A Coastwatcher Mission off the coast of Papua
I left Australia with the Ist Independent Company Commando), arriving in Kavieng, New Ireland on 24th July 1941. In November 1941, I was lucky enough to be sent with No. 2 Section to Vila in the New Hebrides, arriving there on 5th December 1941. Our mission was to train the Free French on the island. A couple of days after we arrived there, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific had begun.
We received a signal from our Commander in Kavieng, Major James Edmonds-Wilson, ordering us not to return to Kavieng. Subsequently, the 147 members of our unit who were left at Kavieng found themselves up against an estimated 6,000 Japanese approaching New Ireland.
Orders were received from Australia that they were to oppose the approaching Japanese and fight a guerrilla war against them; but New Ireland was not suitable for this kind of warfare, and Major Edmonds-Wilson decided that he would take the men who were left of his commando unit to Rabaul, and there join the Australian 22nd Battalion.
They left Kavieng in their ship the "Induna Star", and after eluding the Japanese who were looking for them, they sailed down the west coast of New Ireland. When daylight fell, they anchored at Gilingil Plantation which was situated opposite Rabaul with the St George Channel between them.
The Chinese storekeeper had "gone bush", but he was found and he told the commandos that the troops in Rabaul had ceased fighting a week earlier. This put a different complexion on the situation. They would not be able to join up with the 22nd Battallon. They could have continued to sail south for Buka Passage in the Solomon Islands, but a message received from Jack Reed, an Australian Coastwatcher in the Solomons, told them that the Japanese had landed there. Although, as was found out later, this information was not true, Major Edmonds-Wilson decided to head south for Woodlark Island, which lay off the coast of the Australian Territory of Papua.
The St George Passage was being patrolled by enemy ships but the '"Induna Star" somehow managed to sail through them, and when daylight came the ship was well on its way to its destination. However, their luck had run out. A Japanese float plane discovered them, and after strafing the ship, it called in a Japanese destroyer which escorted the ship back to Rabaul.
The men aboard the "Induna Star" became prisoners of war, and also became part of the saga of the infamous prison ship the "Montevideo Maru". Over one thousand Australian prisoners of war were later shipped from Rabaul to Japan to work as slave labourers. They were confined in the holds of the "Montevideo Maru", with hatches closed, when it was sunk off the Philippines by an American submarine whose captain was unaware of the presence of Allied prisoners on the ship.
Thus the Ist Independent Company (Commandos) ceased to exist as a combat unit, leaving segments of it scattered around the Pacific in the Admiralty Islands, Buka, Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, and my section in Vila.
When the Americans arrived at Vila from New Zealand on their way to Guadacanal, I was seconded to one of the American units showing them things I had learnt as a Commando. With our work finished in Vila, my section, together with the section that had been evacuated from Tulagi, returned to Australia on the HMAS Manoora.
Leave over, our section was waiting at Royal Park Melbourne to be assigned to another commando unit, when Captain B. Fairfax-Ross arrived and asked for volunteers to go back in behind the enemy lines. We were to try and find out what had happened to the Ist Independent Company, which had completely disappeared without any trace.
I was one of the eleven men who volunteered to go with the Captain. It was not long before we found out that we were now in a new unit called "Ferdinand". "Ferdinand" was in fact the code name for the Coastwatcher Organization which later became a section of the Allied Intelligence Bureau. We were sent to Townsville, and here we joined a small ship called the "Paluma" as a party and crew to carry out a Coastwatcher mission in New Guinea.
We sailed the ship via Cape York and Port Moresby and then to Milne Bay which, until recently, had been in battle with the Japanese. Our mission was to establish parties of three men at points along the north-east coast of Papua between Milne Bay and Porlock Harbour. These parties were to establish navigation aids for our ships sailing along these waters as they ferried troops and supplies to sustain our men fighting the Japanese at Buna and Gona.
I was not in one of these parties. Instead, I was allocated to the crew to sail the "Paluma" and act as offsider to Lieutenant Ivan Champion RANVR who was to carry out a survey of a large reef, east of Tufi, which was a danger to our convoys. We were also to search for any suitable anchorages for our ships.
At this time, September 1942, the battle for Milne Bay was just over. The remnants of the Japanese invasion force were escaping along the east coast of Papua, trying desperately to link up with their comrades fighting at Buna. The Japanese still had control of the sea to the north of Milne Bay, which made our boats vulnerable to attack.
This made the work of surveying the reef hazardous, but it had to be done to allow the convoys a navigable route to Oro Bay with our Australian and American troops who were to support the men already fighting at Gona, and Buna.
We considered that we were getting the easy part of the operation. One day we received a signal to escort a Sydney tug, named the "Wato", which had left Milne Bay towing a five hundred ton barge of ammunition. The destination was Porlock Harbour and then into Oro Bay where the ammunition was to be off-loaded for the troops fighting at Buna.
Shortly after the tug had left Milne Bay, we lost radio contact with the vessel. We began a search of the area where we estimated the tug should have been, but were forced to return to Wanigila for fuel.
Luckily we had fueled when, half an hour later, we received a message from Milne Bay stating that the tug had become lost and was now requesting help from us. We found the "Wato" steaming along the coast east of Wanigila and on a course that would have eventually taken them into the middle of the reefs.
