THAT EVENING, we got to Berande. Along with Macfarlan, who had come with us from Tanambogo, we held a conference of war.
Everything was in an uproar. The peaceful place I had known but three months before had simply disappeared. In an appalling display of cowardice and irresponsibility, many of the plantation managers had abandoned their properties and fled, without even taking their books or securing their stores. Hundreds of laborers were left to fend for themselves, unpaid, with only a few weeks’ rations. Most were Malaita men; they were confused and angry and had no means of returning home. The situation had deteriorated into widespread looting and a general breakdown of civil order; no dump of stores was safe any longer. But we could not provide guards for all of them: the police had other things to do.
The next morning several of the miners left for San Cristobal with Macfarlan, who was having a scout around. Johnstone and I went to Aola to report to Dick Horton, the district officer. We found him busy with the repatriation of the laborers. Several schooners were in, and Horton and Henry Josselyn had been busy fixing them up for that purpose.1 That afternoon, Josselyn took a small convoy off to Malaita. We decided to send Johnstone with him, to get the Ruana and put all the remaining civilians on board. They should be able to get to Australia somehow.
I spent the next two days checking our air warning system. Our lookout post was situated near the top of a giant banyan tree, from which the sharp-eyed watch could spot planes over Tulagi, nineteen miles away. (On calm days one could hear them farther away than that, though most of the men could not yet distinguish the sounds of the different planes.) When an air attack was expected, the lookout would give the warning signal on a conch shell, which could be heard all over the station. The alarm was confirmed with a red flag; a white flag signaled all clear.
Before dawn on 17 February, Henry and I left in the Ramada for Tulagi, chancing a dash in to pick up what was left of the Central Hospital’s precious gear. We arrived, after a very wearing trip, in time to pay a call on Pilot Officer Hamer and the RAAF at Tanambogo. The news was ominous indeed—the Catalinas had reported eleven Japanese cruisers at Rabaul, New Britain, less than six hundred miles away—and his men were nervous and grim.
We sat out the morning raid in the mangroves. The Japs, who seemed to think that Tulagi was still occupied, expended tons of bombs on the old radio station there. It was, of course, not working, but the tall steel mast, which still stood, apparently gave them the idea that it was the center of communications. Tanambogo, with its almost invisible aerials, did the real work.
I was pleased that Lieutenant Russell, in charge of the AIF “Independos,” had taken my advice and had his men move the oil drums around on the wharf at Tulagi to give an impression of activity there. They had even put up mock clotheslines, with washing hung out as if to dry. If we could keep up the deception it would spare the RAAF and the Catalinas and buy us vital time.
Just how precarious our position had become was made clear to me when we were tied up off the hospital. I was standing in the dinghy, which was full of medical stores and being pushed back to the ship, when two fighters suddenly zoomed over Tulagi. I felt quite naked: there was nothing I could do. Luckily they appeared not to have seen us. We spent the night at Gavutu, then got away quick and fast after breakfast, before the chance of a raid.
Back at Aola, Henry took our meager force on anti-landing-party practice. It wasn’t very good training: we could spare little ammunition, so they fired only a minimal number of rounds. I hoped we would not have to defend this place if the enemy came.
On 24 February, Horton returned from Auki in the Ramada. Dick waited until the next day to break the news: after speaking with the resident commissioner, he had decided to go to Sydney and try to join the RAAF. I was the new district officer.
There followed three days of intense activity, as I prepared to take over the government station at Aola Bay. This allowed me to take stock of our slim resources. There was much ground to clear for gardens, so I tried plowing with bullocks, but with little success—there were just too many roots. In the midst of everything we got a message telling us to return eleven drums of diesel oil that we had brought out from Tulagi; this was incomprehensible—they were likely to get bombed there, and we needed all we had. Finally, on the last day of February, I completed my inspection of Aola and its defenses.
Josselyn had been supervising the return of laborers to Malaita. Determined to play a more active part in things, he had thought up a naval patrol scheme, which Macfarlan and Hamer supported and I had been prepared to join. The idea was to get the best of the government schooners, wait till the Japs arrived, report by radio as much as we could, and then make a dash for it. While I was taking over, Henry went off to Auki and put up the scheme officially; Marchant, however, felt unable to make an immediate decision, saying he would let us know in a day or two.
In a rather mutinous letter to an Australian naval friend, Lt. W. R. Milne, which was taken to Sydney by a refugee, I described our situation at that time, and my frustration with it:
The Office of the District Officer,
Aola,
Guadalcanal, B.S.I.P
Dear Bill,
You will, by now, have heard all sorts of stories about the shambles up here and come to the conclusion that all is scuppered and finished. However a few of us, what were left when the rats went, are cleaning up the shambles, and living quite normally.
