YMCA Archives - Pidgeon Post

Australian Red Cross Society letterhead
W.E. Pidgeon
c/o P.R. Unit
N. G. Force
Moresby

Tues 1 Feb [1944]

Sweetheart,

Advanced Dressing Station, Guy’s Post, New Guinea

Am writing from an Advanced Dressing Station i.e. a base where surgeons work closest to the front line. Fortunately for the troops there is only one wounded casualty here at the moment, and from all information on the state of the war up here there are not likely to be any more. The Jap is definitely on the way out.

W.E. Pidgeon (WEP) at work in the Upper Ramu Valley, Papua New Guinea – Published in The Australian Women’s Weekly, 18 March 1944, p9 – The watercolour sketch appears to be the preliminary layout for Evacuating Wounded – Ramu Valley

I’m somewhat limp after an afternoon stroll (?) up a mountain 200 ft higher than the spot where I now sit. All in all that damned ridge is about 4000 ft above sea level. God knows how the soldiers carried their packs (and the boongs the supplies for them) up these exhausting peaks. They must have been superhuman – it was all I could do to cart myself up.

Study for Evacuating wounded-Ramu Valley

The scenery round here is really magnificent. There’s nothing like it in Australia. Clouds encircling the mountains half way and passing fogs crown the peaks up to 4000 ft. The hills are treeless except for dark writhing tangles which follow the eroded creek beds slashing down the sides. Imagine the hills of Picton much more precipitous, higher & sharp edged on top – so sharp are some that only one man could cross the saddle at one time – as green or greener than those I painted.

W.E. Pidgeon (WEP) takes time for a cuppa on a ridge line in the Upper Ramu Valley, Papua New Guinea

After struggling to the top of this bloody mountain I came across some of the lads coming down. We sat & had a cigarette – they said they were Pioneers. I asked about Lloyd Martin¹ and blow me down if he didn’t come round the track. I introduced myself. He was camped right on the top and all around were the most magnificent views. We had a cuppa which seemed to help me along. Then down the hill in practically a straight line & at a 45º angle. God! Did my legs wobble at the bottom. Unbelievable that I should really come across anyone in such a casual fashion in such a hell of an area as N. Guinea. However, it happened. He said that he had had a letter but two days before from his sister² saying that I was on my way. The family resemblance is unmistakeable.

Unidentified War Correspondent, possibly a photographer, joins Wep in a a cuppa on a ridge line in the Upper Ramu Valley, Papua New Guinea

Tomorrow I am on my way up an even higher mount to a Ridge that has been well in the news. Heaven help me, even though I shall have a boong³ to carry my paint box.

That’s a picture to delight your heart. “Squire Pidgeon and Boong ascend the Hairy Mount.” The password for tomorrow is “Excelsior”. I’m definitely & most positively NOT looking forward to it. But the show must go on – albeit over my wracked & blistered body.

A native Fuzzy Wuzzy in the Upper Ramu Valley, Papua New Guinea

By the way, I am not the least less on the nose! The ground is wet with my honest sweat.

I think this hurricane lamp I’m using is about to give up the ghost any tick of the clock!

Will soon retire to my stretcher. I’m sleeping under native built grass roof in the malarial ward. I am not a patient. It is merely that I have been offered the hospitality of the base. The food here is the best that I have had in N.G. The cook was a chef at Scott’s of Melbourne so I guess he knows how to put even tinned meat & vegetables together. And have I had beans? Am not really eating well – don’t seem to be able to muster up any enthusiasm for the same damned stuff. Had alleged fresh meat the other day. Tasted (which word is an euphemism for it) like well worn saddle leather. I just couldn’t make the grade.

Have been taking my prophylactic daily dose of anti-malaria pills. In time they dye the old bod a fine shade of tangerine with the exception of the finger nails which appear to become whiter. Generally, a very smart effect, especially on persons of sallow complexion which acquires a rare old mahogany hue. I am approaching a very delicate pale primrose on the hands. Perhaps I’ll give you some real colour on my return. The boys say it has the same effects on the old doings as quinine. But what do I care – I aint goin’ no place.

I do hope you are really looking after yourself – eating, drinking moderately & keeping the old clods up on a chair or something, or anything that does for something.