The vessel was making considerable smoke, giving a clear signal of its presence to any Japanese aircraft that may have been in the immediate area. When challenged about the smoke, the tug captain was reluctant to try to decrease the volume of smoke being emitted from the tug's stack, but he soon changed his mind when an enemy bomber arrived on the scene.
I was quartermaster on the "Paluma" at the time, and it became very obvious that the enemy plane was trying to line up the tug pulling the barge of ammunition and the "Paluma" so as to get more effect with his bombs.
Flight Lieutenant G.H.R Marsland was the captain of the Paluma. He warned me to be prepared to turn the ship's wheel "hard a port" or "hard a starboard"- whatever he decided - when he gave the command. The ship was cruising at about fifteen knots without an ounce of speed left.
Marsland watched as the stick of bombs left the enemy's bomb bay and shouted out his command. As I turned the wheel hard over to starboard, the "Paluma" immediately answered to the rudder, bringing the ship around like a destroyer at high speed.
I heard the chatter of the two .5 Browning guns on the stern of the "Paluma" and the .303 Vickers gun firing from the ammunition barge, but I knew that these weapons were useless against the high flying enemy bomber unless the pilot decided to lose altitude and begin strafing our ships. Even if that had happened, our fire power would have been minimal against the guns of the bomber.
I did not hear the scream of the bombs coming down. I was too busy trying to keep the ship under control. Suddenly great geysers of water erupted on both sides of the "Paluma", but far enough away to not cause any damage. The bombs had also deluged the "Wato" and the ammunition barge, but they too had been lucky and had received no damage.
In everyone's mind was the thought that this was only the beginning and that the enemy bomber was preparing to make another bomb run. I still had more than I could handle, controlling the ship and waiting for the Captain's orders. But I was not alone. Everyone aboard the "Paluma" was at his action station, waiting expectantly for the next attack to begin. The enemy bomber was circling around but then suddenly, and much to everyone's amazement, it turned towards the east and headed in the direction of Rabaul. The attack was over.
Why the enemy plane had not continued to attack us was a mystery. It was possible that they had only one stick of bombs, but whatever it was that had made the pilot change his mind, it was our good fortune.
The problem with the "Wato" was not yet over. For the rest of the day we escorted the tug up the coast, expecting at any time to see enemy planes coming to attack us. Eventually, as night was approaching, we arrived at Porlock Harbour and were glad to get rid of our charge with its billowing smoke stack, signalling to the enemy its whereabouts.
Our captain decided to anchor for the night before starting the journey back to Tufi which was where we had been operating from. He chose a small creek outside the harbour and to the east for our anchorage.
"We could have tied up in Porlock Harbour, but I think they can expect trouble from the Japs tonight" Rod Marsland our skipper told us. "I told them about our little episode today, and they seemed not to be worried. However, I feel sure that the bomber crew would have passed on the information about the ammunition barge to their headquarters, and I would be very much surprised if they left the matter at that".
For most of the night we did not sleep. We were awakened by our guard with the news that the ship was about to fall over on its side. We had not taken into account the fall of the tide. We hastily improvised with poles, or anything that would help us to prop the vessel up and stop it from becoming a wreck in the mangroves which surrounded the boat and on which it was now resting.
The mosquitoes nearly ate us alive, and about 0300 hours the tide came in and we were out of danger. We had not heard any bombing in the night and thought that we had overreacted about our calculations of being bombed.
The sun rose the next morning trying to disperse the shroud of mist covering the mountain to the west of the harbour. At 0700 hours, a roar of planes burst from out of the mist with guns and bombs saturating the harbour and causing many casualties. The enemy planes had come from behind the mountains where they had gained height. Then, cutting their motors, they had glided down into the harbour and, as they brought their planes to life again, their guns and bombs caused havoc amongst the troops and shipping before the unprepared harbour defences even knew that they were there.
Australian soldiers died that day, but there would have been many more if the enemy bombers had found the 500 ton barge of ammunition. This was no consolation however to those who lost their lives that morning.
As all this was happening, the "Paluma" was making ready to sail. Then over the intercom we received an urgent message that a 4,000 ton ship in Porlock Harbour was trying to escape the air raid and urgently required someone to escort them out of the area.
We guided the ship down to MacLaren Harbour and escorted it into an arm of the harbour where it was safe from attack from the sea. There it was safe for the night.
During those months, while the battle raged on land as Australian and American troops tried to recapture Gona and Buna, we played our part carrying out many duties fraught with danger which at this time was a part of a serviceman's life.
After Christmas of this year 1942, the "Paluma" returned to Port Moresby for a refit. While there, I volunteered for a mission behind Japanese lines at Wewak on the northern coast of New Guinea. This opened a new chapter in my war service as a Coastwatcher, and became the subject of my book "Wewak Mission".
Editor's Note:
Lionel Veale refers in his final paragraph to his book "Wewak Mission". That book gives a gripping account of a dangerous Coastwatcher mission behind enemy lines to set up an observation post to monitor activity at the major Japanese base of Wewak on the northern coast of New Guinea. Capture by the Japanese would have produced interrogation under torture followed by execution. Inquiries regarding that book may be addressed to:
Mr Lionel Veale,
P.O. Box 408,
ASHMORE CITY, Queensland
AUSTRALIA 4214