Fear Drive My Feet (27 page)

The boys looked at us in astonishment, saying, ‘Japanese, of course! Didn't the
tultul of Sedau tell you about them? They slept one night in his village, and told
him to build a house for them, because lots of Japanese parties would be coming through
here.'

Les and I noticed the venomous look the tultul shot at them, and we could not help
laughing, in spite of the grave news.

‘Where did they go after they left Sedau?' I asked.

‘Through the Kisengan, in the Erap River. They slept at Sugu on the way.'

My scalp prickled, and I heard Les's sharply drawn breath. So that was it: the new
rest-house at Sugu, where we had slept, had, only a few nights before, housed Japanese,
and the track, which we had remarked as being uncommonly well tended, had been cleared
in honour of the enemy! Twice already we had crossed the trail of that party, and
now there was news of another one ahead of us.

The game played by the natives was understandable and, from their own point of view,
justified. They wanted neither Japanese nor Australians wandering round their country.
Both were merely nuisances to them – useless people who ate their food, had to be
carried for and shown their way round the bush. The natives were frightened, too,
that there would be a battle between us in which they would inevitably suffer, and
they were bending all their energies to keeping us apart, each in ignorance of the
other's presence.

From our point of view things were as bad as could be, and we could not continue
wandering round the mountains blindly crossing and recrossing the paths of enemy
patrols. It was a shock to find that the Japanese had departed from their habit of
the previous year and were
now patrolling extensively in the wild mountain country
into which they had been once so reluctant to venture. But it was a worse shock to
find that the natives were giving them as much assistance as they gave us: this attitude
I blamed largely on the fact that for two and a half months the area had been abandoned
by us. If I had never left the country, but had stayed on in the villages, I felt
sure that things would never have come to this pass.

There was only one thing to do now: we must get all our cargo safely into some remote
spot and then find the enemy patrols for ourselves. We told the tultul and the two
messengers from Sokulen of our intention, and the three of them joined in tearful
entreaties to us to leave immediately.

‘Go back to the Markham at once,' they pleaded. ‘If you go now you will be able to
reach your own people safely. If you stay here you will certainly be killed. There
are so many Japanese, and if they find we are hiding you from them they will cut
our heads off. Some of them are coming to sit down at Boana Mission,' they added.

Jock's words came back to me: ‘If I were the Jap commander I'd have a standing patrol
at Boana.' It seemed as if his gloomy forecast was being fulfilled in earnest.

In spite of the pleas of the local natives we resumed the journey to Sokulen quickly,
after having told the police what the situation was and sending Watute and Pato ahead
to scout. At a point on the track which offered a particularly good view of Boana
we paused for ten minutes to let the carriers catch their breath, while we watched
the mission. Through binoculars we could see right into the houses, and since there
was still no movement we concluded that the mission was, at any rate up to this
moment, unoccupied.

At Sokulen we set up the radio and informed headquarters in Port Moresby that the
Japanese seemed to have taken up inland patrolling in a big way. Then, still keeping
the unwilling Sedau people as carriers, as punishment for having lied to us, we pushed
up the Bunzok Valley to an out-of-the-way village called Bandong. It was dark when
we arrived, and raining hard. The Bandong people received us with indifference and
showed us to the only spare house in the village. Wet through, and too tired to eat,
Les and I and all the boys lay on the floor and went to sleep.

In the morning I awoke to a depressing sight: a packed mass of black, brown, and
white humanity lying steaming in their wet, dirty clothes, and a house looking even
filthier than it had appeared by torchlight the night before. I sat up and shivered.
Bandong, one of the highest villages in the Wain, was about six thousand feet above
sea-level. No wonder it was cold. I roused Dinkila and Tauhu and told them to light
a fire and prepare some tea. Les woke, and we went outside with maps and compass
to plan our next move.

‘This is a pretty remote spot, all right,' said Les. ‘But if the Nips are visiting
all the villages it won't do to stick round the houses. We must get out among the
gardens, disperse our stores, and lie low till that mob at Bungalamba has gone on.'

