Kokoda (34 page)

They were going to retake Kokoda,
that
was what they were going to do! With Kokoda came the airfield, and with the airfield came the potential to get both immediate supplies and reinforcements in, plus a way of quickly evacuating their wounded. And it would also be a good way of getting the new arrivals ‘blooded’ quickly, making them all the better for it as soldiers.

It didn’t take long for the purport of Major Cameron’s remarks to filter through to the lower ranks of B Company, who were collectively angry. The veterans of B Company, including Joe Dawson, Ray Phillips and Wally Gratz, looked at each other with hollow eyes. After everything they had been through,
this
was their reward? To have their name maligned by a bloke who didn’t have the first clue about what had happened but was prepared to crucify them anyway? Who the hell did he think he was? For the moment, alas, there was nothing they could do but wear it.

Strike two. After their success in the Battle of Midway, on the morning of 7 August the Americans launched their next strike-back at the Japanese. Always the American way had been ‘when in doubt, send in the marines’, and this is precisely what they did. Under cover of darkness, some six thousand US marines of the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal and successfully attacked the two thousand Japanese soldiers defending the newly constructed airfield. By dusk the following day, the Americans were the new defenders of the airfield, the many captured Japanese supplies that came with it and the crucial port facilities.

In Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo, the American move was viewed with alarm, and as soon as the next night, 8 August, the Imperial Japanese Navy arrived with such force that the American Navy—after losing four cruisers—had to abandon its marines there. The stage was set for the massive battle of Guadalcanal, with both the Americans and Japanese continuing to pour in more and more men in a bid to control the crucial airfield.

For the first time, Japan’s resources in the Southwest Pacific were stretched to almost breaking point. It didn’t mean that the Japanese military leadership would abandon their plans in New Guinea, but it certainly shifted their focus from the island.

Contact
. On the morning of 8 August 1942, for the first time Major Cameron at Deniki was able to get a message through to Port Moresby along a landline to tell them the state of play. Communication along the Kokoda Track to this point had been extremely difficult for the Australians. While, typically, the Japanese had long before developed a special lightweight radio that worked perfectly in jungle conditions, the Diggers were not so blessed.

At the beginning of the campaign, the same backpack radios weighing around thirty-five pounds that had worked so well in the Middle East were issued and then lugged by porters up hill and down ravine for mile after wretched mile. Alas, once in place in the jungle it was discovered that they really didn’t work for ranges beyond a mile and a half anywhere other than in the relatively flatter country to the north of the Owen Stanleys and, even then, only when the wind was blowing in the right direction! The high humidity affected the efficient functioning of the radio, as did the hilly terrain of most of the track. Unless there was ‘line-of-sight’ between the transmitter and receiver, it simply didn’t work. So, as part of an enormous exercise of logistics conducted by the Signals Brigade, a cable of telephone wire was laid all the way from Port Moresby to Deniki, and this now worked… at least reasonably well.

Because human speech could be transmitted on the cable for only ten miles or so, signal stations were set up along the track roughly along those intervals. And, to avoid the classic case of Chinese Whispers changing the original message entirely, each signalman would not only receive the message, but check that he had it exactly right before passing it on. In such a laborious fashion did Port Moresby command keep in vague contact with its men in the field.

On this morning, Major Cameron sent the message that his three companies were moving out with the objective of retaking Kokoda in a surprise attack by nightfall. At the head of C Company, Captain Cyril Dean would head carefully north along the main track back into Kokoda, while Captain Noel Symington and A Company would make a circular flanking movement to come at the plateau from a little-known side track, which had been suggested by Bert Kienzle. Captain Bidstrup with D Company would go all the way around on another track which went in a northeasterly direction, and come out at a spot on the track between Oivi and Kokoda, which would enable them to cut the Japs’ supply line. They could then fall back on Kokoda, where A and C Companies would, they hoped, already be in possession. Two other companies, including the ‘disgraced’ B Company, would man the fall-back positions at Deniki and further back at Eora Creek, and Major Cameron would stay with them. (As they said among the common folk of the privates: ‘RHIP’, Rank Hath Its Privileges.)

