Martin Clemens

Major Warren Frederick Martin Clemens CBE, AM, MC (17 April 1915 – 31 May 2009) was a Scottish colonial administrator and military officer.

In late 1941 and early 1942, while serving as a District Officer in the Solomon Islands, he helped prepare the area for eventual resistance to Japanese occupation.

With the coming of the Pacific War, he volunteered for military service in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Defence Force and was commissioned a captain.

After a short leave in Australia in late 1941, Martin Clemens returned to the Solomons on a ship sent to evacuate European and Chinese residents from Guadalcanal.

[2] Meanwhile, the managers of the coconut plantations had fled Guadalcanal in panic, abandoning the native workers from neighboring islands, who were left to be repatriated by Clemens.

After the Japanese occupied the island of Tulagi in early May, they initiated searches for Clemens, and the other Guadalcanal coastwatchers Donald S. Macfarlan, Kenneth D. Hay, Hugh A. Mackenzie, Leif Schroeder, and F. Ashton Rhoades.

Major General Alexander Vandegrift gave Clemens "complete charge of all matters of native administration and of intelligence outside the perimeter".