Kokoda Mist: Australians fighting for their future, at home and in the New Guinea jungle

PROLOGUE

On 7 December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed Pearl Harbor, and crippled the American navy in the Pacific.

On 15 February 1942, the British military forces in Singapore, Britain’s military stronghold in the Far-East, surrendered to the Imperial Japanese Army.

On 19 February 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy carried out an aircraft-carrier-based attack on Darwin. It was the largest military attack ever fought on Australian soil.

These actions caused alarm among Australia’s politicians and defence planners. Within the span of a few short months, everything they had depended on to protect Australia’s security in the previous two decades had been brushed aside by the Japanese military like unwanted clutter.

On 21 February 1942, General Douglas MacArthur stood on the rear balcony of a railway carriage in Melbourne, Australia, and declared to the people of the Philippines, I shall return.

MacArthur had been ordered out of the Philippines, which was about to fall to the Imperial Japanese Army, and take up his new command as the supreme commander of the South-West Pacific in the allied war against the Imperial Japanese forces in the Pacific.

MacArthur delivered his speech to an awe-struck Australian audience of thousands, who had come to welcome the man who would save them from the terrifying thought of Japanese invasion and occupation. The Australians cheered, clapped and waved excitedly. What they did not know, however, was that all MacArthur had to offer them at that moment was himself and his headquarter staff sitting behind him in the railway carriage. The simple truth was that American support was months away, and all that MacArthur had at this vital moment in Australia’s history was what the Australian military forces could offer him to command.

When MacArthur discovered just what he would be commanding, he was shocked. Most of Australia’s regular fighting force were fighting overseas. The 8th Division, along with air force and naval personnel had been captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell. The 6th, 7th and 9th divisions, along with some naval ships and personnel, were fighting the Germans in North Africa under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Alexander, who was Commander-in-Chief Middle East, and Winston Churchill, who headed the war cabinet in London and oversaw the defence of the British Empire. Churchill had ordered the Australian 6th Division to be part of a military force that had fought in the Greek campaign where it had sustained heavy losses and had to be rebuilt. The Greek campaign was badly planned and hastily executed (much like Churchill’s Gallipoli campaign in World War I) and had failed in its mission to defend Greece.

These regular Australian troops had to be recalled by Australia’s prime minister, John Curtin. What followed was a struggle between Winston Churchill, who wanted to keep the Australians in North Africa to defend the Empire, and Curtin, who wanted them brought back to defend the Australian homeland. Churchill believed that the primary mission of the Empire’s forces was to stop the Germans in North Africa and the Japanese in Burma (now Myanmar), thereby denying them possession of the vital oil fields of the Middle East. Since Australia’s defence ran counter to that mission, it could be sacrificed. Obviously, Curtin did not agree with this strategy, and ordered the Australian troops home to defend their homeland. Churchill resisted, Curtin insisted, and so the Australians formed a convoy of ships led by the Royal Navy (RN) and set sail.

Unhappy with this turn of events, Churchill ordered the convoy to change direction when it was in the Indian Ocean and head for Burma. Curtin heard of this and demanded the return of Australia’s troops. Churchill conceded.¹ In the final analysis, it would be the Americans, not the British, who would send their navy, army and air force to defend the Australian homeland in its ‘darkest hour’ of need. This led to a dramatic change in Australia’s defence strategy, which would continue until the present day. This change is best summed up in Curtin’s own words:

The Australian Government, therefore, regards the Pacific struggle as [the] primary one in which the United States and Australia must have the fullest say in the direction of the democracies’ fighting plan. Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links of kinship with the United Kingdom.²

At the time of General Douglas MacArthur’s arrival in Australia, however, the only effective Australian fighting force available to him was a few CMF (citizen military force) divisions, which were comprised of part-time soldiers with only limited training. Furthermore, many of the units were not at full strength. Nevertheless, these were the soldiers who would be sent into battle in New Guinea to stem the Japanese advance until the regular Australian units could return and American troops could arrive to relieve them.