By his own men, Major Cameron’s orders had been greeted with something less than enthusiasm, most particularly by the officers who had been put in charge of each assigned section, and who understood the tactical dubiousness of what their commander was proposing. Dean, Symington and Bidstrup were all fresh to the 39th, having come as the reinforcement officers from the AIF a couple of months previously. Dean and Symington had seen action in Syria, while Bidstrup had fought in Tobruk, and all three of these officers— vastly more experienced than Cameron in matters of battle—were quietly of the view that Cameron was something of a ‘gung-ho merchant’.

It was the older and bolder Captain Symington who voiced these concerns.
¹²⁷
There is a particular kind of military language where, without risking a court martial, a subordinate can put the view to a senior officer that the orders he has just given might possibly be construed, just possibly, as
insane
, and Symington used that language now. Peppering his remarks with many a ‘Sir’ and ‘is it possible that?’, he noted that it seemed, perhaps, a trifle risky to send small forces of men into an area where the strength of the enemy was all but entirely unknown. Did Major Cameron have, perhaps, any information that he, Captain Symington, was not privy to, as to the strength of the Japanese around Kokoda, or even back at their beachhead? Major Cameron did not, but he still insisted that his orders be followed to the letter, right down to his order that Captain Symington fire off a Verey flare as soon as he and his men were
in situ
at Kokoda, despite Symington’s expressed view that the flare would only be visible to every Japanese soldier within ten miles, but remain unseen to the men of the 39th it was meant to alert back at Deniki.

‘Do exactly as I have asked, Captain Symington, is that clear?’

‘Yes,
Suh
.’

Another who felt trepidation about the orders was Captain Dean, whose task it was to go right down the main track towards Kokoda with his men until such times as they encountered resistance— despite the fact that they had precisely
no
information about what strength that resistance would be and where they would find it. Such an order meant that it was all but guaranteed that he would lose at least some of his men when they came to the Japanese ambush which was sure to be set up. By way of temperament and personality, however, Captain Dean was not like Captain Symington and did not remonstrate with Major Cameron. He accepted that he had been given an order and, however unwise he thought it, however much in his heart of hearts he might have wanted to tell him to go to billy-o, he decided that it was his duty to follow it.

The companies moved out as ordered, separating as they went along their assigned tracks.

Unfortunately for Dean, C Company had only proceeded a short way towards their objective before the encroaching Japanese indeed ambushed them. In the ensuing fire-fight, Captain Dean was hit by a sniper’s bullet.

‘Through the stomach, too,’ he managed to get out, as he put his hands over the wound, and then fell down and died almost immediately. He was a good, brave man, popular among his men, and somehow the sight of him there, dead at their feet, galvanised them as one. His enraged men charged straight at the Japanese positions, firing as they went, and bayoneting those few Japanese who stood their ground. Operating less in the realms of conscious thought than a collective rage that had built to bloodlust, they kept pursuing the fleeing Japanese, and when the battle was over a great number of Japanese soldiers had been killed for the loss of only a few Australians.

But that was still a few too many, and the one who was lamented most was the brave Captain Dean. In his absence, a doctor from Brisbane, Captain John Shera, took command and called a halt to pursuing the Japanese further. With the certainty that there would be another ambush at the Japanese fall-back position that would surely be waiting for them over the next hill, he told the men that C Company would go no further. Instead, with the assistance of the omnipresent Father Nobby Earl, they buried their dead, gathered their wounded and—helped to calm just a little by the cigarettes they had pilfered from the dead Japanese soldiers—turned back. In such difficult situations, the presence of Father Nobby Earl, always with his long stick in one hand and his rosary beads in the other, provided great spiritual succour. Even for the men who had not a religious bone in their bodies, the sense of care and goodness he projected was a comfort. For the rest of the day, C Company slowly limped and staggered back to Deniki, fighting a rearguard action all the way.

