Invasion Rabaul (4 page)

After departing Sydney, the liner stopped at Brisbane for a day, then steamed north along the coast, giving her passengers a dramatic view of the Great Barrier Reef before crossing the Coral Sea to the south coast of New Guinea. A three-day layover enabled the troops to explore Port Moresby, the hub of Australian activity on the Papuan Peninsula. The town boasted a large anchorage, a seaplane base, wharves, warehouses, commercial shops, churches, government offices, two hotels, a hospital, and an open-air the-aer. But three days were more than enough. The Victorians, unaccustomed to New Guinea’s oppressive heat and humidity, were glad to be on their way to Rabaul.

The
Katoomba
steamed into Simpson Harbor on March 26 and docked at the Government Wharf. Representatives from the territorial government boarded the ship to give lectures about the local Tolai natives and the town’s culture, after which the troops disembarked to a rousing reception from the townsfolk. Tanned businessmen wearing tropical suits of white cotton, ladies in colorful floral-print dresses, and pensioners from the Great War turned out in the hundreds to welcome the garrison.

Meanwhile, the remainder of the 2/22nd at Bonegilla chafed while awaiting their turn to deploy. Even a backwater town like Rabaul would be better than the isolated training base. Another month passed, however, before they finally received orders to entrain for Sydney. Unable
to hide their enthusiasm, the soldiers chalked slogans on the sides of the train cars, turning them into rolling billboards. “HERE WE COME,” stated one; “VICTORIA—2/22—LITTLE HELL,” announced another; and someone even paid an indirect tribute to Gullidge and the battalion band: “WE ARE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD.”

Reaching Sydney on April 17, the second half of the garrison boarded another passenger ship that regularly plied the Pacific trade routes. A beloved member of the merchant fleet owned by the trading conglomerate Burns, Philp & Company (Australia’s equivalent of Sears), the TSS
Zealandia
had served as a World War I troopship. Not only was she older than the
Katoomba
, but considerably smaller as well. Throngs of well-wishers observed the ship’s departure, but there were not many relatives of the soldiers among the crowd. From Victoria, the journey to Sydney was simply too far and too expensive for most of the men’s families to undertake. Jim Thurst’s mother was said to be “too poor to cross the street,” but his sister Kathleen did come to see the
Zealandia
depart. In the years that followed she reminisced about hearing “Now is the Hour,” a touching New Zealand folk song played by the battalion band. Often called the “Maori Farewell Song,” it was known by heart to most Australians:

Now is the hour when we must say good-bye

Soon you’ll be sailing far across the sea

While you’re away, oh please remember me

When you return, you’ll find me waiting here

Steaming northward into the Solomon Sea, the
Zealandia
reached the coast of New Britain by April 24. Passengers at the portside rail could observe the island’s dark, rugged mountains as the ship paralleled its 370-mile length. The next day the shoreline loomed even closer as the
Zealandia
entered St. George’s Channel, a relatively narrow passage separating New Britain and New Ireland. Rounding Cape Gazelle, the liner turned west and steamed past the wharves and copra sheds of Kokopo (pronounced
Cocka-
po), a bustling little town on the north shore of the Gazelle Peninsula. The ship continued westward toward Rabaul, which was screened from view by several large volcanoes on a rugged promontory that curved from the north. Another point jutted from the south
like an opposing thumb, and the
Zealandia
glided between the two points into horseshoe-shaped Blanche Bay. Six miles beyond, another volcano off the port rail marked the entrance to Simpson Harbor, at the north end of which stood Rabaul. At last the
Zealandia
coasted to a stop, her passengers unaware that they were floating inside a vast caldera.

Those who might have pondered their surroundings were soon distracted by a different sort of spectacle. The minute the ship dropped anchor she was surrounded by a boisterous parade of small craft. The arrival of any large ship was a festive event at Rabaul, but the liner’s welcome this day was exceptionally keen. April 25th was ANZAC Day, a major holiday commemorating the debut of the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli in 1915; therefore, the whole town was in a patriotic fervor when the ship steamed into the anchorage. Private Percy A. “Perce” Pearson, watching with his fellow soldiers from the
Zealandia’
s main deck, was amazed by the flotilla of schooners, launches, and rowboats that maneuvered around the ship. He was especially impressed by the dozens of outrigger canoes, “paddled by natives and loaded with fruit for sale,” which looked like a scene straight from an adventure movie.

