A Time for Silence

Curious soldiers clustered on a New Guinea riverbank. As the late afternoon sunlight slanted through coconut-palm fronds, a raft drifted around the river bend. Small frizzled-haired Papuan natives guided it slowly to shore. Heedless of cries of "Don't bother, we'll get it for you" from the soldiers on the bank, four Australian soldiers aboard the raft slowly gathered up possessions that only a soldier can truly treasure--firearms, rain capes, a few battered odds & ends. As they turned their sunken eyes shoreward, the shouting and chatter of the spectators ceased. The crowd parted. In dead silence the four bearded Australians crunched up the bank, walked to a waiting field truck.

Then another raft rounded the bend, and another, until eleven rafts had brought to safety 33 footsore, tattered Australians, remnants of a band of 50 that had battled the Japs on the north side of the Owen Stanley range. Outflanked and outnumbered, for 44 days they had fought off the Japs and beaten their way over jungle trails back to the Allied-held side of the mountains. Haggard faces, tattered uniforms, mute fatigue told a story of privation and courage that won the respectful silence of the other soldiers waiting at the jungle camp.

Sitting in a cool grove of rubber trees, the Australians ravenously ate meat loaf with mashed potatoes, peach shortcake, bread and tea. Only then, as the tropic dusk came swiftly, did one Australian speak. "Give me a few days," he said, "and I'll be ready for another go at them."

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