Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons by Walter Lord
A single exception to all this was Rovu, the hereditary chief of the settlement at Vanga Vanga village. He was sixty years old and couldn’t speak even pidgin English, but he did know every rock on Kolombangara. Though now a venerable elder by island standards, he had to lead every patrol, just to get the others back home again.
Evans cheerfully dived into his assignment anyhow. Reaching Hiruka about noon on March 22, he unpacked the teleradio, strung the aerial, and contacted KEN. For his own call letters he chose GSE—his wife’s initials.
He had no trouble recruiting natives to serve as sentries and lookouts, and he soon had a good network of scouts on the islands that fringed the strait. Scouting on Kolombangara itself remained a problem; the natives knew nothing about firearms, and he never dared trust them with anything more sophisticated than knives and axes.
Evans also found his tree-top lookout less than perfect, and on April 15 he moved his camp to a nearby hill he called “Square Top.” This gave him a wider view of the Vila area, and was slightly nearer Blackett Strait.
He scored his first triumph on the morning of May 8. At 3 A.M. four Japanese destroyers, racing down Blackett Strait with supplies for Vila, piled into a minefield just laid by an American task group. One sank almost at once; two others lay damaged and burning. The fourth was still picking up survivors when Evans spotted them at daybreak. He fired off a message to KEN, and nineteen SBDs soon appeared. They polished off the two cripples, while three fighters worked over the only destroyer to escape.
On this same day, KEN sent Evans an assistant. Actually, Evans himself felt perfectly happy as matters stood, but there were considerations he didn’t know about. The buildup for TOENAILS—the operation to seize Munda—was in full swing, and Kolombangara would clearly be in the center of things. Enemy barge traffic would increase as the Japanese pumped reinforcements into Vila, and every target must be reported. Given the difficulties of operating on Kolombangara, a second man should allow more flexibility, more opportunity for patrol work. There was, in short, nothing unusual about the idea of sending Evans an assistant; what was unusual was the choice.
Corporal Frank Nash grew up on the family cattle ranch near Canon City, Colorado. It was life in the wide open spaces, a throwback to an earlier frontier America. Physically, he was big and rangy—perfect for a Hollywood western. By temperament, he was quiet, conservative, independent, and intensely idealistic.
When war came, he didn’t wait to be drafted; he volunteered. When it looked as though his signal outfit would be stuck in California, he told his commanding officer he wanted to go overseas, and if necessary he’d get transferred to the infantry. Since it was unheard of for anyone to request infantry duty, the CO decided he must mean it, and by the end of 1942 Nash was in the New Hebrides.
In January 1943 his outfit, the 410th Aviation Signal Company, was ordered to Guadalcanal to help install and operate a new control tower going up at Henderson Field. While stationed there, Nash began hearing the pilots talk about the Coastwatchers. It sounded like interesting duty.
Then in April he heard the 410th was going back to the New Hebrides for rear area work. “This was not my idea of the war,” as he later put it, and one day he dropped by KEN to ask whether they could use him.
Hugh Mackenzie could always use another hand—especially a good radio operator. The 410th didn’t seem to care; so the papers were filed for a formal transfer. It would, of course, take months to clear a U.S. Army corporal for duty in the Australian Navy. Meanwhile, Nash “sort of deserted.”
He soon proved far more than a good radio operator. An enterprising non-com is a godsend in any military organization, and this was particularly true at KEN. Supplies were short on Guadalcanal, and as the only non-U.S. outfit at Henderson, the Coastwatchers were always at the end of the line for everything. They wallowed in praise from the admirals, but getting a roll of toilet paper was hell.
Frank Nash changed all that. Borrowing here and there, authorizing his own requisition slips, moving deftly both in and out of channels, he opened the pipelines. KEN soon enjoyed a steady flow of light bulbs, stationery, office equipment, everything.
When it was decided to send Evans an assistant, Nash immediately volunteered. Mackenzie thought this an absurd idea—what did a U.S. corporal know about the bush? Lieutenant Forbes Robertson, Mackenzie’s chief assistant, thought differently. A resourceful man was what counted, and Nash was certainly that. He could learn about the bush when he got there. In the end, Mackenzie gave in—one of his last decisions before being relieved by Commander Pryce-Jones.
