Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons by Walter Lord
Of the three Coastwatchers on Guadalcanal, Martin Clemens at Aola was in the best position to cover the eastern end of the island. Eighteen miles to his west—about midway along the northern coast—Pay Lieutenant D. S. MacFarland of the Royal Australian Navy manned another teleradio at Berande, a rubber plantation owned by the South Pacific trading firm Burns Philp. All the way west was the third Coastwatcher, F. Ashton Rhoades, manager of the Burns Philp copra plantation at Lavoro.
Stocky, cheerful Don MacFarland had been a buyer with an Australian dry goods chain before the war. Called up as a naval reservist in 1941, he landed more or less by chance in naval intelligence. Here he was picked up by Eric Feldt and sent to Tulagi to coordinate Coastwatching activities in the area, and to serve as naval liaison with Resident Commissioner Marchant.
As the Japanese advanced into the Solomons in March 1942, Marchant shifted his headquarters to Auki, Malaita, a hundred miles farther east; and MacFarland—acting on previous instructions from Feldt—moved to Guadalcanal. Unlike most of the Coastwatchers, he had no experience in the area, but he had a unique advantage. He quickly came under the wing of Kenneth Dalrymple Hay, an oldtimer who managed the Berande plantation.
Stubborn, independent, and immensely wise in the ways of the Islands, Hay characteristically refused to join the exodus south. He watched the panic with contempt, then retired to Berande and began collecting an immense amount of abandoned Burns Philp stores. MacFarland joined him, and the two spent most of April shifting supplies to three secret caches in the interior. When the Japanese came, their plan was to retire to an eminence called Gold Ridge, fifteen miles inland and 2800 feet up. From here, there was a magnificent view of the coastal plain and the waters offshore. While Martin Clemens watched the east, they would handle the middle part of the island.
“Snowy” Rhoades, concentrating on the western end of Guadalcanal, came from a prosperous Sydney family. He had been wounded in World War I, fallen on hard times in the ’20s, and finally caught on with a Lever plantation in the Solomons in 1933. Gradually he learned to recruit natives, shoot crocodiles, and get the most out of a grove of coconut palms. By now he was a thorough Islander—tough, caustic, and highly individualistic.
Rhoades had been earmarked for Coastwatching work by Eric Feldt over a year ago, but there weren’t enough teleradios to go around. That was no longer a problem, and on March 24 Don MacFarland headed for Lavoro with Clemens and Hay. They assembled a teleradio, strung the aerial, worked out codes and schedules, and the new recruit was ready for business.
April was a month of tense waiting on Guadalcanal. The Japanese had now moved into Buka, Bougainville and the Shortland Islands. They stepped up their air strikes on Tulagi. Squadrons of land-based bombers joined the Kawanisi flying boats that staged the earlier raids. The RAAF patrol plane base in Tulagi harbor reeled under the blows.
Watching from a lookout atop a giant banyan tree at Aola, Martin Clemens wondered how long it would be before the Japanese landings began. Of the three Coastwatchers on Guadalcanal, he was farthest removed from the enemy line of advance, yet Aola was the seat of government—wouldn’t the Japanese head there first? He began preparing a fall-back position in the hills behind the station.
Meanwhile, as district officer, he struggled to maintain some semblance of British “presence” on the island. It was a life of ludicrous contrasts: One minute he was trying to fight the war; the next he was settling some native marital dispute, for his authority touched everything. On April 21 he met the problem of sagging morale in characteristically British fashion: He staged a cricket match.
At Berande 18 miles to the west, MacFarland and Hay continued moving supplies to the secret caches they had established in the interior. Hidden at Koilo, for instance, were 110 cases of food, 93 bags of rice, 200 cases of kerosene, 40 drums of benzine, and at one point 50 cases of whiskey.
Even at this late date MacFarland was also attempting to expand his Coastwatching network. He gave a spare teleradio—patched together by the RAAF at Tulagi—to Leif Schroeder, an old Norwegian trader who operated a store on Savo, a smallish island between Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Another set went to Joe Martin, a half-caste on Choiseul, but he could never make it work, and the Japanese were now too close for MacFarland to go up and teach him.
