Ten Yards Start Was All They Wanted

McCarthy’s War History reports on many of the exninftc i Volunteer Rifles the militia-type battalion which had been raLed in 1939 Guinea residents had vigorously demanded that some effort be made to arm and tram civilians to defend themselves and their homes and „ ° ne °L the stories is of the NGVR scout section under Forestry Officer I n McAdam, then a sergeant. After the Japanese had taken over Salamauf McAdam led !? IS + se / :tior ?. d °wn into the area to find out what they were doing’ He had asked to be allowed to pick his own men for the job. says McCarthy and ‘‘had chosen Jim Cavanaugh, a forester like himself but younger in the service ? ai ? haired and blue eyed; Geoff Archer, a welder with the Bulolo Gold Dredging Com pany and a wanderer by instinct; Bert Jentzsch, older than the others. I mine manager; Gordon Kinsey [building contractor!; Bob Day [gold miner! • and lim Currie [gold miner] These were all men who love/ the bush and had ” distinctive understanding of its ways” began moving on March 30, 1942, and began to edge his lookouts closer nhlrn cno r 1? the Japanes ? untll eventually they were able to overlook Salamaua, where scarcely a movement escaped them. In their early days the nearest wireless was at Mubo, but later they brought one closer and were able to radio their inforf nati ° n i k a J ck to Port Moresby in a few minutes. To collect the information they linked their various lookouts and camps with a telephone network contrived mostly Jf salvaged wire taken from abandoned camps, and burnt transformers from Wau.

Records the War History: ‘‘They were continuously watching, scouting tirelessly into the very fringes of the garrison area itself. They survived by adapting them selves completely to their circumstances, with cool courage, intelligence physical lardihood and superb bushcraft. McAdam said later, ‘we only used our own tracks ind we took pains never to mark the main tracks so that, whenever we saw them, :hey were a book telling us what the Japs had been doing . . . Our tracks were so ightly marked that it took a good bushman to find them. We left no marks in that orward country. We walked carefully on roots, stones. We had the heels taken off >ur boots. Where necessary we walked our natives behind us to put their tracks )ver ours . . . We went there with three automatic revolvers, only one of which we ;ou!d rely on. We couldn’t carry our rifles because they caught in the bush, so, in ;orw 7 ard scouting in pairs, we took a pistol each, the good one and one uncertain me. Our sole defence was our speed. We could see a Jap before he could see us md if we had 10 yards’ start we could get away. What I wanted was a Tommy-gun o that our forward scouts could put the Japs flat and so get a 10 yards’ start on hem. All the four months I was there we were unable to get a Tommy-gun. There vere about six in NGVR but we didn’t have one’.”

After the war, McAdam was appointed P-NG Director of Forests and died in larness only three months ago.