The 39th Battalion’s D Company, meanwhile, was hit by another Japanese ambush at the tiny village of Pirivi, but they also fought back well. In savage hand-to-hand fighting, where the bayonet did at least as much damage as the bullet, the Australians had the best of the notably bloody fighting. At the conclusion of the second engagement of the morning, the Japanese had been especially badly hit and it was they who’d withdrawn and the Australians who were momentarily masters of this bloody section of the track. So hurried was the Japanese withdrawal that they left behind their dead and some of their immobile wounded, including one Japanese soldier who had been hit in the upper thighs. He was still conscious, lying sprawled on the track, his own machine gun out of his reach as the Australians tentatively approached.

The sergeant took one look at him and gave an order: ‘Smoky, finish him orf,’ he said to one of his men, ‘Smoky’ Joe Howson.

Stillness on the track. Heavy air, with insects buzzing…
roaring
. Every ounce of the Japanese soldier’s terrified consciousness was now focused, staring up at the pure blackness of the muzzle that the Australian soldier was pointing at his forehead. Pointing, not moving…

‘Smoky, finish him orf,’ the sergeant had said. Smoky knew it was obvious that the bloke could live, but he asked himself what else could he do?

‘With that I looked down,’ Smoky would recount after, ‘and he looked back at me. And I’ve been looking at those eyes ever since…’
¹²⁸

It was indeed going to be a long and savage fight, with no room for mercy from either side. Taking prisoners was out of the question for both the Japanese and the Australians. Not only were there no cells or secure enclosures handy in the jungle, but as the fight for domination of the track progressed it would be too dangerous and draining to assign much-needed soldiers to escort prisoners back to secure lines. Perhaps even more important than both these factors, however, was that taking prisoners would mean more mouths to feed and greater strain placed on supply lines that were always under severe pressure.

With the two fighting forces operating as much as ten days march from their bases, through extremely difficult terrain, lack of food and ammunition would be a constant source of angst. Both sides knew it, and acted accordingly. No prisoners. No mercy.

After a day of bloody fighting, the survivors of D Company were able to achieve their objective and regain the track between Kokoda and Oivi, arriving just in time to ambush a platoon of Japanese who were marching double-quick time to what they thought was a battlefront way ahead of them. It was one thing to have cut the Japanese supply line to Kokoda, but quite another to hold it, as D Company now came under attack from both directions.
¹²⁹

With so much Japanese resistance out along the main tracks defending Kokoda from the main Deniki thrust, there were precious few soldiers left in the main garrison near the airfield itself and, by just after one o’clock, A Company—with the former ‘local’ Lieutenant Peter Brewer and the ever-faithful Lance Corporal Sanopa of the Papuan Infantry Battalion guiding them—was right on the outskirts of Kokoda. Ahead of the men was the thick rubber plantation, and just peeking over the tops of the trees they could see the roofs of the village. But no Japs! Were they about to enter a trap? Was their next step going to be their last? Could it really be
this
easy to retake a key position on which so much blood had already been spilt by both sides? Almost…

Indeed, as A Company proceeded with great caution through the plantation, the men did see a few Japanese soldiers in the distance and had a few shots fired in their direction. None of the Japs were in it for a real fight though and, by half-past one in the early afternoon, the Australians were in total control of the plateau once more and manning the defensive positions.

There, they made two significant discoveries. In one of the station houses they unearthed Japanese documents clearly noting the track through Kokoda as the planned route to Port Moresby, and the level of detail the map showed about the topography that remained was staggering. Clearly the Japanese intelligence was first class and Captain Symington wasted no time in giving the maps to Lance Corporal Sanopa with instructions to break through enemy lines and get them to Major Cameron. He was also to inform the Major that they were in possession of the airfield and needed Moresby reinforcements urgently.