Patrol from Vanimo to Amanab and return, 1962
(A Coy, PIR) led by Lt P. A. Stokes

Vanimo was idyllic, far more so than Manus in fact. The Officers’ and Sgts’ Messes were right on a beautiful white sandy beach separated from it only by a Haus Wind and a row of coconut trees. Government Vanimo as opposed to Mission Vanimo was situated on the south side of a peninsula of land resembling a head jutting northwards, beneath it was a narrower neck which formed a small grass airstrip running from beach to beach east/west across the peninsula. Beneath that was the collar which was the PIR Outstation. The whole PIR camp in fact had a frontage on two beaches: on the east side Daumlinge Bay and on the west Dakriro Bay. Below that again rather like a shoulder sash running from the north-west shoulder towards a southeast waist was another much larger all weather strategic airstrip in the process of construction by a Troop of Army Construction Engineers. They lived in a bush camp at the Western end of the PIR Outstation. They were in fact a detachment of a Construction Squadron at Wewak which was building a road from Wewak to Maprik and who also lived in a bush camp adjacent to the new PIR Moem Barracks.

The inland or Western beach was not very satisfactory, having less sand and more pukpuks than the idyllic Eastern side of the peninsular. It was also where the main Vanimo wharf was (for what that was worth). This Western beach was on the eastern side of Vanimo Harbour, a bay about two miles across on the western side of which was Mission Vanimo. A substantial stream called Wara Daunda ran into this bay half-way between the mission and the camp. Half an hour’s walk west of Mission Vanimo was Warumo village, four hours further west was Mushu village and four hours west again was Wutung which was mainly on the eastern side of the Dutch NG border but in fact often straddled it. The capital of Dutch NG, Hollandia was only a further day’s walk to the west. The coastal plain was not more than a mile or two wide at the widest before it arched sharply upwards into the foothills of the substantial Bewani Mountains, a jungle clad, and until that time an impenetrable massif.

The small grass airstrip served as a Parade Ground, a market-place, a football ground, an open air theatre and at various times a five hole golf course. The construction of the new airstrip begun the year before, together with the occupation of Moem Barracks, was the first indication that Australia had some sort of strategic reasoning going on. The airstrip took a year to build and there was some anecdotal evidence to suggest that the first C130 to land on it was indeed Indonesian by night and by accident late in 1962. That was never verified although there are some hair-raising stories of Indonesian incursion both deliberate and accidental over the next few years one of which I was to experience myself first-hand some years later and a few including one hilarious one described by Brian McFarlane in his book We Band of Brothers

Each of the Pl Comds was to do a short one-week patrol and a longer five –six week patrol into the Sepik and/or border hinterland. We had been in Vanimo perhaps six weeks when I did my short stint up to Wutung on the border. I was amazed at how unfit I had become in the few weeks since we left Moresby. By the time I returned I had lost over a stone mainly as a result of not being able to eat sufficiently. We foolishly ate the native ration packs on patrol which had the wrong nutrition values for Europeans and were unpalatable enough to warrant refusal until one became really hungry after about four or five days. By then the average Australian could easily match the native intake of rice and bully beef. Even so the coastal journey to Wutung provided plenty of coconuts, kaukau, corn and watermelon which we could buy from the native gardens, so I wasn’t completely without sustenance.

Sometime in May I think it must have been, I set off on a patrol of five or six weeks to skirt the Bewanis and end up in the Waris just north of a recently established Patrol Post at Amanab. The Waris was a region centred in Dutch New Guinea but like all traditional lands acknowledged no colonial boundaries and much of it at the time was in the Trust Territory of NG. All of these places were moveable feasts and villages often moved 5,000 metres or more to follow their gardens in search of fertile soils and to rest tired soils. The maps were appalling, being wartime US things of a 1:63,360 or one inch to the mile scale. Interestingly, within a year we were getting newly printed maps of the border from Australia at 1:50,000 or 1:100,000 and none of the new maps contained any information more recent than 1944 despite huge amounts of information forwarded to JIB over ten years from both PIR and admin sources represented by dozens of patrols. Copious detailed reports had been written together with numerous revised maps verified by more than one source, the contents of which obviously never went further than some bureaucrat’s desk at the JIB, later the JIO and still later the DIO. I never recovered my confidence in JIB and I remain skeptical to this day about what they were capable of achieving. I was to be doubly troubled over fifteen years later as I prepared to go to Malaysia as a Defence Adviser and was briefed at JIO.

