Hundred

Five Against Five

How King's Medal Winner Arrested 100 Papuan Raiders

From Our Own Correspondent

Pt. Moresby. Feb. 12

TTOW five native police arrested 100 raiders without bloodshed is recalled by the recent award of the King’s Police Medal to Sergeant Gaiberi of the Papuan Native Armed Constabulary.

Gaiberi was recruited in 1896 from Kiwai Island, and has served continu ously for 40 years in the Police Service, for the last 28 being Senior Sergeant.

His service has been marked by consis tently good conduct, rather than by sen sational achievements.

Early in 1930 he was at Tufi when news came that a party of bushmen from the interior had been drowned when the canoe in which their coastal friends were carrying them had struck a rock and sank. The tribe to which the drowned men belonged scornfully refused to be lieve the story of the accident.

No Papuan believes in accidental death; and any fatality that occurs is attributed to violence or to sorcery.

The bush tribe concluded that the coast people were to blame for the deaths and they got together a war party of 500 men. Marching down to the coast,

they destroyed all the gardens of the coastal tribe, and murdered two women.

Before they could carry their revenge further the news reached Gaiberi at the Government station. The white officer was away on patrol, so Gaiberi took mat ters into his own hands.

With four constables and all the hand cuffs on the station he set cut to meet the 500 raiders, and ordered them to sur render.

The raiders laughed. ‘‘You are five,” they jeered, “and we are many. What can you do to us?”

“I can do this,” said Gaiberi, and snapped handcuffs on the wrists of the leader.

“If you do not come with me now.” he shouted above the confusion, ‘T will come *o your villages with many men and many guns. There will be sorrow among you, and many dead men, and women crying.”

The raiders thought matters over. They

knew the power of the Government, and they knew Gaiberi. In the end they threw down their spears. Gaiberi selected 100 of them and marched back to the station, where he locked them up.

Since then there has been no raiding in that district, and Gaiberi’s reputation is greater than ever.