AFTER THE Ruana departed for Auki, to pick up fuel oil for the trip south, I got down to mending a spare WT set that had been left behind by a DO from one of the evacuated western districts. Snowy Rhoades had repeatedly written me that he ought to have a teleradio: he intended to stay, and he would have a marvelous view of Japs approaching Tulagi. Horton and I had been keeping a set for spare parts, but after no success making representations to Malaita for another set I thought it better to go without spares and let Rhoades give the RAAF warnings while he could.
Though I was not keen on getting stuck at Lavoro, I had to show Snowy how to work the set. Macfarlan was keeping radio watch for the RAAF. I decided to go down at once, while the opportunity still offered: the sooner Rhoades got started, the better. After loading up Hing-Li and installing my radio, we left about lunchtime on 23 March, intending to pass Cape Esperance at night.
At Berande, Hay was full of exasperation. This time it was the government: the RC had asked him to declare his stocks of fuel oil and other supplies! I persuaded Ken to give me a small petrol engine and dynamo, for Rhoades to charge his batteries.
Just before midnight, we set out for Lavoro. It was a fine, still night. The calm made me shiver—it was almost palpable. The air seemed full of portents, a feeling that anything might come out of the west. As the sea was so flat, we kept very close to the land, and arrived at Lavoro in time for breakfast. Snowy met us down at the wharf, a large pipe in his teeth and his rifle over his shoulder. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a wide-brimmed hat cocked at a jaunty angle. Beneath his bushy eyebrows, his deep-set eyes twinkled with anticipation.
While the men were unloading, we had a “dekko” round the plantation. Most of it was on flat ground; behind this the land rose to a steep cliff, with the house on top of it. The view was magnificent—I could clearly see the Russell Islands, thirty-five miles away. Rhoades would be able to give the RAAF at least fifteen minutes’ warning of approaching planes.1 Snowy was full of belligerent ideas; I thought he would probably get a chance to experiment later on, but the main thing at the moment was to get the teleradio up and working, so I could get back to Aola.
We put extension wires onto both ends of the aerial and hoisted it between two coconut palms, which we hoped made it almost invisible from the air; certainly it was so on the ground from fifty yards away. There were slipknots so he could pull the aerial down in a hurry. After we had spent a morning assembling the set under my inexpert guidance, I could not help but feel amused at myself, rattling off technical terms like an instructor. Snowy soon got the idea, and we contacted Macfarlan by lunchtime; it was typical of him that he started, “Hi, Mac, have you heard this one?” Well, the set worked, and that was all that mattered.
We both worried about the difficulty of giving Snowy some sort of military status. Since the beginning of March, we district officers had been gazetted, by radiotelephone, as second lieutenants in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Defence Force. The RC, as commanding officer, had taken the exalted rank of captain, the highest provided for under existing legislation. I understood that Marchant was trying to have this revised to suit the altered conditions, but in the meanwhile neither of us had the power to make Rhoades anything other than a member of the Defence Force. Then, too, there were no uniform regulations, nor was there any sort of uniform or distinguishing badge. Promising to take up the matter, I told Snowy that, now he had a teleradio, he could also agitate about it himself. I left him a formal note of appointment as “a member” of the Defence Force; we knew it would mean very little should he fall into the hands of the Japanese.
Rhoades readily agreed also to keep an eye on native affairs in the area. I told him that if he arrested any troublemakers—there appeared to be far more roaming about than I had expected—I would send police to collect them or risk another trip myself.
After a hasty goodbye, I dashed off to Visale for tea with Bishop Aubin. He still insisted on remaining neutral. I told him that, though I respected his ideas, even if I had a ship when the Japanese arrived she would probably be far too busy to answer any messages for help or evacuation. He appeared to accept this, and asked no more than to be left to carry on his work. In that case, I said, the less his priests prowled around the plantations “salvaging,” the better, for they always seemed to leave in their wake a trail of false rumors. I also told His Reverence that neither Hay nor anyone else could spare him any more tinned food.
We were off after sunset. A pouring rain had obliterated all landmarks, and I overshot Berande, but just before dawn we spotted the light, and dashed ashore to pass the news. Ken had steaks for breakfast. I was glad of a square meal, for I had to spend the morning holding court: he had passed the word that I was coming, and the headmen had brought in a large crowd of malefactors.
When I got back to Aola at nightfall, I was dead beat. Mac was in good heart, and with his help manning the teleradio I was able to spend the next few days intensively “cleaning up.” All the district headmen had been ordered to report the situation in their area every two weeks, and to bring in cases for court, so that all should see that we were still keeping law and order.
