IN several places the road was mined, while rifle-pits had been dug along the edge, and snipers placed in the neighbouring trees. The sailors fought their way for six miles to the wireless station, where the German defence surrendered. Our casualties were ten officers and four seamen, and the whole German force fell into our hands. Two days later our troops sailed for the Solomon Islands, and secured without difficulty the surrender of Bougainville.*
They then turned their attention to Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land,* where they expected a more serious opposition. But again they won a bloodless victory. The British flag was hoisted in Friedrich Wilhelmshafen, and a garrison left behind. The Australian navy had done its work with admirable precision and dispatch, covering great distances in a very short time. HMS Melbourne, for example, sailed 11,000 miles in the first six weeks of war. At the end of September one or two small islands were still nominally German, but for all serious purposes the Emperor’s dominions in the Pacific had disappeared.
The Solomon Islands had been ceded to Britain by Germany (which had held them for only four years) under the Treaty of Berlin in 1899, with the exception of Buka and Bougainville. The islands were granted full independence in 1978, though the British monarch remains the Head of State.
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland formed the northeast quarter of the island of New Guinea, with the British-Australian Territory of Papua in the southeast quarter. The western half of New Guinea remained under Dutch control until it was annexed by Indonesia’s Islamic military junta in 1962, but Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and the rest of German New Guinea had passed to the control of Australia in 1920, and full independence was achieved in 1975. The Head of State is the British monarch.