‘These people grow yams,' I remarked. ‘They probably have little storehouses scattered
about the gardens.'

‘They're sure to,' Les agreed. ‘Let's go and sink this tea, and then we'll have a
look round.'

The sweet black tea, scalding hot, gave us new life. As we drank it, we called some
of the Bandong people to us, to explain what we intended to do and to seek their
help. They were shy, for they had had very little contact with white men. Only one
of them spoke pidgin, and he had to translate for the benefit of the others. They
soon caught the idea, and brought us to a spot about an hour's walk farther upstream,
leading into a tributary valley. There was a garden here – it had been abandoned the year before, the Bandong men
said. Dotted here and there about it, but hardly visible till they were pointed out,
were five tiny shacks used for storing yams and firewood. The valley was so steep
that it was possible to approach the houses only by the narrow path we were following.
Even if we were discovered there, it would be no easy matter for the enemy to take
us while our ammunition lasted. This was an ideal hiding-place.

Les and I decided to sleep in one of the shelters with Kari and Watute, and the other
boys, with part of the stores, were to use the other four shacks. They were minute
houses: one could not stand upright, even in the middle of the floor, while at the
edges it was necessary to crawl. The one we were in, the largest, was not quite seven
feet long. Les said that if you even wanted to change your mind you had to go outside
the house to do it!

As soon as we had posted a sentry we ordered Dinkila to cook a large meal for us,
and told the boys to prepare one for themselves. Then we changed into dry, warm clothes
and squatted by the fire to read.

‘We're safe for the present,' Les said. ‘And, anyhow, it's no use trying to think
about these things on an empty stomach.'

Dinkila excelled himself, and even made a batch of pancakes. When we had demolished
his good work we lay on our blankets, maps spread before us, to make an appreciation
of the local situation, and work out what we should do to meet it.

At present we considered ourselves pretty safe from attack, and probably would be
safe as long as we remained here. On the other hand, it was too remote a spot for
us to hear what was happening. It would be necessary, we decided, to move nearer
to some of the more important
tracks which traversed the Wain and Naba, but we could
leave most of our food here as a reserve.

We were worried about the attitude of the native inhabitants of these parts. It was
decidedly disturbing. In 1942 the kanakas would have informed me instantly if even
a whisper of enemy patrols had reached them. Now they were at pains to conceal every
enemy movement from us. The reason was that they feared the Japanese patrols – which
moved in greater numbers than ours – more than they feared us. Stories of beheadings
carried out by the Japanese seemed to have had a great effect upon the natives. We
would have to try very hard to regain some of our influence with them, partly by
propaganda through the local men Les had brought over from Moresby, and partly by
judicious distribution of presents to influential natives.

We decided to remain two more days in our present hide-out, then venture out cautiously,
ascertain the whereabouts of the Japanese, and if possible reach my old camp at Bawan,
where I was better known and had more close friends among the local natives. It was
no use, at the moment, formulating a detailed plan, since there were too many unknown
factors.

We folded up the maps, opened a cake of ration chocolate, and addressed ourselves
to reading again.

‘Ha, what do you know! A crossword puzzle!' Les exclaimed as he turned over the last
page of his magazine.

‘Let's help do it,' I begged.

‘No fear – I'll do it on my own first! But I'll only write very faintly in pencil,
so that I can rub the letters out before I hand it over and give you a turn.'

‘O.K., do that. I'll have my go tomorrow.'

Trade goods and other supplies had made so many carrier-loads that we had been forced
to leave nearly all
our books behind at Wampit. We had squeezed in a few paperbacks
and a magazine or two, but it would not be long before we had read everything.

Next day brought a surprise visitor – Singin, tultul of Wampangan village. He had
been among those village officials who had gone to meet the Japanese party at Bungalamba,
and when we heard this we hoped to get some detailed first-hand information, for
he was a shrewd, observant man. But we were disappointed, for Singin said that when
he and his companions reached Bungalamba the Japanese had left, proceeding down the
river through Mililuga and Gawan to Lae. There were about thirty of them, and they
had come from Sio, on the north coast. Apparently the trip had been hard, for two
of them were sick and were being carried.