I got back to find that the Mor [i.e., the Morinda] was due to evacuate the whole place and that all who were staying were to be volunteers for intelligence work. This was entirely the R.C.’s idea as Fiji had told him to get out with the rest. He told me I could not go back to my old District as the bloke relieving me had offered to stay and he offered me a district where I had never been before and where the D.O. had burnt everything and ratted. It was bombed the next day. It didn’t seem quite the place to take on at this stage of the game which I told him very plainly. . . . I also find that my recall could easily have been cancelled but wasn’t because the Govt Sec retired into his shell and did nothing.
It appeared also that the N.L.O. MacFarlan and Clive Hamer, in charge R.A.A.F. A.O.B. [Advanced Operational Base] had quite divergent ideas as [to] what was to be done. . . . All through the R.C. has stuck his head in the sand and said that the Japs would never come here. In fact he still believes it. We are getting a weekly raid over Tulagi, which has been thoroughly looted. . . .
The R.C. has gone out to another station and thinks he is carrying on normal administration. For the last week or so I have been Acting D.O. here, but have spent most of my time with a convoy of five boats salvaging Govt property and oil fuel from Tulagi. We creep in at early dawn pack up and hide up before 10.30 which seems to be blitz time, usually called the Tannimboko [Tanambogo] Trot, after the R.A.A.F. depot here. They dropped a nice stick on the Mor as we arrived. . . .
I have salvaged quite a lot of my gear from Tulagi, but doubt whether I will ever get any of it away from here. . . . Still why worry about things like property as long as one is alive.
After the Mor went, we sent off an old 80 foot schooner [i.e., the Ruana] with 5 Whites and six Chinese. . . . I heard that they had reached Vila. It was their ambition to sail in through the Heads . . . but I expect they will leave her at Vila and get something more substantial. Williamson, one of the gold crowd and Cramer-Roberts, Theodore’s offsider2 weren’t too keen on the ocean trip. The latter’s luggage was a shirt & bottle of 5 oz of gold.
Of the three of us here, Horton we are sending off by plane to join the R.A.A.F. and Josselyn . . . and myself are trying to get signed on as temp s/Lieuts to run a naval patrol for snooping purposes. . . . The R.C. and the D.O. on his station seem to want to go on till they get caught which seems to us rather stupid. Hence the reactionary camp on Guadalcanal. MacF, N.L.O. is to w/t Eric Feldt at Townsville and see what can be done. The R.C., of course, wants us to go on active service without joining an armed force, which is the height of folly. After several show downs he has sent to Fiji to get us our release for the duration. . . .
The worst show here was put up by the managers of the Commercial firms, who shot off in a boat after the first two bombs, without even taking their books, paying off their labour, shutting their stores or anything. In the last week or two I have had to sort out, record wages owed, and repatriate about 1500 labour off the various plantations. It was no joke with small vessels. . . .
All the best
/s/ Yours ever
Martin Clemens
Latest All is at 6’s & 7’s. The R.C. got a boomer from H.C. Fiji, no release. . . . We have been asked to stay for intelligence & now we are asked to carry on the administration. If you can possibly speak in someone’s ear that the R.C. must be got out for the good of the war, for God’s sake do it. At present he is trying to pull the scapegoat touch on us. M.
Even more unfortunate, at least for me, we had drawn the RC’s attention to the fact that the government records were still at Gavutu.3 Marchant ordered Josselyn to take them down to Vila in the New Hebrides, six hundred miles away, but refused to release a government vessel to do the job. So Henry commandeered Lever’s auxiliary ketch Kombito, which despite engine problems was well suited for the task, as she had a big hold and was very seaworthy.
On 1 March, Donald Kennedy sneaked over from Ysabel in his cutter, Wai-ai, to discuss things. Kennedy was older and more experienced than most of us. He loved adventure, and as he walked up to the house I noticed that he was really enjoying the present situation. A New Zealander, of strong and independent character, Kennedy intended to stick it out, either on Ysabel or farther west, and report the situation as fully as possible. Worried, like the rest of us, about our lack of military standing, he had begun to address that problem: from the RAAF he had obtained a bush hat, which he had decorated with a red band and the gilded coat of arms off the helmet of his white civil uniform. To this original headgear he had added a formidable leather belt, from which hung a small automatic, and an elegant carved ebony walking stick. It gave him a rakish appearance.
We compared notes about what had happened and what we intended to do. As I had just done on Guadalcanal, Kennedy had given firm orders to all the people on Ysabel that if the Japanese came they were to have no dealings with them, in order to avoid being in the position of having to give information to the enemy.
