Book Reviews

Tulagi To Hollandia With the Coast Watchers

ERIC FELDT’S The Coast Watchers is the best book published to date of the war in the South-West Pacific area. It probably will remain the best book of all time, as Feldt alone was in the unique position of being able to give an overall account of the thousands of facets that make up the complete and complex story of that branch of the Allied Intelligence Bureau called the Coast Watchers, or as Feldt himself christened it, Ferdinand.

Stories of particular men and particu lar incidents have been recorded from time to time, but this is a full account and as, in the telling of it, the author records the history of the Anzac-Ameri can campaigns of the SW Pacific war from Guadalcanal to Hollandia, this book is destined to become the Islander’s official history of the war in that area.

In it he will find the names and war histories of men he has known for years; there are villages and islands through which he himself has trod; and the sol ution of mysteries that intrigued him during the years of silence. But even a stranger, who knows neither men nor places, must be fascinated by the tale told straightforwardly, attractively and without sentimental soppiness, of a handful of rugged individualists of high courage, who, in the best way they knew, helped to lick the pants off the Japs.

THE framework of the Coast Watching Organisation existed for years be fore the war, both in Australia and in the islands of New Guinea and the Solomons; but money for the necessary equipment and lack of communication in the outer island areas severely restricted activities.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, however, money for this type of work was immediately available, and, before that year had ended, Eric Feldt, who had been on the Emergency List of the RAN (he spent the years after 1922 in the Department of District Services, in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea and, at the outbreak, was Mining Warden at Wau) was appointed Staff Officer, Port Moresby. There he was given the task of extending the existing Coast Watching Organisation in the Territories and the Solomons by ap pointing personnel and placing tele radios at strategic points so that there was a reporting network covering the northern and north-eastern approaches to Australia.

By the end of 1940, most personnel had been selected, tele-radios placed and their operators missionaries, Adminis tration officials, planters—instructed in their use and in reporting what they saw.

When Japan came into the war on De cember 7, 1941, the coast watchers were ready. In 1942, as the Jap swept south ward, they ceased being a civilian or ganisation and became a part of the Naval forces. Later still, they were a composite unit made up from all services which went on to play a decisive part in the slow turning of the tide of war against Japan.

IN his writing Feldt pulls no punches.

When he considers censure is merited, then censure there is. Where praise is due, then praise is given. The reader instinctively feels the sincerity of this book; it shows the South West Pacific

world and its inhabitants, native and European, as they actually are and as neither the romanticist nor the detrac tor has seen fit to see them.

Perhaps the most poignant passage in the book is the story of Sub-Lieutenant Con Page, who was a Coast Watcher in the Tabar Group, TNG, when Japan en tered the war and who remained at his post, sending messages to headquarters in Townsville, until the Japs landed and took him away to Kavieng, New Ireland, where he was put to death, THERE could be no better example of the coast watcher’s value to the Allies than the work of Read and Mason, who were stationed on Bougain ville during the stickiest days in the Solomons.

Before the war, W. J. Read was an Assistant District Officer at Buka Pas sage; Paul Mason was a planter at Inus; they, therefore, both knew the terrain well. Both were, in addition, keenly in terested in radio, and both became coast watchers and gave incalculable service to the Americans after the US forces had reoccupied Guadalcanal in August, 1942, and during the Japanese counter-attack in the same area in the November following.

When it was decided that the US Marines would attack Tulagi and Guad alcanal, Mason and Read were ordered to take up good positions on Bougain ville for observation, and report all enemy activity. Read was in the ex treme north of the island; Mason was in the extreme south.

Jap air strikes against the US forces in BSI could, at that time, come only from Rabaul and Kavieng and their air routes were certain to pass over Read or Mason, who immediately reported that aircraft were going south and thus gave the Americans at least two hours’ warning—time in which to prepare a reception committee for the unsuspect ing Jap fighters and bombers.

For example, four hours after the US forces opened their attack on Guadal canal and Tulagi on August 7, 1942, headquarters there received a warning from Mason: “Twenty-four torpedo bombers headed yours.” Twenty-five minutes later, Pearl Harbour was able to rebroadcast this to the rest of the Pacific, while at Henderson Field, on Guadalcanal, speedy preparations went on.

The torpedo-bombers duly arrived; but they were met by fighters who swooped down out of the clouds to which they had climbed some time before; by ack-ack guns at the alert; and with US ships cunningly dispersed to minimise the effect of the Jap attack. Only one Nip plane survived that day to return to its base at Rabaul.

Next morning, at 8.40, Read heard the drone of many aircraft and was able to report “Forty-five dive-bombers going south-east.”

Again a reception was prepared and “ . . , two hours later, Read tuned in to the US aircraft-carriers’ wavelength and heard the preparations being made to receive the enemy aircraft. A little later he heard an excited voice: ‘Boy, they’re shooting them down like flies, one, two, three ... I can see eight of them coming down in the sea now.’

“Read, four hundred miles away, felt the glow that was justly his.”

NEITHER is Coast Watchers merely a meticulous job of recording; there is real literary merit in this book, and, just as there was in the coast watchers

themselves, real humour. There is, for example, this gem of Austral-American misunderstanding, as told by Feldt: After the defeat of the Jap attack in November (Guadalcanal) there was no need for a coast watcher at Gold Ridge.

However, it was not until January, 1943, that K. D. Hay came in. He had been sheltering an aged nun for much of this time, the sole survivor of a Japanese massacre.

Hay walked down; but, by the time he reached the roadhead, being ex tremely fat, he was exhausted.

He sent a note by a native saying he was “knocked up.” In Australian slang this means too fatigued to travel any further. In American it means pregnant.

A puzzled American officer set off in a jeep to meet Hay. When he met him he took one look at that ample belly and said: “My God! It’s true.”—JT. {The Coast Watchers, by Eric Feldt, published by Oxford University Press, Melbourne, for 17/6.)