Man Behind The Coatwatchers

ERIC FELDT was an officer of the New Guinea Administra tion from 1923 to World War 11.

As a wartime commander with the Australian Navy, he was re sponsible for the organisation and supervision of the Coastwatcher intelligence network. He now lives in Brisbane. Mr. Feldt takes advantage of the publication of Peter Lawrence’s “Road Belong Cargo” in paperback to explain and defend some of the attitudes of the pre-war New Guinea Ad ministration. In some things, he feels, the Administration is not given sufficient credit for attempt ing to do a difficult job with in sufficient resources. By happy coincidence, the Australian pub lication of Lawrence's “Road Belong Cargo” coincides with the release of the first Australian paperback of Feldt’s own book, “The Coast Watchers’ * (Angus and Robertson, $1.25). “The

Coast Watchers” has had only one hard-cover edition, the original one of 1946, which is now a collector’s item, likely to fetch as much as $20,000 on the second-hand market. There have been two previous paperback editions —one published in America and another in France, in French. The Ameri can paperback is a more concise edition of the original; and the French one is not a literal trans lation, and also it has been re arranged. The new Australian paperback is thus the closest to the original 1946 edition, and therefore of special interest. It is a reprint of it, omitting the foreword, the photographs and the lists of those Coastwatchers who served—but it has a final chapter bringing the story to the end of the war, as have the French and American editions. Some contro versial items about the com-

mandos at Kavieng, and Coast watcher Murphy at Rabaul have been amended or omitted, on legal advice, in this new edition as in the others.