I no longer have access to the old maps or my report, so all of what follows is the work of memory. I set off into an immediately mountainous hinterland carrying my allotted supply of five days’ rations, spare clothing, spare boots ABTS (brand new) fifty rounds of 7.62 ammo to be held centrally for the platoon together with £15 in one-shilling pieces (300 shilling pieces) to pay carriers, and two or three pounds of salt for similar purposes. All in all, my load was twice what the soldiers carried considering they wore shorts and went barefoot anyway. Within a day I was stonkered, the coins alone weighed 8 lb. (3.5 Kg) so Erema, the acting Pl Sgt effected a redistribution, and I was able to survive into day 2.

At the end of Day 3 we were to reach the village of Kilipauand cross the PualRiver on the log/rope bridge. When we got there the river was over a hundred yards wide, most of the village was two feet under water and there was no sign of a bank on the far side; the track to Pagei, my destination for Day 4 was under water. None of this was in the script, and what was doubly complicated I was scheduled to get an air resupply at Pagei on Day 5 or 6 at the latest. Using the very bad radio reception of the WS A510 designed for mainly CW over long distances the OC suggested I look for a DZ close by. If I hadn’t been so buggered, I would have floored myself laughing.

Next morning the water had dropped slightly and some oli appeared on the Pagei track way over the other side and they were only up to their knees in water. They whooped and hollered and let us know that only an hour further on, the track actually climbed into dry land or at least mud all the way to Pagei. I nominated a volunteer islander to swim across with a rope. He foolishly put the rope around his waist but got to a fallen branch well short of the far bank and proceeded to drown as the force of the rope in the current dragged him under. Next thing there was a great whoop and Erema came belting down the river from well upstream on our side; he was on a log and somehow managed to get to Leruk the drowning Manus Islander and got the rope from around his waist.

I was almost paralysed with fear at what had happened when Erema started swimming and wading tree branch by tree branch until he was about thirty metres further on than Leruk and was actually standing up to his waist on the far bank. He then managed to find the track with the help of an oli and was now about thigh deep in water. Leruk followed him and by various shouts we agreed we would all be better off wet on the far bank than dry on the home side. So I teamed up non-swimmers with swimmers and we made rafts of our ponchos two by two, a technique which I had learned at SME many years earlier and which was the most valuable piece of military innovation I was ever to learn. I rigidly inspected and tested every raft and after a few mishaps and the passage of two hours we were all standing on the Government track, me nearly waist deep and some of the lads nearly neck deep. We waded/swam along the track all in our jocks or equivalent whooping, shouting and pulling and pushing our rafts, every now and then someone disappearing into a hole until we reached dry land by early afternoon. We stopped, sorted ourselves out and had a brew and a fag. I sent my sig Okapia on ahead with Cpl Baior and three other soldiers to set up his aerial and establish comms from Pageiby evening sched time. The soldiers were in terrific spirits after the ordeal as it would be grist for the mills of their patrolling tales for the future. We got to Pagei just on dark; Okapia was in already in touch with Vanimo and I was able to confirm the airdrop for the next day and order dry cigarettes and another pair of gaiters to be added to the load.

