Target: Rabaul (49 page)

Krantz knew approximately where the coastwatchers were, for the supplies had beenx dropped on Figgis’s camp. Later that day a runner brought a note advising the Americans to “follow this boy and bring all of the firearms.”

Upon reaching the inland camp on December 2, the newcomers were greeted by Figgis, who wore a classic Aussie slouch hat. He introduced them to Migliacci, Henderson, and the rest of his party, then gathered their service information. After that, he saw to their needs.

In a wartime jungle camp deep inside an enemy-held island, the needs were diverse. Krantz later outlined Figgis’s careful attention:

He took care of our cuts and sores, put sulfa power and bandages on them, and then he gave us shorts and shirts and shoes. He gave us each a revolver. He fed us, and then he got on the radio and reported that we were with him, and that we were from the
Bunker Hill
.

He was very friendly. We were relieved to be with him. We had food, quarters, and medical attention. The next big thing was: How soon could we get back to our own forces? I wanted to get back to my squadron. Well, we found out it wasn’t feasible. But we didn’t know that at the time. They weren’t taking any people off, not until the day we left.

THE DAY THEY left turned out to be months away. During the interim, the marooned aviators created complications for Figgis beyond the extra mouths to feed. The army fliers didn’t have much respect for the navy fliers, and vice versa, a situation that mystified Figgis and his assistants. As the days and weeks passed, everyone’s nerves were rubbed raw. Krantz became especially irritated with one of the army fliers, whom he considered “a real whiner.” But that paled in comparison to his disdain for a marine pilot who arrived weeks later.

On January 14, 1944, during a strike on Simpson Harbor by navy and marine light bombers, Zekes shot down a TBF of Marine Torpedo Bombing Squadron 232. The crew’s experience was similar to that of Krantz and his men. After ditching their identical plane in Saint George’s Channel, the marine crew exited safely and drifted in their raft to New Britain’s coast. They spent a couple of weeks in a village, learned of Figgis’s camp, and set off with the help of several islanders. The radioman, infected with malaria, had received some “Japanese quinine” from the natives, but traveled only a short distance before collapsing. Rather than arranging for native carriers to assist him to the camp, something done routinely in the
islands, the pilot sent the sick man back to the village with a few islanders. He and the remaining crewman then proceeded to Figgis’s camp.

Krantz, Case, and Miller, who had supported each other throughout their ordeal, resented the pilot’s decision. Krantz in particular was disgusted that he had not only left one of his men to an unknown fate, but seemed ambivalent about it. The situation only made the enmities between military branches seem more pronounced.

Wisely, the coastwatchers avoided involvement. “I was aware of some friction among them,” recalled Figgis. “It did not seem to be personal, but a question of USN versus USAAF and Marines. Personally, I had no trouble with them, because I am sure they felt obliged to keep their feuds to themselves and not to worry me about them. They all knew that if they were ever to return to their units, cooperation with me was essential.”

With seven stranded fliers and his own party to feed, Figgis was more worried about his dwindling supplies. The situation worsened when a supply drop, evidently conducted by a green bomber crew, went wrong. The drop was made at high speed, as in a bombing run, and the parachutes broke. “Our supplies came tumbling down in free fall,” remembered Figgis. “Bags of salt were a danger as they crashed through the trees, ripping off branches and bursting open when hitting the ground.”

After Figgis’s stern admonishment over the radio, the next drop was perfect: a slow approach, flaps down, nothing broken or damaged. While waiting several days for the attempt, however, the inhabitants of Camp Figgis were reduced to a diet of rice and fresh shoots from the tops of palm trees.

FORTUNATELY FOR THE coastwatchers and stranded airmen, evacuation plans were in motion. Operation Dexterity, the invasion of New Britain, had commenced in December 1943 and achieved the desired results. In a reversal of the situation endured by Lark Force two years earlier, Japanese troops were withdrawing along the trails from the western end of the island to Rabaul. The only difference, besides the direction of travel, was the scale of defeat. Whereas approximately a thousand members of Lark Force had initially “gone bush” after the Japanese rout in January 1942, many thousands of starving, ragged Japanese streamed eastward in the spring of 1944.

MacArthur had originally intended to make his preliminary landing at Gasmata in mid-December 1943. That plan was scrapped after intelligence reports and photo reconnaissance showed that the Japanese were preparing for an assault there. In late November, at the recommendation of his naval advisors, MacArthur changed the landing site to Arawe (more accurately Cape Merkus), about ninety miles west of Gasmata, with the assault scheduled for December 15.

The landings, conducted by the 112th Cavalry Regiment using rubber boats, met surprisingly stiff resistance. Additional waves were delivered by LTV-1 and
LTV-2 amphibious tractors, and by day’s end 1,600 soldiers were ashore. The Eleventh Air Fleet retaliated with raids over the first few days, with Figgis providing early warning from his new camp. The Japanese claimed phenomenal results, including the alleged sinking of numerous transports, warships, and landing craft, but actually the raids were ineffective.

Eleven days after the preliminary landings, the 1st Marine Division went ashore at Cape Gloucester. These were the battle-tested veterans who had taken Guadalcanal; relieved after four months on that pestilential island, the division had moved to Melbourne, Australia. Nearly a year later, well rested and regrouped, the marines landed on New Britain the day after Christmas. Eleven thousand troops secured the beachhead, but faced difficulty moving forward because of inland swamps. The marines found themselves in a tough fight against determined units of the Japanese 17th Division. The terrain was difficult to negotiate because of mud, swamps, massive tree roots, and heavy jungle—its canopy so thick that no sunlight penetrated. The Japanese took advantage of the terrain’s chokepoints, using them to create fields of fire from networks of reinforced machine-gun bunkers and mortar pits built with coconut logs. With minimum camouflage, the nests were difficult to see. The combination of cunning defensive works, oppressive jungle, monsoonal climate, and enemy tenacity challenged the marines every step of the way.

