1 11 679
C 2
is
ii
Allied Intelligence Burean
Also by COLONEL ALLISON IND
BATAAN: THE JUDGMENT SEAT
THE FIRES OF TJEPO
AUSTRALIAN BRIDE
Our Secret Weapon
in the War
Against Japan
COLONEL ILIM ID
ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES
MAPS BY DONALD PITCHER
David McKay Company, Inc.
New York
COPYRIGHT 1958 BY ALLISON IND
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book, or parts thereof, in any form, except
for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-12259
Manufactured in the United States of America
Van Rees Press New York
To
"Connie" and "MJ.F."
Foreword and
Acknowledgment
K
iAPOLEON ESTIMATED THAT "A SPY IN THE
right place is worth twenty thousand troops."
Initially in the war against Japan, MacArthur had few troops
because of the holocaust raging over most of the globe; it was the
task of the newly created Allied Intelligence Bureau to get spies
into the right places, not only amid the bewildering island network
of the Philippine Archipelago, but in the whole vast area from
Singapore throughout the elongated tail of the Netherlands East
Indies into New Guinea, the Admiralties, New Britain, and down
into the Solomons. That area could be superimposed over the
greater part of the United States and Canada.
The Bureau was one of the several intelligence tools originated
and utilized by GHQ, Southwest Pacific Area, first for the collection
of information vital to the integrity of the Command as a fighting
machine, and then for the purposeful prosecution of the war by that
Command. The history of each of those tools is a story in itself.
This is "AIB's" story. But similarly, the sequences presented here
can in fact be only highlights of a complicated picture involving at
the end several thousand individuals performing allocated assign-
ments. Of these a total of 164 were known to have lost their lives
while the fate of 178 others remained a mystery. Seventy-five were
listed as captured. A measure of the esteem in which these men,
living and dead, have been held by the Allied governments con-
cerned may be seen in the fact that approximately 170 decorations
were awarded to all ranks and grades.
viii FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Official statistics credit the Bureau with a total of 264 missions,
exclusive of those operated into the Philippines from mid-1943
onward under the semi-autonomous Philippine Regional Section
springing from the original Philippine Special Section of the Bureau.
The greatly stepped-up, purely AIB, effort mainly against the
enemy-held Celebes islands and Borneo in the first seven months of
1945, mostly by the Services Reconnaissance Department of the
Bureau (SRD), alone accounted for 155 sorties, the majority by
aircraft. More than 300,000 pounds of supplies went in to agents,
guerrillas, and isolated civilians. While combat is not a function of
clandestine intelligence units, commando and other para-military
operations of the Bureau accounted for more than 7,000 enemy
killed and 150 captured, while still another 950 enemy surrendered
in consequence of propaganda efforts carried on largely by the
associated Far Eastern Liaison Office (FELO). Last, but certainly
not least, on the humanitarian side were the more than 1,000 indi-
viduals of all services rescued by AIB units throughout the area of
operations.
Just as the total effort in discharging the total intelligence re-
sponsibility is to be shared by all the intelligence organizations con-
cerned, both those under and associated with the "G-2" of GHQ
and those beyond SWPA, and just as the record of the specific AIB
achievement is to be shared by all who participated in one capacity
or another, similarly credit for the production of this single volume
must be shared among numerous individuals, military and civilian;
without their assistance, some over a period of more than a decade
in the collection and analysis of data and the review of successive
manuscripts, it is doubtful if the work could have been accom-
plished.
It is desired, therefore, to mention at least the following: Major
General C. A. Willoughby, retired; Brigadier K. A. Willis, retired;
Brigadier General Harry O. Paxon, retired; Colonel C. S. Myers,
retired; Master Sergeant Juan Dahilig; Professor L. H. Conrad,
Mary Jane Finke; R. C. Galang; Edith D. Johnson; Joan Corrigan;
Anastasia Stamathis; Lila Beehler; and then, throughout, my
patient, hard-typing wife.
Contents
Part 1 POINT OF NO RETREAT 1
Part 2 THE SOLOMONS 15
The Coast Watchers 17
Part 3 NEW BRITAIN AND NEW GUINEA 65
New Britain Interlude 67
Buna 79
New Britain Toll 87
Gazelle Necklace 94
Fateful Hollandia 103
Part 4 THE PHILIPPINES 113
"Planet" Project 115
The "Man-Who-Walks-Like-a-Ghost" 146
"Carabao Bo/ 7 155
Chic Parsons, 'The Artful Dodger" 159
Sulu Sharpshooter 189
Philippine Snatch 198
Mindanao Mender 205
The Charlie Smith Way 223
The Captured Plans 230
Part 5 THE COMMANDOS 243
Limpets for Singapore 245
Tahoelandang 262
Sultan's Ransom 274
Part 6 FINALE 289
The Unspoken 291
Finale 293
INDEX 295
ix
Part I
POINT OF NO RETREAT
A/L
ELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, ON THE SOUTHERN-
most coast of the far-south continent. Beyond, only the relatively
small dab of land known as Tasmania. And then the wilderness of
the South Pacific Ocean congealing into the white reaches of Ant-
arctica. . . .
Melbourne, then, in early 1942; this far had the remnants of
those defending the Western way of life in the Orient been driven
from Singapore's sea-girt fortress, from the Netherlands East In-
dies, and the Great East, and from the stricken archipelago of the
Philippines.
The point of no retreat.
Northward of Australia, a broad arc over the globe's surface was
a sinister wartime secret. Forces moved there, gathered, and moved
again. The evil of their intent and their implacability went before
them like an infection. They knew no barriers, certainly none that
we in the Philippines, the Chinese on the Asia mainland, the British
in Malaya, or the Dutch in the Indies had been able to erect against
them. One by one the thin, uncertain lines of communication be-
tween General MacArthur's reconstituted headquarters in Mel-
bourne and the tortured Philippines three thousand miles to the
north were fading into silence.
Singapore was mute. Batavia, Bandoeng, Soerabaja. . . . Rabaul
in New Britain. New Ireland and the Admiralties. Paralysis was
creeping down the Solomons, too. Cryptic signals still were to be
picked up from a handful of Australian Coast Watchers who mirac-
ulously had survived the engulfing flood of invasion and now were
isolated radio voices far back of the enemy lines of advance; other
3
4 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
brief whispers came through the ether from ghost ships that hit
and ran and hit again far in some other direction to try to deceive
the enemy into a belief of strength when there was no strength after
Pearl Harbor; from the few air strips still in Allied hands young
pilots hardly more than out of flying school, yet suddenly old in the
ways of war, flew daring missions without escost, always at the
ragged edge of endurance, to bomb, strafe, and fight, and to collect
any bit of military information that would help.
On April 18, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur had formally
assumed his newly constituted command, Southwest Pacific Area,
or "SWPA." This gave him military authority there over all the
army, navy, and air elements of the Americans, the Australians,
British, Dutch, and any other remnant of the Allied nations rolled
back by the Japanese since the initial blows that had fallen
simultaneously at Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong, Malaya, and the
Philippines on December 7, 1941. The vast area of command re-
sponsibility ran westward to Singapore, ended at the Japanese
Ryukus north of the Philippines, and to the east shared the re-
mainder of the South Pacific with Admiral Chester Nimitz. It was
a tremendously impressive command on paper. There was only
one thing wrong: the Japanese high command had not concurred
in its planning; in the driver's seat of the most ruthless Asiatic mili-
tary machine since Genghis Khan, they were in a superb position
not only to contest its implementation but to smash it stillborn.
A month before GHQ SWPA was created, war-battered Flying
Fortresses had carried MacArthur and his staff out of the be-
leaguered Philippines on orders from Washington and put their
wheels down on the red, hot soil of northwestern Australia. And
now the needs of the new command were as endless as they were
adamant, for what MacArthur found in Australia was a monumen-
tal inadequacy to face even a fraction of the force he knew Tokyo
could bring against him. He needed whole convoys of troops, ship-
loads of vehicles, radios, guns, ammunition, aircraft, and fleets of
ships themselves. He needed parts, parts, parts. . . . But of all the
needs, none was more immediate than that of tactical intelligence
information about the enemy. The new Commander in Chief be-
lieved that the enemy's strategy was clear enough; it was not a
POINT OF NO RETREAT 5
question of "what," but rather "when," exactly "where," and "how
moving."
First and foremost, as he saw the broad picture, the Japanese
high command must see to it that at any cost Australia was not
permitted to be developed as an American base. Unless severed at
once, the vulnerable umbilical cord stretching thousands of miles
across open sea to the arsenal of mainland United States would
nourish that base into a giant's strength. Accordingly, that vital
link had to be destroyed now. Since the loss of Malaya and the
Indies by the Allies already had isolated the British in far-off
Ceylon and India, the parting of the two remaining principal ob-
stacles to Japanese control of the Pacific world would insure each
being dealt with separately. That should not prove difficult with
American naval power a shambles at Pearl Harbor and Allied air
strength cut to a few riddled, disorganized squadrons to cover a
fourth of the earth's surface.
Severing this umbilicus, then, could be reduced to a simple tac-
tical problem of gaining immediate control of a few key geographi-
cal spots north and northeast of Australia. That huge southern
continent, as large as all of mainland United States, was ringed in
those directions and to the east by a series of islands forming a
great, broken double chain. There was New Guinea to the north
and its satellite islands trailing southeastward from Milne Bay.
Beyond this was the New Ireland-Solomons-New Hebrides chain,
also stretching southeast. Bridging the two chains at the northerly
end was the sizable single island of New Britain. Every ship to and
from America would have to penetrate one or both of these island
screens, or sail far to the south to New Zealand. But if Japan con-
trolled the island screen and based naval and air raiders there,
even the long southern approaches would be impossibly costly to
slow Allied convoys either totally unescorted or given such scant
protection as the Allies could scrape together. In any case, neither
convoy nor escort could be expected to live long.
On the eighth floor of the tall bank building at 121 Collins
Street in Melbourne, MacArthur conferred with his chief of in-
telligence, tall, handsome Colonel (later Major General) Charles
Willoughby. That personification of genius and vitriol, Prussian
6 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
drillmaster and lecture-room academician, had just consulted his
huge situation map, had snatched from us in the G2 Section the
latest teletype reports, and had conned the newest estimates from
the Allied capitals. Brief reports from those magnificent Coast
Watchers, from the few defiant ships, and from the individual pilots
who performed as entire squadrons, provided new information to
strengthen the Commander in Chiefs concept of the enemy's
strategy: already he was moving down into the Solomons, he had
occupied Buka Passage, Faisi, and Bougainville. He had been
sighted in the New Hebrides, farther south. Down there was the
important French base of Noumea, on New Caledonia island.
As the two men studied the situation it appeared increasingly
that to control the island screen the enemy would need to anchor
his effort at two extremes: Port Moresby on the under belly of
New Guinea in the north, and Noumea, which lay due east of the
upper third of Australia.
Willoughby described the scene to us later, the general pacing
back and forth as he talked, striding with the energy of a man
quite unconcerned that at the end of each five paces hard walls
compelled him to about-face and stride the other way. He leaned
forward as he went and his chin was outthrust, his hands tightly
interlocked behind him. It was a familiar picture to Willoughby
and the others of us who had seen him on Corregidor where the
restraining walls of Malinta Tunnel laterals were uncounted tons
of solid black rock. The Commander in Chief suddenly faced Wil-
loughby and mentioned a name that was destined shortly to imprint
itself forever on the pages of American history: Guadalcanal.
The enemy would seize some portion, probably the central area,
soon; his creep down Buka Passage and Bougainville into the New
Georgia chain presaged it. Obviously, unless he could be prevented
from taking and developing a base in central Guadalcanal, where
the kunai grass plains along the eastern coast would prove reward-
ing to diligent airfield construction efforts, his air and sea raiders
soon would be enabled to range as far north and as far south as
they wished in order to convert the Coral Sea and the Solomons
Sea into Japanese lakes. He would have progressed far toward the
POINT OF NO RETREAT 7
absolute isolation of Australia, and America would likely be com-
pelled to fall back upon Hawaii.
Ever associated with the threat to the communication link with
America was the equally black possibility of the early invasion of
Australia itself from such an occupied island screen, including New
Guinea. Or the attack might even come sweeping down from the
occupied Philippines, or in from the occupied Netherlands East
Indies. (Already there had been devastating bombing attacks on
Australia's northwest and west coasts; on the east coast an Aus-
tralian military defense plan drawn up prior to the establishment
of GHQ SWPA envisioned the loss of everything north of a line
drawn across the country from some point midway between Bris-
bane and Sydney; a tremendous stand would be made to preserve
the steel works at New Castle, just north of Sydney, but Brisbane
would be gone.)
