Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Gladys met WWI veteran Bill Baker when nursing at an Australian repatriation hospital. In 1920, the handsome couple married in Papua where Bill was the resident magistrate. Gladys accompanied Bill when he carried out his work in various districts before he left government service in the late 1920s. The couple purchased the Langu plantation on Witu Island, 40 miles north of New Britain’s coastline & 200 miles west of Rabaul.

They worked hard - becoming efficient planters, splendid employers towards their native workers and gracious hosts to visitors. They built a 7-bedroom bungalow (each with a bath), modern labour barracks, outbuildings and a hospital with Gladys attending to the medical needs of the natives, often acting as a midwife. She was known affectionately as The Sinabada (white woman who lives at Langu). Sadly, Bill neglected a scratch which became infected and he died suddenly from blood poisoning in 1936.

Gladys had taken a great interest in the business and was experienced in managing the copra production, native labour, maintenance of schooner engines as well as being adept at the many jobs on the plantation from mending a bullock cart to issuing rations. One day a visitor was surprised to find her efficiently laying cement for the foundations of the new hot-air copra drier.
Gladys used her small launch to visit Talasea, often sailing over 100 miles in open sea and proved herself to be a competent engineer and had a ‘mud-ticket’ gained by her knowledge of New Britain waters.

In mid-1941 Lark Force was sent to defend Rabaul from invasion. Following the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, five days later the Australian War Cabinet imposed the compulsory evacuation of non-indigenous women and children from Papua New Guinea and associated islands. Nurses and missionaries could choose to remain. Gladys stayed, believing her knowledge of the waters and tropical nursing skills would be useful. Japanese bombing of Rabaul began on 19 January with 5,000 Japanese troops invading 5 days later. A rout followed with Lieutenant-Colonel Scanlan infamously ordering “every man for himself”. Many soldiers took to the jungle rather than surrender.

Gladys, anticipating the ill-equipped soldiers would travel westwards through the jungle, loaded her small launch, Langu the Second, and in a series of trips left food dumps on the Aria River near Iboki. On 14 February a Japanese floatplane circled her small launch and looked as though it would land. Gladys hid in the bilge. Sure enough the plane landed, two Japanese men came on board to question the native crew in Pidgin. The crew replied that the master had gone to Sydney a long time ago.

News arrived that 18 very sick Aussies were moving slowly towards Iboki. Five went on towards Gloucester with Gladys nursing the rest, who were sick with dysentery, tropical ulcers and malaria, until they were well enough to travel. The 18 men got to Madang and went overland to Moresby.

Gladys then bravely sailed along the coast towards Rabaul looking for more Aussies. She canoed to a reef where she’d spotted a boat, but it had gone. Later the Mission boat turned up at Iboki with 35 sick 2/22nd Battalion men on board. Meanwhile Coastwatcher Keith McCarthy had been searching the jungle collecting sick, starving and dispirited men, but they were stuck at Iboki. Gladys strode up the beach towards them and informed McCarthy that the 350-ton Lakatoi was loading copra at Witu.
The ship was seized, loaded with stores supplied by Gladys and on 21 March set sail for Cairns with 210 men & 2 women on board.
Gladys piloted them through the Dampier Strait & then set up a sick bay for the most desperately ill men. Unnoticed by the Japanese, on 28 March the ship arrived at Cairns. A special train was put on to Brisbane.

Later Gladys joined the AAMWS. She was awarded the MBE, returned to Witu, but died a week later of blackwater fever in late 1946.

References:

Photos of Gladys: Althea Martel

Gladys Baker, MBE, Pacific Islands Monthly January 1947 page 22-24; nla.obj-316203675

Route taken by Gladys Baker from Ibok to Cairns, Una Voice No 2, 2002 – June; https://www:pngaa.net

Veitch, Michael, Australia’s Secret Army, Hatchette, 2022, pages 89-102

Lark Force: 2/22nd Battalion and support (1,485 men), First Independent Company later known as Commandos (273 men). 365 men made it back to Australia.

Rabaul death toll: 845 troops & 208 civilians captured and drowned on the Japanese POW ship Montevideo Maru, 115 soldiers & 43 civilians massacred at Tol Plantation despite a white flag being shown, and 125 other individual killings.