The Tol of war

ON Sunday, Feb 4, a small group of Rabaul residents and members of the Rabaul Historical Society braved the weather to gather at sunset at the Lark Force /
Montevideo Maru Memorial on the Rabaul foreshore to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Tol and Waitavalo Plantation Massacres.
Below is an excerpt from, 75 years on, shocking Tol Massacre forgotten in Australia and PNG by MAX UECHTRITZ and which was read by MATHEW COHEN at the ceremony last Sunday.

HISTORIANS rank the carnage at Tol and Waitavalo – the adjoining plantation on February 4, 1942 with the most callous of atrocities of the Pacific war.
The men were bayoneted and shot, or both, after being taken prisoner by Japanese while retreating from Rabaul, then THE capital of
Australian-mandated Territory of New Guinea. Rabaul fell on January 23rd to a massive Japanese invasion force which quickly routed a brave but tiny
Australian garrison consisting largely of the 2/22nd Battalion Lark Force.
When the order “Every man for himself” was given, soldiers and civilians fanned out over New Britain looking for escape routes through the most rugged terrain imaginable.
Some overcame an epic trek through dense jungle – battling malaria, dysentery, tropical ulcers, leeches, exhaustion and malnutrition to eventually escape on small boats.
Not the majority and not those who emerged at Tol hoping to be rescued.
Five barge loads of Japanese troops were on the beach to meet them. There was no option for the starving, exhausted Australians but to surrender. At first it seemed they’d be treated as normal POWs but then an order to execute the prisoners was given.
Red Cross brassards were ripped off medics. Men were trussed together in small groups with fishing line or ropes, taken into the jungle and slaughtered. They had to stand or sit listening to their mates’ death cries awaiting their own fate by blade or bullet.
Survivors told of grinning Japanese soldiers emerging from the bush wiping blood from their bayonets and beckoning their next targets.
Some victims – asked if they wanted to be shot or bayoneted chose the gun only to be stabbed.
Two wounded men found alive in Waitavalo plantation homestead were smeared in pig grease and burned alive in the house.
Requests for final cigarettes were refused. Some prayed, others simply said cheerio to their mates, some begged for their lives.
Incredibly there was a handful of survivors who survived by playing dead. Private Billy Cook of the 2/12 Field Ambulance survived 11 bayonet wounds.
Corporal Hugh “Nipper” Webster whose son Tony Webster visited us in Rabaul in 2014 was another to survive.
Tony Webster recounts, “Dad first enlisted in the war with his best mates Norm Walkley and Les and Wal Whittle,”
“As part of their bond of friendship and because all their surnames started with W , they all had a W tattooed on their forearms. They were gonna see this through together as mates – as mates do – but unfortunately on that fateful day they all stood together, but this time it was in front of a firing squad.
“Dad stood side by side with Wal, Les and Norm and they faced the firing squad together and that was part of the commitment they made when they joined the armed services.”
The personal connection goes deeper for Tony Webster.
His middle names are Walter,  Leslie, and Norman. His father never talked much about the atrocity but made sure his three mates were honoured forever by naming his son after them.
Tony told how his father and 10 others were rounded up and taken nearby to Waitavalo, lined up in the bush and shot.
It was a sombre but special moment for Tony who travelled to Tol & in the jungle at the very spot where the execution happened.
“It’s just beyond comprehension,“ said Tony. “You can only imagine what they were going through, waiting their turn. What would you be thinking if you were the third fourth or fifth group waiting, you could hear the shots going off or you could hear the cries of men being bayoneted?
“Dad was shot twice, in the arm and the side and fainted,“ he said.
“When he came to, his mates were lying dead all around him, except for Norm who was barely alive.” Norm Walkley was shot in the arm, chest and buttocks. The two men staggered off into the jungle but became separated. “Nipper” was rescued by other Australians.
Norm Walkley performed an amazing feat walking for nearly a month but he died of wounds on
New Britain on March 1.
He was buried at Rabaul’s Bita Paka war cemetery but Walter and Leslie Whittle’s remains – and most others  were never identified and lie still at Tol and Waitavalo.
“Nipper” Webster, Tony’s Father, returned to Tol when Australian troops recaptured the plantation in 1945 and was filmed meeting
Australian Commander-in-Chief General Blamey at the site of the massacre.
Webster later was part of the inquiry by Justice William Webb into the atrocity.
Tony Webster says more should be done by the Australian federal government.
“There are photos from when my father went back. There were still skulls, there were still boots visible then and nothing has ever really been done to give them a proper and fitting burial that they deserve,’ he said.
“It really does tug at the heart to know what happened all those 70 years ago and I look at the site there’s nothing formal there to recognise them.
Locals will name a new school the 2/22nd Lark Force school and some years ago a private group of survivors now gone – and descendants erected a small memorial cairn at Tol.
“I’m very proud of the guys who came back here and built this memorial but I just think as a government we can do more. I’d like to see a plaque with the names of those killed here at Tol as some sort of recognition,” said Tony Webster.
“When you think those brave young Australians, they were fighting on Australian territory under an Australian flag. I would hope we could just honour them and give them some more recognition and a better resting place.”
Max Uechtritz is a well-known Australian freelance journalist. He received awards when he worked at ABC, Al Jazeerah and Channel 7.
He owns media company KUNDU PRODUCTIONS and is a great supporter of Rabaul and the Rabaul
Historical Society. He is the great, great grandson of Queen Emma’s sister Phoebe Parkinson.