First things first. The threatened Solomons, then . . .
GHQ had no troops to send northeastward to meet any threat,
and very little air power. Obviously, the responsibility for meeting
it would be up to Admiral Robert Ghormley, Nimitz's wing man
assigned to protect the South Pacific (actually the line between
SWPA and "COMSOUPAC" the Navy's South Pacific Com-
mand bisected in the Solomons). Ghormley would need intelli-
gence to know how to husband his all-too-slender naval resources
in order to hit suddenly and crushingly and get out of it to hit
again. After they had met and beaten back this threat, said Mac-
Arthur, they could breathe, then they could dig their heels in and
prepare to take that first step back to the Indies, back to the
Philippines . . .
". . . to win this war, Charles."
Win the war! At a time when survival itself was a day-to-day
goal and some of us who had come down to Melbourne from
Bataan and Corregidor had not even unpacked the emergency
rations in our knapsacks because well, frankly, it seemed to
people who had been on the run since the first bombs crashed down
December 7 that such an act of confidence would constitute a fool-
hardy tempting of fate.
Willoughby, who had been told to "land on your feet running"
8 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
gave every appearance of having done so in his tremendous efforts
to overcome the dearth of intelligence information. In rapid order
he planned and secured approvals for half-a-dozen projects that
were to be of great importance. One was Allied Geographical Sec-
tion, to produce detailed terrain studies of vast tropical areas that
had not even been names to the great mass of American officers
and men. In an appallingly short time they would have to fight for
them, live in them, and die in them. Another was Allied Transla-
tor and Interpreter Section, which before the war was over would
produce solid bales of vital information from captured enemy
documents, diaries, and interrogations of prisoners. He created and
instilled efficiency into organizations for processing the strategic
information that came from all over the Allied world as well as the
meager bits and pieces that came from the immediate tactical front.
This tactical front was immense; fronts normally could be meas-
ured in thousands of yards; this one extended over thousands of
miles. Compared with the compressed areas of the European
theater, the enormous reaches involved in even the simplest opera-
tions in the Pacific staggered the imagination. The tactical and
strategical areas of responsibility for GHQ SWPA could quite
effortlessly be transposed over the whole of the United States and
Canada with the east and west extremes well out into the Pacific
and Atlantic oceans. With GHQ in Melbourne, the transportation
span required to reach the area of threat discussed by the Com-
mander in Chief and Willoughby that day can be envisioned by
transplanting GHQ to New Orleans and considering ways and
means of stopping an enemy expansion in the lower Hudson Bay
region gt Canada. Or if the Indies or Singapore were under study,
it would be necessary to think of points far off the west coast of
Oregon. Yet these were the immediate areas of concern; to men-
tion the Philippines from which we had been routed was to con-
sider points in northwest Canada and the Yukon region of Alaska.
And all this with practically no long-range air units and, at that
time, only half-a-dozen operational submarines that would have to
be based at a point similar to San Diego, California, on our trans-
posed situation map. Later, submarines would work out of Bris-
POINT OF NO RETREAT 9
bane, Australia, or, let us say, out of Norfolk, Virginia still a
devastating distance in hostile miles to Hudson Bay or Alaska.
Obviously all ordinary means of reconnaissance for intelligence
information either were hopelessly inadequate or would be consist-
ently dependable only as the Allies won control of ever-advancing
bases. This, then, was a job for ships and aircraft but more than
for either at this stage, it was a job for spies on the ground, send-
ing in their reports from far, secret places by special radio equip-
ment taken in by them. Before this could be accomplished, a
coordinating organization would be necessary for the training of
new agents, for the support of those already out, for communica-
tions, supplies, and equipment, transportation a thousand things.
The foundation bricks for such a structure already existed or,
more properly, the initial tools for the secret collection of intelli-
gence in denied areas were available in Australia by the time the
wheels of the B-17's set down there in March 1942. My own
acquaintanceship with these developments dated from mid-May,
when I transferred out of Air Corps intelligence and into the
incomparable "ulcer factory" of Willoughby's G2 Section, GHQ.
It was on a typical Melbourne winter day, cold, wet, gloomy,
rendered the more depressing by the pale filter of light through the
opaque windows of 121 Collins Street, that I reported to Wil-
loughby.
"Go through these." He handed me a bulk of top-secret files.
His left eyebrow was raised in a characteristic manner I had first
observed in Manila. Those close to him had learned to interpret
and evaluate that eyebrow; it was a barometer indicative of many
things besides storm but certainly storm. It might imply: this is
important. It did this time. He explained that these temperamen-
tal, unconventional tools of warfare saboteurs, secret agents, the
Coast Watchers, commandoes, and so on comprising the burden
of the secret files had been sources of worry and harassment to
the Australian commander in chief, General Thomas Blarney, a
silver-haired soldier of the orthodox school. MacArthur had agreed
to take them all over, Australian, British, Dutch, and a few others,
and Blarney had breathed a sigh of relief. We would have to find
a way to operate and control them to best advantage in some plan
10 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
to be jointly supported by the American, Australian, and Dutch
governments. Washington had suggested to GHQ that it accept the
services of General "Wild BUI" Donovan's OSS, or Office of
Strategic Services, to do this clandestine work. But while Mac-
Arthur was cordial enough to the OSS founder and chief, and
gladly accepted his offer of the services of the brilliant late Dr.
Joseph R. Hayden, former vice-governor of the Philippines, as a
confidential advisor, he declined OSS. General MacArthur felt that
the various unorthodox units he was taking over from General
Blarney and the Dutch might submit to a certain amount of con-
trol from him there on the spot, but he was convinced that an
attempt at domination by or absorption into another intelligence
unit based in Washington would prove to be unworkable. Besides,
he required something immediately responsive to his requirements
and command.
As stated, the files revealed that the "tools" were not exclusively
for gathering intelligence information. One file dealt with an outfit
that specialized in every phase of sabotage and silent killing. "Spe-
cial Operations Australia" was its classified name. It was a branch
of the world organization finely culled and sharpened in England
and called Special Operations England, or "SOE." Factories, ships,
power plants, arsenals persons anything and anyone valuable
to the enemy any place, were "SOE" targets. In Melbourne SOE's
headquarters was at "Airlie," a cold gray house behind a cold gray
stone wall in the fashionable Toorak section of the city. "Airlie"
was security tight and was personnelled by British, Dutch, and
Australian specialists. Singularly one-minded was its chief, Lieu-
tenant Colonel G. S. Mott of the British forces. Moody, dark,
saturnine, quick to anger and quick to act, he seemed to burn with
deep inward resentment because the Japanese had routed him out
of Burma and Java in turn. Yet his enmity was impersonal; he
wanted only to turn his people loose against the common enemy.
Before the end his "Services Reconnaissance Department," or SRD,
as was its eventual open name under successors to Mott, would
cover itself with glory, both as a sabotage unit and as a spy outfit.
A second file dealt with another British organization. This one
was as pedigreed as SRD was new. The antecedental line went
POINT OF NO RETREAT IT
back to the sixteenth century. The communication channel of this
unit still was direct from its own radio towers in Australia to
Number 10 Downing Street. London-born Commander Went-
worth, we shall call him was director, and a shrewd, capable,
imaginative dangerous man he was. When all other AIB efforts
would founder in a prolonged welter of agent casualties in Nether-
lands East Indies, his radio monitors at war's end would be copying
highly revealing cryptograms from spy operators under the very
noses of the Japanese in Java.
The subject of a third file, Netherlands Indies Forces Intelligence
Service headquarters, or "NEFIS," was coming into existence in
a dark-paneled house on Domain Road, Melbourne. There was
not much left after the rout from the Indies and Dutch New
Guinea: a handful of loyal Indonesians, a score of Netherlands
naval and army officers, and a lot of stubborn Dutch will. The
Dutch government-in-exile in London sent money, some old sub-
marines, and authority to participate in the new effort to the limit
of their resources. This they did.
Fourth, there was the nucleus of what was to burgeon into an
efficient propaganda service under the direction of Lieutenant Com-
mander J. C. R. Proud of the Australian forces. Early in the his-
tory of the new unit, however, it would become evident that this
specialized branch could operate more effectively under Australian
control at Canberra, the Commonwealth capital.
The Fifth Division was already doing a superb job. These were
the Australian "Coast Watchers." I had encountered them first in
a prewar survey of intelligence assets in Australia. Since the first
fateful days they, or those that still were alive, had been reporting
vital ship and air sightings and the movements of Japanese land
forces in the coastal areas of the islands to the north and east.
In June, when the Australian winter season was a damp, raw
reality, Willoughby's executive officer summoned me. The late
Colonel Van S. Merle-Smith of the prominent New York family
spoke in cool, deliberate words of the need to draw up an official
document to activate and operate what we agreed would be called
"Allied Intelligence Bureau." The "controller" would be the cur-
rent director of Military Intelligence for the Australian Army,
12 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
Colonel C. G. Roberts. I would fill the slots of deputy controller
and finance officer. The decision to make an Australian the con-
troller was based on both diplomacy and foresight. The coopera-
tion of the Australians would be encouraged and when the time
should come that the United States forces would have won their
way back well north of the equator on their way to Manila and
Tokyo, it would facilitate returning the remaining sections of the
organization to full Australian control in the south. With an Ameri-
can finance officer, GHQ still had indirect but vital control: with-
out his approval, any proposed operation would die stillborn of
financial anemia. In Roberts GHQ had found a man of integrity,
tremendous energy, and fearless loyalty.
Throughout the month, Roberts and I met with Merle-Smith to
formulate the directive establishing "AIB." It was published in
orders July 6, 1942. The Bureau was to "obtain and report infor-
mation of the enemy in the Southwest Pacific Area, and in
addition, where practical . . . weaken the enemy by sabotage and
destruction of morale, and . . . render aid and assistance to local
efforts in the same end in enemy-occupied territories."
It was succinct, it was ambitious. Considering the general Allied
positions, it was in some ways a colossal presumption.
Space on the fifth floor of 121 Collins Street was assigned to us.
Like the G2 Section, AIB itself was to "land on its feet running."
Furniture, files, telephones, and short-tempered demands for im-
mediate espionage plans involving the threatened northeast area
arrived simultaneously. One of our first and most important visitors
was a slender individual in the neat, dark uniform and spotless
white cap of the Royal Australian Navy. His blue-gray eyes had
a youthful twinkle; they and his smooth, unlined face belied the
iron gray of the hair. This was Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt,
charged by the Australian director of Naval Intelligence with the
expansion and development of the Australian Coast Watcher sys-
tem. He unlocked a brief case and spread charts, maps, and statis-
tics on the barely dusted-off tables. There was an upward tilt to
his lips and an upward tilt to his words, but there was no nonsense
about him. So it was that in a surprisingly short time we had made
a compilation of names, check marks, and neat columns of nota-
POINT OF NO RETREAT 13
tions that constituted Allied Intelligence Project No. 1A: the col-
lection of all possible information about the enemy on the ground,
in the air, and on the seas surrounding Guadalcanal.
That was the first project. In rapid succession would be others
to cover Bougainville and the rest of the Solomons, New Ireland,
New Britain, and New Guinea. Other projects directed by other
men ultimately would aim for the Indies, Singapore, the islands of
the Great East, and the Philippines themselves until, by the time
Japanese officials were signing away their nation's sovereignty in
surrender ceremonies aboard an American warship in Tokyo Bay
some three years later, more than five thousand men and women
would have been engaged directly or indirectly in hundreds of in-
dividual projects. Some of the efforts would prove to be tragic,
many abortive despite the best that good men could give, some
enormously fruitful and all laced with the challenge of high ad-
venture. Yet there was something more: a tenuous moral connec-
tive fiber throughout, a dedication by free men whose faith was
made manifest in their actions during endless months of training,
of routine grind, and in sudden action in far places. Capriciously,
fate seemed to single out some for stellar roles. Two of these in
the early days were W. J. "Jack" Read and Paul Edward Mason.
On the day Lieutenant Commander Feldt spread his maps and
charts out at AIB in Melbourne, those two Australians were at
opposite ends of a mountainous, heat-bathed, tropical island in the
Solomons, approximately twenty-five hundred airline miles to the
northeast.
