The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific by James Campbell Page A
Authors: James Campbell
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were often preserved as a means of communicating with the spirit world, for initiation rituals, and as trophies, which warriors displayed to enhance their standing in the villages. Even among tribes that did not take heads, the belief that the skulls and bones of dead relatives possessed magical properties was common. In the Sepik River region of New Guinea, a widow was obliged to stay in a hut with the body of her dead husband until the flesh had rotted from his skull and bones.
Although cannibalism and headhunting were not practiced by all of the tribes, much of New Guinea was populated by an intensely territorial and martial people, who were mistrustful of outsiders. Even tribes living along the same river system engaged in near-constant payback skirmishes, fueled by a simple principle: an eye for an eye. If one tribe stole a pig from another tribe, the offended tribe would be honor-bound to stage a raid and take a pig. If in the process, the raiding tribe killed a man, they could expect that the death would be avenged.
Because of the warlike reputation of its people, New Guinea became a place where for centuries imagination and invention substituted for hard facts. However, by the mid-1800s, whalers and sealers were plying the plentiful waters of the “cannibal islands” traders, searching for pearls, tortoise shells, sandalwood, ebony, wild rubber, copra, and bêche-de-mer, explored the mainland; and ruthless “blackbirders” rounded up young men as slave laborers for Peruvian mines and South Pacific sugar plantations. Given the burgeoning interest in the island, the world’s powers could no longer ignore New Guinea. Emissaries from Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands ventured there, and many of the expeditions ended very badly.
One of the first recorded disasters occurred in 1782. The captain of the
Northumberland,
a Dutch ship that was cruising off the coast of New Guinea, sent ten men ashore, not for the purpose of exploration, but for water and vegetables. “They came down on us like unto a half moon, men, women, and children, such as could take a bow and arrow into their hands,” wrote the only survivor. “They came down into the water then fired their arrows as thick and as fast that we could not see for the darkness of their arrows…. They carried one of our boys out of the boat and cut him through the middle and throwed his bowels into the air. I perceived them broiling the remains of poor Mr. Sayce.”
A century later, bona fide explorers fared no better. At age thirty-two, Otto von Ehlers joined the German East Africa Company and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Following his service in the company, he began a series of journeys to Zanzibar, Bombay, Kashmir, Nepal, Burma, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Canton, Peking, and Korea, and wrote of these adventures in flashy, self-aggrandizing travel books. When he came to New Guinea in 1895, it was said that he stood proudly “on the pinnacle of his success.” If anyone could conquer New Guinea, Von Ehlers surely could.
On August 14, von Ehlers set off with forty-one native porters and W. Piering, a German police master stationed in northern New Guinea. Von Ehlers immediately noted the terrain, which was unforgiving—a cruel, endless succession of ridges and valleys. Up and down, down and up, his team struggled for days hacking their way through the thick jungle. Rattan thorns ripped at their clothes and exposed skin, and leeches either fell from the overhanging trees or slithered upward from the ground, attaching themselves and later dropping off, leaving small exposed wounds, which were soon infested with red maggots. Von Ehlers’ face and body were covered with infected sores, and Piering could walk only with the help of two carriers. Nearly forty days into the trip, the team’s food ran out. Von Ehlers finally agreed to let Piering kill his beloved mastiff, though von Ehlers refused to eat any of it. The team then subsisted on grass shoots and young leaves.
Although cannibalism and headhunting were not practiced by all of the tribes, much of New Guinea was populated by an intensely territorial and martial people, who were mistrustful of outsiders. Even tribes living along the same river system engaged in near-constant payback skirmishes, fueled by a simple principle: an eye for an eye. If one tribe stole a pig from another tribe, the offended tribe would be honor-bound to stage a raid and take a pig. If in the process, the raiding tribe killed a man, they could expect that the death would be avenged.
Because of the warlike reputation of its people, New Guinea became a place where for centuries imagination and invention substituted for hard facts. However, by the mid-1800s, whalers and sealers were plying the plentiful waters of the “cannibal islands” traders, searching for pearls, tortoise shells, sandalwood, ebony, wild rubber, copra, and bêche-de-mer, explored the mainland; and ruthless “blackbirders” rounded up young men as slave laborers for Peruvian mines and South Pacific sugar plantations. Given the burgeoning interest in the island, the world’s powers could no longer ignore New Guinea. Emissaries from Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands ventured there, and many of the expeditions ended very badly.
One of the first recorded disasters occurred in 1782. The captain of the
Northumberland,
a Dutch ship that was cruising off the coast of New Guinea, sent ten men ashore, not for the purpose of exploration, but for water and vegetables. “They came down on us like unto a half moon, men, women, and children, such as could take a bow and arrow into their hands,” wrote the only survivor. “They came down into the water then fired their arrows as thick and as fast that we could not see for the darkness of their arrows…. They carried one of our boys out of the boat and cut him through the middle and throwed his bowels into the air. I perceived them broiling the remains of poor Mr. Sayce.”
A century later, bona fide explorers fared no better. At age thirty-two, Otto von Ehlers joined the German East Africa Company and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Following his service in the company, he began a series of journeys to Zanzibar, Bombay, Kashmir, Nepal, Burma, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Canton, Peking, and Korea, and wrote of these adventures in flashy, self-aggrandizing travel books. When he came to New Guinea in 1895, it was said that he stood proudly “on the pinnacle of his success.” If anyone could conquer New Guinea, Von Ehlers surely could.
On August 14, von Ehlers set off with forty-one native porters and W. Piering, a German police master stationed in northern New Guinea. Von Ehlers immediately noted the terrain, which was unforgiving—a cruel, endless succession of ridges and valleys. Up and down, down and up, his team struggled for days hacking their way through the thick jungle. Rattan thorns ripped at their clothes and exposed skin, and leeches either fell from the overhanging trees or slithered upward from the ground, attaching themselves and later dropping off, leaving small exposed wounds, which were soon infested with red maggots. Von Ehlers’ face and body were covered with infected sores, and Piering could walk only with the help of two carriers. Nearly forty days into the trip, the team’s food ran out. Von Ehlers finally agreed to let Piering kill his beloved mastiff, though von Ehlers refused to eat any of it. The team then subsisted on grass shoots and young leaves.
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