NGVR: Jonah Has Marched Out: Too Real

Their ranks included traders, planters, mining engineers, native labour overseers, aircraft mechanics, executives of various tropical trading concerns, Government health officials, patrol officers. In addition to this tiny fighting force in embryo there was a trained nucleus of native constabulary working with the administrations in both British New Guinea and Papua.

This was the set-up when the Japanese, already advancing down the Malayan Peninsula, opened a second prong of potential Pacific conquest by driving south from the Mandated Islands of the Carolines toward the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomons and New Guinea. Action began with a suddenness that might have paralysed a less conscientious defence force. When the Japanese first bombed Rabaul on the 3rd January, 1942, this main outlying base was defended by two coast defence guns, two anti-aircraft guns, a garrison of 1400 troops, some of them noncombatants, and a puny air force consisting of a few Catalinas, Hudsons, and Wirraways. 

Port Moresby itself was the vital bastion between the Japanese advance and the continent of Australia, but at that time it was defended virtually by a token garrison. Within a fortnight of the first attack on Rabaul the Japanese had converted what had appeared to be a "tropic sideshow" into a large-scale air saturation operation, obviously a preliminary to invasion. Using a carrier-borne force of light bombers, dive bombers, and fighters, in conjunction with land-based heavy bombers, they struck over a vast area of the islands in an attempt to confuse our defences as to which of the attacks were diversionary and which were necessary preparations for out-right invasion. 

Although attacks were generally heavy over the whole island perimeter, the heaviest raids were made on Rabaul, Bulolo,
and Lae. On the 23rd January Rabaul was invaded by a Japanese task force estimated to consist of more than twenty warships and transports carrying 17,000 picked soldiers and marines, and a covering air force probably aggregating 250 modem aircraft. Against the fury of the pre-invasion "blitz" Rabaul gave gallant but vain resistance; and within four hours of the Japanese attack the main base in New Britain was under the Japanese flag and the Australian garrison was either killed, captured, or attempting to struggle to safety through the tangled jungles of The Bainings.

CIVILIAN EVACUATION

With the fall of Rabaul heavy raids continued on the New Guinea mainland, which was obviously next on the roster of the Japanese military plans; and the first important task of the N.G.V.R. was to see to the evacuation of women, children, and all civilian men either too old or unfit for military service. The N.G.V.R. performed a magnificent task in assembling refugees at stated points, caring for the sick and wounded, in finding routes by which they could cross the mountains to safety, and in arranging for air transportation to get them away. 

In what was probably the craziest rescue fleet the world has ever seen battered old mining transport planes, two seater Moths, and ancient fabric-covered biplanes-more than 2000 men, women and children were brought from isolated tropical outposts, from mining towns and trading ports, and taken to the safety of the Australian mainland. The job was done with the loss of only one suitcase.

The N.G.V.R. at Lae then swung into military action in exactly the same way that an equivalent V.D.C. organization would have gone into action had similar attacks or similar threats been delivered against the Australian mainland. Lae itself, which, although capital of British New Guinea, had been virtually undefended, had been tremendously battered by a low-altitude attack carried out by sixty Japanese bombers and fighters the day before the invasion of Rabaul. 

In less than an hour. property worth 1250,000 was ravaged by bombs or destroyed by flames. Behind Lae  in the mountains, half of Bulolo was in ruins. The N.G.V.R. brought order to the ruined town and in blinding tropical rainstorms escorted the civilian population through terrible swamps and jungles to safety.

One 62-year-old trader who insisted on remaining with the N.G.V.R. to defend Lae it the Japanese came had to be forcibly sent from the area, and he finished up by setting the pace for a party of aged men and women and also children who walked and went in native canoes all the way from Salamaua and Lae to Buna and up the track to Kokoda. Other refugees went by mountain trail to Wau.

With all non-essential civilians out of the area N.G.V.R. officers, in co-operation with the Port Moresby garrison, set about establishing a main jungle force in the Markham Valley, to be instructed, supplied, and fed by the Moresby garrison, and if possible, to be reinforced as rapidly as men and materials were available.

