Invasion Rabaul by Bruce Gamble

Author:Bruce Gamble
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2006-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

ESCAPE: THE LAKATOI

“… after many adventures we arrived at Port Moresby.”

—Sergeant Clive MacVean, 2/22nd Battalion

The mass murders at Tol and Waitavalo plantations on February 4 represented a turning point. Prior to that Bloody Wednesday, no one from Lark Force had successfully gotten off New Britain, which seemed to validate Major General Horii’s warning that they could “find neither food nor way of escape.” (About twenty troops had been airlifted with 24 Squadron two weeks earlier, but that was technically an evacuation, not an escape.) In the wake of the massacres, however, some 385 soldiers and sixty civilians escaped to Port Moresby or the Australian mainland over a period of ten weeks. They were the lucky ones. The accounts of their courage, ingenuity, and perseverance not only gave the Commonwealth something to cheer about, but rank among the most compelling escape stories of the entire war.

The dark side of their story is that they endured long weeks or even months of the harshest conditions imaginable before they reached safety. During that time, an estimated sixty-five evaders died from starvation or disease—more than were killed during the invasion itself. Most of those deaths could have been prevented with timely assistance from Canberra, but none came. No Australian warships were sent to rescue the remnants of Lark Force, no flying boats returned to pick up stragglers. The War Cabinet, aware for weeks that the troops were on the run, did nothing to help them.

In the absence of official support, a handful of individuals took charge of various rescue efforts. Some were soldiers, others lived on New Britain, and a few belonged to the Australia-New Guinea Administration Unit (ANGAU), which oversaw coastwatching operations.

One of the first to take action was Lieutenant Commander Feldt, stationed at Townsville. Soon after Lark Force went off the air, he contacted John K. “Keith” McCarthy, a coastwatcher at Talasea on New Britain’s north shore, and asked him to transport a radio to Toma. McCarthy was to report on the situation at Rabaul, then coordinate an evacuation if possible. The mission would be long and hazardous, but Feldt believed the thirty-seven-year-old McCarthy had just the right stuff.

I knew he was the appropriate man for the job. A tall, red-headed man of Irish descent, he was no cool, premeditating type. His affections and emotions governed him, but when his fine, free carelessness landed him in trouble, he could extricate himself, logic guiding his Celtic fervor until the danger was past. He had shown this capacity when ambushed in the heart of New Guinea by natives, coming safely out although wounded by three arrows, one of which he described as having ruined the beautiful symmetry of his navel. I could only hope that his long practice of improvising ways of escape from diverse and unorthodox difficulties had fitted him for coping with what lay ahead.

Accompanied by plantation owner George H. S. “Rod” Marsland (also a member of ANGAU) and sixteen native police boys to carry the AWA 3B radio, McCarthy left

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