Part 2
THE SOLOMONS
The Coast Watchers
I T WAS NO ACCIDENT THAT AT THE MOMENT IN
history when their services would be most critically needed, Read
and Mason, together with a priceless handful of others of their
daring kind, were in the right places at the right times. Against
the unproud record of the democracies for bland unpreparedness
in the face of unmistakable warlike trumpetings there gleam a few
bright exceptions. One of these was the Australian Coast Watcher
organization which was born years before the outbreak of the
Japanese war at a time when to seek funds for military prepara-
tions was nothing short of heretical and quite unrewarding. The>
first suggestions that Australia organize such a system had come
as far back as 1919 from a Captain G J. Clare of the Australian
Navy. In consequence of World War I settlements, Australia was
assigned mandates over the eastern half of New Guinea Papua
and a large portion of the island screen that was to play such a
vital role in 1942-43. The area Australia did not control was for
the most part under the British Solomon Island Protectorate, ex-
cept that New Caledonia was French. Not only for the sake of
good colonial government communications but to provide an early
warning of sea or air raiders in case of war, it seemed to Captain
Clare advisable to establish a network composed chiefly of civil
servants, the managers of copra plantations, and other "islanders"
devoted to a remote way of life among the Melanesian native
peoples, many of whom were very primitive. A genuine affection
for the natives and a respect for their simple but solidly estab-
lished rights were essential ingredients of the successful "islander."
Fortunately indeed for the Coast Watchers of a later day, such
17
18 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
factors were pivotal in the colonial policy of the government at
Canberra a stern but fair guardianship which in turn won the
confidence and trust of the native. Without that, no watcher or-
ganization could have survived more than a few weeks at best
when the chips were down, for in its essentials this specialized
espionage was no different from other espionage activities: the
degree of success would be directly proportional to the receptive-
ness of the host peoples involved.
A civilian, Mr. Walter Brooksbank, was primarily responsible
for molding the foundations of the embryonic watcher organiza-
tion, and incorporating into it the office of the director of Naval
Intelligence in Melbourne. There, Commander R. B. M. Long,
a stocky man with a cupid's-bow mouth and a steel-trap mind,
added his official weight and skill. But it was a labor of love;
World War II would be casting its unmistakable shadow before
he would be able to generate even mild interest on the loftier levels
of the political and military. He went ahead anyway, appointing
Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt of the Naval Reserve to get
the detailed field work done.
Feldt did it in the far reaches where tropic seas creamed against
white beaches or soughed in the mangrove swamps of lonely coasts
with their spattering of latticed houses and atap huts amid ranked
coconut plantations. He consulted and recruited among the civil
servants, likely themselves "islanders" and probably also planters.
Feldt talked their language, for he was an "islander." He was
"right." They signed on. They heeded his suggestions of what to
look for, how to utilize "flash codes" in reporting air and ship
movements by radio to the net control station at Port Moresby
all at no salary. Moresby would relay to Townsville on the Queens-
land coast, and Townsville would push the messages farther south;
in a short time Commander Long would add another "flag" on
his situation map in the office on St. Kilda Road, Melbourne. It
was this organization and these "flags" that a military mission
from Manila, of which I was a member, studied with such interest
in November 1941 a month before Pearl Harbor. We would
shortly return to Manila and report that when war came as we
THE SOLOMONS 19
then knew was inevitable there would be some splendid ob-
servers already in key spots.
So it was that as the first projects were formulated that day in
the AIB office in Melbourne, Read and Mason were in such spots
on Bougainville at the head of the Solomon chain. I became per-
sonally acquainted with Read and some of the others as time
went on, and from their unadorned narratives filled out the cryptic
reports they prepared.
As a result of enemy action during the last days of January
1942, Read already had become a "gypsy" without a permanent
home. But he was within sight of what had been his home all too
briefly at the northern tip of Bougainville. It was quite evident
that the enemy landing parties had "taken over the lot," as he
told me many months later. "With the glasses we could make out
the whole of the Buka Passage area well enough, and especially
the buildings on the little island of Sohana." Read had been colo-
nial district officer on Sohana. He also had been a civilian Coast
Watcher. It would be some weeks later that he would become a
lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, a development resulting from
Long's tireless efforts in Melbourne to give military status to Coast
Watchers in order to prevent their being classified as civilian spies
and shot out of hand by a capturing enemy.
Read had developed an efficient "posi," or position, high above
Buka Passage. The fluted column of a gigantic rain tree gave him
flank protection while affording an unobstructed view to the north-
west. He had arranged a support for his binoculars. On this par-
ticular day in early 1942 he had been observing the Japanese on
Sohana. The shore parties once more were engaged in looting and
smashing on Sohana.
He slowly shifted the glass so that the field of vision crept across
the indigo blue of the Passage itself into the shallower green water,
and then up along the hard coral ribs of Buka Island as it lay
opposite him.
There was no sign of activity on the shore line. Carefully he
examined the atap fiber huts of the Melanesian natives of Buka
village. The few huts that had been burned in the bombings prior
to the landings by the enemy had been replaced. Everything looked
20 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
peaceful enough there, but Read had no illusions about these
natives; they were realists. Throughout history they always had
been dominated by someone stronger. Until recently it had been
Australian colonial government. Now it was the Japanese. There
would be no real affiliation, not even a nominal one, but that vil-
lage would serve strength and it had seen the white man run out
by the Japanese.
Read glanced at his own Melanesian "boys" with their glisten-
ing black bodies partly covered by travel-stained calico lava-lavas,
or wraparounds. Was it dangerous wishful thinking or a sound
appraisal based on his ten years' experience with Melanesians that
induced him to place implicit faith in the trustworthiness of this
little group? They had seen him prepare to abandon Sohana shortly
after the two Royal Australian Air Force Catalinas that had been
based at Soraken, just to the south, departed one day, their crews
taking possessions that normally they left until their return from
routine patrols. Then news of the fall of Rabaul on the north
tip of New Britain had come in through Read's radio receiver.
The jungle telegraph had got it, too. Provident and calculating,
Read previously had reconnoitered for a position on the high basalt
upthrust country of interior Bougainville that would enable him if
necessary to "hole up" with supplies and maintain active obser-
vation; it simply never occurred to him to try to escape, even
though he was convinced that the tide of invasion would sweep
beyond him as it then was sweeping over the islands just to the
northwest of him. Out there on Taber Island had been Coast
Watcher C. L. Page, who shortly after the outbreak of war had
broadcast the warning of a four-motor Japanese flying boat that
had soared over his lonely outpost to take sights on Rabaul. Soon
Page had been run out. Then Allen on Duke of York Island went
silent, and Chambers on Anir abruptly stopped sending. C. C.
Jervis of Nissan, just off to the northwest from Buka, quietly men-
tioned that a Japanese warship had hove to off his tiny atoll,
which he had described as being "as flat as your hand and just
as bare of places to hide in." Silence again. . . . But there were
others that the enemy had not found, and because of this over-
sight, the enemy would pay. Read was wiry of build, rather than
THE SOLOMONS 21
big or solid, but within him was a solidness of spirit, a steely de-
termination, and a capacity for careful planning; it was altogether
likely that in his own way he, himself, would extract payment.
His loyal native police sergeant, Yauwika, asked permission to
use the field glasses. His voice was hoarse and his pidgin English
a little hard to understand. Yauwika frowned fiercely as he put the
glasses to his eyes and stared toward Buka village. Read thought
he knew what Yauwika sought: through his own devious means
and loyal native missionary workers Yauwika had instituted a
native "pipeline" and along it detailed information flowed in a
mysterious current; now he knew exactly which of those atap huts
he could see with their fiber-woven roofs concealed Japanese sup-
plies, and which were serving as barracks. Read's cryptic messages
to the Royal Australian Air Force RAAF made good, ex-
plicit bombing objective data.
Read studied the stocky, black native police sergeant. He decided
that Yauwika could be completely trusted and probably those he
worked with. Yet power impressed Yauwika, too, and Read had
been both disappointed and secretly amazed at the effect news of
the Battle of the Coral Sea had had upon the natives of Bougainville.
Read had heard of Coral Sea both from news casts and official com-
muniques. The jungle telegraph of the natives had been almost as
prompt. The naval collision had occurred in May in consequence of
the Japanese attempt to clear the way for an attack against Port
Moresby, which the Allied high command had foreseen as part of
the strategy to control the island screen. Read was able to glean that
the victory had been a tactical one for the Allies in that the enemy
effort had been beaten down. But in the fight the enemy had inflicted
more damage than he had received. Just how the native assessment
had arrived at the truth was a puzzle which Read ascribed to the
white man's general ignorance of native shrewdness. In any event,
Coral Sea had been disappointing in its propaganda effects and
Midway was too distant to have any effect at all.
In addition, Read was apprehensive that the jungle telegraph had
scored another local beat. A Japanese force had since landed on
Guadalcanal and was preparing an air base on the kunai grass
plains. What was needed urgently to avoid deterioration of general
22 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
native support was a spectacular Allied victory in the Solomons with
the results heaped up for all to see. If it did not come soon, he could
foresee trouble of another sort on Bougainville. Here and there on
the island were groups of defenseless civilians and some of the mis-
sionary personnel, including Catholic sisters, who previously had
declined to heed his advice and that of others who had no illusions
either to go overseas to safer areas while they could, or at least
head for the mountains and avoid contact with Japanese patrols led
by cooperating coastal natives. All told there were perhaps a hun-
dred. They had been recalcitrant but Read had no doubt they would
be demanding a protection there would be no way of according
them when the bulk of the coastal natives should really turn against
them.
Beside him Sergeant Yauwika had grunted excitedly and pointed.
Read wiped the moisture from his brow and squinted. Sohana was
still quiet enough. But something was stirring in Buka village.
Yauwika fired an explosive torrent in his own dialect and his black-
skinned comrades rolled excited eyes. Read rapped Yauwika's arm
for the glasses and peered.
The scene was too confused to enable him to get the exact pat-
tern but apparently the Japanese once more were resorting to harsh-
ness, even brutality, in enforcing demands upon the villagers. The
Solomon Islander was not long out of the Stone Age, and from
there he had come direct into the Steel Age. But he had brought
with him almost intact his superstitions, his tribal customs, and his
curiously well-developed sense of property. Of the latter, his most
potent single symbol was his pig. Possession thereof marked him a
man of means; possession accorded him bargaining position for all
things in his social scheme, from food gardens or a seat in the village
council to his fancy in a wife. Coral Sea had upset the Japanese sup-
ply communications and here at Buka a levy was being made upon
native resources to make up for the fish and rice that had failed to
arrive. Not content with a diet confined to tropical yams, taro, and
sago, the enemy soldiers and sailors demanded pigs. They refused
to penetrate far into the unknown jungles to hunt for them; the al-
ternate was to commandeer the native's prize possession.
Read could see a body on the ground of the village street. Nearby
THE SOLOMONS 23
an enemy wiped a bayonet. Two others carried off a kicking pig. Sul-
len natives opened a way for them, then closed in after them. A
cloud of dust slowly subsided. This execution of a villager who had
resisted doubtless was what Sergeant Yauwika had witnessed.
Read felt a grim satisfaction. Word of that kind of treatment
would get around. Of course it could terrify the native into a kind of
cooperation that would be dangerous to him, but with some military
development favorable to the Allies the enemy would soon know
what it meant to alienate the natives. Read's own meticulous adher-
ence to a code of recognition of the small rights of the native in a
white man's world was the key to their loyalty to him. There was
one other related item of influence: the Solomon native's apprecia-
tion of money. Read had taken all the money from the office at
Sohana and could and did pay the fair price for their services and
goods. After all, it required a carrier force of from fifteen to thirty
"boys" to carry the radio gear and all, to say nothing of essential
scouts and runners.
While Read was reflecting on all this, there was a sudden poising
of weapons. Someone was moving in the giant ferns to the left. Then
Yauwika grunted. It was one of their own lookout boys. He was
breathing hard. He spoke fast in his own dialect. Yauwika converted
it into mangled pidgin. Three ships, warships, were approaching
Buka Passage from the west. Read questioned him. Apparently a
cruiser and two destroyers.
Read signaled and the party moved off over a barely discernible
trail so that he could verify the report. If true, and if the ships an-
chored, they would comprise a target worthy of any bombing mis-
sion or if not, simply the knowledge of their exact whereabouts
would be of importance to Allied planners moving their invaluable
pieces on the chessboard of the South Pacific. An hour later Read
and his natives were squelching over sodden trails to the base. Just
in time the confirmatory sighting had been made before the rain
streamed down into a jungle already steaming with dank heat. Read
clumped into a hut; he hated the rains. He motioned for Tamti, a
native who had been taught wireless signaling. Tamti warmed up the
tubes of the Australian-built "Teleradio," a splendid piece of equip-
ment that originally had been designed to service Australian "out-
24 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
back" sheep stations and the "flying doctors" who administered to
their needs in response to radio summons for help. While he worked
over the three steel-gray cases of the combined receiver and trans-
mitter, Read enciphered. He wondered if the signal would reach
distant Port Moresby on New Guinea nearly seven hundred airline
miles. It would be another eight hundred from Port Moresby to
Townsville where the Intelligence Center was located. It was another
fifteen hundred to Melbourne. He was considering the unpredictable
behavior of Hertzian waves in the ether. The present saturated sky
was certainly bad in theory for transmission, yet already Tamti had
registered acknowledgment from Port Moresby. Another time the
sky could be clear as crystal and Moresby might be off the planet as
far as their capability of reaching the control station was concerned.
