‘Whilst the [use of maggots] was uncomfortable in the extreme for the patient, many men are alive today because of Captain Viner-Smith’s ingenuity’
—The 2/27th Battalion history
The last survivors of the withdrawal were Colonel Cooper’s ‘lost battalion’, the 2/27th. Cooper and 310 officers and men had been forced off the track near Efogi, after the battle of Butcher’s Hill. There were 46 wounded, of whom fourteen were stretcher cases.
A dearth of carriers made the retreat through enemy-held territory painfully slow. Stretcher cases were carried over the steepest gradients along human chains, but on the night of 11 September the last nineteen native carriers abandoned the battalion. The troops then shouldered the wounded. ‘Most were wounded in the stomach, neck or head,’ wrote Corporal Frank McLean. ‘We lost about six on the trip; some we even carried for most of the day, not even knowing until we stopped that they had died.’1
Heat and flies had turned the wounds gangrenous, and the battalion’s medical officer, Captain Keith Viner-Smith, devised an ingenious, if ghastly, remedy: maggots were to be left in the wounds. The creatures preferred rotting to healthy flesh, and flourished in gangrenous wounds. This saved several limbs from painful bush amputations—without anaesthetic, and with the likelihood of death from infection or blood loss. ‘Whilst the [use of maggots] was uncomfortable in the extreme for the patient, many men are alive today because of Captain Viner-Smith’s ingenuity,’ records the battalion history.2
Cooper despaired at finding Menari and Nauro in Japanese hands. His troops were so hungry he thought of attacking for the sake of food. Between 5 and 21 September, each man had lived on one tin of bully beef and one emergency ration. Fortunately a patrol recovered a box of broken biscuits and dried fruit from an airdrop. The same day fortune smiled on them: they found two garden huts filled with fruit and vegetables; patrols filled their haversacks and went back to the wounded.
By 18 September, half the stretcher cases had died. Cooper decided to leave the survivors near a village garden several miles east of Nauro, and pressed on to Iawarere, where a runner had been sent to fetch help. On the 25th, after a week of solid walking, he and about three hundred men walked into the Allied camp at Iawarere, amid scenes of profound relief. The survivors had lost on average two stone each. Cooper immediately set in motion arrangements to bring out the wounded.
Earlier Corporal John Burns and Private Alf Zanker had volunteered to stay behind with the seven stretcher cases and nine walking wounded in the village garden. Their supplies were ten shell dressings, a bottle of morphia, a syringe and a garden of yams.3 At the slightest noise Burns and Zanker stood to, their weapons raised, ready to defend this circle of helpless men.
These eighteen troops—two of whom were fit—remained in the jungle for three weeks, as related in Burns’s diary:
0810 hours on September 19, 1942, found Private Zanker and myself in charge of the wounded…Zanker and I built shelters to help protect the lads from the terrific heat and rain…
Wednesday 23rd…Corporal Williams spent a terrible night and when Zanker and I had washed the lads we decided to put him on a new stretcher and put the first fresh dressings on his wound. It was a terrific job but we succeeded in the end; both Zanker and I had a couple of blackouts during it.
Diarrhoea broke out…and we were lifting the poor lads for the next 24 hours without respite.
Friday dawned with a blazing hot sun and millions of flies. Again I spent the night with Corporal Williams and at 0800 hours he had a drink and at 0810 hours we found him dead. We immediately dug a grave [with] a tin hat and a machete…at 0930 we buried him with just a little prayer.
The 25th arrived…after what seemed the longest and hardest night of my life. Zanker and I managed about two hours’ sleep, but the poor lads on the stretchers couldn’t get off. Private Burke had taken a definite step towards the end…and lapsed into semi-consciousness…There was nothing we could do for him except a dose of morphia to put him out of agony…It took Zanker and I all our time to hold him on his stretcher when he started throwing himself around…’4
Private Burke endured a second day of convulsions. ‘He was going through a living hell.’ Mercifully, Burke died on the 28th, and they buried him alongside Williams.
By then the walking wounded felt strong enough to walk to Itiki, and paid a native guide ten shillings for his trouble. Burns and Zanker stayed with the five remaining stretcher cases. To pass the time Burns gave lectures on the ‘finer points of baking’—he was a baker—and the men ‘debated the merits’ of the books of the New Testament.
On 2 October an Australian patrol found them—‘You have no idea,’ Burns wrote, ‘how the boys’ spirits came to life’—and they were carried out on the shoulders of native carriers. This journey across the mountains took seven days.
A doctor accompanied them and food was available, and on 9 October—after a month in the jungle—Burns, Zanker and their five surviving stretcher cases were led into Subitana. The wounded were given a hot bath, pyjamas, and rushed to hospital; the ‘hero bearers’ received a huge meal. Burns and Zanker were awarded the Military Medal and Mentioned in Despatches.