Martin Clemens - Alone on Guadalcanal: A Coastwatchers Story

Alone on Guadalcanal

This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Alone on Guadalcanal

A COASTWATCHERS STORY

Martin Clemens

BLUEJACKET BOOKS

Naval Institute Press
Annapolis, Maryland

This book has been brought to publication by the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402

1998 by Martin Clemens

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Bluejacket Books printing, 2004
ISBN 978-1-6125-1203-7

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Clemens, Martin, 1915

Alone on Guadalcanal : a coastwatchers story / Martin Clemens.

p. cm.

Includes index.

1. Clemens, Martin, 1915 Diaries. 2. World War, 19391945CampaignsSolomon IslandsGuadalcanal. 3. World War, 19391945Personal narratives, British. 4. Military service, VoluntaryUnited States. 5. Intelligence officersGreat BritainBiography. I. Title.

D767.98.C53 1998

940.5426dc21

[b]

9834092

Frontispiece: Martin Clemenss bomb-battered diary

FOR ANNE AND OUR CHILDREN,
CHARLOTTE, VICKY, ALEX, AND MARK

Vouchsafe to those who have not read the story,
That I may prompt them; and of such as have,
I humbly pray them to admit the excuse
Of time, of numbers, and due course of things,
Which cannot in their huge and proper life
Be here presented.

Shakespeare, King Henry V, act 5, prologue

Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire:
The Battle of the Tenaru

IN HIS ACCOUNT Return to Paradise, James Michener observes of the test to which British colonial administration was put during World War II:

When war broke, these German-Australiantrained natives killed missionaries, betrayed coastwatchers and sold American pilots to Jap soldiers who beheaded them. On British islands not one white man was betrayed. Not one. The fidelity of the Solomon Islanders was unbelievable.

Unless and until the Cold War becomes the hot war, it becomes increasingly clear that its outcome depends in large measure upon our ability to earn and deserve and command such fidelity. We must command it not only from our immediate allies, but from peoples who may not share our English language and culture but who do share our belief in the right of the individual.

We American Marines were presented with that fidelity and support at Guadalcanal. Obviously, since it was there when we arrived, it had been earned by others. Britains colonial servants, such men as Martin Clemens, had earned and deserved that loyalty from the natives over a period of years, and so had it to command when it was needed. Somehow, these colonial servants had cut through the barriers of race and language and culture to reach the heart and affection of the Solomon Islander. I believe they achieved this by force of character, by example and personification of the virtues of our western philosophy.

When a competitive society and philosophy, in the form of the Japanese military, overran the Solomons, there was little left of the western worlds local prestige. Our only alliance with the Solomon Islanders depended upon faith. That faith was proclaimed by Martin Clemens, and others like him, who stayed behind the exodus of Europeans, in hiding from the Japanese, but in constant contact with his native charges.

He had no tangible resource at hand, save his personal example, with which to champion the faith he asked those natives to bear. In their eyes, the initial Japanese conquest of Guadalcanal might well have appeared decisive and final. Yet with his faith and example, and a long accumulated storehouse of trust and loyalty, he was able to sustain the native population in expectation and hope for the white mans eventual victory. Many trying months later, he was still sustaining a friendly and faithful population and so could offer help when my Marines landed on Guadalcanal. During the ensuing decisive weeks, when we were so often only one battalion and one day ahead of the Japanese countermoves, we relied heavily upon information brought to us by Martin and his charges. There were instances when that information and support was a substantial portion of the margin of victory.

As we look to the future we must ponder how to make and keep faithful allies for the world struggle. We can well look to the past to see how one man, representative of his service, by his personal example sustained one small but vital alliance. That it has gone thus far unheralded is reason enough for this book.

Gen. Alexander Archer Vandegrift, USMC, 1953

IT IS A GREAT PLEASURE to write an introduction to Martin Clemenss spirited account of great days on Guadalcanal. Although I only reached the Pacific a few weeks before General Vandegrift and his Marines landed in the Solomon Islands, I was privileged in the months that followed to see much of the campaign, and I can vouch for the accuracy of the vivid, truthful picture of it contained in this book, from the beginning of August 1942. Of events before that, I have no knowledge.

Before the Marines arrived on the scene, Colonel Marchant, the resident commissioner, and his stalwarts must indeed have felt alone and abandoned in the bush, and that at a time of dire and dreadful defeat in the Middle East, in Malaya and Singapore, at Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines, and, as it seemed in those black days, wherever the enemy was able to strike at the overstrained, outnumbered or unready forces of the alliance, which then looked anything but grand.

But, even if the Germans were at the gates of Alexandria and the Japanese advancing almost unopposed across the Pacific, the district commissioner must still be in his district; the responsibility for law and order, for such public services as there were, for indeed pretty well everything that happened, must be discharged. If things looked dangerous or difficult beyond the ordinary, why, all the more reason to call on the DC to deal with themhe was there, he always had dealt with difficulty and emergency, and surely a mere enemy invasion was not going to defeat him now! And, of course, it did not, as you can read in these pages; and when the time came for the counterattack, for the chance to hit back, he became intelligence officer, guerrilla leader, pilot at sea and guide on land, and a great many other things; and all the time he continued to administer his district from inside the Marines position as he had done from a hiding place in the bush, in spite of the enemy.

It was on the island of Guadalcanal that the Japanese advance to the south was first held and then turned back. It was a heroic, an epic struggle against odds that must have seemed, and often were, overwhelming, if only the U.S. Marines had known the meaning of the word, in a climate like a Turkish bath, in mud, rain, and misery, while malaria, malnutrition, and dysentery took almost as heavy a toll as the enemys weapons of the weary but indomitable men. Americans will surely be very proud when they read this plain tale of how fine men finely led stood in the line of duty and prevailed against great odds. But for the British people, and especially for us of the Colonial Service, it has a special appeal of its own; for we know that many Americans have an instinctive dislike and suspicion of colonialism, which they suppose to be a system of oppression and exploitation of backward people. When the counterattack in the Pacific started we could not avoid being conscious of this attitude of mind. But as the months passed there came a change.