Scouting the Hard Way

Three Nights With A

Bomb-Happy Carrier

'~THE following story is from Noel Ott -1 way, Melbourne “Herald” corres pondent with the US Marines in New Britain. It concerns an officer who penetrated deep into enemy territory and a native carrier who had night mares. One wonders what the Pidgin for “bomb happy” really is (“alright along bomb” is the nearest we can get, because there seems to be no Pidgin for “happy”)—but it makes a good story for all that.

The officer took the native with him as a carrier and crossed a deep swamp to remote territory, where he believed he would be safe.

He knew that prowling natives would not carry word of his movements to the enemy, because the ground he had chosen as a hiding place had been cursed by native witch doctors as the “home of Tamboran” (evil spirits).

But he reckoned without the Japanese, who came within 50 yards of his hiding place to shoot pigeons.

And he reckoned without his native boy, who, at midnight, suddenly startled from his sleep and gave an unearthly shriek, rising to a shrill crescendo in the still jungle.

The officer sprang on him and, cover ing his mouth with his hand, pummelled the native into wakefulness.

“Why did you make that noise with the Japanese within earshot?” he de manded in a fierce whisper.

Shudderingly, the boy told him he had been captured by the Japanese in Rabaul, and had been sent by them as a carrier to Buna. There he had been bombed by the American fliers and bom barded by the Australian guns. Finally he had crept through the Japanese lines to the Allied positions.

“I am bomb happy,” he confessed.

“Every night I dream that Japanese are cutting my throat. I can’t help scream ing.”

“What a helluva time to tell me,” mut tered the officer. For three nights he remained there in concealment, unable to sleep at night.

“I had to remain on the alert all night,” he told me. “Every time Les (the native) started I had to kick him smartly, and put my hand over his mouth.

“I slept always beside him, and after three days we managed to get out, but I still cannot understand why the Japa nese did not hear that first frenzied cry.

“I thought it would have wakened even dead souls.”