Hope the family are still pottering along alright.

Regards to the Hunter Hillbillys [friends from Hunters Hill – King Watson and other drinking partners]. Even a schooner of Tooheys would cause a riot up here. N.G. is absolutely dry. I haven’t had a drink since Townsville. The boys at Moresby took a dim view of my alcoholless arrival.

Lots of love darling, Bill

P.S. The tea guzzling up here is staggering – every few minutes someone is making tea – if you’re not in the camp drinking the fairly lousy stuff you’re drinking it at a Salvation Army or YMCA inn along the road somewhere.

More love XXX

Evacuating Wounded-Ramu Valley, New Guinea

W.E. Pidgeon (WEP) at work in the Upper Ramu Valley, Papua New Guinea

Wed. Feb 2 6.30 pm.

Jaysus! Do I feel sick! Have just done a very rough and very wobbly sketch of a fellow having his knee opened up by two field surgeons. Do they cut ‘em up!

Knee operation at an Advanced Dressing Station at Guy’s Post in the upper Ramu Valley, New Guinea

I’ve seen all the operations I want to for many a day. It was touch and go whether I would make a ninny of myself by throwing up on the spot! The day was saved by my extra rapid scrawl and an attempted wise look indicating the completion of my sketch. Phew! I bet I dream about it.

All that on top of tea which made me belch like hell & a slight sickness of exhaustion.

Shaggy Ridge, Ramu Valley, Papua New Guinea

I’ve been up and own the blasted mountains today my love. Started at 8.30 am & didn’t return to the camp till nearly 5 pm. Felt completely buggered and far from home. My knees are like jelly – my heels are sore from the thumping I gave them on the way down the mount. Banged all the nails through into my anything but calloused heels (incidentally it’s dammed cold at the moment – and raining too –a perfect setting for a first class whinge).

Study – On Shaggy Ridge, looking across to the Pimple, 5600 feet above sea level, dominating the Ramu Valley, New Guinea

Well I have at least seen Shaggy Ridge and what a hell of a place it is. Heaven only knows how the boys took it over from the Jap. On either side of a track only wide enough for one. The earth face walls near sheer nearly 200 or 300 ft & the top of it was riddled with fox holes. It is all beyond me I’ll have to get hold of one of the crowd that did it to tell me all about it.

Don’t think I’ll write anything more tonight darling. Am feeling too depressingly tired. Keep a couple of gals⁴ for picking me up at Martin Place. I aim to be home this month via Flying Boat.

Hope you are OK.

I might get a letter in a few days – hope so.
Lots of love –from

Plugga Pidge
the boy wit de wobbly knees.

I really think my mountaineering days are over.

Moderation is the keyword for today.

love XX

Bill

Squire Wep and faithful 'boongs' ascend Shaggy Ridge; reproduced — Squire Wep and faithful ‘boongs’ ascend Shaggy Ridge; reproduced The Australian Women’s Weekly, 18 March 1944, p9.

On Shaggy Ridge – Reproduced, The Australian Women’s Weekly, June 10, 1944, p40

Ascending the Pimple – Reproduced, The Australian Women’s Weekly, June 10, 1944, p40

Notes:

1
Pvt. Harold Lloyd Martin known as Lloyd, Service Number – NX96972, 2/2nd Aust. Pioneer Bn
2
Mrs Joyce Elizabeth Farrar (nee Martin), Flat 1, 103 Northwood Road, Northwood
3
Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels were native Papua New Guineans who assisted the Australian war effort. They carried stretchers, stores and sometimes wounded diggers directly on their shoulders over some of the toughest terrain in the world. – Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels. (2024, January 17). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_Wuzzy_Angels
4
Gallons of petrol

W.E. Pidgeon
(War Correspondent)
C/O DPR
New Guinea Force
Moresby

22^nd Jan 44

Darling,

I am writing this in a blooming outpost of the empire – an outpost consisting of a small tent with one table, blanketed, & draped with the cooling form of your dear husband. He has steamed off & for the first time since arrival is sitting quietly & is tolerably happy.