At Lavoro, Snowy Rhoades tried to run his plantation as usual, with occasional interruptions when Japanese planes raided Tulagi. Being all the way west, he was generally the first to see them. Then he’d break off and flash a quick warning to the A.I.F. commando unit guarding the patrol plane base. It did little good; they had nothing to shoot back with, and could only crouch in their shelters as the bombs rained down.
April 29, the days of waiting ended. That morning the RAAF radioed MacFarland that a large concentration of Japanese ships had been sighted heading for the Solomons. On May 1 especially heavy raids hit Tulagi. One damaged patrol plane was towed across to Aola, and Martin Clemens wondered how, on top of his other problems, he could hide a four-engine Catalina. Some 300 natives finally dragged it up on the beach and covered it with palm leaves.
On the 2nd, Coastwatchers to the west of Guadalcanal reported a Japanese seaplane carrier and escorting corvette in Thousand Ships Bay, Santa Isabel. That was only 60 miles from Tulagi. The RAAF advised MacFarland that they were evacuating the patrol plane base, and the A.I.F. commandos began destroying supplies, equipment, anything that might be of use to the enemy.
At Berande Don MacFarland assessed the latest ship sightings and decided the time had come to move to Gold Ridge. He piled his gear into the plantation truck, and during the afternoon Ken Hay drove him cross-country several miles into the interior. At Bamboo Creek a dozen native carriers were waiting. They took over the gear and disappeared with MacFarland up the winding trail that led into the hills. Hay returned to Berande, planning to join him later.
Back at the plantation a visitor was waiting. Snowy Rhoades had piloted the company launch down from Lavoro in search of supplies and news. On Hay’s return from Bamboo Creek he got plenty of both, and the two men sat for a while on the plantation house verandah watching the smoke boil up over Tulagi.
Now it was dark, and the glow of many fires spread across the evening sky as the commandos continued their demolitions. There was no time to lose: If the latest sightings were correct, enemy warships would be arriving any hour. Despite the danger, Rhoades decided to get back to Lavoro. He loaded the launch and at 9 o’clock chugged off into a beautiful moonlit night.
Martin Clemens was winding up an especially hectic day at Aola. There were records to pack, supplies to disperse, defenses to organize, the crew of the damaged Catalina to feed, three boatloads of fleeing Chinese to deal with—and everything seemed to happen at once. Now, as the glare of the flames seared the sky over Tulagi, he tried to remember the code signal that meant the station there, VNTG, was closing down for good. Was it “eggs and sausage”? “Liver and bacon”? Something like that, but his weary mind drew a blank.
Suddenly word came that he was wanted at the radio shack. He rushed in and learned Tulagi was coming on the air. The background noise was appalling, but as he bent low over the set, he could hear a faint, desperate voice calling, STEAK AND EGGS, DAMN IT, STEAK AND EGGS, DAMN IT, VNTG CALLING VQJ4, STEAK AND EGGS.
Now he knew, but that was all he knew, for the voice faded and there was only static. Had VNTG sighted Japanese ships? Were the Japanese already ashore, bursting into the station? Had the RAAF and the commandos gotten away safely? Shaken and worried, nobody slept in Aola that night.
In the first gray light of May 3, an ancient coaster wallowed in, clearing up the mystery. It carried the RAAF personnel, who reported the commandos had also escaped on another ship. Even as they slipped out of Tulagi harbor, they saw four Japanese warships sail in.
Clemens gave everybody breakfast, and the Tulagi men then sprawled on the lawn in exhausted sleep. He tried to persuade their commander to keep them on Guadalcanal and form a guerri
No time to mope about that. During the day the damaged Catalina was scuttled; three schooners loaded with Chinese refugees were sent to safety; most of the native families living on the post were evacuated. Whatever else he was doing, from time to time Clemens would dash to the teleradio, twiddle the dials, trying to keep in touch with Don MacFarland, en route to Gold Ridge … or Snowy Rhoades, isolated at Lavoro … or the control station at Auki on Malaita, which relayed his intelligence to Townsville. The best vantage point was the lookout post, high in the banyan tree, where a native blasted away on a conch shell every time Japanese planes appeared. Occasionally Clemens himself climbed the ladder for a look. The weather was thick, but he made out two big ships—apparently transports—steaming into Tulagi harbor.
