The Jungle

Returns

All That- is Left of a South Sea Island Base

VOME South Pacific Islands, in these last three years, have seen strange things. Almost overnight, thousands of Servicemen have arrived and taken possession; the whole place has been transformed and the economic structure of the community disrupted; and then, just as quickly, the vast camps have disappeared.

Here, strikingly described by a re sident, is what happened in the little island of Aitutaki, Cook Islands. r those of us who thought we had found our Shangri-la in the Islands, the coming of troops was a rude awakening. Where we had been lulled to sleep by the murmur of the reef —than which there is no more delightful lullaby —day and night were made hideous with the din of tractors, dredgers, distillation plants, pumps, cars and trucks run with

open exhausts, and all the attendant hor rors of the machine age, without any of its amenities.

Sleep was difficult, local foods were brought up by coloured troops to whom money apparently meant nothing, so that they became next to impossible to obtain.

The natives became so much above them selves with this temporary prosperity that they mostly lost what little charm they still retained and became avaricious and resentful towards tneir former friends.

The oiling of the swamps brought mil lions of mosquitoes into our settlements, where there had been none to speak of before. It appears to be no secret that even in Panama, where a belt of artificial desert has been created five miles wide on each side of the Canal, there are still mosquitoes and there is still malaria.

What hopes, then, on a tiny island, less than 4i by 1J miles, where people have to plant for a living?

Hurt at seeing our lovely little island home being torn to pieces: sleepless, often hungry—for one cannot live entirely out of tins; and having lost the goodwill and respect of the natives, who came to judge all men by one standard only (which was how much money they flung around) the position of the handful of Europeans here became anything but a happy one. * * * AFTER a long spell of wet weather, this morning broke fine and sunny, so I went out for a walk. My steps led up the hill along the old main road, from which I presently turned off along what had been one of the new roads leading to one of the camps.

At the end of the road, already half overgrown, on a little eminence, was the camp—or, rather, the place where the camp had once been. I remembered hav ing lunch with the two officers in charge, just after they had installed themselves in their most comfortable living quar ters, and afterwards being shown over the whole place—the stores, the guns and piles of ammunition, the workshop, the post exchange—bustling activity every where.

Now, perhaps 18 months later, I was unable even to get my orientation of the place right.

Near at hand were rows of wooden piles which had supported a building, but which building I could not remember.

Within a stone’s throw was an immense concrete floor, which may have belonged to workshops or stores. The brush had grown above the piles and seemed press ing inwards from the sides of the con crete floor, as if anxious to hide the ugli ness of the scar.

The roads intersecting the camp, which had been rolled and covered with coral gravel, were fast reverting to thick bush.

The übiquitous mynatT'bird was there, of course, and white terns wheeled over head. Ruminating on the enormous amount of labour involved in carting this vast quantity of material here and away again. I turned away.

Back on the main road, down the hill a little way, was the theatre, solidly con

structed of Imported timber, although thatched with coconut leaf. A little dis tance away, two posts and a cross-bar were all that remained of the shelter that had once contained the screen and the squawker. The theatre, erected doubtless at considerable expense, was used a few times only, then abandoned.

A little way further down the hill another road branched off, at the end of which were more concrete floors, the remains of more wooden piles, and another network of overgrown roads and paths. Here had been the main buildings of the hospital, and separate huts for wards and recreation rooms, the tanks and machinery of one of the water-dis tillation plants.

Over here on this concrete slab, which had been the floor of qne of the wards, I used to sit and talk to a soldier friend, hospitalised as he unfortunately had con tracted filaria. A bana.na plant and a lot of earth from the bank had slipped down and covered the spot where his bed had been.

Over there, on a series of piles now fast disappearing under lush grass, had been the surgical ward.

The whole camp, riven from the bush, and the scene of intense and breathless human activity for the space of a few short weeks was, like the other, rapidly returning to the bush from which it came.

I remember it so well in the building.

And then, no sooner was it all finished and put into operation, than down it all came again, in no time at all, like the mushroom growth it was. In some cases it seemed as though, no sooner had men finished erecting one end of a building, than another gang started dismantling it from the other. * * * THE kindly bush is hiding the scars on the land, but the scars on the people’s minds are not so easily healed. Wandering alone through the bush or alono- the beaches there is a strong feeling that the island has been desecrated, and that something priceless and irreplaceable has been lost for ever.

Sister A. Banks, who has served in the Methodist Overseas Mission Hospital at Ba, Fiji, has returned to Australia on medical advice.

Miss J. James, of the Methodist Over seas Mission, arrived in Sydney from Fiji on furlough in March. After her period of leave Miss James will take a course in the Teachers’ College in Melbourne.

Mr. John Mather, who was well-known in the British Solomons for several years prior to the war, was training in Austra lia, as a member of the AIF, when the Japs invaded the Solomons. He went to Guadalcanal, with commissioned rank, and he was in most of the fighting in the Solomons, with the Americans. His services were recognised by the award of the United States Legion of Merit, He was afterwards in the Cape Gloucester fighting.