We heard all this with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was good to know the Japs
were out of the way for the moment. On the other hand, if they had really come from
Sio, and had crossed over the Saruwaged Range to do it, the mountains had clearly
lost all terrors for them, and they would probably be prepared to chase us wherever
we went. There was no certainty that the Japs had made the crossing, of course, and
we could not understand why they should bother to do so when they could easily have
walked round the beach or come by barge. Still, they had gone, and this was our chance
to get to Bawan. We gave Singin a very handsome present – a tomahawk – and told him
to return to his village and remain there until he heard from us, meanwhile having
nothing to do with Japanese patrols. He agreed to do this, saying that he would send
all his people into the bush if the enemy approached Wampangan.

We watched his long, lean figure disappear up the hillside.

‘Too smooth by half,' Les said, shaking his head.

‘Yes. He saw the Japs all right, I bet. All the same, I don't think we have anything
to fear from him. He's shrewd enough to realize that we might win the war. He knows
that if he tipped us off to the Nips and we were the victors he'd be in bad. I think
he'll play a politician's game, but will see nobody gets hurt – as far as he can.'

That night Les went down with a sharp attack of fever, and we had to wait two days,
until he was well enough to travel. The little houses were so cold that it is remarkable
we were not all laid low with fever or pneumonia.

On 7th May we set out for Wampangan, travelling round the head of the Bunzok River
and passing through the villages of Kawalan, Ganzegan, and Kwamboleng. Although the
country was wild and steep, we moved much more quickly than before, because we had
left more than half our cargo hidden in the garden at Bandong.

The road showed signs of recent maintenance work. But it was the villages that astonished
me. In each case, including Wampangan, the old site had been abandoned and a new
village of model houses had been built. There was also a great increase in the area
of cultivation.

Singin greeted us effusively and announced his intention of co-operating whole-heartedly.
His was not a very convincing performance, and one could quite easily have imagined
him saying the same thing to the Japanese. However, we thanked him and gave him a
small present, telling him to have carriers ready in the morning.

As we sat down to eat our tea by lantern-light Dinkila asked whether we would consider
going to the mission, seeing we were so close, to shoot a bullock. He hinted that,
though he was equal to the task if need be, it placed a strain on even the best cook's
ingenuity if the
meat always came out of a tin. A piece of nice grilled steak, now,
he said…

He had struck the right note. Les and I looked at one another, our mouths watering.

‘I'll go down there in the morning if you like,' I said. ‘You can go straight to
Bawan with the cargo. If all is well I should be there almost as soon as you are.'

‘Do you think it's worth the risk?'

‘I'm pinning my faith on Singin. I don't think he would let me go if the coast weren't
clear. It's pretty safe, I reckon.'

In the morning Kari, Watute, and I set off for Boana, having received Singin's assurance
that the mission was deserted. On a hill overlooking the mission station we hid for
half an hour or so in a clump of bamboos, watching. One or two natives moved about
the grass houses, but the usual brooding quietness lay over the iron-roofed ones.
Of the enemy there was no sign, but we approached warily, Owen guns cocked. The mission
schoolhouse seemed still to be in use, though we got the impression that it had been
hurriedly vacated as we approached. As before, the feeling that hostile eyes were
watching our every movement assailed us. Kari, who had been with me the first time
I visited the mission, said he still thought it was ‘place no good'. I agreed with
him.

In the mission house various signs of the enemy visit remained. The organ had been
broken open, and there was a pile of cigarette-butts on the veranda, as though a
sentry had been posted there. All small pieces of cloth had been removed – presumably
to patch clothes with, for native reports all agreed that the clothing worn by the
Japanese was in an extremely tattered state. In their usual filthy way they had covered
the veranda with excreta not six feet from where they had slept.