Fear Drive My Feet (36 page)

Ewok, to all appearances, was a model village, set on a lofty, narrow ridge. It was
clean, well laid out, and abounded with neatly arranged trees and shrubs, some decorative
and some useful. The mission seemed well entrenched, to judge by the excellent state
of the church and school. Although the mission teachers hurriedly vacated their houses
and disappeared, the other natives greeted us in tolerably friendly fashion, answered
our questions, and brought us food – including a dozen eggs which we ate at a sitting.

Being well into wild mountain country we were surprised and disappointed to hear
that the Japanese had twice visited this village. While there, they had been informed
of the easy route to the north coast over which we had just come, and their leader
had announced that another patrol would soon come to investigate it.

‘I don't like the sound of that,' said Les. ‘It seems we might be chased all round
the Leron country now.'

‘I don't think I could take much of that,' I replied. ‘If there's going to be any
rough stuff, I think I'll look for a quiet, out-of-the-way spot, and hole up there
till the bloody war is over – for years, if need be. The war can't go on for ever
– or can it?'

Les smiled wearily. I could see he felt much the same as I did. All sense of adventure
and excitement had long since vanished from this patrol, leaving behind an empty
flatness that was only one degree removed from despair. We were just plodding on,
in spite of frightful weariness, in an attempt to save our skins. More and more frequently
we were coming to doubt whether those skins were worth the agony of sweat and sobbing
breath and aching bodies and bleeding feet.

It was more to preserve the illusion that we still functioned as an intelligence
patrol than in the hope of getting useful information that we sent for the few Ewok
men who spoke pidgin and began to question them. Strangely, they had no aversion
to talking freely, and we discovered a number of useful facts about enemy patrols
in the area. They were much more extensive than we would ever have suspected, and
everything seemed to point to the establishment of a strong overland line of communication
between Madang and Lae. The Japanese had told the natives to be ready at any time
to carry machine-guns, food, ammunition, and other stores, and to feed and guide
other enemy parties.

Their propaganda, moreover, was cunning. In addition to the obvious line about all
the white men having run away, they pitched the natives a story that won them a lot
of service. Briefly, it ran somewhat along these lines: ‘When you native people die
your spirits go to live in Japan, our homeland. The spirits of your ancestral dead
are living in Japan now. Unless you look after us Japanese well we will see to it
that the spirits of your dead get a bad time.'

One could ridicule this, of course, but it was very difficult to counter effectively,
and many natives believed it implicitly.

After we had sent off a long message to Port Moresby, incorporating all the information
we had gathered about enemy patrols in this area, we felt that perhaps, after all,
we were still of some use, and not merely a ragged crowd of fugitives.

Late that night a boy from a nearby village brought us news of another European at
Wantoat, not far away. This, we surmised, was Fairfax-Ross, the man being withdrawn
from the north coast. He had been expecting cargo to be dropped by plane to him at
Wantoat about 17th June, but the cargo had not arrived. As it was now 18th June,
and Wantoat was a good two days' walk away, we felt we had small hope of overtaking
him. In any case, his chances of escape were probably better while he was alone.
The natives said – though afterwards I was not able to confirm the point – that he
was even worse off than ourselves, for he had neither boots nor clothes. We still
had rags of some sort. It was strange to sit in Ewok and know that just a few days'
walk, a few valleys away there was another white man struggling on to safety. He
did not know it, but our thoughts followed him on his long, lonely walk to the Central
Highlands, where he was eventually picked up by aeroplane.

It was nearly twelve o'clock that night before we finished laying our plans for the
next few crucial days. The Japanese seemed to be everywhere, so our only hope was
to move with all possible speed. Three rivers flow into the Markham from the north
side – the Leron, the Irumu, and the Erap. To have followed the Leron down would
have taken us within range of enemy patrols near Kaiapit, the district where Harry
Lumb had been killed. The Erap would have led us down close to Lae, and, after my
frequent trips on the river the previous year, the enemy
would be almost certain
to be watching it. Between the two lay the Irumu, flowing into the Markham not far
from Chivasing, where we had begun our patrol a couple of months earlier. We decided
to move as quickly as possible down this river, travelling mainly at night and avoiding,
if possible, all contact with the natives.