Pagei was a seedy village with an unenthusiastic Luluai. The villagers felt hard done by because they had built an airstrip years ago in the expectation of plenty cargo and no plane ever landed, however the strip was a valuable DZ, and we took our fourteen days resupply. We stayed in Pagei for a couple of days while I visited a couple of border villages. I’m no longer sure whether the visits to Sekotiau and Sekofro were from Pagei or from Simog further south. Sekotiau was in Australian territory by several thousand metres, but it was administered by the Dutch. Sekofro was definitely in Dutch territory, but I decided to visit it anyway pleading ignorance because it was marked on the map on our side of the border. Sekofro had only been visited a day or two earlier by the Dutch Controlleur. They spoke Malay which my Vanimo soldiers could speak anyway. There was a fine native built school and a Catholic haus lotu (native built church). The catechist and the teacher spoke broken but intelligible English, enough to indicate to me that they were apprehensive of the gathering move to give them holus bolus to the Indonesians. The teacher told me that the Controlleur said if that happened, they were all to move immediately to their wantoks at Sekotiau and base themselves in Australian territory. This subsequently happened in many places on the border.

Back in Pagei I got a taste for wild fowl eggs and guria, the large pigeon about the size of a chicken. Unfortunately, the only way the soldiers would eat it was to boil it. It tasted like turkey and was a protected bird and could only be killed by Europeans in self defence; who could ever have imagined a pigeon being so vicious that it needed to be shot at regularly?? Wild fowl eggs were rich, like duck eggs but were nearly all yoke and almost as big as a cassowary egg. Unfortunately, the second one I tried had a half-formed chicken inside which Baior leapt on and consumed with relish. It made me feel sick so from then on I insisted that mine be poached. In fact, there were very few that weren’t almost fully fertile, but I was always indulged by the soldiers when there was a clean one which they invariably gave me because they would eat anything. The Pagei natives ate little meat, and their staple diet was sago, they had no vegetables or even coconuts or bananas. They were certainly lacking in protein and that was to become even more evident as I got deeper into the Bewanis.

When we went into a village, we normally stayed in the Haus Kiap; a rest house in each village built for the itinerant patrol officers; there was normally another larger hut built for the kiap’s police entourage. Our seniors always assumed we set up camp and acted tactically which would have been a hell of an imposition and what we did no one in authority would have known anyway because they rarely (up to that time) ventured out. Each village had a village book like a cross between a census and a visitors’ book. In it were recorded the routine census, births, deaths and other occurrences and it included hilarious and profane remarks by various kiaps, missionaries, liklik doktas, didimans and PIR officers over the years. Whenever we stayed in villages, which was probably 30% of the time, we stayed in the kiap colonies, but we always posted two sentries.

We recruited sufficient carriers to carry our seven days extra supplies, we only needed about six carriers fortunately because there was no enthusiasm for the job at one shilling or a tablespoon full of salt a day. Once through the Bewanis the predominant river flow was south and west towards the Sepik where the flows debouched around Green River Patrol station on the Sepik itself. North of the Bewanis around Kilipau the rivers flowed generally north and east to the north coast west of Sissano. The Pual for instance had quite a large delta at a village known as Kru Kru hence the Pual was known locally as Wara Kru Kru. The people north of the Pual at Kilipau seemed different types to those we found further south.

I was able to discharge the carriers and guide a few days south-east of Pagei when we hit Kilifas and Fas No 2. These were evil places. The men, when we could find them, were morose and unhelpful and whole hamlets were underfed. The women were almost untermenschen and when they did appear they generally did so suckling a piglet. The village books were full of foreboding and dire warnings of Sanguma (witchcraft) and disease. I sneered at the former but experienced the latter with a vengeance. The books seriously warned the reader to look out for corpses in trees which was how their dead were disposed of. We didn’t see any, but we could sure smell them, and the people also took on that unmistakable rotting corpse smell. The last kiap patrol had told the Luluai that if the practice didn’t cease, he would be gaoled; fat lot of good that did! We had also now entered fully into the land of the phallocrypt, a penis gourd worn by the men as the only form of covering. It was what the natives called a sel kambang, a dried bean gourd of varying size and shape. The soldiers referred to them as Bokis Kok. There were various practices associated with the phallocrypt the most common being the rapid clicking of the gourd with the fingertip to express wonder, surprise or approval.