Actually only one of the ships was a transport, but Martin Clemens was right in his hunch that a major Japanese landing was under way. Its early conquests digested, the Empire was now on the march again. The plan was to seize both Tulagi and Port Moresby on the southern coast of New Guinea.
This would give Japan control of the Coral Sea. Her bombers could then range from Port Moresby, hammering bases in Australia itself; while from Tulagi and its adjacent islands, the Fleet Air Arm could devastate New Caledonia, the Fijis, and Samoa, imperiling the supply lines between Australia and the United States. Combined with the “decisive fleet engagement” at Midway that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was already planning, the result should win the war for Japan. The Allies would see the futility of fighting and negotiate a peace on Tokyo’s terms.
The twelve ships assigned to the Tulagi phase of the operation left Rabaul on April 29, and it was the vanguard of this force that arrived in the early hours of May 3, just as the last defenders were clearing out. By 8 A.M. troops were swarming ashore from the transport Azumasan Maru. With them, acting as guide and interpreter, came a Japanese named T. Ishimoto. He had lived on Tulagi for years, working as a carpenter … and as a quiet observer for His Imperial Majesty’s government.
The Japanese landings on Tulagi meant a whole new set of worries for the Coastwatchers on Guadalcanal. Would the enemy come right over? Nobody knew, and there was certainly nothing to stop them. Prodded by two strafing enemy float planes, Ken Hay decided to close down Berande and join Don MacFarland on Gold Ridge right away. He spent the day packing up and that night loaded his truck to capacity. Hay liked his comforts and even included a kerosene-run Electrolux refrigerator. He then went to bed but was soon awakened by the beam of a ship’s searchlight probing his house. It suggested he was leaving none too soon.
At Aola to the east, Martin Clemens had no sleep at all. He spent the night answering false alarms and checking his jittery native sentries. He was still at it around 6:30 A.M. on May 4, when a blast from the conch shell announced the approach of the day’s first planes.
But this time was different. Sweeping in from the south, 40 dive bombers and torpedo planes, all bearing the American white star, poured down upon the Japanese shipping in Tulagi harbor. Great balloons of fire and clouds of black smoke boiled up into the sky, as the watchers at Aola looked on first in disbelief, then in ecstasy. Someone began beating the station drum, and to Martin Clemens it seemed to say, “Come and see, come and see!”
Unknown to Clemens or any of the Coastwatchers, U.S. Navy code-breakers had learned about the Japanese operation, and now Admiral Chester B. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, was deploying his forces to meet the threat. Under Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher the carriers Lexington and Yorktown raced to the scene, and the planes hammering Tulagi were from the Yorktown, hovering about a hundred miles to the south.
That was just the start. Wheeling west, Fletcher now went after the other prong of the Japanese advance, the Port Moresby Invasion Force. In the Battle of the Coral Sea that followed, U.S. carrier planes sank one enemy carrier and seriously damaged another. American losses were even greater—Lexington and two other ships sunk, Yorktown badly hit—but Fletcher’s purpose had been achieved. At 9:00 A.M., May 7, the Port Moresby Invasion Force turned back to Rabaul.
But the Japanese on Tulagi remained, far less crippled than they looked to the excited watchers on Guadalcanal—or to old Leif Schroeder, the Coastwatcher on Savo. He had the best ringside seat of all. In fact, he was too close, for several Japanese survivors from sunken patrol boats soon came swimming ashore. Schroeder took to the bush, but not his assistant George Bogese, an educated native medical practitioner. Bogese tended two badly burned sailors, and when a Japanese patrol arrived to pick them up, he asked to be paid for his services. He was immediately arrested and taken to Tulagi as prisoner. Here, under threats of execution, he was soon telling who the Coastwatchers were, and where they were stationed.
It was just as well Martin Clemens didn’t know. He was discouraged enough already. During the evacuation of Tulagi, there hadn’t been time to think about himself. There were the Australians and all those Chinese to ship south. Then, during the Japanese landings he was so busy he barely realized that Don MacFarland had left the coast for the hideout on Gold Ridge. Finally came the American strike, and who could think about anything else that day? But now they were gone too—everyone was gone but the Japanese—and Clemens suddenly came face to face with his own situation.