Moresby confirmed receipt of the data and signaled no more traffic.
Tamti moved aside and Read played with the vernier dial of the
receiver. Familiar voices came to being, for now he was on the fre-
quencies assigned to the Coast Watchers, and where distances were
short, radio phone, or "voice," was often used. Brief, staccato barks
for the most part, because, after all, a radio transmission was a voice
for all to hear and the enemy missed few of them, day or night.
For instance, he had all-too-clearly heard the enormously foolish
newscast out of Melbourne not long ago stating that Japanese war-
ships had landed reconnaissance forces not too far from Read's posi-
tion. Immediately the enemy was interested. No aircraft had sighted
that landing. A Coast Watcher, then? They knew of only one man
that could have radioed such a report, a really harmless old chap
named Percy Good whom they had put on parole. Two days later
they landed again and despite his protestations of innocence for
innocent he was, since he was not a Coast Watcher and the report
had been filed elsewhere by one who was summarily executed him.
In Australia prompt steps were taken to insure that henceforth
no such revealing information would reach the air.
Read often spent a part of the night hours this way, although he
had always to be sensitive to the drain of his batteries. The Tele-
radio was powered by heavy wet cells that had to be charged by a
petrol engine charger, even heavier. Petrol itself was no small prob-
lem. There were caches
THE SOLOMONS 25
Meanwhile GHQ had moved bodily from Melbourne eight hun-
dred miles north to Brisbane, and with it the headquarters of AIB.
In one of the big insurance buildings on Queen Street, exciting mat-
ters concerning the Solomons were occupying the high command.
But the cards were being held very closely to official chests and in
general very few who had no "need to know" possessed the knowl-
edge that soon there would be launched the first Allied attempt, not
only to halt the enemy drive down the Solomons, but eventually to
reverse it. It would be a combined navy, air, and land assault to an-
nul the Japanese landings at Lunga on Guadalcanal and other stra-
tegic points in the central Solomons. GHQ was playing a support
role this time, for the show primarily would be one of COMSOU-
PAC's with the American First Marine Division scheduled for the
actual landings. The concentration was being effected in the New
Hebrides with Noumea as the hub.
"I didn't know anything specific," Read said later. "But I became
properly suspicious that something was up, just by listening to the
ear bashing over the air."
Lieutenant (later Commander) Hugh Mackenzie was AIB's
Coast Watcher coordinator stationed with COMSOUPAC head-
quarters in the Solomons. Read often tuned in to see what Hugh had
to say. It was not much. But from the same quarter came many
broad American accents. Mackenzie had helped the Marines to or-
ganize their own local watchers. "Not a doubt of it the Yanks were
zealous," commented Read. "But they were too ruddy voluble on
the air. Obviously something was up."
Another whom Read monitored was D. S. Macfarlan. One of the
best was Macfarlan, with a gift for accurate observation and a
matching ability to describe what he saw. Later in Brisbane we were
to benefit from these talents to get vivid word pictures of what oc-
curred at Guadalcanal largely in consequence of the roles that Read
and Mason soon were destined to play.
Assigned to Guadalcanal to watch the Japanese at close hand,
Macfarlan had insisted on a grandstand seat to enable him to ac-
complish the task with aplomb. He fairly looked down into their
rice bowls from a lofty, beautifully hidden spot on Gold Ridge. He
reported every inch of progress on the air strip the enemy was build-
26 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
ing below him at Lunga. Just to the east of Lunga was Tulagi, the
former center of British colonial administration for the area. The
enemy held that place, too. Macfarlan's boys had been reporting in
detail defense strong points, stores, and barracks. He encoded the
data and sent them two ways: to Mackenzie for use by appreciative
COMSOUPAC authorities and those who were to lead the assault,
and to AIB via Port Moresby.
Other Coast Watchers hidden on Guadalcanal were contributing
to this vital build-up of information. There were taciturn F. A.
"Snowy" Rhoades and A. M. Andersen. Martin Clemens was farther
north. And off on the dreary basalt upthrust of tiny Savo Island was
another, frail elderly L. Schroeder. On one occasion while Read
monitored, Macfarlan was reporting the estimated strength of a
Japanese force north of the partly finished airfield. Read was
amused. He knew Macfarlan's method: send in natives who would
come back and tell him how long the mess line extended. It was as
good as any and better than most, for natives were notoriously un-
able to estimate numbers of men. "You'd get anything from a thou-
sand to twenty times that number," Read would explain. "The true
count was probably five hundred."
Guadalcanal was a somewhat fatter island than most in the Solo-
mons. To the north was a spattering of small islands comprising the
New Georgia group, between it and Bougainville. Other Coast
Watchers were there. And they were important, for while Read was
the farthest northwest of the whole series of Watchers and therefore
could give maximum warning of raids that he might detect coming
south to hit American concentrations, enemy ships and aircraft
might not touch within his eyesight. Then it would be up to Paul
Mason, a hundred and thirty miles south of him on the opposite end
of long, thin Bougainville, to warn. After Mason came the watch-
ers in the New Georgia group, and finally those on Guadalcanal.
Thus there was observer strength "in depth."
On one night while Read monitored, Paul Mason was acknowl-
edging receipt of a successful air drop, containing desperately needed
supplies. Read chuckled explosively. The black boys squatting on
their haunches in the opposite corner of the hut rolled eyes whitely
toward him. In turn they grinned. They appreciated it when the kiap
THE SOLOMONS 27
was amused. He was a good kiap, stern and quick, but a proper "big
fella." Read was thinking that poor Mason deserved a successful
drop after all the trouble he had experienced.
Mason had been a planter on Bougainville. He probably was less
like the conventional picture of a conquering military hero than any-
one Read could imagine quiet, round-faced, with a boyish com-
plexion that went with the mild blue eyes behind round spectacles.
But we were to learn that Mason would surprise you. When the going
was rough, he was indeed a good man to have on your side. His de-
termination was matched only by his unsuspected powers of endur-
ance. The first drop that had been made to him went astray by not
less than seventy miles! But Mason doggedly set out by bicycle and
on foot to recover it. His reward after a bitter trek through some of
the most uncomfortably fetid country in the South Pacific was ex-
actly nothing. The situation was doubly distressing because, where-
as Read had plenty of supplies cached, Mason had had no oppor-
tunity to save much from the plantation before the Japanese landed.
Read had expressed his concern that Mason's natives might not ap-
preciate his straitened circumstances. The second drop would alle-
viate the situation, at least.
Mason had taken up a position at Malabita Hill near Buin, on
extreme southern Bougainville. As fate would have it, the area he
could effectively overlook would become one of the major anchor-
ages for the Japanese Southern Operations fleet.
The drops to Coast Watchers included more than merely the
means to keep body and soul together. Feldt had experienced many
years' service on isolated assignments and he knew very well the
tremendous importance of mail from home. Great care was taken to
insure inclusion of one or two pieces at least. So it had been that the
last bomber to drum out of the night and lay a softly floating para-
chute onto Read's carefully selected drop zone had brought a letter
from his wife in Melbourne. It had been a solid, homey sort of thing,
just what he needed most, and it had told him all about the antics of
their little daughter, Judy. (What it did not tell him was that Mrs.
Read had experienced a serious accident; she had not wanted to
worry him for she was confident that the results would not be last-
ing.) Reference to Judy had made Read smile. Doubtless both his
28 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
wife and young Judy would be amused if they knew of the arrange-
ment he had with Feldt that if he ever had to go on the air in plain
language and wanted to confuse listeners other than Feldt, he was to
sign his emergency messages "JER," Judy's initials.
Read snapped off the Teleradio until the next schedule with Port
Moresby. It was time for kaikai, or food, and despite the downpour
that went on as if it never intended to stop, the boys managed their
cooking and Read had his plate of hot tinned meat, vegetables, and
his mug of tea. He hitched himself farther from the drifting spume
at the propped-up atap transom over the open window space and
savored the brew.
In the next transmission Read reported that he had made a short
reconnaissance to the coast. At one point he had been waited upon
by a surly delegation of the civilians whom he had urged to take
proper precautionary steps when the war was young and there re-
mained time to act. They demanded that the RAAF make air drops
of supplies to them. After all, they insisted, the government owed
them protection and sustenance, too. Read reminded them that pro-
tection was something they had rejected by keeping themselves be-
yond its line of possibilities. He reminded them that there were
exactly twenty-five Australian soldiers on Bougainville, a poorly
equipped guard detachment of prewar days, in almost as bad a
plight as they were themselves. As to sustenance, he imagined he
could forecast RAAF's reception to the idea that it should risk its
few operational bombers from their round-the-clock war responsi-
bilities to deliver food to people who a short time ago had denounced
the military as unnecessarily dictatorial. But that night Read relayed
their request to Port Moresby. The next day he had confirmation of
his forecast. The issue did not endear him to the group, nor it to
him. Read was honest with himself; he was direct and honest with
others. He had an idea he had not heard the end of them. He
wondered about the Catholic nuns he knew to be still on the island
with a Bishop Wade.
He continued to file his observer reports from Buka Passage.
Every significant bit about the air strip, the village, or the ships that
came and went and what they did while they were there swelled our
intelligence file at AIB.
THE SOLOMONS 29
But one day toward the end of July he got a deeply encoded mes-
sage from Feldt at AIB.
He was to stop reporting everything except emergency informa-
tion of great importance. He would establish himself at the best
point of vantage above Buka Passage and await developments.
Meanwhile, if he did see something very important, especially in
the air, he would report directly in plain language. His messages
would be identified by the "JER" call sign.
He stood in the middle of the shack, the deciphered message in
his hands, and he knew this meant action. He was laying pounds to
sixpence that it would be on Guadalcanal to the southeast of him.
A few minutes later he knew that Mason had received the same in-
structions from Feldt and that he would use the call sign "STO."
Mason had married a girl whose family name was Stokie.
It was fully appreciated at AIB that broadcasting in plain lan-
guage meant shouting out the locations of the two men. But speed
in reporting was going to be of utmost importance; conceivably the
success of the whole operation would rest on adequate warnings
of enemy counterblows while the landing and support ships were
bunched without maneuver room at the beaches. Against the "give
away" was the fact that the two men were tiny needles in a very
large haystack. Bougainville was a hundred and thirty miles long
by thirty wide and what was not smothered in rain forests and
jungle growth was upended in mountains. As long as the natives
did not turn against them. . . . Nevertheless, it was a very uncomfort-
able decision to have to make back in the safety of headquarters.
Read looked wryly around the shack. It had been a secure spot.
He decided to make a cache of supplies in several places, of one or
two of which only he would know the exact location; then, whatever
befell him, he should have recourse to a few emergency supplies. He
was to be thankful one day for this item of his foresight.
The next morning he put into execution his plan for erasing signs
of the base preparatory to moving northwestward. He was seeking a
better position that was low enough to avoid most of the mists but
high enough to cover most of the vital area. The rains came down
as they departed. This time Read did not mind so much. He wanted
their tracks to be erased. He used trails unknown to all but his little
30 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
party, or cut new ones. On the evening of August 7, 1942, he still
was some distance from Buka Passage. Except that it had been a
strenuous day, for him it had not been unusual. Since his teleradio
had been stowed in many containers slung from poles supported
fore and aft on the shoulders of carrier boys, he had been entirely
unaware that in reality the day had witnessed a tremendously im-
portant military development in some respects even more signifi-
cant than either the naval battles of the Coral Sea or Midway, be-
cause it represented the first retaking of a land mass for a counter-
offensive that was not to experience a major reversal until the war
was won for the West. Read made camp where the rain forest was so
dense that only directly above him was there open space. After a
new downpour the stars showed there.
Paul Mason, however, had been aware of something unusual on
that day. He had, in fact, played a part in connection with it as vital
as any who participated, and doubtless because he had, many still
were alive and safe who otherwise would have been victims of the
air attack launched by some twenty-seven Japanese warplanes from
Rabaul.