We left Ewok at three in the morning, our immediate object being to get over the
divide between the Leron and the Irumu rivers to Bogeba village. We arrived in Bogeba
almost exactly twenty-eight hours later, having neither eaten nor slept in that time.
When I came to write the official report of the patrol I found that I had no real
recollection of this part of the journey, but only a succession of impressions,
unrelated in time or space: impressions of villages where we sneaked around in the
dark, not waking the inhabitants, of rivers which almost swept us away, of legs which
stumbled on, unknowing and uncaring, all feeling gone. I am sure that half the time
we walked with our eyes shut from exhaustion.

At Bogeba we rested for a day and a night and made several good meals on native foods.
The kanakas seemed friendly, and said that though the Japanese had never been to
the village they knew there were many of them moving about the country. They introduced
us to a native of Siang village, farther down the river, who said he could guide
us along the Irumu to the Markham, avoiding all the tracks. This seemed a good plan,
and we moved to a hamlet a few miles downstream to wait for nightfall. We set up the
radio here for what was to prove the last time, asking Port Moresby to inform our
forward posts along the Markham that we could be expected either next day or the
day after. After a journey such as this had been, we wanted to run no risk of being
shot by our own men, which could easily have happened, particularly if we crossed
at night.

Just at sunset we moved off, leaving behind every
thing but light packs and our arms.
We followed the Irumu, walking in the water for the most part, for though very swift
it was not deep. The valley was a very shallow one in the Markham plain, about a
thousand yards wide, and the stream wandered haphazardly from one side to the other,
in several channels. As there was a bright moon, we had no difficulty in seeing our
way. The country was as flat as a table, and covered with kunai- and cane-grass.
Dotted here and there were weird black sentinel-like stumps, the remains of dead
palms.

We were so tense and keyed up with the strain of this final stage that the slightest
movement or noise in the shadows made us start, but we felt no weariness, though
we walked without rest all night.

About three o'clock in the morning, as we splashed through the muddy water, we heard
a rooster crowing, and then the howl of a dog. The sounds came from the bush on the
right-hand side of the river, and we knew we must have passed Teraran village. So
far, everything was going smoothly, and another eight or nine miles should find us
at the Markham. However, the Irumu started to subdivide into numberless tiny streams,
and finally petered out altogether in a tangled swamp of cane-grass, sago-palms,
and cruel-thorned vines. Our native from Siang announced himself baffled too. It
had not been like this years before, he said nervously, and then, afraid we would
vent our concealed wrath on his person, he took to his heels and vanished into the
night.

For a while we tried to cut our way through, moving on a rough compass-bearing. It
was a scene I shall never forget: a dozen or so natives and two white men hacking
like fury in the moonlight at the wall of jungle ahead of them, knee-deep in the
slime, swearing, grunting, whimpering occasionally as bare feet encountered the
savage thorns of the sago-palms.

When dawn broke we found that our progress had been disappointingly slow. Given time,
we could have cut a pathway to the Markham, but we had no food and were near exhaustion.
We felt our strength would never be enough to carry us through. After consultation
with Kari and Watute we retraced our steps to the main Markham road, which we had
crossed a couple of hours earlier. There were a number of prints of the enemy's well-known
black rubber boots, but none seemed to be of recent origin. We followed the road,
scouts well out ahead, as far as the old Wawin rest-house, and then turned south
down the track up which we had come on our way out – two months ago to the day.

