Invasion Rabaul (20 page)

January 23rd, 1942.
Japanese Commander in Chief

Most Australians scoffed at the implied threats, though few would disagree with Horii about the lack of food in the jungle. Dick Travers, for one, believed there was little hope of successfully evading the enemy. Hiding near Mount Varzin with D Company, he hoped to arrange terms for a large-scale surrender. On the morning of January 24 he started toward Vunakanau with Geoff Donaldson, but after hiking for two hours without finding any Japanese, they returned to the donga. For the benefit of the troops, they outlined the situation as they saw it.
“Travers called us together and told us there were only two things to do,” remembered Lance Corporal William J. Neave. “[We could] either go back and give ourselves up or break up into small parties and try and make a break for it. He stated he would … go back with any troops who desired to give themselves up.”

While Neave and several others struck out for the north coast, Travers waited with the rest for the Japanese to pick them up. The exact number of men from D Company who surrendered is unknown, but a Japanese soldier noted in his diary that approximately one hundred Australian prisoners were marched into Rabaul on the evening of January 27. Travers was not among them. When he surrendered, the Japanese executed him on the
spot. Perhaps he was the first to pay with his life for miscalculating Horii’s sincerity, but he was definitely not the last.

D
EEP IN THE JUNGLE NEAR THE
K
ERAVAT
R
IVER,
P
IP
A
PPEL AND
C
OLIN
McInnes were acutely aware of their dire situation. During the afternoon of January 23 they safely led most of A and C Companies across the river, but none of the nearly three hundred men were prepared for a prolonged stay in the jungle.
“Our first thought was for food and supplies for the troops,” McInnes later stated, “but as none had been placed in dumps for a situation such as this, we had to depend on missions, plantations and native villages.”

But such establishments were not equipped to cope with a sudden request to feed and shelter so many men. Therefore, the retreating Australians scrounged for whatever they could find, then continued walking northwest for mile after miserable mile. They worked their way around diamond-shaped Ataliklikun Bay toward the northern coast, where the terrain was slightly less demanding than in the mountains, but the going was still extremely slow.

Close behind them, the South Seas Detachment conducted the task of mopping up the plateau. Aware that many Australians were fleeing toward Ataliklikun Bay, Horii sent Lieutenant Colonel Tsukamoto’s 1st Battalion to pursue them. Likewise, the 3rd Battalion, encamped at Kokopo, was ordered to intercept Australians retreating southward toward the mouth of the Warangoi River.

The Imperial Japanese Navy also participated, sending warships and floatplanes to patrol New Britain’s coastline. They paid particular attention to the seaside plantations and mission stations, shelling some establishments—mainly for the purpose of intimidating the landowners—and destroying every seaworthy vessel that could be found. At Pondo, a large plantation owned by W. R. Carpenter and Company on the island’s north coast, the Japanese bombed and sunk a sixty-foot schooner. A landing party then went ashore and wrecked the steamer
Malahuka
, which was under repair on a slipway. To make sure it never sailed again, the Japanese also punched a large hole in the hull and disabled the engine.

Pressed hard by the pursuing Japanese, the remnants of Lark Force separated into small, disorganized groups. Already smarting from the lopsided
defeat, they found themselves caught in a nightmarish environment. The jungle—hot, sticky, dark, and smelling of decay—was their only shelter. The
Australians slept on the wet ground, hunger pangs gnawing at their bellies and insects biting their faces, arms, and legs. They scratched mindlessly at the bites, which then became infected and began to suppurate, slowing the men even more as their malnourished bodies tried to fight off the illness.

When Japanese patrols caught up with slow-moving parties, the outcome was often brutal. On January 26, Doc Silverman and his leading orderly, Bert Morgan, were trying to get beyond Ataliklikun Bay with Len Henry and a few other soldiers, one of whom had malaria. About three miles past the Keravat River, just after entering a foul-smelling mangrove swamp, they were ambushed by an enemy patrol. Morgan pulled his malaria patient into the swamp and hid with him until it was safe to emerge. Silverman and Henry were captured after a brief exchange of gunfire near Mandres Sawmill, and Henry was immediately beheaded. Silverman was alive when taken to Rabaul, but according to information gathered later, the Japanese refused to recognize him as a medical officer and executed him on January 30. By that time, Bert Morgan and his unidentified patient had decided to surrender. Captured soon after re-crossing the Keravat River, they were imprisoned at Rabaul.

