Free Fortress Rabaul by Bruce Gamble

they stay and fight with the infantry?
    The weather was beginning to deteriorate, matching Scanlan’s mood. Sharing a last drink with Lerew, he decided after a brief deliberation that the RAAF personnel would be more of a hindrance than an asset and gave Lerew his consent to withdraw. Shortly thereafter, the remnants of 24 Squadron started toward the south coast of New Britain in an assortment of trucks and staff cars.
    WORKING STEADILY throughout the afternoon to treat the wounded men brought in from the wrecked coastal guns, the medical personnel on Namanula Hill were nearly oblivious to the crisis developing outside the hospital. But when the explosion of the bomb dump cut electrical power, they decided to move the sick and wounded to a safer location. Nearly eighty patients were transported in a caravan of ambulances, utility trucks, and other vehicles to Vunapope, where Bishop Isidoro Leone Scharmach, the vicar apostolic of Rabaul, made the mission’s “native boys’ hospital” available. It was well after midnight by the time the vehicles rounded the caldera and arrived at the clinic, normally used by male islanders. After settling the patients, the six army nurses attached to the 2/10 Field Ambulance trudged up the hill to a women’s dormitory for a few hours’ sleep. But there would be no rest for the two doctors, Maj. Edward C. Palmer and Capt. Sandy E. J. Robertson, who elected to return to Rabaul. They were battlefield surgeons and intended to perform their duty with the troops. It was not an easy decision. Sooner or later, everyone left behind at Vunapope would be captured by the Japanese.
    Before leaving, Palmer approached Chaplain May and said, “You’ll stay, will you, Padre?”
    It was not a question. Both men understood that the doctor was politely telling May to assume responsibly for the patients, nurses, and orderlies from the 2/10 Field Ambulance, not to mention the civilians from the administration hospital and local missions. The chaplain, responding with a simple “Yes,” knew that he would be one of the first officers captured.
    WHILE 24 SQUADRON put some distance between themselves and Rabaul, a radio operator raced ahead to hunt for a working radio. Finding one at Tol plantation on Wide Bay, Sgt. Frederick G. Higgs encrypted a short message to Port Moresby: “ Send flying-boats . [The men] will identify themselves with torch.”
    By this time, dozens of other evacuees, including civilians and even a few army personnel, had joined the exodus from Rabaul. When the last segment of navigable roadway ended at the Warangoi River, the rabble numbered 150 men.
    Due to the heavy rainfall, the river was now a raging torrent. Two native canoes were available for crossing the river, but the process tookhours. Afterward, the men continued on foot through the dripping jungle, fording another river before they finally reached a large, stylish plantation called Put Put in the middle of the night. Allowing only a brief rest, Lerew split the group into two parties. He put Bill Brookes in charge of the civilians and married RAAF personnel, numbering about fifty men, and commandeered two boats to take them the rest of the way to Tol plantation.
    Brookes was appalled by the behavior he witnessed that night among certain civilians. “Numerous cases occurred where [men] were deliberately dumped and left behind,” he reported, “in order that a particular person could make his escape either a little more certain or faster.”
    Among those left behind was Harold Page, the former territorial administrator. No longer a young man, he decided to walk back to Rabaul with three other officials. Reaching the convoy of trucks abandoned at the Warangoi River on January 25, they made camp and waited for the Japanese to pick them up.
    Lerew and his party, meanwhile, continued their journey from Put Put on foot, covering another fifteen miles to Adler Bay. Stopping at another plantation to rest at midday on January 23,