Chapter 4

I spent the evening getting Sergeant Downs up to speed. He insisted I call him Wilf. I said that was all right as that was a good South African name. He looked at me in disbelief but I said that it actually was. Wilfred was a common German/South African name. I told him a little bit about the island saying it was part of the what are known as the Caroline Islands. The island was very small and I and the natives lived a very basic life; living mostly on fish caught in the huge lagoon and some wild pigs in the tropical jungle and wild goats that were up on the high craggy peaks of the mountain. The island was a strange mix of volcanic rock and coral atoll. There was really only one village on the edge of the lagoon where a small jetty had been constructed so that shallow bottomed trading vessels could tie up to. The only entrance into the lagoon was by a narrow passage through the reef outside. As such we had few visitors.

The head of the villagers was known as the soumas en kousapw, but chief was much easier to say. The family blood line was important and the chief’s close family were accorded special privileges. For example, traditionally they would get the first fish caught because they were of noble birth, although the current chief had forbade that. However as brave warriors they were expected to lead the hunt for wild pigs because they were hard to find and extremely dangerous when cornered. They had to climb the cliffs and mountain to kill the goats that lived up there. There was little hope of domesticating these creatures because there was nowhere to farm on the island. The volcanic soil and the tropical heat meant that the jungle regrew quickly if the natives tried to clear it. The island consisted of fine white sandy areas, thick jungle and bare rocky peaks. It was not a good place for farming so the women gathered roots, seeds, berries and fruit while the men in the main fished. The food in the lagoon was plentiful.

I saw him looking at the huts, one of which had been given to me by the villagers. They saw visitors in the traditional way and invited them into their homes as guests and fed and looked after them. I had been ‘visiting’ for four years already and in about four thousand more, I told Wilf, that I might be considered to be seen as a distant relative. The houses were very basic and designed to be easily rebuilt after typhoons and storms demolished them. Wilf seemed a bit surprised, but I informed him that this happened frequently and quite violently from mid-year onwards. Even modern-day building materials wouldn’t have been able to withstand the winds and the occasional tidal surges that washed away the village so there was little point in having something too permanent. Over the many seasons I had learned when such storms would come and would simply head into the shelter of the jungle and on to higher ground with the rest of the village. What we couldn’t predict were the tsunamis that came when there was an earthquake out at sea. There was little time to run when the water was sucked out of our lagoon only to come back with such a force as to destroy all before it. The pigs and the birds in the jungle would sense it first and headed for higher ground before we even felt anything. I told him that I had lived through one tsunami and a few typhoons in my time, but one thing I said he had to get used to was the fact that there were always storms and rain.

Traders, like the one who had brought him, would come and bring trinkets and man-made materials in exchange for coconuts, dried fish and shells. The villagers had little else to offer them. Some traders told the natives that on some islands, women were offered for their goods, but that was something the chief on the island of ***** would never permit. That didn’t stop them asking every time they visited. I was one of only a few white visitors who had stayed any length of time. From what I understood, I told him, I had set the record years ago. At the turn of the century, missionaries arrived but they made no inroads and the weather, being so hot and often so wet, made them move on. As a consequence, unlike some of the islands around, the villagers never grew up as Christians. I also told him that people from other islands would come for special ceremonies and sometimes some of their young women stayed and some of those on this island left. These ceremonies were lavish and the villagers would fish and hunt for days beforehand as every guest had to be well fed.

I had some grasp of their language and said that was important for him to try to learn it too rather than the pidgin English some of the traders used to communicate. I said that he would gain instant respect for just trying and that I would teach him as best I could. I had already asked permission from the chief to see if Wilf could stay. The chief was caught in a dilemma as Wilf was deemed as a guest and had to be treated well; but the chief was still very unsure as Wilf had brought with him two rifles and they were seen to be unfriendly items. The rare times the Japanese came they carried rifles and waved them threateningly at the villagers. The chief thought that was not the way of things on *****. In the end I was able to convince the chief and Wilf was allowed to stay and live in my hut which was slightly away from the village. I was led to understand that if Wilf caused harm, I would be joining him on the next boat out of here.