F
OR HUNDREDS OF OTHER EVADERS, IT TOOK EVERY OUNCE OF DETERMINATION
to stay one step ahead of the Japanese while pushing through the seemingly endless jungle. Three days after the invasion, Appel and McInnes brought 285 tired, hungry men to Kamanakan Mission, twenty miles beyond the Keravat River. Appel, the senior officer of the group, called the men together for a pep talk. He urged them not to surrender and promised to organize camps in the hills. The troops perked up when he suggested the possibility of getting them fit enough to fight again. To improve their living conditions, he separated the men into four parties, each with a lieutenant or captain in charge, and divided the group’s limited resources equally among them.

The day after Appel gave his talk, McInnes’ party began walking toward Lassul Bay. Japanese warships shelled several plantations around the bay, then sent landing parties ashore. McInnes and his men would have
been captured had they reached the coast a little sooner, but they heard the shelling and spotted the landing craft just in time. McInnes advised his men to split up into even smaller parties in order to slip past the enemy.

Appel and his group, approximately 120 strong, also tried to reach one of the plantations. Forced to evade Japanese patrols, they spent another rain-soaked night in the jungle, and by morning both Appel and McInnes had changed their minds.
“The position,” McInnes recalled, “appeared to me to be rather hopeless as we did not have sufficient food, and there did not appear to be any hope of getting away from New Britain, so Appel and myself decided to see what terms for surrender we could make with the Japanese.”

Joined by three noncoms, the two officers headed for a plantation along the shore of Lassul Bay owned by former coastwatcher Ted Harvey. Japanese troops had been observed there the previous day, but when the Australians arrived at the plantation, it was no longer occupied. In fact, the entire northern coast had been abandoned. As suddenly as they’d come, the Japanese had gone.

The jungle, it turned out, was a great equalizer. Lieutenant Colonel Tsukamoto’s battalion encountered several impediments as they pursued the Australians, not the least of which was the heavy rain that blanketed the Gazelle Peninsula. Similarly, Lieutenant Colonel Sakigawa’s mechanized unit slowed to a crawl as they advanced around Ataliklikun Bay on January 27. “The
butai
could not advance as hoped,” he reported. “The mountain roads went up and down and in some places [soldiers] walked in mud and water up to the knees. And also there were obstructions on the roads [such] as fallen bamboo and rotted trees.”

Other units experienced even greater difficulty. One detachment of mountain artillery tried to drag their wheeled guns through the heavy jungle. They reached the Vudal River on January 25 only to find it impossible to ford, so the soldiers hacked out a road to a different crossing. They even labored to build a temporary bridge, but their progress was so slow that they were forced to leave the field guns in the jungle. By the time the detachment finally reached the western shores of Ataliklikun Bay, they had lost contact with the fleeing Australians.

As a result of such setbacks, the battalion commanders requested naval support. General Horii arranged for a destroyer and three transports to
conduct a “sea pursuit,” resulting in the aforementioned landings at Lassul Bay and Massawa Bay, but these proved to be only a minor threat to the Australians. The Japanese did not venture inland, mainly because the jungle quickly conspired against them. As the writer of an operational report later explained:
“Practically every man of the 1st Infantry Battalion suffered from malaria owing to an eruptive outbreak of the disease at the time of mopping up … in particular, the pursuit action in the Ataliklikun Bay area.”

The heavy rains and high humidity of the past several days had created ideal conditions for mosquitoes. Many of the men in Tsukamoto’s battalion, poised to capture hundreds of Australians, were themselves laid low by malaria. That so many became infected was the result of “nothing but negligence,” according to the report, which placed blame squarely on the “leaders, medical staffs and epidemic prevention staffs in particular.” Days passed before the Japanese realized what had caused the outbreak. At least ten men died, and several others were “affected in the brain and became mad.”

Within days, the combat strength of the South Seas Detachment was reduced by half. As a result, the 1st Battalion quit the jungle at Lassul Bay only a few hours before Appel and McInnes arrived with intentions to surrender.

