Major Trench, of BSI, Gathers Information

Patrol

(From a hook by Harold Cooper on the war in the South Pacific)

ON Guadalcanal, late in 1943, with New Georgia wrested from the enemy’s grasp, the finishing touches were be ing put to for the liberation of other islands in the western Solomons.

One of these islands was well-known to Major David Trench, the Acting-Resident Commissioner, and he readily volunteered to reconnoitre it with a mixed Allied patrol.

The task of the patrol, which was to be put ashore after making the journey from Guadalcanal, was to ascertain the size of the Japanese garrison and to select beaches where an invasion force might later disembark. It was not exactly the sort of work the Colonial Office had in mind when it drew up its curriculum for the Cadets’ training course which Trench had attended at Cambridge; but his experience with native scouting par ties on Guadalcanal had taught him all the bushcraft he needed.

This is how Trench afterwards described the three eventful days he spent on the island: WE arrived offshore in perfect weather —by which I mean that it was as black as pitch and raining like hell.

We had no information whatever about Jap dispositions on the island, so we decided to go in to what seemed the best points and chance our arm.

“We dropped two patrols off the western end of the island first and then our patrol was dropped off the eastern

end. The night was starless and, although the boys gave us a bearing to paddle by, we had the helpless feeling of not knowing quite where we were going There was a sharp little sea running, ’ but our boats behaved beautifully “We were close enough to the coast to determine our exact position and we found we were about five miles west of where we should have been. This meant we were coming in roughly at the point where the two other patrols should have been dropped.

“We were just debating what to do when a dark shape loomed up on the water in front of us. I don’t need to tell you that we moved towards it with a certain amount of caution, for the last thing we wanted to get mixed up in was a night naval action fought from small boats at point blank range “When we got within fifteen yards of the shape we heard the unmistakable click of a carbine rifle being cocked and realised that we’d run into one of the boats from the other patrols.

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“We took counsel and decided to go in together. This we did, making the land ing without incident. We hid the boats and then dispersed into the bush in dif ferent directions. That was the last we saw of the other patrols until a few hours before the time arranged for re-embarka tiom ' “11TE sat down quietly in the bush for Tf about an hour until the moon was up and while we were waiting we made up our minds that, since we were so far from the area we had been ordered to reconnoitre, the best thing to do was to make our way boldly along the beach, in order to reach our objective with as little delay as possible. We had to take account of that fact that, by the time our mission was accomplished, we might have the Nips on our tail, in which case we should need an extra half day or so in which to make a devious withdrawal through the thickest jungle we could find As we had been warned that the natives might be unfriendly, our policy at first was to avoid contact with them—a some what troublesome proposition, as the course we’d charted took us through two villages.

“We negotiated the first with what we were pleased to regard as a velvet tread and got through safely, but as we ap proached the second a dog heard us and let forth a series of yelps which we felt sure were audible in Rabaul. A man in the village woke up and came sleepily to the door of his hut, but we kept right on down the main street, hoping he’d take us for Japanese. He did.

“During this night trek we saw no sign of the enemy, but a Solomon Islands ser geant who was with us picked up the tracks of a Jap patrol in the sand. We reached our objective in the first light of

dawn and then cut into the bush to ap proach it from the rear.

“As dawn broke we came across more and more signs of Jap activity and by the time it was fully light we were on the very outskirts of an enemy camp, which we could hear coming to life, with a babble of raucous sound, no more than two hundred yards away. We edged on a little further and got to the bank of a river, the mouth of which it was part of our task to reconnoitre.

“This was the point where we had ori ginally intended to land; and it was for tunate indeed that we missed our way, for otherwise we should have landed in the arms of the Japs, and that would have been the end of our adventure and probably the end of us.

“117’E found the Japs were disposed f? along the river in considerable strength and that it was impossible to cross it. So we withdrew through the bush parallel with the beach, this time keeping well clear of all villages. But our luck was out, for we ran into one old woman who was working in a garden.

