Martin Clemens, Guadalcanal Spy, 94
Dave Sill
(includes photo and comments from acquaintance and daughter)
Martin Clemens: Solomon Islands wartime district commissioner
Martin Clemens played a lonely but key role in the recovery by a US task
force of the island of Guadalcanal from the Japanese in early 1943.
Lying towards the southern tip of the Solomon Islands archipelago, 1,200
miles northeast of the Australian coast astride sea and air
communications with the US, the island was occupied by the Japanese in
May 1942. Two American divisions with supporting aircraft were deployed
to Queensland to counter any enemy landing and, after the US naval
victories of the Coral Sea and Midway in May and June, a concerted
effort to recover the Solomons was planned; but intelligence on Japanese
strengths and dispositions was virtually non-existent.
As far back as 1919 an Australian coast-watcher service had been
established and by late 1941, when the Japanese attacks in the Pacific
and South-East Asia were launched, a cordon of observers had been pushed
out to islands extending in an arc from New Zealand to the Solomons.
Clemens, serving as the British district commissioner on the island of
St Cristobal in the Solomons, was instructed to cross over to
Guadalcanal to help with the evacuation of Europeans. When the Japanese
arrived he took to the hills with a group of Melanesian scouts, evading
all Japanese attempts to locate him until the Americans began to arrive
in July 1942.
His intelligence-gathering during the intervening months on Guadalcanal
was reliant on co-operative islanders reporting on Japanese activity to
the indigenous island police officers, who relayed the information to
Clemens in the hills for communication by radio to the American naval
task force under the command of Admiral Robert Ghormley.
In the run-up to the naval battle of the Eastern Solomons at the end of
August 1942 both Ghormley and his opponent, Admiral Nagumo, lacked
reliable intelligence of the other�s casualties and sea deployments. The
coast-watcher service in which Clemens was a significant link provided
Ghormley with details of enemy naval movements, contributing
significantly to the eventual US victory at sea.
Ashore, the Japanese were equally short of information, but in
anticipation of a largescale US landing they reinforced Guadalcanal with
small contingents of troops in a widely distributed and piecemeal
manner. Observed by Clemens and his scouts this was reported to
Major-General Alexander Vandegrift commanding the 1st (US) Marine
Division. Aerial photographic reconnaissance targeted on areas
identified by Clemens provided Vandegrift with the intelligence
essential for a successful landing on Guadalcanal. By that time, Clemens
had received the Marines authenticating codes to allow him to work as
their principal intelligence-gathering officer until the island was
finally cleared of the enemy in February 1943.
When he came down from his mountain-top coast-watching eyrie to meet the
Marines in August 1942 Clemens was gaunt, bearded, dressed in rags and
barefoot. Through the reporting of his Melanesian scouts, he was able to
report the dispositions of the Japanese 35th Brigade and guide the US
1st Raider Battalion and elements of a US Parachute division during a
three-day battle resulting in the capture of the vital Henderson Field
airstrip.
Subsequently, he served as the British liaison officer with the 14th
(US) Corps in the Solomons with the rank of major. He was awarded the
Military Cross for his contribution to the recovery of Guadalcanal and
later appointed to the US Legion of Merit.
Warren Frederick Martin Clemens, the eldest of the four children of
Warren and Blanche Clemens, was born in Aberdeen, where his father was a
church organist and choirmaster. Educated in England, he won
scholarships to Bedford School and Christ�s College, Cambridge, where he
took an honours degree in agricultural and natural sciences. He rowed
for Cambridge and was a reserve for the winning eight in the British
team at the Empire Games in 1938, the year he joined the Colonial Service.
After the war he served with the Colonial Service in Palestine, during
the final years of the British Mandate (1946-47), serving first as
Deputy District Commissioner in Samaria and then as District
Commissioner in Gaza, for whose Palestinian population he established a
lasting sympathy.
On leaving Palestine, he went to Cyprus, first as District Commissioner
for Nicosia and then for Kyrenia, during two periods between 1948 and
1957. Finally, he became Defence Secretary on the island from 1959 to
1960, when the EOKA terrorist campaign for union with Greece reached the
climax that was to lead to Cypriot independence.
On leaving the island, he was advanced to CBE from the OBE to which he
had been appointed in 1956 when he was a District Commissioner.
When offered a foreign service post in Burma, he decided instead to move
to his wife�s family home at Dunraven, Melbourne, taking Australian
citizenship on arrival. Subsequently he devoted his energies to his
wife�s family holdings in Queensland and community activities.
Many community groups have reason to be grateful for his guidance,
including Austcare, the International Council of Social Services, the
Red Cross and the Australia-Britain Society, where he helped to initiate
the Plain English Speaking Award. He was active in the local Liberal
Party and served as a director of a number of companies.
His concept of �community� remained pivotal to the conduct of his life.
At social gatherings he was invariably at the centre of an animated
group, in his later years with a glass of the best Scotch whisky parked
on his walking frame.
He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the
community in 1993. He also published his war memoirs as Alone on
Guadalcanal. He had prepared the manuscript by the 1950s but was unable
to find a publisher until 1998, when the US Naval Institute Press in
Maryland heard about it by chance.
His wife Anne, n�e Turnbull, died earlier this year. He is survived by
two sons and two daughters.
Martin Clemens, CBE, MC, OAM, was born on April 17, 1915. He died on May
31, 2009, aged 94
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See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Clemens
http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/major-spied-on-japanese-20090614-c7d2.html?skin=text-only