The track showed no footprints, and to judge by the way the grass was growing on
it had not been used for some time. All the way to Chivasing we saw no people, and
the hamlet half-way was deserted. We were weary, sore-footed and aching all over,
but we kept kidding ourselves along with the thought of the cup of tea we would
soon be drinking at Kirkland's, and of the European foods we would eat there. ‘Not
far now,' we would murmur each time we crossed a creek.

The hot Markham sun blazed down on us and the sweat squirted from our bodies. The
dust from the dry track rose slowly round our feet, sticking to our wet skins. We
did not care. The end was in sight. By about three o'clock we had reached the large
coconut-grove at the edge of the village, and looked up longingly at the cool green
nuts. A crowd of Chivasing natives, with the tultul and doctor-boy, appeared suddenly
at the other end of the grove and advanced to meet us. Some of them climbed the palms
to get green coconuts for us to drink. We sat in the shade and let the cool fluid
trickle down our dust-filled throats.

‘Are there any Japanese about?' we asked at length,
our inevitable question, which
we hoped would be for the last time.

There was a silence. The steaming quietness of the Markham afternoon descended.

‘Are there any Japanese about?' we repeated sharply.

‘No-got, master! Me-fella no lookim some-fella Japan!' The answer came readily enough
this time.

‘Better make sure,' Les said. ‘We'll send Arong into the village to have a look round.'

We called to Arong, who had had a drink, to move into the village. He was wearing
no uniform, and there was nothing to mark him out from the Chivasing kanakas, so
he would be safe enough even if there were Japanese there.

While he was away we tried to make conversation with the natives. They seemed strangely
uneasy, but they said they had expected us and had the canoes all ready to take us
down to Kirkland's. We wondered whether we imagined the tension in the atmosphere
– whether the long strain now ending had made us over-suspicious. We were cheered
when Arong came back a few minutes later with a smile on his face, to say that he
had taken a look round the village and that all was as it should be. Then, Arong
leading the way, and Les behind him, a few paces ahead of me, we walked into the
village. Most of our boys stayed in the grove, still drinking coconut milk.

As we neared the clear space at the centre of the village there was a sudden burst
of machine-gun fire and a volley of rifle-shots from one of the houses. Bullets kicked
up the dirt all round us. We both made a dash for the creek that runs through the
village, and as I jumped down into it there was another burst of fire from the house.
Les gave a cry, fell, and lay still. Japanese – there seemed to be dozens of them
– then jumped down from the houses and rushed over towards me. I lost my footing
and fell into the water, got my clothes and Owen gun
tangled in a submerged branch,
and finally struggled across the creek and into the bush minus Owen gun and most
of my shirt. Bullets were clipping the leaves all round me. I did not go far, but
buried myself deep in the mud of a place where the pigs used to wallow, with only
my nose showing, and stayed put.

For a few minutes all was quiet, but soon I heard the Japanese calling out to each
other, and their feet sucking and squelching in the mud as they searched. I could
not see, so I did not know exactly how close they were, but I could feel in my ears
the pressure of their feet as they squeezed through the mud. It occurred to me that
this was probably an occasion on which one might pray, and indeed was about to start
a prayer. Then something stopped me. I said to myself so fiercely that I seemed to
be shouting under the mud, ‘To hell with God! If I get out of this bloody mess, I'll
do it by myself!' It was no doubt a childish sort of pride, but I experienced a rather
weary exhilaration that, terrified and abject, lying literally like a pig in the
mud, I had not sufficiently abandoned personal integrity to pray for my skin to
a God I didn't really believe in.

I lay there motionless, buried alive in mud and pig-filth, feeling, or imagining,
creatures of unspeakable loath-someness crawling over me in the slime. The voices
became fainter and the squelching footsteps died away. I eased my face out, blinked
the mud away from my eyes, and carefully pulled some leaves over my head in case
the searchers returned.

For half an hour or so there was no sound. Then several natives walked round the
outskirts of the village calling out to me. I heard their voices clearly, just a
few yards away through the bushes:

‘Master, you come! Japan all 'e go finish!'