The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [57]
Before setting out for Jaure the following morning, Medendorp left behind a platoon under a lieutenant to guard the village. If the Japanese sneaked into the village, they could ambush the 2nd Battalion, which Medendorp knew from periodic radio reports was slowly making its way north.
Two days out of Suwari, and fourteen days after setting out on the trail, Medendorp and the Wairopi Patrol walked into Jaure, at the headwaters of the Kumusi and Musa Rivers. It had taken the patrol nearly a week to travel the last sixteen miles. At Jaure, they discovered Boice’s pathfinder patrol, from which they had not heard anything since Laruni. Everyone, it seemed, was okay—after sighting the Japanese patrol, Boice decided that it was safer not to try to make radio contact.
Boice, who had been out scouting, returned to the village. What he saw stunned him: Medendorp and his men were a pitiful sight. For a moment Boice may have experienced a twinge of doubt. Had his report on the feasibility of the route across the mountains consigned hundreds of men to misery? For him and his small patrol, the trail had been extraordinarily tough, but it was “practicable.” But what would become of an entire battalion? What would happen when the monsoons arrived? Would the trail be “practicable” then?
Boice did not express any of these reservations to his friend.
“Well Al, you old son of a gun,” he said, shaking Medendorp’s hand.
Hoping to achieve a bit of humor, Medendorp paraphrased Stanley encountering Livingston.
“Jungle Jim, I presume.”
The following day, Medendorp dispatched a fifty-man detachment into the Kumusi River valley. When Sergeant Jimmy Dannenberg’s group left Jaure, everyone was outfitted with new boots that had been dropped days before. Few had a pair that fit well, but no one cared. New boots, ill fitting or not, were something to be grateful for.
Medendorp stayed behind to radio Colonel Quinn. Then, because every porter with whom he had begun the hike had deserted, he spent the day rounding up seventy-five native carriers.
Medendorp described the new carriers as “wild” looking. To be sure, the natives of Jaure were some of the most isolated people on the Papuan Peninsula. Except for infrequent contact with Australian colonial patrols and perhaps the odd prospector, they had no exposure to the outside world. They were tattooed men, who wore bone necklaces, ear and nose ornaments, loincloths of beaten bark, and fur hats; they smeared their bodies with pig fat to protect against the cold. They believed in sorcerers, supernatural forces, the dream world, and spirits that had to be propitiated through elaborate rituals.
Lieutenant Segal examined the natives. Many were covered in bug bites, and because of a vitamin B deficiency, they also had skin diseases, festering sores, peeling skin, and grayish scales. In truth, Segal was only able to give them basic care. He had sent numerous radio messages requesting surgical instruments, and though food and ammunition came, the instruments never did. It was a constant frustration for Segal. How was he to care for an entire patrol and its carriers with only one scalpel and a few hemostats?
Using that one scalpel and his knife, Segal first took care of the soldiers’ boils and ulcers. Some of the men had skin ulcers where their fatigues had rubbed and the straps of their backpacks had pressed against their shoulders. Some had malaria, with temperatures hovering at 103 degrees. They complained of tender bellies, aching joints, confusion, impaired vision, and nightmares. For them there was nothing Segal could do. He was almost out of quinine.
Late that night, Medendorp limped over to Segal. He had an ulcer on his leg that had been causing him pain since Ghost Mountain. He had ignored