The island itself seemed determined to stop them. A mild earthquake in late December killed more than a dozen marines with falling trees. A heavy naval bombardment had preceded the landings, loosening the root systems and leaving some trees on the precarious rims of shell craters.

During an eastward push through that nightmare of jungle, swampland, and concealed bunkers on January 2, 1944, marines of the 7th Regiment encountered fierce resistance at a place called Suicide Creek. Among the many casualties that day was Pfc. Edwin C. Bearss, hit by enemy machine-gun fire in the left forearm, right shoulder, left heel, and left buttocks. But not all in one burst; rather, the Japanese gunner kept shooting Bearss after he fell. He survived due to the heroics of fellow marines and navy corpsmen, and believes his wounds had a positive influence on his postwar career as a battlefield interpreter.
^*

After two months of bitter fighting at Cape Gloucester, the Eighth Area Army at Rabaul ordered the withdrawal of the 17th Division. The retreat started out orderly, but additional marine landings farther up the coast of New Britain created extreme hardship for thousands of Japanese. Although MacArthur no longer planned to launch an all-out invasion of Rabaul, many stragglers became trapped by a cruel combination of New Britain’s mountains and lack of food. During patrols from his coastwatching hideout, Figgis observed enemy soldiers who were “in a far worse state than the worst of the Australian survivors from Rabaul two years previously.”

With the Japanese scattering in disarray, the AIB formed an armed guerilla unit called Lion Force. Manned mostly by islanders, with Skinner directing operations from the south coast, the unit conducted hit-and-run attacks against the Japanese. By that time, most of the coastwatchers had been hiding in the mountains for nearly a year, and the burgeoning population of downed aviators was stretching their resources to the limit. Two evacuations were arranged—one for the groups in northern New Britain, the other for Figgis and the coastwatchers near the south coast.

Several individuals almost missed the northern rendezvous with USS
Gato
. Departing on February 3 from Roberts’s camp, Manuel bid an emotional farewell to the islanders who had cared for him since the previous June. He and Roberts, plus aviators Planck, Czarnecki, and Giertsen, made their way with native helpers to Open Bay. On the evening of February 5,
Gato
surfaced in Open Bay and crept within a few hundred yards of shore. Crewmen launched two rubber boats and paddled them in for the pickup. With the evacuees on board, the rubber boats started out toward the bay, but had covered only two hundred yards when a frantic flashlight signal from shore got the sailors’ attention.

A message, described by
Gato’s
skipper as “crude blinker signaling,” was interpreted aboard the submarine to read: “sixty-seven more aviators.” Lieutenant Commander Robert J. Foley told his cook to prepare soup for dozens of guests, and the two rubber boats went back to the beach. There they found not sixty-seven aviators, but a party of six to seven, including Hargesheimer and two members of an RAAF Boston who had been shot down on the other side of the island the previous November.
^*

The new arrivals had come from Skinner’s camp, where a runner had informed them days before of the planned evacuation. The aviators set out the next day, but they wound up walking in a circle. Stokie then sent word that the pickup time had been moved ahead and sent a “hill native guide” with extra carriers to assist the anxious aviators. Their subsequent arduous trek, a race against time, brought them to the rendezvous beach within minutes of the rubber boats’ departure. Fortunately one of the men possessed a working flashlight and signaled the submarine. Had they arrived just fifteen minutes later, they would have missed the boat entirely.

Soon after the three aviators left Skinner’s camp, he crossed the island to meet with Figgis. There, arrangements were made to evacuate Figgis’s team along with the seven airmen under his charge, five of whom he had been supporting for more than four months. Assisted by several islanders, the party vacated the camp on March 17 and made their way carefully to a rendezvous point. At 0100 on the morning of March 26, they boarded an eighty-foot Elco of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 7, based at Thursday Island, New Guinea. The boat, commanded by Lt.
Alfred “Dix” Leeson, delivered them later that day to the mainland. From there, the long-stranded aviators were flown to Australia for hospitalization. Anxious to return home, Krantz and his crewmen were frustrated to find that the festering sores on their legs continued to resist the doctors’ efforts and were very slow to heal.

As one of the few who escaped New Britain in 1942, Peter Figgis had served his country honorably and bravely. He was under no obligation to risk his neck again, yet he returned to the island and spent a year and twenty-five days in that unforgiving place. Throughout the rest of his life, Figgis remained modest about his role, crediting his success as a coastwatcher to the support of the island people. “I did not have a close call or narrow escape from the Japanese,” he said. “This was because, having the total confidence of the native community, we were always aware of any Jap activity and laid low until we got the all clear.”

Figgis thought he did not contribute much to the war effort, but his government disagreed. In 1947, Figgis was award a Military Cross, Australia’s third-highest medal for valor.

*
The word for white man (also known as a “European”) in Pidgin English is “masta,” obviously derived from the pronunciation of “master.” The islanders were not enslaved, and many Australians have insisted that “masta” is merely an honorific. Perhaps so, but Melanesians were typically treated like children during that period, with grown men referred to as “boys” and women as “marys,” while toddlers and small children were “picaninnies.” When it came to discrimination and bigotry, Australians were no different than their American counterparts.

*
Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit, created in March 1942 to provide military personnel for administrative duties in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea

*
Bearss eventually became chief historian of the National Park Service. As of this writing, he is retired from government service but still leads walking tours, primarily across his favorite haunts, the battlefields of the Civil War.

*
Wing Commander William E. Townsend and Flight Lt. David M. McClymont escaped from their Boston after it was hit by antiaircraft fire and ditched off Palmalmal plantation on November 3, 1943. The gunner was killed in action.

CHAPTER 17