Lambeti-How A Solomons Planter

Returned Home

J-lERE is a despatch probably unique in the Pacific War. The owner of a Pacific plantation, who happens to be a skilled writer, was with tne American forces when they attacked and threw out the Japs. He watched his plantation being freed from the invaders — and he saw it, in the freeing, blown to pieces.

The writer is Mr. Leslie F. Gill, owner of famous Lambeti Plantation, once one of the show places of Roviana Lagoon, in Hew Georgia, British Solomons. When the Japs, in August-0 ctober, 1942, were thrown out of Guadalcanal, they immediately built up a new base, with a good airfield, at Munda, at the northern end of Roviana Lagoon. They seized the Methodist Mission station there, and Lambeti Plantation, alongside ; and there, and in the hills immediately behind, they constructed innumerable fortifications.

The Americans beat them by seizing Rendova Island, lying some five miles off the coast, opposite Munda and Lambeti.

Mr. Gill was with them when they landed on Rendova. It took many weeks to clear the enemy out of the maze of islands of which Munda was the centre, and Mr. Gill witnessed much of the fighting.

In this article, written for the “PIM he vividly describes some of his early impressions. mHE days following the landing on A Rendova of the American Army come back to me as memories of men, guns and transport toihng gigantically in an ocean of mud, It rained until the coconut plantation became a quagmire, and the road a horror. The heavy guns went through, followed by the loaded ten-wheel trucks.

Then the road ceased to exist.

Ruts became chasms, along the edges of which the Jeeps crawled and pushed with their bellies on the mud. It rained.

The Jeeps bogged at last and were pulled by cats.—then only the cats, (caterpillars) could move.

More rain. For hours even the cats. could not claw their way through the mud. By some miracle, which only those supermen of the Seabees and the Artillery can explain, the 155’s had been lugged into position, and commenced barking at Munda and Lambeti, seven miles away. x , We camped, and dug our foxholes in the slush. Jungle troops, laden like packhorses with sodden equipment, awaiting their turn to go into the line, filled the area. No cover for them. They just scratched shallow, inadequate foxholes and lay down in the mud and the rain, Rendova then was the answer to an air bomber’s prayer—a small harbour stuffed with shipping, and beached LST’s pouring men and supplies into a small, congested area—surmounted by heavy artillery. A bomb dropped anywhere must surely hit something. How the Japs hated those 155’s! And how they went after them!

Day and night they raided. The alert would go—sometimes it didn’t, and we would be caught with our pants down, and would dive for our foxholes. Overhead would be heard the unsynchronised engine drone of the Jap planes, while we dug our noses and toes into the bottom of our foxholes and held our breaths.

Then it started. With the noise of a thunderclap, the first bomb exploded near us—growing to a shattering crescendo of hideous scrunching, as plane after plane peeled off and added its “stick” to the pattern of bombs that was rocking us.

From the islets and ships and from the whole area our flak roared into the

sky. The ground shuddered and shook with the monstrous reverberations of the bombs. The air palpitated with the pro digious pulsation of our flak. It was Hell.

We sweated and quivered in our fox holes. Pattern bombing or strafing as they went, the enemy planes swept along the plantation, out to sea, turned, came back, repeating it all again.

Suddenly, silence. Followed by the sweet, silken swish of American fight ers’ engines as they swept in to our res cue. Blessed sound. Relief unutterable!

We breathed again.

Shakily we emerged to see a gigantic black pall of smoke rapidly filling the sky, and to hear a long continued crackle of explosions. Three great fires had been started in dumps of fuel, stores and ammunition. Then, grimmest and sad dest of all sights, came the wounded and dead, carried or helped by their com rades.

After one such raid our area was a shambles. Twenty killed and 100 wounded.

But through it all —raid after raid —the troops carried on, and the “heavies” con tinued to pound Munda and Lambeti from indomitable Rendova.

ANIGHT air raid is a beautiful sight when the long, 'silver fingers of the searchlights are interwoven with the bewitching patterns of the flak’s coloured tracers across the dark sky. But a night naval bombardment excells all as a magnificent spectacle. Its transcendent power and terrible beauty is War at its loveliest. Multi-coloured lights and gor geous streamers arch across the black sky from unseen warships. Thunderous detonations roll across the water as the guns of the fleet open their throats out there in the darkness.

Coloured star-shells burst in the air and spread an effulgent beauty in the sky. The black void of night is canopied and laced with streaming shells and tracers speeding on their rainbow-col oured way from the blooming rosettes at the mouths of the guns. Mighty explo sions shake the shore, and sheets of flames illumine the area where the shells are bursting. The earth, sea and sky are ablaze with a terrible grandeur of colour, and athrob and shuddering with the gigantic thud of the guns.

Suddenly, the show is over. The lights go out. Somewhere out there in the darkness great phantom shapes alter course, gather speed, and leave. The -naval task force has completed its mission.

MUNDA suffered several such bom bardments. In addition, it was pounded night and day for a month from Rendova by heavy artillery—the 155’s, For months of “softening,” Ameri can bombers had had the area on an almost-daily bombing schedule. Munda • was tough.

Finally, the American Air Forces really turned on the heat. From Rendova could be heard the prolonged scrunch of burst ing bombs, day after day, as the great fleets of bombers carried out their strikes on “the most bombed area in the Pacific.”

Over 500 tons of bombs fell on Lam beti in less than a week. Then the Navy took a hand, and poured 5,000 shells into 500 square yards of my Lambeti planta tion. Even then the ground forces had to employ tanks, flame-throwers, mortars, and hand grenades before they could capture that strpngpost.

My feelings may be imagined as I listened and looked towards lovely Lam beti, and realised that my beloved home was being annihilated. Thus I came home —to dust and ashes. I brought with

me liberation, death, and destruction.

Lambeti is no more!

WHEN the history of this war is writ ten it will probably be said that the Japanese made a major mistake in not holding Rendova in force, thereby denying the American forces a vantage point from which to shell Munda, a valu able harbour in which to land men, stores and equipment, and also a beach head from which to deploy troops for the attack on the airfield. Tough and pro longed as the Munda operations unex pectedly proved to be, the task might have proved impossible had Rendova been as strongly held as Munda.

Fortunately for us, only an outpost of about 120 Japs held Rendova island and harbour—with no fortifications, installa tions or artillery whatsoever.

Properly equipped and garrisoned, I consider the Kolombangara-Munda-Ren dova set-up could have been an impreg nable fortress. Snugly tucked away behind, and protected by the southward seaward maze of reefs of the Roviana Lagoon, the Munda airfield was safe from a frontal landing from the sea. Rendova guards the only sea approach from the east, Kolombangara that from the west— leaving only the long approach from the north coast across the highest mountains of the widest part of New Georgia open to land forces. Fortify those northern approaches—a simple task —and Munda is virtually impregnable.

Mr. F. R. Charlton, Director of Lands, Mines and Surveys in Fiji since 1935, resigned from active duty at the end of January. He came to Fiji in 1921 and during his period of service in the Colony has been at various times a member of the Suva Town Board and the Central Board of Health. He was chairman of the Town Planning Board and a mem ber of the 1936 Public Service Re-organi sation and Revision Committee. Ap pointed Commissioner of Lands in 1935, the title of the office was subsequently changed to Director of Lands, Mines and Surveys. Mr. W. H. B. Buckhurst now succeeds him as Director.