He has bathed in the placid waters of the Finschhafen area, has aired his body in the cool tropical breeze and has sat on damned shape coral. With bended neck has gaped at clustered coconuts fifty feet above him – he has carefully avoided standing under them as fractured skulls are collected that there way.

Interior of tranpsort plane at dawn, Townsville to New Guinea, January 1944

Landed at Lae on the way up.¹ You can tell Jane² that as far as I could see there wasn’t one house standing. They have just plain disappeared. It may have been a pleasant enough place in the good old days, but boy, the Air Forces have sure blasted all the charms & graces to high heaven. The coconuts stick up stripped and shorn & about as long as a 3 weeks beard.

Army Post Office APO322, Base F, Finschhafen, New Guinea

It has turned out not so quiet – the Loot in charge of the business here is sitting opposite writing a letter – or should be. But then I suppose he likes to talk to someone strange so we have been chatting for the last ¾ hour. Consequently I have been dilatory & neglectful of the cultivation of that rather sweet just too too gentle mood into which I had been dissolving with the help of broadcast songs of Betty Grable from a YMCA hut across the way. Of times I felt like bursting out into “Sing me a Song of the islands” what with the swarms of coconut palms (we are on the edge of a coconut grove plantation) and the lap-lap of the sea to egg me on.

Camp in coconut plantation near Finschhafen, New Guinea

This side of the island is TROPIC. The hot sweet smell of rotting vegetation under the vine lining trees brings back to mind the typical orchid house. But the orchids although they are not in flower, at least those I saw weren’t, Hibiscus are! The whole shemozzle looks like a corner of the Botanical Gardens gone to fruit.

It doesn’t seem to be hot – it must be hot! My shirt is stuck on my back like a stamp. Yet I think the climate is good. You’d love it for a holiday. The sea is blue and syrupy as the barge I’m in cuts slowly through to its landing place. Planes zip most zippily above.

This blarsted (sic) hurricane lamp is making my eyes smart. My mind wanders whilst I most conscious of the static ache in my bum, brought about by the constant pressure of the tuberosities of the ischium upon the unresponsive board of a box of dehydrated potatoes.

I am writing whilst waiting to take off (not in a plane) on another leg of my journey³ of which I shall write you at more length when I find some place to settle down for a few nights.

You deserve more than a rough resume committed to paper in circumstances most undesirable.

So lots and lotzer what it takes from dear Willie.

Be good & don’t work
and don’t ____________
“     “     _______________        fill
“     “     _______________        in
“     “     _______________        as
“     “     _______________        required
“     “     _______________

love to you darling
Bill

The light has got me down. I finish – to spend the rest of the night under the stars staring and sleeping. You’ll understand what this is about later.

Goodnight & Sweet Dreams

??ou got the mosquitoes.
[parts missing off copy]

NOTE:

Volley Ball – The centre ball player is Acting Air Commodore (later Air Chief Marshall and Sir) Frederick Rudolph William Scherger, Commanding Officer RAAF No. 10 Operational Group based at Nadzab, Papua New Guinea, in support of the US Fifth Air Force.

It is believed that Wep spent a few hours painting at RAAF Number 10 Operational Group based at Nadzab near Lae. The painting featured a game of volley ball with one of the players noted as being Air Commodore (later Air Chief Marshall and Sir) Frederick Rudolph William Scherger, commander of No. 10 Group. This appears to be the only date where they could have crossed paths. No. 10 Group was later based at Morotai from June 1945 and Wep travelled there between June and August but it is yet to be determined whether their paths may have crossed there.

Wep sets up his painting gear, at RAAF No. 10 Operational Group

Wep painting “Volley Ball”, at RAAF No. 10 Operational Group near Nadzab, Papua New Guinea

Notes:

1
Friday, 21st January 1944
2
Jess’s mother, Mary Jane Graham (nee Wray)
3
Wep was about to head off to Kelanoa by barge from Finschafen. Much of the trip was made at night

Tag: YMCA

War Letters – New Guinea: 1-2 Feb 1944; Ramu Valley, Guy’s Post & Shaggy Ridge

Notes:

War Letters – New Guinea: 22 Jan 1944, Finschhafen; Waiting to depart for Kelanoa

Notes: