He instructed Saburo Gentaro, the commander of the third battalion, to get the battalion back to Lorne as quickly as possible and then push up the road to Deans Marsh, link up with the force that was already holding that position, and dig in and not allow the natives to break through and cut the rest of the brigade off. Meanwhile, Toshiro would stay at Apollo Bay and coordinate the retreat of the other two battalions. It was all turning into a disaster! Tachibana was the first to get back to the coast road, and he had him deploy his troops at the road junction until the first battalion reached them. At the same time, he ordered Akiro to begin falling back down the road from Forrest. Fortunately, the enemy dug in around that town showed no signs of following up immediately. Indeed the only people that seemed to be aggressively advancing with the ones coming from the west. They were advancing rapidly in a highly mobile column led by the damn mentalist who had killed Rokuro.

An hour later, the first of Uesugi’s troops began arriving at Apollo Bay, and rather than clog up the road to the east, he had them deploy and begin new defensive positions as more and more of them straggled into the town. He had Akiro keep his troops moving when he reached the coast road with instructions to support Gentaro as well as hold the road leading inland from Lorne until the rest of them had made it back to that town.

Once the last of Akiro’s troops were clear of Skene’s Creek, he had Tachibana start pulling his troops out to follow as the last of the first battalion’s troops had finally retreated to Apollo Bay. He held them there for an hour to let the second battalion get well up the road before joining the retreat. The first battalion’s troops were extremely twitchy. He’d never seen Japanese troops quite so nervous-looking and made sure that he showed a confident front in front of everybody.

The drive back to Lorne was marred by mechanical failures amongst the vehicles, particularly the civilian ones they had pressed into service, and he finished up having to order trucks forward from the third battalion to pick up troops that had lost all their transport as the ragged column made its way eastward. They were barely a kilometer from Lorne when the troops at the rear of the column reported enemy vehicles were in sight, pursuing them. He had his driver pull his ATV off the road and let the rest of the column pass before getting going again at the rear of the column.

He had Akiro deploy his troops on the top of the hill to the west of the town, including two of the remaining artillery pieces, and they were ready to open fire as soon as the pursuing natives came into view. Toshiro had stopped at a spot where he could still get a view of where the road came around the point to the west and waited for the first enemy vehicle to appear. The column of enemy troops came around the point in the artillery open fire almost immediately. The first shell hit on the side of the hill above the road and slightly in front of the column doing no damage other than to shout the road with debris. The second shell appeared to hit the first vehicle in the column, but even before the smoke cleared, the vehicle appeared out of the smoke and continued driving along the road. Damn!