Good fortune continued to smile on the Australians at the abandoned Harvey plantation. Although the Japanese had wrecked the house and two-way radio, they overlooked some hidden caches of food. Taking advantage of the windfall, Appel dispersed his men among several nearby plantations and divided the food among them, then rounded up the last stragglers still hiding in the jungle. Eventually he organized more than four hundred Australian soldiers along thirty miles of coastline, safe for the time being from Japanese pursuit. However, the conditions at most of the sites deteriorated quickly, and the Australians too began to suffer from malaria. Appel saved his limited supply of quinine for those with active infections, relying on his prewar experience as a pharmacist to aid the sick. Having nearly surrendered his men to the enemy, the thirty-seven-year-old captain proved to be
“an inspiring and energetic leader.”

O
N THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ISLAND, HUNDREDS OF
L
ARK
F
ORCE SOLDIERS
made for Wide Bay. Many still believed the RAAF would evacuate them by
seaplane, an idea that gained credibility when David Selby’s party, consisting of two officers and around twenty men, came across a line of abandoned vehicles beyond Malabunga Mission. Some of the trucks bore RAAF markings, and there was plenty of canned food aboard. The soldiers gladly helped themselves. David Bloomfield ate a whole can of bully beef and another of peaches, then filled his haversack with extra tins.

Determined to deny the vehicles to the enemy, Selby divided his group into two parties with instructions to disable the entire lot. Keeping six men with himself, he started at one end of the line and sent the remainder with his second in command, Lieutenant Peter H. Fisher, to disable the trucks at the far end of the row. Somehow, the two parties became separated on the dark and narrow track. By the time Fisher’s group finished slashing tires, draining oil pans, and running engines until they seized, Selby’s party was
“nowhere to be seen.”

Fisher had a good prismatic compass for overland navigation, so he decided to lead his party independently into the Baining Mountains. He was unaware that Selby was actually nearby, casting about for Fisher’s group in the jungle. The heavily forested slopes and lack of communication equipment kept the two parties separated for days. Thus, Fisher led his group up the footpath for several hours before they stopped to rest. The men shared a single fourteen-ounce can of bully beef, served with a stick into outstretched hands, then spread out to find a place to sleep.

Still hungry, David Bloomfield scratched out a shallow depression in the undergrowth and lay down, using his canteen for a pillow. A pelting rain woke him during the night, and he discovered that his “hip hole” was filled with water. It was an appropriate conclusion to a rotten day. “As I lay awake,” he recalled, “I thought about how terribly unprepared we were. When we evacuated Frisbee Ridge all we were permitted to take with us was our rifle, bayonet, water bottle, respirator, and what we stood up in.” Bloomfield’s uniform—a khaki shirt and baggy shorts, underwear, boots, and socks—was inadequate for the jungle. No one in his group had a poncho, groundsheet, or extra clothing.

The men were poorly rested when the sun came up, yet Fisher spurred them on without breakfast. All that day they climbed progressively higher into the Bainings, alternately struggling up mountainsides that were nearly vertical, then carefully picking their way down the opposite slopes.
Invariably they would come to a fast-flowing river at the bottom of each narrow valley. The recent heavy rains had turned streams into rivers, and rivers into raging torrents. Overhead, Japanese planes circled above the rivers, waiting to machine-gun anyone who attempted to cross. The Australians discovered that if they dashed across just one man at a time, the enemy pilots were not inclined to waste the bullets or the fuel to dive down and attack them.

On one stretch of mud-slicked trail, Fisher’s group met up with nine members of the 17th Antitank Battery. The two groups decided to pool their rations, and after crossing yet another river they made camp. They even allowed themselves the luxury of a small fire made from “damp paper and photo negatives and a lot of coaxing.” The burning material gave off just enough heat to brew tea, which they savored along with one stale biscuit per man for supper. Soon thereafter it began to rain again, and that was the end of the fire.

Bloomfield awoke again during the night, this time to find his skin bloody from the bites of countless sand flies. Alarmed, he awoke the whole party and they retreated from the river. After pausing long enough to eat another biscuit, they started hiking in the darkness but soon became disoriented. Several frustrating hours later they ended up back at the original campsite—but at least they were no longer lost.