May 8, and Nash was on his way. First, a pause at Segi for one of Donald Kennedy’s patented briefings … then by canoe to Kolombangara. He arrived on the 17th—essentially still a Colorado cattleman loose in the tropical jungle, but ready and eager to learn everything he could from Reg Evans. As it worked out, neither was really at home in the bush, and in the end they lived mostly off rations and Spam. But Forbes Robertson was right: Resourcefulness was what counted, and both men had plenty of that.
Blackett Strait was “heating up” now—Japanese barges down every night … planes coming and going … an occasional destroyer, as reinforcements poured into Vila and Munda. GSE radioed a steady flow of sightings, but Evans worried that they weren’t catching everything. On June 14 he again moved the camp—this time down to Hipera, only a mile from the coast and well below the cloud line.
With the launching of TOENAILS on June 30, Kolombangara became hotter than ever. The Japanese began using Vila as their main staging point for ferrying troops to New Georgia. Again Evans worried that they weren’t seeing enough, and on August 1 he asked KEN for permission to shift GSE to Gomu, a small island between Kolombangara and Wana Wana. This would be more central, and local communications would be better too. Canoes could come and go, day or night. Nash would remain on Kolombangara, in touch by walkie-talkie.
Evans was still waiting for an answer that night, when he and Nash spotted the blaze that marked the pyre of PT 109. At daybreak they could see something floating in the water where the fire had been, but even with their 15-power telescope they couldn’t make out what it was. In reporting to KEN, Evans suggested it was “possibly” the remains of a barge. Certainly it didn’t occur to him that it might be the shattered wreckage of a PT-boat.
Nor did it occur to KEN, or to the advanced Coastwatcher base PWD on Rendova. Apparently overlooking any possible connection, at 9:30 A.M. PWD radioed Evans:
PT BOAT ONE OWE NINE LOST IN ACTION IN BLACKETT STRAIT TWO MILES SW MERESU COVE. CREW OF TWELVE. REQUEST ANY INFORMATION.
Evans immediately moved into action: All natives were to watch for survivors; the scouts would start searching the coast. Nobody found anything, except an extraordinary number of spent American torpedoes washed up on the shore. As for the mysterious object floating in the strait, it was too far off to be investigated by canoe in daylight. At 11:15 he radioed PWD no luck so far. He added that the “object” was still in sight.
At 1:12 P.M. KEN confirmed the loss and position of PT 109, and at 4:45 Evans reported he was still searching, and that the “object” was now drifting southeast. Optimistically, he predicted that his Gizo scouts would pick up any survivors who landed on the other side of the strait.
A reasonable assumption until now, but during the night of August 2 some 200-300 Japanese troops landed on the north coast of Gizo. This was a major threat to the network and must be reported immediately. On the morning of the 3rd scouts Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana took a canoe and hurried down Blackett Strait to alert Evans, still on Kolombangara awaiting permission to move.
During the morning Evans was again in touch with PWD and KEN about the missing PT 109. All searches were “negative”; no sign of survivors anywhere. Nor did he have any better news on the 4th after seeing Biuku and Eroni. At 10:25 A.M. he regretfully radioed PWD:
NO SURVIVORS FOUND AT GIZO.
By now KEN was very interested in the “object” that E
WHERE WAS HULK OF BURNING PT BOAT LAST SEEN? IF STILL FLOATING, REQUEST COMPLETE DESTRUCTION. ALSO REQUEST INFORMATION IF ANY JAPS WERE ON OR NEAR FLOATING HULK.
Reg Evans had the precise mind of a good accountant, and wasn’t that sure the “object” was part of PT 109. He radioed back:
CANNOT CONFIRM OBJECT SEEN WAS FLOATING HULD OF PT. OBJECT LAST SEEN APPROX TWO MILES NE BAMBANGA DRIFTING SOUTH. NOT SEEN SINCE PM SECOND.
But August 5, the “object” was sighted again, now in Ferguson Passage drifting south. It ended up on a reef, where scouts later identified it as the “forepart of a small vessel.”