SCORCHED EARTH AT LAE

A patrol was sent in to Lae to ensure that a scorched earth policy had been carried out. The Japanese planes themselves had done an efficient job, but it was discovered that the untouched Lands Office was abandoned in perfect order. It even contained a full stock of printed maps of various New Guinea districts which would have been a prize of the utmost value to the enemy. The office and its contents were destroyed, together with fuel dumps, abandoned motor cars and liquor stores. When the tiny column of N.G.V.R. men moved back into the jungle through blinding rain and along a native track which was a slowly moving stream of treacly black mud, Lae was a silent and shattered capital containing nothing of value to the enemy. Even a supply of bullion brought down from the Bulolo Valley mines was discovered in the safe of a bank. One of the N.G.V.R. men offered to act as an amateur cracksman, blew the safe, and the gold was taken to an airfield from which it was flown by bomber to Port Moresby.

The N.G.V.R. had six weeks in which to establish itself as a valuable force assisting, the main fighting force now being built up in Port Moresby with all the speed possible. At the end of that brief period, on the night of the 8th March, the Japanese invaded and captured Lae and Salamaua after the cautious preliminary of heavy air and naval bombardment against two completely abandoned towns. The N.G.V.R. were able to organize native patrols, to enlist natives for the carriage of supplies, to keep a close watch on Japanese movements and to report to Port Moresby enemy establishments and defence positions. 

In addition, it was their task to harass the enemy in any way possible by demolition, night raids, and other methods. They also kept the Japanese pinned down over the critical period to the coastal fringe by sniping and ambushing along the few jungle-choked tracks that led into the mountains behind Lae. At other points in a vast area, always as close as possible to the Japanese positions, they did invaluable work as spotters and outposts, feeding vital information into intelligence headquarters at Moresby, and even in selecting desirable targets for the attention of our bombers operating over the enemy positions.

ABSORBED INTO ARMY

As strength increased in Port Moresby, and as sufficient material aid arrived to make it possible to reinforce the jungle outposts, the N.G.V.R. became absorbed gradually into orthodox Army units on the same basis as troops enlisted on the mainland and sent to New Guinea as regular members of the Army. The men were given regulation uniform, ample and modern equipment, better rations, and more efficient medical services. Within a few months some of them, down for a brief spell of leave, could be seen in mainland cities wearing the distinctive green and yellow colour patch and the shoulder insignia of the N.G.V.R. 

Much of the work they had carried out, during the critical period when we had to keep the Jap guessing, was subsequently done on a larger scale by trained personnel of the A.I.F. independent companies, but the N.G.V.R. had laid the basic groundwork, had established jungle camps and supply points. had carried out valuable patrols which had opened new supply routes, and had done much to fill in the gaps in maps which for a long time had been one of the big problems of utilizing a fighting force in areas of New Guinea almost completely unexplored.

The work of the N.G.V.R. continues. Many of its members are working with the Australian-New Guinea administrative unit as interpreters, administrators and overseers of native workmen. Some are attached to alternative infantry units, and to scouting patrols. Some are still co-operating with independent company units. Because of their knowledge of local conditions and customs, and because of their familiarity with the tough terrain of New Guinea, many of the former N.G.V.R. fighters have proved invaluable in selecting potential sites for the air strips which have enabled the 5th Air Force to drive the Japanese out of their island holdings, and in supervising the actual construction of fields.

It is impossible to more than skim the surface of this story, for so much of it cannot be told until hostilities cease. The very basis of the unit's first active service was one of the utmost secrecy, and much of its later life was still to be secret. The Japanese learned to fear the stealthy figures that haunted the tangled tracks of the Markham and Huon Gulf and the Waria. N.G.V.R. men fought valiantly

and bravely, without much recognition. They operated up in the sago swamps of the terrible Sepik country, where head-hunting and cannibalism are matters of everyday occurrence, in scores of remote jungle outposts. Details of the adventures of the men in many of these areas cannot yet be given. When they can they will form a thrilling story, almost unparalleled in this war for drama, suspense, and colour.

The significance of the story of the N.G.V.R. in this outline of the history of the V.D.C. is that it proved conclusively that a civilian organization, created for home defence, could perform vitally important military service during a period of active military operations when it was impossible to bring any weight of orthodox defence to bear against the enemy. In the vital period of a few months before and after the Japanese landing on the actual island of New Guinea, much depended on the spirit, training, and efficiency of the tiny force of "part-time soldiers" enlisted in the N.G.V.R. They did what they were asked to do. Those of them still capable of performing military service are carrying on with the job.

"B3/73"

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