Corporal Andrew was busy training police recruits, and the cultivation of vegetable gardens and digging of slit trenches were going on apace with all available labor, even convalescents from the hospital. The headman from Marau reported that the Catalina not on patrol now spent the blitz hours there every morning; luckily the Japs hadn’t started to wander about or look for fresh targets. Much to my annoyance, Bengough had sent over another fourteen Chinese to join our happy band. They said that he had refused to feed them. I knew he knew that our food supplies were scanty, so I sent him an indignant signal, but got no reply.
Mac and I talked every night. As we had to keep lights out, there was nothing to do but sit on the verandah and listen to the rustle of the coconut palms by the beach. I reminded him of an incident that I had related in Tulagi. It had happened at Aola, where I was spending an evening with Dick Horton on my way in from San Cristobal. At sunset, we were watching the police doing “flag down” when a small white airplane, at great height, streaked past our astonished eyes. We had no means of identifying it as it faded into the gloaming, but we knew single-engined planes were scarce as hen’s teeth in Australia, and we had no airfields in the islands. There was little doubt that it had been a Japanese cruiser plane—the shape of things to come. All of us, I think, had felt a chill down the spine, but we had hardly realized the implications. We had yarned away about the shortcomings of our defenses and the inefficiency of our reconnaissance services, but none of us had known just how limited our resources were.
Mac and I laughed over Tulagi in those days. It was there that I had met him. He was only a reserve officer, and had never served outside Australia, but although he and the administration had differences of opinion he had got on very well with everyone. Mac had seemed to have a far greater appreciation of the fact that it was time something was done to prepare the islands for the inevitable war with Japan. To a certain extent, he had visualized what would happen once the Solomons were evacuated, and was more prepared than most of us to accept it. But he was concerned principally with coastwatching, whereas people like Horton and me had felt that there was no future in it, and had not welcomed the prospect of being taken prisoner before we could get in a lick at the enemy. I hadn’t really known where my duty lay. I suppose I was still finding out.
After all the rushing about, Aola seemed a haven of rest; yet its very quietness, and the lack of callers, became ominous—was something about to break? A medical dresser, who had set out for Visale, returned unexpectedly. I felt strangely uncomfortable.
A few hours later, I had little time left to wonder why. On 30 March, at 1830, a message came in from VNTG—three Japanese cruisers and a transport had been spotted by the Catalinas off Faisi, in the Shortland Islands.
The effect on Mac was electric. Although this meant that a landing force was definitely headed our way, I did not expect it that night. “Never mind when, boy,” he said, “they’re coming, and that’s good enough for me. I’m off!” And with that Mac packed up his gear, took his teleradio, and was off in Hing-Li up the coast to Berande, to go and set up camp somewhere in the goldfields. It took him thirty minutes. His departure was so precipitate that there was little time to protest; so, as he clambered on board from the dinghy, still in faultless whites, all I could do was wish him the best of luck, muttering, “Keep your skates on, mate.”
I walked back up to the house, feeling rather lonely. It looked as if each of us would have to work alone. Mac would have excellent observation from Gold Ridge, however, and to keep the teleradios dispersed was the best policy. Apart from pushing out as much information on the Japanese as possible, my job would be to try to keep the administration functioning, and the population friendly throughout the island. It would not be an easy task.
I had also received orders to “deny all resources to the enemy,” which in plain language meant a scorched-earth policy. Although there was little of any real value to an invading force, apart, perhaps, from ourselves and our teleradio sets, the Japs might try to work the plantations. To put a copra dryer out of action was rather difficult; if I had had the orders before, I could have visited most of the plantations on the Lavoro trip.
While I was pondering the problem, Rhoades, quite suddenly, went off the air. One of his last messages had been that the northwestern villages were running wild; now I had three reasons to see him, and in an instant the decision whether to take another trip to Lavoro had been made for me. It would not be so safe this time. The Japanese had waited a long time before coming to Faisi; would they keep moving, or would they consolidate again? It would be rather awkward to sail round Cape Esperance in my little schooner and find myself in full view of a cruiser or two en route to Tulagi at six times our best speed. I spent all night trying to puzzle out what to do; when on 1 April I found that Rhoades was still off the air I decided to chance my arm and go straightaway. It was All Fools’ Day—who cared? Perhaps I’d have fool’s luck.