Meanwhile Biuku and Eroni had left Evans and were paddling back to Gizo. Breaking their trip at Wana Wana, they headed across Ferguson Passage on the morning of August 5. As they approached Nam, first island on the other side of the passage, they spotted the wreckage of a Japanese boat, stranded a few hundred yards offshore. They anchored their canoe and waded over to investigate.
The pickings were slim. Nothing worth scavenging except a couple of rifles. Then, as they climbed out of the boat, they were horrified to see two men staring at them from the beach. Had the Japanese caught them looting? Biuku and Eroni didn’t wait to find out. Scrambling into their canoe, they paddled off as fast as possible.
Were these two natives scouts for the Japanese? Lieutenant Kennedy and Ensign Ross weren’t taking any chances. They bolted into the bush. Four harrowing days had passed since the Japanese destroyer had sliced through PT 109, and it looked like one more narrow escape.
“This is how it feels to be killed,” had been Kennedy’s first thought as the crash hurled him against the side of his boat. But the severed bow miraculously stayed afloat, and he gradually collected the survivors onto the hulk. There were eleven altogether—only two lost—another miracle.
All morning, August 2, the men perched on the listing bow, waiting for some PBY or PT-boat to pick them up. Nobody came. Around 10:00 the bow turned turtle, and Kennedy realized they couldn’t stay with it much longer. If it didn’t sink, the current could easily deliver them to the Japanese. Scanning the horizon, he decided they should swim to one of the tiny islets that stretched southeast from Gizo. He chose one called Plum Pudding, which lay about three and a half miles away. It seemed just the right size—big enough to hide on, yet too small for a Japanese outpost.
They set out about 1:00 P.M., with most of the men hanging onto an eight-foot plank from the wreck. Pat McMahon, however, was so badly burned he couldn’t swim. Seeing this, Kennedy took the strap of McMahon’s life jacket in his teeth, and using the breast stroke, he towed the injured man all the way to the island—a four-hour swim.
Nor was he through for the day. Taking a battle lantern salvaged from the boat, he swam out into Ferguson Passage that evening, hoping to flag down one of the PTs as they entered Blackett Strait on their regular patrol. It was a wasted night. Abandoning their usual practice, the boats took a different route to the north.
Next night, the 3rd, Ensign Ross pinch-hit for the skipper. Taking the lantern, he too swam into Ferguson Passage, but with no better luck. Again, the PTs used the northern route.
On the 4th Kennedy shifted every one from Plum Pudding to Olasana Island, about a mile and three-quarters to the southeast. It was a little larger, had more coconuts, and lay closer to Ferguson Passage. As before, he towed the badly burned McMahon with his teeth.
The swim was exhausting, and this night nobody went out with the lantern. Inevitably the PTs switched back to Ferguson Passage.
On the morning of the 5th Kennedy decided to explore Naru Island, a half mile to the east and the last bit of land before the passage. He recruited Ross, and they swam over together, about the same time that Biuku and Eroni were approaching by canoe from the opposite direction. Starting down the beach, Kennedy and Ross noticed the same Japanese wreck that attracted the two natives, and they came upon a crate that must have been part of its cargo. To their delight, it was full of crackers and hard candy.
Continuing on, they made an even more exciting discovery: a dugout canoe with a can of water hidden in the bushes. Unknowingly, they had stumbled across a secret cache planted for emergencies by one of Evans’s scouts.
They paused for a moment of rest, then went back to the beach. To their consternation, they now spotted Biuku and Eroni scavenging the wreck. The two Americans leapt into the bushes without noticing that the natives—equally alarmed—were scrambling back to their canoe.
After a while Kennedy and Ross cautiously returned to the beach. No one was in sight. The place seemed safe; so that evening Kennedy took the dugout and again ventured into Ferguson Passage. Again, no PTs appeared, and at 9:00 P.M. he returned to Naru, picked up the candy, crackers, and water and paddled back to the rest of the group on Olasana. For lack of room in the canoe, Ross remained on Naru the whole night.
Reaching Olasana, Kennedy was surprised to find two new additions to his party. Biuku and Eroni had landed there after fleeing Naru and encountered the other PT 109 survivors. The two natives had at first been suspicious, but their fears were allayed when Kennedy’s executive officer, Ensign Leonard J. Thom, pointed to the sky and shouted, “White star! White star!”