Kennedy was as worried as I was about the reliability of our staff, especially his NMP, George Bogese. Highly educated, Bogese was a smooth talker and a born politician, but for some years he had been the problem child of the Medical Department, and we did not feel that he was very safe to have about. Kennedy therefore proposed that I give him one of my two medical practitioners; he suggested young Geoffrey Kuper, the son of an early settler. I was not very keen on the idea, but we discussed the matter fairly and decided that, as Kennedy had fewer police, he should have a reliable NMP. Reluctantly, I agreed to transfer Kuper: Eroni seemed a skilled medical man, and I felt he would prove as good.
We still had to figure out what to do with Bogese. I am sorry to say that this time we did not refer the matter to Auki. We decided to send Bogese on a mission to Savo Island, which had never had an NMP of its own. There was plenty of medical work to do there, and we felt that if he were fully occupied he would not get up to mischief. It was a decision we would come to regret.
The last thing was to arrange a rendezvous in case the worse came to the worst, since there was really no object in going out in different vessels if we had to flit. We chose a signal to indicate that fact over the air; it was some irrelevant code word, and I am afraid that I have quite forgotten it. Horton, having composed a letter of resignation, went off with Kennedy to Tulagi.
At 2130 on 3 March, Josselyn returned to Aola in the Kombito. Though very tired, he went back to Auki that night, to try to get a satisfactory answer to his proposal; but Marchant said his hands were tied. Henry sneaked over to Gavutu, picked up the records, and was away for Aola before the daily Jap flying boat came by. So much for our attempted foray into naval intelligence.
We spent the following day outfitting the vessel for her long trip. Reluctantly, I provided two weeks’ rations: I could ill afford to spare our scarce stores of European food, when in Vila such things were more plentiful. A competent yachtsman, Henry had thoroughly prepared for the voyage, equipping himself with various pilot books, charts, and navigational instruments. On 5 March he weighed anchor and headed south in the Kombito.
If it hadn’t been for Macfarlan, who had turned up, in the Tulagi, two days before, I should have felt rather like the last of the ten little Indian boys. Though the ship returned to Malaita before I could commandeer her, I was glad to see him, and happier still that he had got rid of his crew of miners, whom he had left on San Cristobal. Mac was a godsend: he could take over the teleradio schedule and keep me from being overwhelmed by the innumerable other things that never seemed to be done.
After all the tension of the previous weeks, Mac’s presence on the station was very refreshing: he could tell a good story, and he had a great sense of humor, poking fun at everything. This included what he called “your bloody commandos”: “If I raise my voice,” Mac said, “they’ll all vanish into the bush!” I replied that they’d get there a jolly sight quicker than he would.
The military situation was not very clear. We knew from Read that the Japanese had occupied or were using Buka, just across the passage from Bougainville, and that several Europeans had been captured. Mac had been with the RAAF at Tanambogo for a couple of days, but he could not stand the bombing, which by now had become a regular occurrence. As he had not seen much of anything on his reconnaissance, he decided he would stay with me until we got news of the Japanese approaching, then head for Berande and the hills. I offered him the hospitality of the place, which was, sad to say, gradually being depleted. He was still dressed in faultless whites, but soap was getting scarce, and I warned him that he would not be able to keep it up much longer.
Also with me was Dick Horton’s cook, Michael, whom I had gladly inherited together with his pots and pans. Michael was a very pleasant and cheerful character, who appeared quite happy at improvising meals out of whatever came to hand.
Another constant companion was my little dog, Suinao. I had bought him as a pup on Malaita for the tremendous price of fifteen sticks of tobacco (about five shillings). His father, well aware of his position as the district officer’s dog, was more like an Aberdeen than anything else; Suinao, who was named after a famous headhunter, had his father’s coat and appearance but was longer in the leg, and therefore much handier in the bush, and at getting into and out of dinghies and up and down companion ladders. He was a companionable beast, accompanied me everywhere, and was a great watchdog, which was just as well! Like his father, he would strut into a village, and, if challenged, was usually successful in establishing his social position as top dog on the island!
Although the Japs had not, so far as we knew, progressed any farther in the last few days, their bombing had increased considerably. The Catalinas now spent the night anchored off, refueling and taking on bombs, then got away fast in the morning. We kept up our communications schedule on the teleradio—with the other coastwatchers, the RC on Malaita, and the RAAF on Tanambogo. The RAAF chaps, whose call sign was VNTG, kept a listening watch every morning; if my banyan tree lookout signaled that planes were approaching, I would dash for the radio shack and warn Hamer and his men. Soon the lookout messenger would come, at the double, with detailed information—“Twofella Kawanisi ’e come ’long west,” for example, or “Sixfella got’m four engine ’e stop ’long west”—and it would be immediately sent out over the air in code.
It was just as well that I was so fully occupied, because if ever I did have a moment to think then black fear returned, and with it the unanswerable questions: What was going to happen, and what were we going to do? There we were, and it looked as though we would have to fend for ourselves, as best we could.