The call went out for more young men to join in the defence of their homeland, and young men stepped forward knowing that they would go into harm’s way against a fighting force that had never been beaten in the field of battle and had a reputation for the brutal treatment of its prisoners. The Australian Government also introduced conscription for the first time in Australia’s history to fill the depleted ranks of Australia’s defence forces.

These young men were then sent into battle to fight in the New Guinea campaign and were ordered by their Australian leaders in Port Moresby to stand their ground against a well-trained, well-equipped, well-led and numerically superior Japanese force, while they themselves were poorly trained, poorly equipped, undermanned, and, with the exception of their field commanders, some of whom were World War I veterans, poorly led. These World War I veteran field commanders knew how to establish fields of fire and crossfire killing zones, so effective against an enemy determined to make repeated frontal assaults, which was the tactic that the Japanese commander, Lieutenant General Hatazo Adachi, adopted because he was working to a very short timetable to take Port Moresby. The Australian field commanders also reasoned that since they couldn’t stop the Japanese advance, the best they could do was to slow it down, so they employed the tactic of a fighting withdrawal, allowing time for Port Moresby to be fortified and time for the regular Australian soldiers to return from North Africa, and American troops to arrive from America.

Their Australian headquarter leaders in Port Moresby, and their American counterparts in Brisbane, however, were making decisions based on faulty intelligence about the strength of the Japanese force they were fighting. They also had little appreciation of the terrain these young men were fighting in, and no regard for the inadequate supplies their soldiers were receiving. The soldiers they commanded had to fight with World War I weaponry, wear uniforms that had been designed for desert warfare that offered no camouflage protection and quickly deteriorated in the tropical climate, and contend with tropical diseases never experienced by Australian soldiers before. They were surviving on food supplies that were inappropriate, insufficient, and often spoiled by their exposure to the climate.

What these young men had, however, was an abundance of courage and a heroic fighting spirit that was undaunted and determined not to let the Japanese invade their homeland. And so it was that the soldiers of the Australian 39th Battalion found themselves trying to hold out against the onslaught of the infamous Japanese South Seas Detachment as wave after wave of fanatical Japanese warriors broke upon their ranks …

CHAPTER 1

They’ll be here any moment now, Stan thought, looking up at the huge clouds threatening to break at any moment. The heat and humidity that had been building all day closed in around him. Sweat trickled down his chest and face, soaking his belly and neck. Without turning, he tightened his grip on his .303 rifle, and pulled it snugly into his shoulder.

When they came into view, he was surprised to see how tall they were. He was expecting to see five-foot men, but those who came into the straight stretch of track were six feet or more and they were wheeling pushbikes – useless on the Kokoda Track.

‘Let the first ten or so pass before you open fire,’ he had been told, and so he waited, nerves tingling throughout his body, for the right moment. Just a few more, then we can have at ‘em, Stan thought, but the Australians opened fire before he had anticipated.

The battle exploded rapidly. Australian firepower, delivered by old World War I Lewis machine guns and .303 rifles, ripped through the jungle undergrowth. Leaves fluttered and branches fell as the bullets tore through and smashed into the advance guard of Japanese soldiers.

Caught in the open, many Japanese fell. Stan picked his targets with ease, reloading manually, the bolt of his .303 sliding smoothly, ejecting spent cartridges and popping live ones into the firing chamber. He got off three shots before the stunned Japanese began to react. Some went to ground and returned fire, others retreated to re-group with their main body further down the track. The Japanese then fanned out on either side of the track and started a sweep through the jungle.

With the Japanese soldiers lying on the track, moaning and clutching their wounds or laying in silent death, Stan and the rest of his squad picked their way back through the jungle to regroup with their platoon.

After regrouping, the Australians spread themselves out across each side of the track, anticipating the Japanese onslaught. They did not have long to wait. Amid screams of Banzai! the Japanese launched themselves at the Australians, whose firepower managed to hold them off, but the Australians were heavily outnumbered. They knew it would only be a matter of time before the Japanese found the outer limits of their flanks and moved around to surround them. The Australian commander was worried that his men would be cut off, and that new arrivals, coming down the track from Kokoda, would walk into an ambush. Before anything could be done, however, the Japanese encirclement was complete.