Away we went. At Berande, Mac was still organizing his move inland, with Hay flapping about the Catholics’ staying behind. In spite of what I had told the bishop, he had been asking for tinned meat. I told Ken I’d have another word with him. It was 2000 and pitch dark when I anchored at Visale in the pouring rain. From the lack of lights ashore I could see all the missionaries had gone to bed. Sending a message by dinghy to let them know who it was, I turned in on top of the cabin for a few hours’ rest.
We heaved anchor at false dawn and left immediately; I could not spare the time to talk to the bishop. We had been running through the mist for half an hour when suddenly the ship leapt into the air and just as suddenly plunged down again, and came to a grinding halt. Most of us were thrown to the deck; one or two scouts sitting on the gunwales were thrown into the sea. The worst had happened: we had overshot the passage and taken a knife-edged reef at full speed. I had visions of losing the ship, the teleradio, and possibly some of the men as well.
In two ticks the bosun and Chaparuka were over the side, and after some diving they found that we had merely stripped some of the copper off the false keel. Only the last twelve inches was still aground; so, after everyone on the ship had been sent onto the bowsprit, Chaparuka and the bosun, standing on the reef, gave a mighty heave behind and we were clear, with no real damage done. It was fool’s luck, after all. As he emerged over the gunwale, dripping wet, Chaparuka said, “Me thank God ’e stop ’long youme.” “Him now!” I replied, in that classic pidgin English equivalent of “You’re goddamned right!” We all heaved a sigh of relief.
It continued to rain softly, and we got to Lavoro without further incident. Rhoades had been having trouble with one of the vibrators; luckily I had learned, by trial and error, to fix them, and he was soon on the air again. We chatted all morning about native affairs, and how to keep the northwestern end quiet. I was very short of trained policemen, but promised to try to send him a couple. It was bound to be my last trip to the area for some time to come, so we had to fix everything. When all was done, we had a feed, and Snowy walked me down to the dock. We shook hands firmly and wished each other good luck; I wondered if I’d see him again.
On the way back I called at both nearby missions, “earth scorching.” Reverend Stibbard, the Church of England missionary at Maravovo, was not very keen on destroying things: he accepted that it would be much better to evacuate, but was very reluctant to do anything without his bishop’s orders. His food stores were well hidden, mostly in water tanks, and also the type for the mission printing press. I chatted that evening with Bishop Aubin at Visale, then snatched a bit of sleep as we lay at anchor there.
Next morning I called at all the plantations down the coast, from Aruligo to Tenaru. From the beach, the homesteads looked the same as they had in peacetime, but it was quite a different story when one got closer. The laborers had looted everything of value, smashed the rest, and eaten most of the stores and livestock. I cannot remember the number of places at which I called—there must have been almost a dozen—but though I had not visited any of them before, and did not know the former residents, it was very sad to see all the properties in such derelict condition. We removed the flue pipes from the copra dryers and the distributor heads from the trucks, and dismantled any other machinery we could find.
About sunset we got to the Tenaru River, and anchored close to the black sand beach. All of us were very tired, and after arranging the watch I fell instantly to sleep. In the morning I waited long enough to check in on the teleradio, which I rigged on a coconut stump, just out of reach of the surf. No fresh move had been reported from the Japs at Faisi; so far, so good.
At Berande, Ken Hay was on his own, and comparatively amiable: he did not seem to have any immediate cause for exasperation, except the Japanese. It was there, I remember, that we drank the last known bottle of beer on Guadalcanal, draining our glasses after a solemn two minutes’ silence.
Macfarlan had not yet gone bush; he had in fact gone across to Tanambogo, to have a final chinwag with the RAAF. There was such a lot to do, but I could not go straight on to Aola: I had to stay at Berande to hold court, and to tick off a couple of native priests who had been “undermining” Hay’s morale by spreading false alarm and despondency amongst his staff.
Pressing on to Ruavatu, I had great difficulty explaining the scorched-earth policy to the fathers, who objected strongly as they had large quantities of copra that would have to be destroyed in due course. There was a Lever’s plantation adjacent to the mission station, and I had to go there and do over the machinery.
At 1800 on 5 April I got back to Aola, quite relieved at having done all I wanted and suffered no interference. Corporal Andrew was waiting for me. His report was laconic: “Everything ’e alright.” It was, too. Andrew had done a great deal while I was away. He had responded superbly—he was twice the man he had been when I first arrived at Aola—and I realized I was beginning to rely on him. The confusion was at last becoming organized.