty-five years, numerous members of the garrison were actually past middle age. Older troops included Privates Thomas R. Connop and Wilfred J. Baker, both forty-one; Sydney McGregor, Lawrence Quinn, and Harry Bernstein, forty; and a host of others in their late thirties. Many in the ranks were significantly older than their officers. Private William Holmes, a thirty-nine-year-old native of Ireland, was batman for Lieutenant Alec R. Tolmer, twenty-seven, who led the 2/22nd’s Pioneer Platoon. Other junior officers were even younger. Hatsell G. “Glenn” Garrard, a lieutenant in the Headquarters Company, was twenty-three but looked more like an adolescent cadet; Lieutenant Benjamin G. Dawson, one of the intelligence officers in the 2/22nd, was only twenty when he joined the battalion.

With such a wide span of ages and backgrounds represented among the members of Lark Force, there was no shortage of colorful characters. One of the most noteworthy was Private Norman D.
Webster, thirty, an infantryman who had performed as a rough rider in traveling expeditions such as “Wild Australia” and “Thorpe McConville’s Buckjump Show.” Ever the entertainer, he was fond of storytelling and had a penchant for outlandish expressions. Another performer, although not a true professional, was Private A. Colin Dowse, a twenty-year-old farm boy from Victoria who
“could thump out a honky-tonk tune while he bounced about on the piano stool.”

A fair number of soldiers had two middle names and some had none at all; but in the unusual name category, few could compete with Private C. O. Harry. Raised on a farm north of Melbourne, he was accustomed to hard work and hard times, droughts and depressions. His grandfather, John Harry, a British seaman-apprentice, had jumped ship back in the 1850s when gold was discovered in New South Wales. He did not strike it rich but prospered all the same, obtaining acreage along the Murray River during the 1869 Land Act. Among John’s four sons, Henry
Harry had four sons of his own, and for some unknown reason he saddled the youngest with a lisp-inducing family name: Cuthbert Oswald. No one ever blamed the lad for choosing a common nickname. By the time C. O. enlisted at the age of twenty-three, he was known to everyone as “Bill,” and no soldier was tougher.

Easily the most famous personality in the garrison was Sergeant Gullidge. He and the bandsmen became the pride not only of Lark Force but also of Rabaul, playing at all kinds of civic events in addition to their military duties. Boxing tournaments drew large crowds, and the
band entertained them with marches and popular tunes between rounds. A favorite was the “Colonel Bogey March,” to which the soldiers loudly sang their own bawdy lyrics. Gullidge was embarrassed but went along with the fun, making up for it on Sundays by singing in the Methodist church, one of Rabaul’s most established Protestant houses of worship.

Soldiers who attended religious services in camp were alternately led by one of the garrison’s two army chaplains. Captain Victor S. Turner of England was a Catholic padre, and Lieutenant John L. May of Tasmania represented the Protestants. Religious differences notwithstanding, the two men could hardly have been more dissimilar. At thirty-seven, Turner was one of the oldest men in Lark Force, and as one officer put it,
“only dire threats of punishment could secure anything like full attendance at Church Parade.” May was more than twenty years younger than Turner, and his spontaneous, enthusiastic personality appealed widely to the troops.

Religion and faith were important to a great majority of contemporary Australians. A significant percentage of those living among the mandated islands were missionaries, making it inevitable that members of Lark Force would interact with some of them. During a detailed compass-and-chain survey of the Gazelle Peninsula, for example, a team from the intelligence section of the 2/22nd spent several days in the vicinity of Kalas, a Methodist mission school in the foothills of the Baining Mountains. Bill Harry befriended the Reverend and Mrs. John Poole, and the minister subsequently invited him on a “walkabout” to visit villages deep in the mountains. Harry was granted leave to go on the journey, and by the time they returned two weeks later, he knew more about the northern region of New Britain than anyone else in Lark Force.