After clearing inspection, the
Zealandia
proceeded to the main wharf. As the troops disembarked among throngs of noisy spectators and black-skinned stevedores, they were nearly overwhelmed by the humidity and the dockside din. The air was heavy with unfamiliar smells, and the soldiers sweated profusely as they formed ranks and marched up a tree-lined avenue toward their temporary camp. Along the way, they learned how the locals pronounced the name of their town. One of the marching newcomers playfully shouted, “Is this Ra-ball?”

To which an onlooker yelled, “No, it’s Ra-
baal
.”

As the soldiers would soon find out, there were many things they had yet to learn about their new home—some of which were less than desirable.

CHAPTER TWO

EVIL SPIRITS

“It was a very violent eruption.”

—Dr. C. Daniel Miller, U.S. Geological Survey

T
he troops of the 2/22nd were spellbound by their exotic surroundings, particularly the big volcanoes rising to the north and east. All around Rabaul, the landscape bore the scars of past eruptions, yet much of the evidence was covered by layers of thick vegetation. Few of the soldiers would have recognized the visual clues, and none had the background to fully appreciate the incredibly powerful forces that lay dormant beneath their feet.

Not even the scientists of the day knew much about the island’s geological history. After a damaging eruption in 1937, the Australian Geological Society had posted Dr. Norman Fisher to Rabaul to monitor the area, but his simple observatory lacked the equipment to thoroughly study the caldera. Not until five decades later would an international team of vulcanologists visit Rabaul with an array of new technologies, including carbon-dating methods and other specialized measurements, with which they uncovered numerous clues about the caldera’s spectacular development.

New Britain sits on a virtual powder keg, smack in the middle of one of the most seismically active zones on Earth. Just off the island’s northeastern tip, the boundaries of three tectonic plates converge beneath the seabed, their edges constantly grinding against each other with such enormous pressure that sufficient heat is generated to melt rock. The molten magma collects in fiery subterranean chambers, where intense gaseous pressures constantly force it upward, seeking weak spots in the surface. It is
no coincidence, therefore, that several volcanoes exist on the northeastern end of the island. Some are ancient and extinct, others are regularly active, and all around them the ground is highly unstable.

Another geological phenomenon found near the volcanoes is a series of oval-shaped faults called “ring fractures,” which measure several miles in diameter. Occasionally the fractures themselves erupt, not unlike a pot boiling over around the rim of its lid. If enough magma is ejected, the unsupported dome of the empty chamber is likely to collapse, causing a huge depression in the ground. Geologists call this a caldera, Spanish for caldron. Over the millennia, several such eruptions have either formed or modified the caldera at Rabaul, revealing the distinct outlines of two large, overlapping ring fractures.

The most recent of these
caldera-forming eruptions occurred sometime around AD 600, though its exact date is a mystery. The eruption was cataclysmic—one of the most powerful since the time of Christ—and utterly devastated hundreds of square miles of New Britain and the surrounding islands. It likely began with a period of vigorous seismic activity which generated large quantities of magma beneath the existing ring fractures. Numerous tremors shook the island over a period of days or even weeks as pressurized gases weakened one of the old fault lines. The earthquakes grew in frequency and intensity until the conditions underground finally reached a critical state. At some point, the magma chamber not only boiled over, it blew apart.

The noise must have been stupefying. The ground literally ripped apart around the weakened ring fracture, from which a great ring of fire twenty miles in circumference burst forth. Pent-up gases exploded from below, hurling a thick column of rock, dust, and ash into the sky. The tiniest particles, boosted by heat and convection, soared an estimated one hundred thousand feet into the upper atmosphere. Larger rocks and glowing blobs of magma arced back to the surface, where they splattered against the ground or struck the sea with the sound of thunder.