He had never felt more alone. The empty district officer’s house, with its simple furniture of “government oak,” seemed bare and cheerless. The last beer had vanished from the Electrolux in April. On the radio, through some atmospheric quirk, he could only get a BBC program aimed at West Africa. Restlessly, he turned to the wind-up phonograph, which boasted a miscellaneous collection of records left behind by various officials through the years. Normally he played the Tony Martins, but on one of these first, lonely nights he absent-mindedly put on a lugubrious number called “When You’re a Long, Long Way from Home.” It was too much. He broke down and cried.
He was frightened too—and not just of the Japanese. A month earlier a prospector named Wilmott had been axed to death in his bed by a native. Was it an isolated incident, or did it presage an uprising in the wake of the ignominious flight of the European settlers? Every night Clemens went to sleep half-convinced he wouldn’t wake up in the morning.
But he struggled on, certain that his own staff was loyal, whatever the feelings of the population. To start with, he had eighteen native constables under Corporal Andrew Langebaea, an earnest man who liked to stamp to attention with a crash that shook the office pilings. Langebaea became a sort of chief of staff, in charge of organizing a scouting force drawn from his constables and fresh recruits from nearby villages. They quickly proved both brave and resourceful. A native named Bingiti was soon making regular canoe trips to Tulagi, bringing back the latest on what the Japanese were doing.
Clearly the scouts were willing enough. More difficult was the problem of teaching them to report what they saw. Most of them spoke only pidgin English—hardly suited to modern warfare. Beyond that, how could a man recognize a truck when he had never seen one? How could he tell the difference between a cruiser and a destroyer when he normally called all naval vessels “men o’ war”—apparently a carry-over from the distant days of Captain Cook and the early explorers. Trial and error gradually produced a series of curious but workable frames of reference. A gun barrel “all same small fella beer bottle” proved to be a 3-incher.
As yet, Andrew Langebaea’s scouts had brought no intelligence suggesting the Japanese might be coming over to Guadalcanal, but Clemens was taking no chances. Up in the hills behind Aola he was already preparing a fall-back position at a tiny village called Paripao. His native clerk, Daniel Pule, bustled about the Aola office, packing and listing the files and records. Pule—a born bureaucrat—wanted to bring every last form and voucher along, and Clemens never really managed to convince him that the time had come to consider burning rather than
May 13, and all preparations were suspended by the unexpected arrival of Brother James Thrift, one of several Catholic missionaries who had remained on Guadalcanal, convinced that they could carry on their work in spite of the war. Sailing in from his mission station down the coast, Thrift was accompanied by two American flyers from the carrier Yorktown. Lieutenant Leonard Ewoldt and his radioman, Ray Machalinski, had run out of gas and crash-landed at sea after the raid on Tulagi. Washed ashore on the southern coast of Guadalcanal, they had been taken by friendly natives to Thrift. Now, as Clemens came forward to greet them, Ewoldt’s very first words were, “Could you please get us back to Pearl Harbor?”
“I’ll see what can be done,” Clemens replied in the best unflappable British colonial tradition.
He was as good as his word. In three days Ewoldt and Machalinski were on their way south in a launch manned by Chinese volunteers. At San Cristobal a schooner was waiting, which took them to the New Hebrides, where they ultimately caught a ride back to their squadron.
Mid-May, and the tireless scout Bingiti paddled the 20 miles from Tulagi with the disturbing news that George Bogese had been captured and was talking. Obviously it was time to clear out, and at 1:30 P.M. on the 19th Clemens closed the office and headed for the bush.
There was nothing furtive about the departure. Led by the station dog Suinae, it was almost a gala procession. Some 190 carriers had been recruited to bring along the last of Daniel Pule’s beloved files. Sixteen men staggered under the big office safe, crammed with £800 in silver. Another dozen struggled with the teleradio, now broken down into its various parts. Michael the cook and his boys labored under their loads of clanking pots and pans; while Anea, perhaps the world’s meekest jailer, escorted his civil prisoners. Since Clemens was not only a Coastwatcher but also the district officer on Guadalcanal, jail, courts, treasury, the whole official apparatus had to be within reach.