From Kilifas we turned westward to the border and after about a week of tortuous mountainous walking from Pagei, often for hours through swirling river beds we arrived at Simog whence I was to take my next air resupply. The only clear spot was the river bed which was a problem because the day we arrived the river was in spate and the mountains whence it rose looked thoroughly ominous and rain filled. Once again, the river gods smiled as they had done before and the next day the river bed was dry enough to take a drop provided it came in the morning and was on target.

By now two or three soldiers had succumbed to a serious fever and by the time of the airdrop I had at least three who were incapable of moving. One of them, a highlander called Yomba seemed close to death; his temperature was off the scale and emi laik dai. (He was about to die). Half the soldiers were convinced it was Sanguma and we moved from the wretched village to a spot some hundreds of yards away at the soldiers’ suggestion. I noticed that when my shelter was built the soldiers built their shelters considerably closer to mine than in the past.

The airdrop was successful, and we got a few more medical supplies. We used penicillin needles to try and bring down the temperatures but most of these shots were clogged solid and were quite useless. We gave Yomba a chloroquine injection which I had no idea how to administer and my semi-literate medical orderly Mirou was no better. However, he did improve by next morning.

I got another pair of boots and gaiters in the airdrop, my third set of boots and third set of gaiters. My second set of boots was now on the point of disintegration, so I had one new set left, which was to disintegrate before I got back to Vanimo. These were boots that had been in storage since 1945. I also got a brief note from Ben and two very cold cans of beer which had obviously been frozen because they were misshapen. That was a great favour from someone who was a teetotaler

We had taken about three weeks supply at Simog because the idea was to patrol out and come back to a firm base. What happened next is a considerable blur. It may have been from here that I visited Sekofro, but I am confused. We got to Imonda and Imonda on the Rocks which were large villages on the Australian side of the Dutch controlled Waris complex, before setting off for Amanab which was an unscheduled visit but there was a kiap there and he may have had some answers to the fevers we were getting. I then became the fourteenth casualty of the dreaded “not malaria” fever. I got it worse than anyone, I was delirious for at least 24 hours and for the next two days would have been happy to give up the ghost. Erema insisted that I be carried to Amanab to painim balus and be evacuated back to Vanimo. It sounded like a good idea for three or four hours but in the end, I was aching in every limb and couldn’t stand the pain of the jolting. So, we propped until I could stagger two days later and we arrived back in Simog about a week later with me about two stone lighter and as weak as a kitten.

The concern and the compassion of the soldiers was real, and I suppose I was also their insurance policy against the perceived effects of sanguma. Whatever the reason I will never forget the genuine concern, leadership and initiative of Erema especially and the honest sorrow at my illness they all showed. Still, we had a couple of weeks patrolling to do and if we were to go back on the approved route via Sumumini it would take at least that. Besides which we all wanted to be gone from the hell hole of Simog/Kilifas. We had to get four or five carriers and a guide from Simog and that required some stern action on the part of our two attached policemen I’d rather not go into.

The next ten days or more were hell as the only route took us through long stretches of river bed about calf deep. After a few days the swirling sand started to get in through the wrecked third pair of gaiters and interact with my sox, slowly working like fine sandpaper removing layers of skin. We spent hours each day in rivers and on two occasions managed to get inland by the skin of our teeth as the streams flash flooded in two or three eighteen-inch tidal waves with all the debris behind them. The guides told you what you wanted to know; ples ino longwe or if they were brave ples i longwe liklik or if they were prepared to risk violence being done to their persons ples i longwe tumas or ples i longwe moa yet. From my point of view nothing was close, and every objective was miles too far no matter how confident the guides were; and the further the objectives were the more the guides got blamed.

