The Japanese Wife

A Wartime Memory of “Doc”

Vernon

THE story of the long, lean, grey old doctor who haunted the Kokoda Trail in the days of the Australian retreat before the invading Japs, and then went back with the first parties of Australians and Americans when they smashed the Jap infiltration (first told in the PIM) is likely to become a legend.

He was Dr. G. H. Vernon, who grew rubber and other things in Papua before the war, and practised medicine when patients were around. When evacuation was ordered in 1941-2, and they saw that the Doc.’s years totalled something over three score, they tried to ship him South.

But the Doc. wouldn’t go. Eventually, they tied him in somehow with the forces, to give medical service to the organisation of native carriers and labourers; and, in that capacity, he walked the weary tracks between Kokoda and the top of the Owen Stanleys, carrying his medical supplies in a knotted towel, giving his service un stintingly to the sick and wounded Euro peans and natives, helping wherever he could, and living miraculously on an oc casional cup of cocoa.

He died very soon after the war ended.

He was unhonoured —in the manner typical of the old Doc., he just wasn’t around when the medals were being handed out —but he was neither unwept nor unsung. There are many men in Papua, of all colours, who will not forget G. H. Vernon.

The editor has just received a letter from Mr. William Courtenay, MM, Avia tion Correspondent of the London “Daily Graphic” and Gemsley Newspapers, and a former War Correspondent with Aus tralian and American forces in the South west Pacific Area, 1942-46. Courtnay was

with the Australians on the Kokoda Trail, with the famous 7th Division, and he sends us the following little story of his encounter with “Doc.” Vernon.

THE old “Doc.” whose gaunt skinny figure I well remember, must have been our oldest companion on the Owen Stanley march, and I think he found his lack of weight a great advantage during the long toiling days up the “golden stairs” and over the razorbacks.

I met him at one stage near Temple ton’s Crossing and, by the flickering light of a hurricane lamp, as we both sat in a hastily-constructed Fuzzy Wuzzy hut, he read until a late hour and would not let, go the book he had dragged over the mountains till he had ended a thrilling chapter.

He passed it to me to show me what the story was all about.

Apparently, it concerned a pretty Jap girl who had been brought up from eariv girlhood in Paris; carefully nurtured in European ways; and enjoying a consider able dowry.

A young English gentleman of the pre -1914 society vintage in London fell in love with her and desired to marry her. Lon don Society was shocked at the mere sug gestion; relations and friends tried in vain to shake him from his resolve. But he was too much in love with the young thing for reason to exercise any influence.

One Duchess, however, scenting pub licity for herself over the matter, decided to back the young man’s fancy. She ar ranged the wedding and, under her pat ronage, London Society flocked to the fashionable West End Church, So he married his Japanese butterfly and all went well. She was well educated cultured; apparently a girl of good family; and she was received in London’s exclusive Society with her husband in those pre- World War I days. P Came the day when the young husband desired to visit Japan and meet the bride’s relations. At this notion, there were stronger protests from everyone including the Duchess. In vain it was pointed out to him that he would never be received in Japanese Society in Tokyo and that his bride would be shunned, too. But he persisted.

On arrival at Tokyo, the husband learned for the first time the true source of his lady’s immense income. Her family apparently owned a considerable part of the more fashionable and highly lucrative trade in the Red Light district of Tokyo, with ramifications in every city of Japan!

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The girl’s male relations were by no means pleased with her alliance and were studying ways and means of compromising him with some other lady by “framing him” so that a divorce could be arranged and the considerable wealth which the lady enjoyed could be returned to the family.

Ignorant of these wily Oriental machin ations (which doubtless were being carried on with all the stealth of the later ap proach to Pearl Harbour), the young man was troubled in another direction. Having learnt the dread secret of the source of

his wife’s wealth, should he inform her and they together renounce the money, thereby impelling them to a more pen urious existence in England? Or should he say nothing and continue to keep his Oriental flower pure and unalloyed while living on the profits of shame?

THE “Doc.” would not let the book rest until he had found the answer in the next chapter; but I never got that far in his enthralling yarn of Eastern morals and Western ethics to know what it was.

I found a drama of great interest in the performance of the old doctor, who had toiled so far over the razorbacks just to be among his beloved “boongs” and whose animated interest in the deeper emotions of life were still as warm as those of any of the young Diggers of the 7th Division!

Now, I sometimes wonder what hap pened to that English husband. But I can’t even remember the name of the book!