At dawn of that day the first massive combined-services counter-
assault of the war had been launched by the Allies. It was against
Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and other nearby Japanese-held targets. By
the time Read had pitched camp for the night, the First Marine Divi-
sion was dug in hard along the Japanese airfield at Lunga, had re-
taken Tulagi, and had established firm beachheads elsewhere. At
dawn that day planes from United States carriers had screamed
down on Tulagi through a mist that hid the approaching battle and
transport fleets from sight and had bombed it heavily. Then the ap-
proaching warships had divided. One division had taken over from
the bombers while another steered for Lunga and opened up on
shore defenses there. The transports came in and released their
battle-ready Marines. The assault boats rammed square steel snouts
hard aground and the heavy ramps roared down. The enemy had
been taken completely by surprise, and on Guadalcanal were unable
to rally against the attack. The survivors fled into the jungle toward
the mountains. It was almost the same at Tulagi, but there was de-
termined resistance elsewhere.
THE SOLOMONS 31
The Allied command was under no illusions about the initial suc-
cess. The enemy simply could not afford to allow the Allies a
secure foothold in the South Pacific, and certainly not one they
themselves required if they were to secure Port Moresby, already
overdue, and cut the supply line from America. The American com-
manders hoped that before the enemy could reorganize or call for
help, the heavy task of getting supplies ashore to support the troops
for a prolonged period of what was sure to come could be accom-
plished. But manhandling thousands of tons of the materiel of
modern war from transport to barge and barge to shore and shore to
truck and truck to supply dump was a task to weary the stoutest
backs, especially when the debilitating tropic heat wrapped the
whole area in a sodden blanket. There had been little or no time to
rehearse this phase of it. The work went slowly; the wonder of it
was that the sweating, swearing men had managed to bully as much
of the artillery, the ammunition, the construction materials, and
the rations ashore as they had by the time Mason's signal reached
the ships to the effect that over his hidden position at Malabita
Hill on Bougainville at 1030 hours he had sighted
TWENTY-SEVEN BOMBERS HEADED SOUTHEAST
The message was signed "STO." Actually, the ships had not re-
ceived it directly from Mason. He had sent originally on the "X"
frequency for emergency traffic and had been copied at Tulagi, also
aboard the Australian cruiser Canberra, which together with an-
other Australian warship had cooperated with the American vessels
that morning in the shelling of Guadalcanal. Port Moresby also had
taken it in and immediately relayed to Townsville. Townsville re-
layed to powerful transmitters outside Canberra which in turn,
flashed it to Honolulu. The transoceanic station on Oahu stepped
up to full power and sent the warning roaring back over the Pacific
for all to hear. The whole series of relays had taken approximately
twenty-five minutes, and the Japanese still were a considerable
distance off, coming in under heavy bomb and fuel loads.
Mason later said that he was barely able to contain his excitement
and that Ms eyes "felt very hot" behind his glasses as he constantly
32 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
fingered his receiver dials for news. The air was full of strange
signals and he discerned both the Morse key "fists" and voices of
Americans. He knew then that "The Yanks were fair in it now!"
Mason could hear only confusedly, and he could see nothing.
Macfarlan on Gold Ridge, Guadalcanal, constituted the "eyes" for
this show, although some of the others caught thrilling episodes of
it from their lairs.
Macfarlan had noted the orderly deployment of the American
carriers well out to sea. He saw the transports weigh anchor and dis-
perse in a disciplined pattern away from the crowded beachhead. A
low throb of scores of aircraft engines being prefiighted came from
the distant flat tops. The drone swelled and sounded to him like
"a far-off bullish roar." Presently he saw our planes rising, looking
in the distance "like some kind of slow daylight tracers." In due time
they found their proper stations and began a leisurely climb into the
high places of the sky. The heavier American fighter planes were
not so nimble as the Japanese Zeros who doubtless were escorting
the bombers, but the Philippines had taught us that if the American
planes had the advantage of height, the acrobatic superiority of the
Zero was canceled out: our heavier armor and armament more
than evened the score. At Guadalcanal, local warning only would
not have enabled the American fighters to have climbed high. Mason
gave them an hour and a half to do it.
The Japanese pilots were unprepared for the magnitude of the
reception awaiting them from below and were disorganized by the
wide deployment of the targets.
To Macfarlan the whole sky had suddenly become dappled with
the black puifballs of ack-ack fire from the ships. Now he could see
the Japanese bombers coming in on the final approach, but the in-
tense fire disrupted their runs and they began to fall off. Bombs fell
into the sea and far off to one side on the land. One bomber then an-
other burst into flame and black smoke. Others sideslipped and the
ack-ack from hastily erected shore guns took them under fire. The
attack seemed to be breaking up before it was fairly launched. The
Japanese veered more and sought to disengage. The smoke now
made observation difficult and Macfarlan could catch only snatches
of the big surprise. At just the time when the enemy planes could
THE SOLOMONS 33
least afford to take on a new menace, a whole sky full of fury
dropped upon them from the heights. Now both bombers and Zero
escorts alike were caught in a storm of tracers and shells. Pilots who
remembered Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Clark Field, Bataan, let
them have it again and again.
Paul Mason saw only one bomber returning that afternoon. This
was a paradox, for initial Allied claims listed only two shot down
and two damaged. That was before the carriers deployed out to sea
had entered their tallies. Possibly more than that single bomber
seen by Mason got away, but history was to say that it was doubt-
ful if it had any companions.
The next morning, August 8, Read broke camp early. The party
was on the trail when shortly after 0800 hours the column stopped
as one man. The thundering roar of many aircraft engines seemed to
burst upon them. That could mean only that they were flying low.
Automatically his boys melted into denser jungle. Read looked
around desperately for some point of observation. But only his boys
were equipped by dress and nature to shinny up the boles of trees.
Then the sound exploded directly above him. To his surprise he
found himself reacting automatically to training even as his boys
had done when they "melted" into the jungle. He was counting air-
craft which, as fate would have it, were flying across the only place
in the whole vast canopy of the sky that he could observe im-
mediately over his head. They were no more than five hundred feet
above him and he could discern not only that they were bombers
but that they were torpedo bombers.
The din receded. He shouted orders. Two of his boys were well
toward the tops of tall trees. The others reacted quickly and began
to break out the wireless gear. There was no time to make for a more
suitable transmitting area. While Read knew nothing about the
Guadalcanal show, he was certain that eighteen heavily-laden enemy
torpedo planes were not out on an incidental early-morning training
mission so far from Rabaul on New Britain or Kavieng on New Ire-
land. He suspected these were from the latter place; the direction
was right.
He shouted to that boy, helped this one, and heaved with the
34 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
third. The transmitter, the receiver, the batteries, heavy and dan-
gerous to handle. Up went a jury antenna.
Then a warning call from the treetops. More aircraft. As before,
the sound burst upon them. This time Read counted twenty-two
aircraft; some were Zeros.
The sweat blinded his eyes. He dashed it out and tested the power
couplings. Everything seemed to go maddeningly slow. But not
really. "Just the ruddy excitement, you know," as he said later. He
calmed himself, sobered by the thought that at this time of day it
would be a real chore to raise Port Moresby and on "voice," too,
for he did not have Tamti this time, worse luck. Voice had less
range than Morse.
He called on voice. Then listened. There was only the hissing of
the tube filaments in his ears. He tried again, adjusting as he spoke.
But the transmitter was putting out a maximum signal; adjusting
would do no good. There was not even a crack of static.
He banged his fist in exasperation. This signal had to get through.
Right, then, send a general-attention call.
He did, to any Coast Watcher within range or anyone else on
X frequency.
His quick laugh of relief was not lost on the natives. Kiap had
done it! He had, indeed. A Coast Watcher in eastern New Guinea
answered him at once. He had heard Read's frantic calls and was
waiting to take a relay. Read gave it to him:
FROM JER: FORTY BOMBERS HEADED YOURS
He had the satisfaction of hearing the unknown Coast Watcher
swing into the relay. Once more the whole prearranged machinery
of warning went into action. And at Guadalcanal once more the
whole deployment tactic found so effective on the seventh when
only a single ship had been hit went into effect. Once more Mac-
farlan was the star reporter. Many official records remain to testify
to his authentic observing of the most exciting event of his life, for
this attack paled that of the previous day in the sheer fanaticism of
the attackers and the fury of the defenders.
Again the flight of enemy aircraft was caught between levels of
THE SOLOMONS 35
fire, but even more intense fire than previously. The whole arc of
the sky was sliced with red tracers and plumed with ack-ack. Three
enemy planes at one time plunged smoking toward the sea far be-
low. Another bomber erupted into a solid sheet of flame so huge
that Macfarlan was certain that a shell had hit squarely on the war-
head of a torpedo in its bay and the whole thing, big enough to kill
a ship, had exploded in midair.
Still, through the fury of the concentrated fire, Japanese bombers
lived to level off for their torpedo runs and to launch them. Mac-
farlan gasped in disbelief, for some of those bombers were flying at
maximum speed between moving ships, actually below masthead
height.
The sea boiled with torpedo wakes. And now it seemed beyond
credibility that the defending vessels could live with destruction on
the loose against them from every direction. Yet only one torpedo
connected: a destroyer was heavily damaged astern and went out
of control. Under her own power she dragged herself away. Later,
when Macfarlan remembered to look for her, she was no longer
to be seen. Now his attention was jerked to another giant explosion.
A Japanese warplane had plummeted straight into the deck of the
transport. Her whole length quivered with flame, and fire leaped
high where the plane had gone through her deck.
Now it was time for the high-up fighters to come in. Once more
the smoke of battle and the burning transport obscured Macfarlan's
view. But he had seen enough to know that a whole enemy attack
fleet had been all but destroyed before his eyes.
Far to the northwestward Read's fingers had teased the essence
of excitement from the vernier dial. At about seven megacycles he
had come upon strange talk between "Orange Base" and aircraft
pilots. Nothing the Australians owned answered to that. The Yanks,
then. This was it. He listened again and heard a carrier concerned
about getting its fighters all refueled in time to beat off an "expected
bomber attack on the transport area."
Read said that this time he really jumped to his feet and cheered.
His boys cheered with him. The warning had got through!
He waited, caressing the vernier dials. And soon it came, the in-
tercommunication orders and shouted warnings as the battle closed.
36 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
The distant voice said that it would go off the air during the battle,
but the unseen American was unable to stay off the air and kept
breaking in with his own blow-by-blow account of the sight he was
witnessing. "Boys, they're shooting them down like flies! I can see
one, two, three, four, six eight of them all coming down into the
sea together!"
Forty of them had gone over Read's spot. Eight came back. In the
two main battles and in at least one side fight later, the enemy had
lost more than sixty bombers and Zeros in two days. Read could not
know it, of course, nor could anyone else except the Japanese au-
thorities at Rabaul, but the tremendous losses had made impossible
the mounting of another sustained attack until new elements had
been flown in from the Carolinas some days later.
Despite his crucial role, there was one irony for Read in con-
nection with this victory. While both he and Mason and other de-
serving Coast Watchers would be tendered high American decora-
tions for their work, a British decoration for the "Forty Bombers"
message would be accorded not to Read at all, but to an Australian
Army officer who happened to be on duty and was concerned with
the relay of it from the New Guinea Coast Watcher to Port Moresby
and on to Townsville.
In Brisbane we could hardly believe our luck. Conning the maps
coupled Vith an analysis of the reports began to make it dazzlingly
plain that Read and Mason were incalculably valuable positions:
seemingly every flight that went out of Rabaul droned over Mason's
position; all flights originating out of the satellite field at Kavieng
went over Read's. The cream of the Japanese naval air power was
habitually plotting its own course to its own destruction. If by chance
either the two missed them owing to fogs or some temporary devia-
tion in the enemy's navigation, the other Watchers spotted them.
It was to be that way throughout the whole Guadalcanal campaign;
captured enemy operational data after the war were to tell of the
bloodletting there and elsewhere and of the fact that 50 per cent of
all the best-trained Japanese air personnel was lost within the first
three quarters of 1942.
The solitary unknown Australians out in the islands became
legendary figures among the Americans. Both on Guadalcanal and
38 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
in Brisbane, if you wanted to evoke a smile, it was necessary only
to say: "Forty bombers headed yours!" It caught on during the
critical months when the enemy would hurl his might in his effort to
force the Americans back into the sea, a continuous battle that was
to see thousands of casualties on both sides and drain Allied naval
strength to a new low before the tide finally was turned late in the
year.