The Australians had waited too long before withdrawing back to Kokoda. They had intended to slow the Japanese advance by fighting with hit-and-run tactics before making a stand with their full strength. Now it appeared too late. The small band of Australians would have to fight their way out against unbeatable odds.

Stan kept reloading and firing; his targets were not hard to find, they were only a few yards in front of him, and even though his hands began to shake, he kept on firing until his magazine emptied. Bravely, the Australian commander rose and attempted to contact the Australian reinforcements. He was killed instantly. At this point, Stan felt a panic rise within him. Knowing how much his mates depended on him to keep fighting, he smothered the instinct to cut and run.

Just then, an image of Carol came into his mind. He saw her cradling her newborn sister, Jean, in her arms. Carol smiled as she sat, gently caressing her sister’s head.

‘You’re my little girl now,’ she had whispered.

Carol and Stan had grown up together back in Brisbane. They were close friends who shared the hardship of having lost a parent. Carol’s mother had died giving birth to Jean, while Stan’s father had died in an accident at work. Carol’s father worked on the docks in Brisbane which kept him away from home for long hours. Stan and his mother survived on the insurance money his mother got after his father’s death and what she earned from cleaning offices at night. Having to take on responsibilities beyond their years had brought Stan and Carol together in a special way.

Instantly, a calmness fell upon him. He regained control and changed the empty magazine with a full one; then, he continued firing with renewed determination.

If I die now, Carol, I’ll take a few of these bastards with me, he promised her.

The Lewis gun beside him kept hammering away at the charging Japanese, who kept falling away before them. Segments of the Australian line were separated in the confusion of battle as the Japanese penetrated their line of defence, but the Australian centre, where Stan was, continued to hold.

With one final, determined rush, the Japanese launched themselves at the Australian centre. Hand-to-hand fighting erupted around Stan. The din of battle echoed in his ears. Grunts, groans and the thudding of blows mixed with shouting and screaming echoed in his ears. He used the butt of his rifle like a club, smashing anything he saw in front of him. Suddenly, a sharp pain exploded in the back of his head. Darkness engulfed him as he fell forward and rolled over in the soft, damp leaves lining the Kokoda Track.

*

Carol Sutton stopped to look back and smiled brightly at the child-like antics of her younger sister, Jean, whose face was locked in concentration as she carefully placed her foot on the concrete strip atop the gutter she was balancing on. Her arms were extended, giving balance to her slender, young body. Gradually she increased her pace, her confidence growing with each step.

Jean craves adventure, Carol thought, although Father would probably say Jean was more rebellious than adventurous.

The two of them were always clashing over Jean’s behaviour. Sometimes their father was right, sometimes he went too far, but whatever he said, Jean was developing the habit of defying him, leaving Carol in the middle – caught between the two people she loved most in this world.

Jean was an attractive, shapely, sixteen-year-old teenage girl. She had blond hair, bright blue eyes and white teeth that flashed whenever she smiled, which was often. Carol, on the other hand, was a brunette with large brown eyes and generous red lips. When she smiled her whole face lit up, especially her eyes. She was also attractive, but in a more homely, wholesome way.

Looking at Jean, Carol’s heart filled. They had been so close from the first day of Jean’s life, sixteen years ago. Jean was born at home, and Carol, barely five at the time, was allowed to see her newborn sister late in the afternoon. She had stood next to an old cot given to her mother by a thoughtful neighbour. Carol remembered how delighted she had been to see her sister, and how distressed she was over her mother’s death.

Conflicting emotions had battled for her attention on that day, while concern for her family’s future had heightened her anxiety. Through it all, however, one thing had become clear to her – she had to protect her sister, who was so small, and so perfect. When Jean had opened her eyes, the blue intensity of her unfocused gaze seemed to reach a point deep inside Carol.

You are so beautiful,