Kennedy's Boys Go A-Feudin'

By Harold Cooper

IHAVE one of the worst memories in the world, and I have already for gotten many of the things that hap pened—and seemed memorable enough at the time—during my first visit to the Solomons in the middle of 1943. But I don’t think I shall ever forget the 24 hours I spent with Major D. G. Kennedy.

I’d heard a great deal about him, of course, and when I found an APC, which was making an overnight run to Sege, and whose skipper was willing to take me along, I armed myself with an outsize in notebooks and a veritable little quiver ol sharp pencils, thinking T was on the trail of one of the best stories to come out of the Pacific war.

I was reckoning without Kennedy’s modesty. Question him as I would, I could squeeze only a fraction of the story out of him. I doubt if he has told it all yet, or ever will.

When I got to Sege I found that Kennedy had moved across the channel to the old mission station on the island of Vanguna. There were still plenty of Japs at large on Vanguna, the bulk of them being concentrated in the Wickham Anchorage area, to the south of Ken nedy’s new head-quarters. He had told the Americans (who had a battalion guarding the airstrip at Sege) that he felt he could look after things on his side of the channel, and would call for help if he found he needed it.

He had improvised a perimeter defence round the mission house, and kept it manned day and night by riflemen from his little home-made army of 30-odd Solomon islanders. A motley band it was, indeed, that he commanded. There were boys from Ysabel, boys from New Georgia, boys from the remote Polynesian out posts of Rennell and Ontong Java; and the sergeant was a part-European named Billy Bennett, whose home had been at Munda before the Japanese moved in.

AS I walked up the hill from the beach Kennedy met me in a jeep. It was just about the only piece of equip ment he had found it necessary to bor row from the Americans, although “bor row” is scarcely the right word. I understand he traded a Japanese barge, diesel-driven and in perfect working order, for it. Everything else, his 30-odd fighting men and their 60 carriers, needed —arms, rations, benzine, clothing —they had supplied themselves. One or two useful guns were salvaged from crashed American bombers, but the rest of the equipment and stores for this tiny force came from Japanese camps they had raided or Japanese patrols they had “liquidated.”

There was plenty of variety about the equipment, too. The verandah of the mission house was lined with automatic weapons of all shapes and sizes, every one carefully cleaned and oiled, ready for instant use.

Aa( I said just now, I was after a story.

But Kennedy seemed to think I was the one who should do the talking. I was the first British official he had seen for many anxious moons, and he sat me down, gave me a cup of tea (with some Japanese dried fish to go with it), and began to bombard me with questions about how the war in Europe was going, and how things were in Suva, where he had taught school more than 20 years before.

After a time I was almost able to be lieve that I was making an afternoon call at some quiet vicarage in my home coun try of Warwickshire, thousands, of miles away from the jungle and lagoons where Kennedy, for the past 18 months, had been playing his amazing game of hide

and-seek—and playing it for keeps, with his life as the forfeit.

IT was Billy Bennett who broke the spell.

He came in and stood to attention at the end of the verandah, bringing with him, not another plate of dried fish, but news of a Japanese patrol which had set out a day or two before from Wick ham Anchorage. He gava its present loca tion as five miles from a native village whose unfamiliar polysyllabic name I was unable to catch. Kennedy listened to the report with no great show of interest, then said: “Tell the boys to wait until they’re sure they can kill all of them.”

Billy nodded and withdrew. Kennedy turned to resume his conversation about the old days in Suva. I should have preferred to talk about that Japanese patrol, but in deference to my host’s ob vious wishes I made no attempt to change the subject.

At intervals during the day Billy re turned with more news of the patrol’s movements; and with each report the distance separating it from the polysyl lable native village shrank a little, until at length, just after dinner, the original five miles had been narrowed to two and a half. At this point my curiosity over came me, and I asked Kennedy where this village was.

“Oh,” he said, realising for the first time my ignorance of Vanguna geo graphy “that’s here.”

I should be lying if I tried to pretend that his reply did not set me puffing a little nervously at my half-finished Camel.

If the Japanese were only two and a half miles away they were altogether too close for me, and for a moment I pondered the idea of suggesting to Kennedy that we should either douse the light or move to the other side of the verandah, so that our heads would not be quite so clearly visible to all and sundry outside. But Kennedy’s serene indifference to the fate of the patrol (or perhaps I should say his serene confidence that “the boys” would handle this situation with their customary skill) shamed me into silence.

We chatted on for another hour or so, then Kennedy asked me if I’d like to turn in. I said I would. At least that was one way of getting off the verandah.

I FOUND we were to sleep in the same room, an arrangement which pleased me mightily. I was not so pleased When Kennedy handed me a tommy gun, and said, casually: “Better keep this handy—inside your mosquito net, perhaps.

These Japanese are funny blighters. You never know where they’re going _to POP up next.”

I took the gun with as much nonchal ance as I could muster. Kennedy clam bered into bed. Two minutes later his heavy breathing told me that he was sound asleep. The unusual excitement of meeting someone from Suva had quite worn him out.

Next morning, as we were getting up from breakfast, Billy came in and asked me if I’d like a souvenir. The one he had to offer turned out to be a canteen, with a Japanese inscription on the front.

It had belonged to a member of the patrol whose progress I had followed so anxiously the day before. .

“The boys” had evidently done their

stuff again. After all, they’d been at it for 18 months. No wonder they were getting good.