That they both understood. The white star marking on U.S. planes was something every Coastwatcher drilled his scouts to know and recognize. It meant American … friend … someone to be helped.
Reassured, they joined the castaways and warned them of the two “Japanese” they had spotted on Naru. Nobody connected this sighting with Kennedy and Ross; so the relief was enormous when the skipper himself casually reappeared with his crate of sweets.
On the morning of the 6th Biuku and Eroni paddled Kennedy back to Naru for another look around. On the way over they gathered in Ross, who was now swimming “home” to Olasana. Once on Naru, the natives showed the two Americans another secret cache, complete with a two-man canoe. It would come in handy later, but Kennedy’s immediate attention was focused far to the southeast. There he could see Rendova Peak, pinpointing the location of the PT base. It was 38 miles away, but unlike Ferguson Passage, it meant certain help.
Pointing to it, he somehow conveyed the idea that he wanted Biuku and Eroni to paddle there for assistance. With the same thought in mind, Ensign Thom had already scribbled a message on an old Burns Philp invoice found lying on Olasana. It briefly described the group’s location and condition, spelling out recognition signals for any rescue effort. Now Kennedy added a message of his own, showing a bit of the flair that seemed to touch everything he did. Taking a piece of coconut shell, he used his sheath knife to scratch out these words:
NARO ISL
NATIVE KNOWS POSIT
HE CAN PILOT 11 ALIVE NEED
SMALL BOAT
KENNEDY
Carrying both messages, Biuku and Eroni set out in their canoe. Kennedy and Ross remained on Nam until evening, when they took the new two-man canoe out for one more try in Ferguson Passage. Again no luck; worse, a squall upset the canoe. Tossed against the reef, battered by sea and coral, they barely made it back to Nam.
Meanwhile Biuku and Eroni once again crossed Ferguson Passage and broke their trip at Wana Wana. This time they contacted Ben Kevu, Reg Evans’s principal scout in the area. Formerly the district officer’s clerk at Gizo, Kevu spoke excellent English and served as a perfect bridge between Evans on Kolombangara and about a dozen scouts operating in Wana Wana Lagoon. Constantly on the go, he moved back and forth among the Japanese barges with no apparent difficulty. How he managed to appear so inconspicuous—or so innocent—was his own trade secret.
Kevu plunged into action. Knowing that Evans had at last received permission to move and would be arriving on Gomu this very evening, he rushed a scout there with the news. Biuku and Eroni meanwhile continued on toward Rendova.
It was nearl
ELEVEN SURVIVORS PT BOAT ON GROSS IS1 HAVE SENT FOOD AND LETTER ADVISING SENIOR COME HERE WITHOUT DELAY. WARN AVIATION OF CANOES CROSSING FERGUSON.
KEN passed the good news to Rendova, where it was almost immediately confirmed by the arrival of Biuku and Eroni with Thorn’s message and Kennedy’s coconut shell. They had paddled all night, reaching the first American outpost on Roviana Island shortly after daybreak. From here they were rushed by whaleboat and PT to the base in Rendova Harbor.
Headquarters immediately decided to send PTs to pick up the men that night. But where? Kennedy’s message mentioned Nam, but on the radio Reg Evans indicated that the survivors might be coming by canoe to Gomu. Evans cleared the air a little by explaining he had been able to man only one canoe. It wasn’t back yet, but it certainly couldn’t hold everybody. Rendova now decided to send the boats direct to Nam. Evans would return separately any men brought out by Ben Kevu.
Meanwhile, with six good paddlers at work, Kevu made fast time across Ferguson Passage. Finding Kennedy and Ross still on Nam, Kevu walked up and announced with clipped English accent, “I have a letter for you, Sir.” Kennedy stepped forward and opened it up:
On His Majesty’s Service
To Senior Officer, Naru Is.
Friday, 11 p.m. Have just learned of your presence on Naru Is. and also that two natives have taken news to Rendova. I strongly advise you return immediately to here in this canoe and by the time you arrive here I will be in radio communication with authorities at Rendova and we can finalize plans to collect balance of your party.
A R Evans Lt.
RANVR