The Japanese High Command reacted violently to the events at
Guadalcanal. History was to show that a new and much stronger
combined headquarters of the Japanese Eleventh Air Fleet and the
Eighth Naval Fleet was activated that very day to "prosecute with
all vigor the official Southern Operations Plan." As shall be seen
presently in a sequence dealing with New Britain and New Guinea
during this period, in addition to taking steps to bring in greater
power to deal with the Solomons, the enemy already had imple-
mented an alternate to the ill-fated Coral Sea plan to take Port
Moresby.
This new threat out of Rabaul was posing multiple headaches for
the Allied Intelligence Bureau which certainly could have occupied
everyone concerned full time. But we were to be permitted little
time to take our eyes off the Solomons. The Japanese wasp's nests
there especially at Lunga had not been more than normally dan-
gerous as long as they were not stirred up. Lunga's violent dis-
placement by the Allied assault of August 7 produced reactions in-
creasingly dangerous to the Coast Watchers on Guadalcanal and
even farther afield. Calls for help and evacuation began to filter into
the AIB decoding center. Japanese remnants in strength were re-
forming in the coastal areas and in the jungles and they were patrol-
ling in strength. Furthermore, they were venting the anger of their
defeat upon the natives. It was clear to their commanders that they
had been betrayed by hidden observation agents who probably
could not have survived without native permission. Savage reprisals
against the natives were adopted to influence them to change their
allegiance.
In the northwest part of Guadalcanal Rhoades and Schroeder
were in a bad fix. Especially dangerous patrols with cowed native
guides had infested the areas of these two. They, in turn, were wor-
THE SOLOMONS 39
ried, not only on their own account but about the safety of mis-
sionaries and nuns in the vicinity once they had found the stripped
and bayoneted bodies of two missionaries and two nuns on a beach.
It was only a matter of time before the native-led patrols would
catch up with the rest of them.
In a hasty conference at Brisbane it was decided to shift Hugh
Mackenzie from the New Hebrides to Guadalcanal since, in any
event, the forthcoming hub of the Solomons war would be there,
and effective, mature coordination of ABB operations was requisite
to the preservation of our precious people and to serving COM-
SOUPAC, which now was bracing for the inevitable counter assault
by the Japanese.
Hugh Mackenzie, of the generous mouth and level gray eyes,
who eventually would be brought to Brisbane to recover his health
and amplify his modest reports, reached Guadalcanal just in time
to effect a dramatic and unauthorized rescue.
Mackenzie knew that the tough American general of marines
had placed great value upon him as a coordinator of Coast
Watchers. He strongly suspected that if he made a request to risk
a run for it and rescue Rhoades and Schroeder, he would be
refused. Therefore, he did not ask.
"I told Horton that General Vandegrift would skin us alive
when he did hear about it," Mackenzie told me later. He had
set up AIB's Station "KEN" at the edge of the former Japanese
air strip, now called Henderson Field, and he was talking to Lieu-
tenant D. C. Horton of the Australian Navy. Horton was an ordi-
nary chap with an extraordinary way of getting things done. He
had asked for the job of rescuing Rhoades and Schroeder. "I'd
managed to get a launch," continued Mackenzie. He hitched
around and smiled. "Well, the resident commissioner had gone
away and . . ."
Apparently Horton already had anticipated the requisition in
absentia and he had already refueled. "It'll soon be dusk, you
know," he had said.
They emerged from KEN's fairly snug dugout that had been
constructed by them and occupied only a day before the earlier
40 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
one a combination of tattered canvas and a hole of warm mud
soup had been blown to bits by enemy marksmanship.
Horton knew the coast; once he had been a colonial district
officer. He piloted his little craft to take advantage of every ob-
scure passage and every shadow and at dawn crept into an inlet
where Rhoades and Schroeder should have been. They were there
together with thirteen missionaries and a shot-down airman!
Everyone turned to in order to camouflage the launch against
early-morning air patrols friend or foe, it would make no differ-
ence. During the night Horton repeated his delicate piece of sea-
manship along the thoroughly hostile coast and landed sixteen
grateful people the next dawn.
Later in the morning the telephone rang. "An invitation to call
upon General Vandegrift, I'll warrant," Mackenzie said quietly.
It was, emphatically. Horton arose to accompany him. Mac-
kenzie pushed him down. "My party, Dick."
The interview was all he expected. The general had an ample
vocabulary, and suffered from no inhibitions. He expressed him-
self on the subject of discipline and those who lacked it. He
quickly confirmed Mackenzie's earlier presumption that opera-
tional orders would emanate from no place other than his own
headquarters. There were other pointed allusions to this and that
and Mackenzie found himself outside where the steaming tem-
perature of Guadalcanal felt gratefully cool to him.
Not long afterward Macfarlan staggered in to KEN from his
hide on Gold Ridge. Mackenzie searched his haggard gray fea-
tures and told him that if he could achieve as sick a look as that,
he would put in for home leave and get it. Obviously it was
malaria. How long had Macfarlan had it in such a severe degree?
"About long enough, Hugh. I've clipped my coupons. Brisbane
looks good."
He followed Rhoades and Schroeder out by air, his job superbly
done, another yet to do in Brisbane. MacArthur awarded him a
Distinguished Service Cross. The same award went to Rhoades,
and to Read and Mason all citations marked "Secret." They
could not be publicly announced until after the war. Macfarlan
was given long recuperation leave, then joined us at AIB head-
THE SOLOMONS 41
quarters. He was lucky to have gotten out. Soon afterward there
were no aircraft to spare. Daily the situation for the American
troops grew more critical. Despite extensive losses, the enemy had
managed to land reinforcements on the western end of the island
and daily the defensive perimeter was being pinched in. A series
of violent engagements had tipped the naval strength in favor of
the enemy. At one time three American cruisers and one Aus-
tralian were sunk simultaneously. Carriers went, too. To add to
the constant harassment of daytime bombing now came a new
threat to life or sanity. Japanese naval units of the Eighth Fleet
began shelling Lunga by night. Mackenzie and his little staff were
grateful for their stronger dugout, but none had illusions about
what a direct hit would do.
Then one night, amid the endless crash of the explosions they
had come to know so well, there was a new note. The whole
earth rocked to tremendous concussions at regular intervals. Be-
tween blasts Mackenzie peered up through the acrid murk and
announced: "They've brought in the first team. Those are not
less than fourteen-inch guns out there."
He was right. They timed the incoming rounds. They were
methodically deadly at twenty to the minute. Nerves went ragged.
Heads pounded and seemed to pull apart from the incessant ham-
mering. Once Mackenzie was deep down in another dugout when
it was hit. He was flung violently against a wall. He crumbled up.
"It was only concussion shock," he said later, "but I knew now
there was a limit to what a man could take." Yet even through
all of it Station KEN continued to handle the traffic from Read
and Mason and the others to the northwest, especially from a
hard, dark-miened man named D. C. Kennedy, who was holed
up at a plantation on the southern end of New Georgia Island.
He was the last one in the chain northwest of Guadalcanal to be
able to give warnings; his word was the final prelude to the "red
alert" at Lunga.
In Brisbane, Colonel Roberts studied a radio message from
Mackenzie.
"Kennedy's a bloomin' one-man army, no less," he said. "Look
at this."
42 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
It was a request from the undefeated, undefeatable man of
Segi plantation. He had a loyal following of natives (the natives
were worshiping strength here, too, no doubt) and among them
all they had slain three bargeloads of enemy soldiers who had
ventured too close; captured twenty Japanese pilots who had
been shot down in air flights; rescued twenty-two American pilots
who similarly had been shot down.
"He wants someone to evacuate his stockade and barracks,"
chuckled the controller. He picked up a pencil. "Let's see, you
Americans estimate that it costs twenty-five thousand dollars to
train a pilot. Now then: that's five hundred and fifty thousand
Kennedy has saved his gallant allies!"
"How does he rate the Japanese pilots?" someone asked, just
as Feldt came in.
"Same difference," explained Feldt. "He has a standing offer
to his natives: one case of tinned meat and one bag of rice for
every living airman brought in, Japanese or American only the
Japanese are trussed up on poles and carried in that way."
It was an extremely hazardous but well-paying mission for a
Catalina a few nights later to effect the evacuation. Kennedy
stayed on.
It was the same night that the enemy off the Guadalcanal coast
shifted his pattern again, and the two thousand smaller caliber
shells that raked the Lunga area were described by Mackenzie as
seeming to be even worse than the regular pounding of the big
guns. KEN's dugout withstood it, but outside the land was tor-
tured chaos. The next morning they surveyed the damage.
Only one of the three aerials they had so carefully and scien-
tifically constructed for utmost efficiency still stood. But the trans-
mitting wire, in falling, had become entangled in the head of one
of the few coconut trees still erect. It looked very much as if
KEN would be off the air indefinitely. Still, it was decided to try
to raise some comparatively nearby Coast Watcher and arrange
for relays of urgent traffic.
The operator warmed up his Teleradio and called. To his aston-
ishment he got a response from one of the alert members of the
THE SOLOMONS 43
chain. He asked for a signal strength and readability report. Anx-
iously they waited. It came.
SEEMS IMPROVED. HAVE YOU BEEN MAKING ADJUSTMENTS?
Mackenzie looked at his men and they looked back at him.
Then the strain of the night and those that preceded it broke under
their laughter until the tears came.
Between bombings and bombardments they managed to erect
two or more receiving aerials. In the first traffic to be snared by
them were warnings from Read that the heaviest concentration of
aircraft he had yet observed was now on the expanded ak strip
at Buka village. There were more ships there, too. But why no
friendly bombings of them? It was true that the enemy was enjoy-
ing some immunity. Southwest Pacific Area bombers were em-
ployed day and night trying to prevent enemy reinforcements
from reaching the New Guinea coast and the heavy bombers of
COMSOUPAC were based too far south to make raids profitable.
They could not base closer; there was no fuel for them and little
of anything else except an endless supply of wounded waiting to
be airlifted to base hospitals.
Read's reports were followed by grim news from Mason. Liter-
ally scores of enemy ships of every kind were anchoring within
his range of vision. A tremendous build-up obviously was in
progress. Apparently everything now was awaiting the arrival of
actual assault-troop convoys from the enemy Caroline Islands.
Then a different kind of message came from Mason. The enemy
was out after him and to make sure the Japanese had just landed
at Buin crates of savage dogs trained in jungle trailing.
In Brisbane it gave us a shiver of apprehension as nothing else
had done. War was always dirty business, but somehow this
seemed a new low. Mackenzie pleaded for a bombing mission.
AIB urged it. RAAF did it superbly. Mason's next message in-
cluded his fervent thanks to all concerned for the beautiful accu-
racy of a direct hit on the crates.
In a new message to Feldt, Mackenzie expressed fears that this
was only the beginning of an enemy attempt to clean out the Coast
44 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
Watchers. A priority reply went back. Both Read and Mason would
get off the air and stay off until ordered to resume. They would
hole up in the most secure places inland and avoid capture.
On Maliata Hill, Mason needed no prod; he had it in the form
of urgent reports from his native scouts that not fewer than one
hundred Japanese constituted the latest punitive patrol that had
already set out from Buin to mop up him and his handful of de-
voted followers.
Mason considered. If the enemy was heavily armed, his prog-
ress would be slow in the tortuous country through which Mason
planned to lead him. He would bury his Teleradio and travel
light. With signs of their occupancy obliterated, Mason released
some of his boys to return to their homes for the time being and
with the others, he set his face toward the high, mist-shrouded
ridges inland. Now his life was in the hands of his boys, whose
glistening bodies worked patiently to clear passages just large
enough for them to traverse; the jungle closed up after them. It
was bitter, exhausting work and that night Mason felt the giddi-
ness of exhaustion. But he was heartened by his scouts who re-
ported that as he had foreseen the enemy had made even less
progress. At noon the next day he got it from two observers simul-
taneously that the Japanese had given up and turned back. He,
too, headed back, and by the time the last Japanese had trailed
into Buin, Mason's Teleradio was ready for eventualities. He got
a permission to transmit if absolutely necessary.
An almost identical experience had befallen Read, except that
the enemy out of Buka Passage was more resolute. The second
afternoon had found Read's party slogging through a heavy down-
pour well up into the high interior. They moved with the heavi-
ness of men who were approaching their limit. But there was one
more steep ascent before they could reach their objective of a
small village on the very top of the highest elevation in the entire
area. The miserable trail was almost vertical and slick with black
mud and skinned vines. The afternoon was nearly done when they
achieved that last wretched lap. At the top they dropped in their
tracks to rest on the comparatively open crest.
"It was no choice of mine that we stopped at that one par-
THE SOLOMONS 45
ticular spot," Read said later. "We were dead beat and I was on
the point of dropping off to nap when I happened to open my
eyes for a moment."