About five days from Simog one of my highlanders, Dege/Maumile decided we were going the wrong way and he was too tired, so he propped at a riverbank as we were climbing out yet again to ascend another small Everest. When the Highlanders got a big worry, they took dumb insolence to new levels of perfection. At another time and in another place, I would have been infinitely patient and reasoned with him, but I too was feeling very poorly so I brought my stout 6 foot walking staff down with great force onto the top of his silly wooly head. He groaned a little but appeared fairly unaffected because the highland skull has the strength of reinforced concrete. What happened next was instructive, the three NCOs started to belt him, and I had to stop the two policemen from getting stuck into him with their rifle butts. I had no more trouble with him – ever. And the rest of the platoon murmured support and approval and ostracized him for several days. I felt as though I had reached a milestone of some sort and after nearly two years in country, I was developing a modicum of understanding of the native psyche.

We reached the coast about an hour east of Vanimo after 35 days, I think. For the last three days I had no gaiters, and I was chewing through my last pair of boots. (The QM in Taurama later put up a case that I was to be charged the cost of the boots as they were not an expendable item, and I was only entitled to one pair – he was shot down in flames by no less than the OC). The skin of my feet and legs from just below my calves was rubbed raw on both legs. My temperature was well above 100 F for the last few days, and I knew I hadn’t shaken off my “not malaria.” I had been asked to stay out an extra night in order for my return to coincide with the farewell visit of General Wade and his wife (I can’t remember his position, maybe he was AG). He was accompanied by Ralph Eldridge, the Area Comd and the CO and maybe the incoming CO as well, I can’t remember. By then I was beyond caring but as it turned out it played into my hands.

As I marched into camp in mid-morning with this scruffy lot of soldiers I was in a state. I had lost over three stone, I still had a temperature and when I drew the platoon up for inspection the General refused to inspect, ordered me to fall out immediately and join him and his wife and entourage in the mess for morning tea. Molly Wade was very attentive and ordered me some boiled eggs and plenty of orange juice then she turned on Terry Gray and Jim Norrie and claimed that it was a disgrace that people should be forced to remain out in that state and didn’t they have some evacuation procedure. I was quite embarrassed actually but in later years whenever I saw Ralph Eldridge, (I used to meet him from time to time in Melbourne till he was well into his 80s long after I had left the army), he continually harked back to me coming back from that patrol and the sobering effect it had on him.

They left that afternoon and the next day or so Tony Ritman the new RMO arrived. My legs were swollen like balloons now as though I had elephantitis. He diagnosed severe cellulitis and said it was this that was cause of this latest fever. I was put onto antibiotics, and he told Terry I was to rest for at least a week and that meant getting out of Vanimo. The CO was still there, and he informed me the next day I was to be posted to Taurama in six weeks’ time to take over as Asst Adjt. I was not a happy chappy but in no mood or state to react. I remember Jim Norrie becoming most unendearing to the mission priests who arrived over for a few drinks that evening, but the context is obscure and anyway irrelevant now.

Tony and I flew to Wewak a day or so later; he and the CO went onto Moresby, and I stayed at Moem for three or four nights. In our conversations, Tony, like Bert Wainer before him said he believed we had been getting malaria in the Vanimo hinterland, but he had to keep his opinion low key. He realized paludrine was not a solution but to suggest otherwise to the powers that be in the medical field was a hanging offence. It took the horrendous sick lists of Vietnam five or six years later and a new generation of doctors before the Directorate of Army Health began to recognize the shortcomings of paludrine. He also was very critical of the fact that I had spent nearly six weeks on native rations and subsequently had an input to an edict, published some months later, directing that Officers on patrol should eat Australian rations supplemented by rice and fresh veg as available

Peter A. Stokes (2001)

Futher references to the memoirs of Peter Stokes may be found in the book by Tristan Moss – “Guarding the Periphery: The Australian Army in Papua New Guinea, 1951–75″ 2017, Cambridge University Press