She took one look at us and fled shrieking into the bush.

“We pushed on with our fingers crossed more firmly than ever, and by 4 p.m. we’d managed to cover a fair amount of ground, turning at right angles for an occasional furtive trip down to the beach so that our landing expert could take photographs and make notes.

“By now we were all dog-tired and we decided to bivouac for the night. As we were settling down two natives suddenly appeared on the scene, and we thought for a moment that the jig was up., But it was soon apparent that the stories we’d been told about the unfriendly attitude of the Islanders were very wide of the mark.

“Our two visitors hailed us with obvious delight and were disappointed when I did not immediately recognise them as old acquaintances. They gave us any amount of useful information, including the ex tremely welcome tip that it was the custom of the Japs to maintain a patrol on the stretch of beach which it was our job to reconnoitre the next day.

“The natives spent the night with us and in the morning led us to the head quarters of the local Chief, who stripped his larder bare to provide a feast fitting for the occasion. With the aid of a strong escort, mustered by the Chief, we were able to keep so closely in touch with the movements of the Jap patrol that during the day we made a thorough examination of almost every yard of the beach in which we were interested.

“rnHERE were two mildly diverting in- A cidents. At one stage we heard a number of heavy detonations and asked a native what they were. He said he didn’t know, but would go and find out. About a quarter of an hour later he came back and informed us that some Jap guns were being test-fired. We asked him how he knew and he replied: ‘Oh, I just went down and asked the Jap patrol,’

“The other laugh we got that day was when our native sergeant volunteered to go down to the beach and take photo graphs of the Jap patrol from close range.

We explained the mechanism of the camera and he went off determined to make a success of the job. When he came back he reported that he’d taken a number of excellent shots. Unfor tunately our instruction had not been quite painstaking enough, for we dis covered he’d taken them all on the same section of film.

“After a night spent in great copifort as the guests of the Chief we set out slowly on the morning of the third day

for the point at which the boats were hidden. On our way we were disturbed to receive news that a native messenger we had sent to warn our other patrols of the Jap dispositions had failed to con tact them but had run into a party of Japs, who had told him that there were Americans on the island, and that all hatives should be on the lookout for them.

“Our sergeant, who was the real hero of the expedition, volunteered to go back himself and endeavour to contact the patrols. This he managed to do. Our anxieties for them were groundless, for they, too, had found native friends who, throwing a protective screen round them, were bringing them through the bush to our point of rendezvous at a rousing pace.

“fpHEIR mission, like ours, had laeen X completed with only minor mis adventures. Once one of their native NCO’s and another man had been separated from the rest of the patrol and had bivouacked by" themselves in the bush. In the morning they were awak ened by a Jap bugler sounding Reveille about fifty yards away; and the NCO, still half asleep, had stumbled to his feet and almost fallen in with the Japs from sheer force of habit.

“On another occasion one of the patrols ran slap into a Jap patrol. The two patrols stood staring blankly at each other for several seconds before deciding to make off in opposite directions.

“That night, with natives mounting guard in a semi-circle round our beach hide-out, we were able to re-embark in our boats in perfect security and this time our steering was so accurate that we soon made contact.

“Once aboard we were quickly in good spirits again and on the homeward voyage we could always work up a glow of satis faction by picturing to ourselves the bad tempered behaviour of the Japanese on the island, who undoubtedly spent the next few days thrashing about through some of the most unpleasant country in the South Pacific, in pursuit of an enemy who was safely out of their reach.”

TRENCH was taken • back to Guadal canal, where he resumed his duties as Acting-Resident Commissioner.

The patrol had been a pleasant inter lude. He began to think of drawing up, an advertisement for use by the Recruit ing Branch of the Colonial Office. It would describe the life of an Adminis trative Officer in the Western Pacific and would carry the headline, “Never a Dull Moment!”