25^th April 1942

Today was Anzac Day but as South Africans Wilf and I could hardly walk along the beach pompously marching although that would have been very entertaining for the villagers and would see them laughing uproariously and flashing their magnificent white teeth in wide mouth grins. It didn’t mean that much here anyway. We were in another war and once again we Kiwis and Aussies were joined together in arms. I was not a soldier but Wilf was every bit of one. He cleaned both rifles carefully and I’d seen him sort out the ammunition he’d brought using a balancing home-made scale to match the weights of each bullet as accurately as he could. He has learnt fast in a week and has a smattering of words that he doesn’t hesitate to use. The villagers are very patient with him and overlook his mistakes. They are oh so polite. Today he tried to get him to pronounce the name of one of the rays that live in the lagoon. He mangled it so badly that sounded like the word they use to describe faeces. They must have laughed about it later but not one word of rebuke was uttered. Perhaps they saw it as appropriate. When there are few fish caught and they have to cook up a ray, it certainly tastes like shit in comparison to the other delightful fish we eat. Wilf has taken to helping them fish. He hasn’t mastered the technique for casting nets but he’s bloody good with a fishing spear. For someone who was raised in the outback of Queensland he swims like a dolphin.

Today we were invited to go on a goat hunt. Wilf took his rifle. He never went anywhere without it, but he held it like a walking stick and did a pantomime walk of an old man that had even the chief laughing. When we reached the cliffs, some of the young men started to scramble up them. The goats up above looked at them as usual with disdain. It was rare that any goats were caught as they would watch and then when a spear was raised by a villager standing on a precarious ledge, they would simply disappear behind a mound of basalt. Wilf watched for a while at the lack of success. When the last of the young men had managed to climb down and the hunt declared over, Wilf raised his rifle. Some of the villagers had never heard the sound of a rifle before and it frightened not just them but the goats too. When a goat came tumbling down the hillside, killed as if hit by a stone, the villagers were amazed. One man pointed to the hole that was in the centre of the head of the goat and Wilf smiled. The villagers thought that the sound of the rifle had called upon the gods in the sky to smite the goat. Wilf didn’t try to dissuade them.

By the light of beeswax candles tonight, I showed Wilf the codebooks I used for the radio transmitter and receiver. He had seen me use it and verbally send a report of anything we had seen. Every two days it had to be done. This was another night of teaching him how to use the codes. It was important that he act as a backup in case something happened to me. He knew how to use the radio, but the codes were quite complex. I had committed them to memory over a number of years and the books I brought out were covered in dust and had been gnawed at by insects. Wilf was a quick learner or I was a good teacher; probably the former. What had taken me many months, he had picked up in a week. Also, within a week I had suddenly become quite fastidious like him. Normally I would just walk along the beach before going to bed. Now when he cleaned his rifles, I found myself cleaning and polishing my telescope and binoculars that I would take out on my daily surveillance of the coast. I usually took the same route and after the goat hunt today Wilf joined me again. He pointed out things on the land that I hadn’t noticed. Like that the small fissures in the rocks were actually entrances to small caves. He pointed out that if anything happened, these were possible defensive positions. He was thinking like a soldier and I was thinking like a beach bum, which was my preferred ideal career. He said that perhaps some of the equipment, especially the backup batteries for the radio and the hand cranked generator that was to be used if the batteries all were dead, could be stored in the caves. He thought that he would leave a rifle there too. The caves weren’t far from where the natives hunted for pigs and where the goats were and he wondered whether they might like to leave their heavy hunting spears there rather than carry them to and from the hunting grounds. The had much lighter fishing spears for the lagoon. I told Wilf when we got back that I would suggest it to the chief and that it should be me to talk to the chief because who knows what rude words Wilf may accidentally use. I then told him that he had used the word pek to mean ray when it meant something totally different. Tonight was the first time I saw him smile.