The sun had broken through a clearing and a surge of breeze
had driven the mist away. Below, in a glorious panorama of a
Coast Watcher's dream come true, was a convoy of no less than
twelve huge troop transports loaded to the rails with Japanese
soldiers and moving toward the southeast.
Read scrambled to his feet.
"Quick, yufelo!" he yelled. "Wairless belong dis felo, you mak
um hurry alonga tree!"
His weary boys were galvanized into action. They saw now
what the kiap's quick eye had taken in. In an ordered chaos of
their own they put their backs into the business of breaking out
the Teleradio and running an emergency transmitting aerial. For
Read it was a repetition of the scene of August 7 above Buka
Passage.
From the ridge he counted the ships again. Yes, twelve were
in sight. There might have been more, of course. But not one of
these was under ten thousand tons. He realized that this convoy
was carrying enough assault impact to make bitter business of
Guadalcanal. Without a doubt the formidable concentration of
warships Mason had been reporting down south was to serve as
an advance assault and as an escort for this stuff. He correctly
assessed this as the major enemy drive to retake Guadalcanal and
all the central Solomons with it.
Everything now depended on the Teleradio. The connections
were tight. Read patted the transmitter affectionately. To his grin-
ning blacks he expressed his feelings of how good it was to have
the faithful unit. "Wairless i gudfelo samting, dis felo tinkum!" The
boys nodded their noisy assent.
The milliampere needle went to maximum and he knew the
power was radiating from the jury antenna.
Read had not forgotten Brisbane's order for radio silence. But
under the circumstances he was "not very ruddy likely" to ob-
serve it. As he prepared to transmit, he said to himself, "Bougain-
ville's a fair size. We'll just keep on the run."
46 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
Read's warning reached KEN almost simultaneously with an-
other from Mason that now enemy ships of every description were
anchored below him at Buin. Mason listed more than sixty. With
this vital intelligence and much more gathered from non-AIB
sources, COMSOUPAC fully appreciated that the time of deci-
sion had arrived. Nothing could save the worn-down, if now-
reinforced., defenders of Guadalcanal unless the naval and air
strength of the whole command could be rallied to disrupt the
enemy attack before it could hit.
On the night of November 10 the bombardment of Lunga by
Japanese warships, doubtless from the concentration Mason had
kept under observation, was particularly devastating. At dawn the
ships moved back to let the dive bombers take over. That night the
ships came in again for one last softening before the kill. But this
time they were met off Savo Island by an unexpected American
naval force. There was a short, savage fight and the Japanese
were beaten off. More American heavy naval units arrived. Re-
peatedly the opposing forces traded blows. Then one night the
main Japanese escort for the transports that Read had seen were
met head-on by powerful American naval elements. The enemy
was taken under murderous fiat trajectory fire at close range. The
short battle had no equal for quick, savage ferocity.
This left the enemy transports wide open to attack. It came in
successive assault waves from Allied air. The packed convoy was
mauled without mercy until it was no convoy only a remnant
that sought to beach itself before total annihilation.
The Japanese reinforcement attempt was a failure. The cost
had been dreadful for both sides. But the enemy effort in the Solo-
mons never again would be so great as it had been. Even so, he
was still utterly determined, resourceful, and very powerful.
New Year's Eve, 1942 . . .
In Brisbane's brown-out, dense crowds of men and women in
the service garbs of half-a-dozen Allied nations jostled and tramped
and cheered their way aimlessly along Queen Street, George
Street, the City Hall Square, and all the other downtown places
THE SOLOMONS 47
of that overpacked garrison Queensland town. Few knew quite
why they cheered, for the picture was grim enough. Perhaps it
was because they were still alive, or because of Coral Sea, Mid-
way, and Guadalcanal. And there had been another reprieve,
too Port Moresby had been saved.
As has been said, when the Coral Sea victory frustrated the
Japanese in their original plan to capture Port Moresby and thus
give them an anchor in the north for their encircling movement,
the enemy determined upon an overland campaign to do the same
thing. For sheer audacity in the face of stupendous natural ob-
stacles, it was typically Japanese. He had landed troops on the
north coast of New Guinea at Buna, dug himself in and prepared
to assault the Owen Stanley Mountains themselves in order to
take Port Moresby from behind. This formidable range dividing
New Guinea north and south rose wave after green wave to heights
that few white men ever had traversed. Despite concentrated heat,
despite disease, despite endless trails that went up sheer, jungle-
covered sides and went down sheer sides only to go up again the
same way, despite ever-lengthening lines of communication under
continuous Allied air attack, and despite constantly mounting op-
position in front, this insidious threat had crept to within forty
air miles of Port Moresby before it dropped in exhaustion. Then
it had recoiled upon itself, slowly retreating back over the Kokoda
Trail the way it had come.
This threat, too, had originated at Rabaul, that fountainhead
of enemy power to the north. And now not only New Britain was
increasingly dangerous for any Allied Intelligence Bureau activity,
but the New Guinea north coast as well. Plans MacArthur may
have cherished for the acquisition of his own bases on the north
coast once the Solomons were no longer in danger of Japanese
domination would have to await the building of enough force to
smash Buna. Then perhaps he could think of a frontal assault on
Rabaul. Or, if he could not do that, at least he must provide warn-
ing protection for his own flank while he tried to secure such bases
on New Guinea as Lae, Salamoa, and Finschafen for his cam-
paign to return northwestward to the Indies and the Philippines
and finally, Japan itself.
48 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
AIB had become heavily engaged in New Britain; it was per-
forming a vital piece of work before Buna; it had even recruited,
trained, and dispatched its first penetration agents to the Philip-
pines by New Year's Eve of 1942.
But with all this AIB still was tremendously occupied with the
critical situation in the Solomons. A very powerful enemy had
yet to be contained; he would be slowly decimated thousands
of Allied lives, hundreds and hundreds of riddled aircraft, and
whole divisions of Allied warships later
New Year's Eve, 1942 . . .
Midnight on a certain small strip of sandy beach on the north-
east tip of Bougainville. Absolute silence except for the soft purl-
ing of the sea on the sand that showed with pale luminescence
under the starlight. Read studied the radium hands of his wrist
watch. They merged, straight up.
He raised one arm high, then pumped it up and down. On the
beach to the right there was a spark of light. It wavered, nearly
died, but ballooned to a bright orange flame. He turned and faced
the other way. Already a substantial fibre was burning. In back of
him twenty-nine silent men and women huddled in the denser
shadows of foliage. Read took a long breath: it did things to a
man to advertise his presence to the whole world like this after
all those months and especially these last few weeks of hardly
daring to stir without double checking to make certain that a
Japanese patrol led by turncoat natives was not onto him. This
exposure was a calculated risk of the first magnitude. But there
simply was nothing else for it the civilians must be gotten out
of his territory. Without them, he felt that he and his few loyal
natives still could carry on; they could continue to radio vital in-
formation and throw other barbs into the Japanese who now were
stung to true fury by the Coast Watchers who had tipped their
hand at every turn in the crucial battle for Guadalcanal. The
enemy knew now that he could not retake Guadalcanal; the only
thing he could do and this he would if it expended his last man,
ship, and plane would be to seal it off. In his operational book
THE SOLOMONS 49
of "musts," however, was the destruction of the Coast Watchers
on Bougainville. Every day the enemy patrols grew more numer-
ous and more savage. There were murder, arson, rape. The natives
were fearful and they were turning
So all through that day there had been a stealthy gathering of
civilians summoned by still-loyal natives to this place of rendez-
vous. Here, if all went well, a gigantic American submarine the
largest in any navy on this side of the world would appear and
take them off. It had rained steadily. The trail had been a horror
of mud and slippery leaves and entangling vines. But they had
made it including several nuns of advanced age.
So here the year 1943 was born to the soft sighing of palm
fronds and the lisping of the sea.
But wasn't there another sound? From seaward a faint hail?
Read stared. Then he was sure that he could detect a motion-
less shadow well out.
"A quid they're hung up on a ruddy reef," he said to himself.
From the foliage he pulled out a canoe. Bidding the others stay
concealed, he launched the craft and paddled hard. His estimate
had been correct. But with good seamanship on the part of the
American naval personnel manning the power wherry from the
three-thousand-ton U.S.S. Nautilus and some guidance from Read,
the launch and its rubber raft tow were salvaged from the hidden
coral without damage and the beach landing was effected. The
submarine herself had to stand well out, for this underseas giant
needed more than those dangerous shallows in which to swim
safely.
Read directed that the women go first. There were seventeen.
One, a nun, whose habit was spattered with the mud of the
soaked trail, hesitated, then turned and approached him. She ex-
plained that she represented the others in the party when she said
that months ago it was considered that he had been needlessly
adamant in demanding that they evacuate the island while there
still was time, but since then they had learned how right he had
been. She apologized for all the trouble they had been. Read swal-
lowed a tight feeling in his throat and muttered his appreciation
50 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
for her words. Perhaps he had been a bit hard in his direct way;
civilians were not such a bad lot, after all.
Then he turned about, unbelieving. At the very last moment
one of the women, the widow of a planter, announced in emphatic
terms that she had changed her mind and would not go.
"Will you go yourself, Madam?" asked Read icily, "or do you
want to be carried aboard, for that I'll well and truly do now!"
She went. There was no more room. The launch with its heavily
laden tow moved out over the calm sea. Time went by and there
was no reappearance of the launch. Anxiously Read scanned the
hands of his watch. Dawn was not far off and he knew well that
the Nautilus would be compelled to clear the area before first
light. Soon he and the others would have to put back and get
under safe cover. With civilians still to be looked after it would be
grim. Of course there were other civilians on the island, but they
were not in his immediate territory; things were just too hot here.
Finally, the launch returned and just before dawn broke Read
was able to send a message from the Teleradio hidden on the
beach: "Mission accomplished."
He and his natives turned back into the jungle, happily laden
with chocolate bars, cigarettes, tinned hams, razors, mirrors, tooth
paste, and a variety of other things supplied them by the gen-
erous gobs of the Nautilus. Even the conviction of enemy reprisals
to come failed to dim their New Year's party in the bush.
It was a short respite. The enemy was implacable. His patrols
became constant. Nor was he afraid to come inland. The key to
his efficiency lay in his impressment of natives, now demoralized
by a combination of propaganda that was superior to the Allied
brand, and brutality if there was a lack of cooperation.
There was a flurry of AIB priority messages involving Mason.
From Guadalcanal, Mackenzie told Brisbane that reliable infor-
mation indicated the presence of not less than four enemy patrols
of some fifty men each converging on Mason's priceless hide above
the Buin anchorage. There was no time to lose. Mason was or-
dered to bury his Teleradio and anything else he could dispense
with and go light but go fast. He would try to effect a junction
with Read, a hundred and thirty miles of the most rugged walking
THE SOLOMONS 51
through the bush to say nothing of the enemy and his hoard of
native aides. It was learned later that Mason had barely cleared
the old site when the Japanese swept down on it from all sides;
he never would have had a chance.
Read knew Mason only through the medium of the Teleradio.
But the combination of electronics and his own intuition added
up to what he felt was a solid enough appraisal. Somehow, he
was sure, Mason would get through. Anxious weeks later he re-
ported that the jungle telegraph was active, and that he now was
able to trace the progress the little safari was making along
villainous trails made doubly hazardous by repeated traps placed
by the enemy. Read decided to send help.
From the beginning, as the reader will recall, there had been
on Bougainville a detachment of twenty-five Australian soldiers
who had been assigned to guard supplies accumulated there prior
to the outbreak of war. Read queried their officer and got agree-
ment that they would work southward to try to contact Mason. It
proved to be sound tactics, for in due time he had word that the
junction had been effected somewhere in the wild bush and that
the combined party now was proceeding north.
Then came a message from the soldiers that left Read disturbed:
for reasons of his own, Mason had sent the main party forward
while he and one police boy detoured to investigate a camp of
refugee Chinese. If that message bothered him, the next one pro-
duced genuine anxiety. It said that shortly after the separation
had been effected, a strong enemy patrol had been spotted be-
tween them and Mason and now he was cut off. The soldiers
wanted instructions. Read considered all angles and then, examin-
ing again his preconceived assessment of Mason's character sent:
"Wait."
For the next three days Read's boys squatted on their haunches
and watched their kiap. His dark-gray eyes stared unseeing into
the jungle and his jaw, with a strong hint of stubbornness in it,
seemed to set even more firmly. The boys looked at each other
and there was admiration in their glance. Here was a kiap worth
sticking by: he was one to hold fast when action could be foolish.