The greatest devastation resulted from the terrible cloud itself. Most of the material hurtling skyward eventually lost momentum, then gravity took over and the outer portions of the dark, roiling column collapsed. Superheated to more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, the material accelerated as it fell, and when it hit the ground it burst outward at more than
one hundred miles an hour. Known as “pyroclastic flow,” the incandescent cloud spread rapidly over the ancient volcanoes and raced downhill to the sea, boiling the water spontaneously as it blasted across the surface. Outlying islands were wiped clean in seconds. By the time the energy finally dissipated, the fiery cloud had killed every living thing on land and marine life near the ocean’s surface for
thirty miles
in every direction.

Other destructive effects reached even farther. The prevailing winds carried heavy accumulations of ash fifty miles southwest of the volcano. Huts collapsed, crops were ruined, and the surviving islanders groped through blinding, polluted air. They too would be wiped out, doomed to eventual starvation unless they could quickly find a source of unaffected food.

Sometime after the eruption subsided, the unsupported roof over the empty magma chamber caved in. An oblong area approximately seven miles long and five miles wide collapsed suddenly, sliding downward for hundreds of feet. Additionally, the sea breached a portion of the southeastern rim and flooded most of the huge depression.

After the dust finally settled and the sea calmed, a large portion of the island resembled a bizarre moonscape. The pyroclastic flow had deposited grayish veneers of ash and pumice on the steep slopes of the old volcanoes, and low-lying areas around the caldera were buried under a hundred feet or more of the stuff. Based on vulcanologists’ estimations, the eruption had disgorged ten cubic kilometers of magma and debris from the earth. (By comparison, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 displaced only three to four cubic kilometers, and the explosion of Mount St. Helens in 1980 displaced less than one cubic kilometer of material.)

Thanks to the tropical environment, the devastated landscape began to show signs of life within a surprisingly short time. Fast-growing kunai grasses and other vegetation thrived in the mineral-rich volcanic soil, and people eventually returned as well, most migrating from distant islands. They built new villages and resumed the familiar patterns of their ancestors, tending simple gardens, defending their homes, and practicing tribal rituals passed down from generation to generation. Stuck in the Stone Age, the primitive islanders did not develop a written language. Thus, they never created a permanent record of the disaster, and the great eruption gradually faded from memory with the passing of each generation. For almost a thousand years the island remained largely hidden from the outside world.

T
HE FIRST
E
UROPEANS TO APPROACH THE CRESCENT-SHAPED ISLAND WERE
Portuguese and Spanish seafarers who explored the region in the early 1500s. By 1545 the Spanish had claimed New Guinea, the world’s second-largest island, but most of the neighboring islands remained undiscovered for another 150 years. The underlying reason was fear: early explorers developed a strong aversion to malaria and cannibals, and rightfully so.

No one knew what caused malaria, only that if it didn’t kill a man, it usually drove him to madness. That it entered the bloodstream by means of tiny female mosquitoes would not be discovered for centuries. In the meantime, treatment in the form of quinine was developed, but its source—the powdered bark of cinchona trees found only in the Andes mountains of South America—made it extremely hard to obtain. The early explorers didn’t have it, and even much later the drug was often unavailable.

As for cannibals, the stories about shore parties being killed and eaten were frequently true. Cannibalistic tribes lived on many of the islands, as did fierce warrior clans which routinely attacked rival villages. After slaughtering the inhabitants, they made off with their victims’ food and weapons—and often their heads. Believing firmly in sorcery and the supernatural, the smallish tribes held a common distrust of virtually all outsiders. Rival tribes were blamed for bringing evil spirits, considered the root of all unpleasant occurrences such as diseases, earthquakes, and volcanoes. It was not a moral issue, therefore, to kill a person or even an entire village if a threat was perceived. Indeed, knocking off rivals was one well-accepted method by which a tribe could assert its power, there being no better symbol of achievement than to put a collection of the enemies’ heads on prominent display.