52 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
And then came the nnmer. The party was just below and com-
ing. A kiap was with them, limping badly.
Read and Mason met, and Read knew how accurate his ap-
praisal had been. The signal he had been waiting to send to AIB
was transmitted by Read just six weeks after Mason's own Tele-
radio had gone silent at Buin.
One of Mason's feet was in bad shape. When he had become
separated, he had taken refuge with a white miner who had been
successfully evading the Japanese since the beginning. A foot blis-
ter had become infected and was suppurating. The miner tended
him for two days, then Mason had hobbled off. Bougainville had
beaten strong men down to defeat despite every assistance, yet
this planter who boasted none of the physical qualities of the cam-
paigner now proposed to make the last lap of it on only one good
foot.
He did it. Read and Mason measured each other and liked what
they saw. They discussed the situation. They were in immediate
agreement on two points as many of the remaining civilians, in-
cluding refugee Chinese, should be evacuated at the earliest op-
portunity, and the soldiers should also go, since they were in poor
shape owing to prolonged exposure to a kind of rugged tropical
life to which they were not acclimatized. They "made a signal"
to Mackenzie, who concurred and asked Brisbane's okay. Bris-
bane sent it, but said that the soldiers were to be replaced by
fresh men from New Guinea who could give the Coast Watchers
some protection. In addition, there would be three new officer
Coast Watchers. In that case would Read and Mason come out
for a most thoroughly earned rest?
The two men looked at each other over mugs of tea. Outside
the hut of bamboo stalks and fiber roof the rain drummed down
in a gray blur. Read shivered slightly and looked into his tea mug,
then at his faithful police boys in their jungle-stained khaki shorts.
Their eyes were on him. He looked at Paul Mason, who smiled
slowly and shook his head. Read put his cup down and chuckled.
Obviously they agreed that neither they nor their black boys would
take to the life of a "base wallah."
He flipped the Teleradio to "on," and Brisbane got its answer.
THE SOLOMONS 53
The next evacuation was set for the last of March at the same
place on the northeast coast. Then came the word that this time
it would not be the Nautilus, but an operational submarine with
compressed spaces that certainly were not designed for the ac-
commodation of passengers. That drew another signal from Read.
It was one that jolted Brisbane. He had no less than twelve women
and twenty-seven children in addition to twelve soldiers in the first
contingent for exchange.
The signal that came back from Brisbane gave no hint of the
soul searching that had gone into its making: the soldiers would
have to wait. Read sighed. So be it. Some of the civilians had
made the trek of a hundred miles to the rendezvous on foot.
The next day Read supervised the concentration of his charges
at the same spot as had sheltered the group on New Year's Eve.
Quietly he spoke to the commander of the downcast soldiers, tell-
ing him to have the men ready "with their kits." The other looked
at him sharply. Read shrugged. He muttered something about
man's inability to forecast the future accurately if at all, and said
good-by for the moment.
What happened that afternoon was not what Read had antici-
pated. A short time after his conversation with the troop com-
mander he was staring at the small Japanese ship that had come
into the very eye of the evacuation area and dropped anchor a
few hundred yards offshore. What a situation! Here he had
gathered all the weak and the helpless he could sweep up and de-
livered them straight into the hands of the enemy. And the sub-
marine as well.
He was everywhere at once. There were men, women, and chil-
dren to hide in the jungle; there was a small fleet of canoes to
conceal. There was a warning message to be sent to AJQB at
Guadalcanal to warn the submarine not to come in. And if sheer
mental persuasion had power, then Read bent every iota of his to
influence the Japanese to stay aboard their ship and leave with-
out landing.
The day wore on, and with each measure of light that went out
of the sky Read's hopes rose another notch; surely the enemy
would not land in the darkness. But why were the Japanese here
54 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
at all? Were they going to establish a base, or rendezvous with
another ship?
There was no sleep for him that night.
Shortly after dawn the enemy ship hauled in her anchor chain,
her crew sluicing off the links as they came inboard. The vessel
slowly gathered way and left. He sent another message. It would
be tonight. Meanwhile, they could wait and rest.
At dusk the signal fires were lighted. Almost instantly the sub-
marine rose out of the depths and shook the sea from her. Read
launched a canoe and went out.
Lieutenant Commander Foley of the U.S.S. Goto was chuckling.
The Goto had spotted the unwelcome visitor immediately. "He
can thank his lucky stars you and your party were there hiding on
the beach," he had said. "Otherwise we would have blasted him
sky high. We were practically sitting under him all the time!"
Read cleared Ms throat. "I ... " he began, looking straight at
Foley, "have fifty-one persons to go out." This figure, of course,
included the weary soldiers.
The American's eyebrows went up. Then he grinned, called his
executive officer, and discussed it with him. He turned back.
"If we can dog down the hatch over the head of the last one,
we might say we're full. Bring 'em on!"
There was a story that the last six were made comfortable in
the torpedo tubes.
Now on Bougainville there remained the last of the soldiers and
a Bishop Wade and some of his people. Read sent word for them
to be ready for the next and last evacuation party.
It was in the interval between the second and the last evacua-
tion that Read observed nearly one hundred Japanese Zero planes
take off from the greatly expanded air strip at Buka village and
strike off for the southeast. Again his famous signals preceded
the raiders. The ensuing sky battle off Guadalcanal was one
of the most devastating the enemy had yet experienced, for there
was no doubt that he already had expended the cream of his ex-
perienced pilots while the Allied fighters were just achieving their
maximum efficiency, and with their added advantage of ample
time and height, the issue was certain.
THE SOLOMONS 55
The last evacuation went off without a hitch. Now no civilians
remained except some refugee Chinese and possibly a few white
men fairly well able to take care of themselves. A new burden
had been laid upon Read, however, for a RAAF Catalina in at-
tempting a resupply drop near the high country had crashed into
a mountain. Some crew members had been killed outright. A
brave but futile attempt had been made to carry the critically in-
jured survivors to the submarine evacuation spot before the ship
left. A camp inland was established for them. On the other side
of the scales there now were several fresh, experienced Coast
Watchers. They included an old New Guinea friend of Read, one
"Wobbie Wobinson" Captain E. D. Robinson of the Australian
Army was unable to articulate the letter "r"; result: "Wobbie."
Stories of "Wobbie" were legion. Feldt later told of the pur-
ported initial conversation between him and Read. It had gone like
this:
Read: "I had it first that the 'Robbie' coming in was c Dry Rob-
bie.' " He was referring to the only non-drinking Coast Watcher
in the whole organization, Lieutenant H. A. F. Robertson of the
Australian Army.
Wobbie, emphatically: "Not I, mate. I likes me pint." (In
peacetime he had owned a pub in Sydney,) Then he asked Read
if he had heard how convivial indulgence in the cup that cheers
had done no less than save the very life of still another "Robbie."
This time he meant Flying Officer R. A. Robinson on Mackenzie's
staff at Lunga. Read had not, and awaited elucidation.
Wobbie: "Well, now. Y' see a wuddy Nip ai'cwaft that had
been plaguin' th' Yanks had just come back t' pay anothah visit
and th' Yanks was lettin' him have what-foah with all the ack-ack
in the place. The wed wa'ning signal had been displayed all th 5
time but ouah man was havin' none of it because th' beeah was
on that day. So he was sittin' theah and he had just tilted his head
back t' get the last fine twickle o' it, when a wuddy hunk o'
shwapnel comes in and actually nicks his wuddy fo'head. Now
then, it's plain t' be seen that if he'd been sittin' in a nondwinkin f
position like T)wy Wobbie' would, n' doubt he'd now be flyin'
56 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
about by means of wuddy wings of his own Let that be a
lesson f you, Jack Wead!"
Other things also had been occurring at Lunga. The original
Marines had been relieved during December 1952 and had joy-
fully pushed off for Australia. With them had gone Major General
A. Vandegrift. Major General A. M. Patch had replaced that warm
friend of the Coast Watchers as commander of ground forces,
now predominantly army infantry. To Mackenzie's relief, General
Patch was no less solid. The same could not be reported of his
intelligence officer. Totally untrained for his job, this individual
was described by Mackenzie as one who "did not seem able to
absorb much knowledge of the geography of the Solomon Islands.
His plan was based on his desire to rectify the unsymmetrical ap-
pearance on his map of the colored flags indicating Coast Watch-
ing stations." The G2 put his "plan" before General Patch. It is
not known whether it was at this time that the American com-
mander sent a message to Washington requesting the assignment
of the most experienced Intelligence officer they could lay hands
on (he got him in the person of Colonel E. E. Brown) but it is
known that he sent for Mackenzie and assured him that no one
and he meant no one would disturb the Coast Watchers except
Mackenzie himself, and that thereafter he should consider him-
self as having direct access to the general's command post at any
time.
It had been a gratifying moment. But Mackenzie found himself
increasingly unable to rally to good luck when it did occur. The
frightful ordeal of November and the unceasing strain, coupled
with low-grade malaria, were taking their toll. At last he radioed
Feldt. Feldt decided to investigate in person. He flew out. A few
days later we were dismayed at Mackenzie's urgent message of
critical illness not of himself but of Eric Feldt. The untiring
chief of the Northeast Area section had collapsed while flying in
a small military plane. He now was in capable American medical
hands. Diagnosis: coronary thrombosis. Prognosis: fair, under con-
ditions of absolute rest.
Eventually he was flown back to Brisbane and hospitalized. It
THE SOLOMONS 57
was the end of active military service for him. Yet from his sick-
room he eventually would compile the finest complete story of the
Coast Watchers to come out of the war.
The casualties of war were not restricted to the fighting fronts.
In Brisbane devoted, dogged Colonel Merle-Smith also had passed
the limit of physical elasticity. He was told to rest, and while re-
luctantly complying, suifered a heart seizure. Flown back to main-
land United States, he died in New York.
On Guadalcanal, Mackenzie persisted through a haze of exhaus-
tion until Commander I. D. J. Pryce Jones could take over at KEN.
Then he was evacuated to Australia. The drain on his vitality had
been too much and the low-grade malaria degenerated into feared
"blackwater" fever. He was critically ill for months. Upon his
eventual recovery he came to us at AD3 headquarters in Heindorff
House, Brisbane, where his quiet friendliness and unassuming ef-
ficiency would be strengthening factors at all times.
Meanwhile a slight man with snow-white hair, frosty eyebrows
over friendly pale blue eyes, and a granite-like jaw had taken over
from Feldt. Commander J. C. McManus was not an "islander" but
he was as capable as he was fair, and he was a champion of every-
thing and everyone related to Coast Watching. It was plain that he
would be accepted, even by the clannish, unpredictable, independent
"islanders" themselves.
A development that was to have far-reaching effect on Coast
Watching had its inception at the time he took over. This was a
plan for greatly expanding the scheme which Kennedy on Segi Island
had been employing so successfully against the enemy the recruit-
ment of volunteers among qualified natives to serve as trained, of-
ficially enrolled guerrillas under the command of the Coast Watch-
ers themselves. Eventually the plan would result in the development
of splendid battalions that would become the terrors of the Japa-
nese, on New Britain and New Guinea as well as the Solomons;
they would account for the bulk of the more than fifty-four hundred
enemy killed and nearly fifteen hundred wounded officially credited
to the Northeast Area section. The high proportion of killed to
wounded was significant.
It fell on McManus, also, to implement an earlier decision to
58 ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
revitalize Coast Watching on Bougainville. One of the newcomer
Coast Watchers was Lieutenant J. H. Keenan of the Australian
Navy. He was to take over Read's old spot in the north, while Read
and Robinson, together with some soldiers in support, were to
locate on the east coast in a more central area. Mason would head
south for his old location, which seemed to be quieter now.
Any appearance of peacefulness was wholly deceptive. Hardly
had Read gotten into position and Mason traversed a part of his
rugged way back when trouble was reported from every point.
Some of it was because of the inexperience of some of the new-
comers, but mainly it was the aggressive enemy and his host of co-
operating natives. Mason, hemmed in and having lost one of the
new officers to a Japanese bullet, turned in his tracks and set his
course for a reunion with Read or the Buka force. But the latter had
been attacked, too, and Lieutenant Keenan had escaped only by
prompt evasive action. He later returned to his burned-out site and
prepared to continue reporting movements at Buka. But the enemy
in turn was watching him.
Then the lightning hit Read.
The observation camp he and Robinson had set up was high on
a ridge. Some miles to the westward were the soldiers. Japanese
were known to have been in the area and Reed, the old hand, em-
ployed every device of his jungle wile to prevent surprise. An "outer
guard" was established at some distance from his lookout along the
only trail that would lead directly into it. Then came a s
