‘Must have 14 days’ reserve of rations by 26th August, also 100,000 rounds small arms ammunition, 3600 four-second grenades, 1000 seven-second grenades, and 2-inch mortars’
—Brigadier Arnold Potts to Port Moresby, on finding no supplies at Myola
Meanwhile, the Australian troops were trudging towards Myola. The long line of light khaki wound over the mountains like an ant-trail. They had bully beef, army biscuits and a cup of tea for lunch and dinner. Tobacco was their greatest pleasure and morale-booster.
The terrain divided the stronger from the weak, and sub-units struggled to stay intact as stragglers fell back. The older, and bigger soldiers couldn’t keep up, but gradually the troops grew used to the fatigue. Though 45 years old, the inexhaustible Potts cheerfully drove his men on towards Myola, where, he’d been assured, the supplies for his offensive had been airdropped.
On the 18 August the forward troops reached the foot of the third range, the Maguli, some 2200 feet high, into which the engineers had cut 3400 steps. ‘Impossible for white men carrying loads; natives may carry up to 15 pounds,’ warned one track report.1 This was the longest ascent, and took the slower soldiers seven hours. ‘Gradually men dropped out utterly exhausted—just couldn’t go on. Many were lying down and had been sick,’2 observed Captain Phil Rhoden, later to command the 2/14th Battalion. ‘I went backwards and forwards encouraging the stragglers to get up and move,’ he recalled. ‘You slept in the open, you slept where you fell.’3
From the Maguli, the men dropped to the Brown River, and crossed at two places over single tree trunks. Up ahead, beyond a black swamp, was the village of Nauro—old Nauro. Here, and in forward villages, supply stations and medical posts were supposedly anticipating their arrival with fresh rations.
This was false: the village administrators were usually surprised at the sudden arrival of an army, and some of the forward ANGAU patrols treated the troops with careless inattention. At Nauro, ANGAU officers were barely able to offer a cup of tea.4 Potts later spoke bitterly of the incompetence of the forward stations, whose staff generally ‘displayed little interest [in us] and gave the minimum of help’.5
On the third and fourth days the Australians reached the pretty village of Menari, at the junction of two creeks. Menari is still a ‘pleasant midday halting place…both peaceful and prosperous…inhabited by men and women leading the old life of Papuan mountain folk’.6 Here the friendly Koiari people offered fruit and vegetables, and the soldiers replenished their water. Of all the forward stations, Menari was the only one ‘where everything possible was done to assist the troops’, Potts wrote.7
The next morning they crossed a stream ‘on a huge log jamb, and passed across…a cliff face on a scaffold of saplings’,8 leading to the foot of Mission Ridge, some 5000 feet high, at the top of which they reached an oval-shaped clearing, covered in kunai grass. The summit would later be called Brigade Hill (or Butcher’s Hill), in memory of the battle fought there. The clearing straddles a magnificent 360-degree view of the ranges, dominated in the north-west by Mount Victoria, at 13,363 feet (the height of which had been wrongly calculated, resulting in several plane crashes).At the peak, the troops ‘were in very high spirits…Each man regarded the fact that he had reached this spot as a personal triumph, which gave him confidence in his ability to endure even greater hardships.’9 In the evening fires were lit in the chilling alpine air and they sang songs as they shivered around the flames. ‘We warmed ourselves, and we sang and we sang and we sang,’ Phil Rhoden recalled. ‘We sang a lot of rugby songs. The morale was high. It was great.You felt you were a member of something good.’10 Stan Bissett led the chorus of voices, and during the singing he remembers catching his brother Harold’s eye: ‘I felt at that moment,’ Stan recalled, ‘that he was not going to make it; I had a premonition that he was going to die.’11
On 20 August they reached the village of Efogi, perched on an exasperating knoll, and encountered the first of the 39th Battalion’s wounded coming back down the track. They nursed gunshot and bayonet wounds wrapped in old field dressings.
White recalled two ‘walking wounded’ edging along the path: one was shot through the foot, the other through the skull—the bullet had entered just below the left eye, and emerged behind the ear. He complained of a headache. A third was shot clean through the thigh, and another carried a badly shattered hand. ‘They had walked 113 miles in 16 days,’ White reported. If so, these men must have been involved in the skirmishes at Wairopi. They were ‘jubilant’, because their wounds ensured home leave. None spoke of the fighting. They were ‘desensitised…completely inured to suffering. They accepted it as an integral part of living [like] eating and sleeping.’12
On the last ascent the men passed through The Gap, supposedly a narrow defile; in fact, aircraft could easily fly through it in fine weather. Had the Persians encountered this at Thermopylae they would surely have poured through and crushed the Spartans.
Near the highest summit, at 8500 feet, they entered a dark, moss-covered forest, a cathedral of trees that dwarfed the forward troops. It is a cold, cavernous place—the bizarre, botanical manifestation of an alpine climate on the equator.
Gathered there are the freaks of nature, alien, triffid-like flora: great figs, startling ferns and the giant pandanus trees, whose colossal roots hang at eye level as though ripped out of the earth by a giant’s hand. Fronds as long as ten feet fall from the canopy, channelling the rain to the forest floor. The long, sharp leaves of the cycads, a prehistoric remnant, explode in perfect, radial symmetry. On the forest floor vines, roots and shrubbery seem to have coagulated in a frozen state of serpentine violence. Bright green moss sheathes the lower tree trunks; and phosphorescent slime clings to their buttresses, where fans of cream fungi grow. Anomalously lining the trail are little ginger plants, as though perversely planted here by some mad, lost gardener.
There are no carnivorous animals or deadly insects. Rarely do the indigenous birds of paradise or the ostrich-like cassowaries appear, although members of the parrot family are common, and there is the occasional snake. The track is nonetheless a paradise for butterfly catchers and orchid lovers. An incurable orchid fan, Blamey later found many to distract him near Moresby and wrote to his wife of their voluptuous beauty.
The troops took a track to the right and on 21 August, in weary ones and twos, emerged from the forest onto the vast crater of Myola. Here Potts expected to find a bustling camp full of freshly dropped supplies—40,000 rations and a huge arsenal of ammunition—with which to relieve the 39th at Isurava and launch his counteroffensive.
He found virtually nothing: a few makeshift huts, and a totally inadequate supply of rations and ammunition:‘Nothing [had been] dropped since August 16th although the weather had been good.’13 There were just 80 blankets and 6000 rations—about four days’ worth.14 Worse, only two days’ reserves were held ahead of Myola.As for firepower, there were 10,000 rounds of Tommy gun ammunition and 75,000 rounds of .303 ammunition, less than half the amount required—‘and the 21st brigade was expected to take the offensive!’15 bitterly remarked Frank Sublet, a brave, ruthless officer impatient to defeat the enemy. Nor had the small force at Myola, which included Kienzle, been told of the timing of the brigade’s arrival.
A furious Potts contained himself and questioned the uncomprehending ordnance officers in charge. No, they had not received any airdrops for at least a week. No, they had not been informed of his arrival—and so on.
Potts was bewildered. The supply arrangements at Myola were ‘appallingly lax’, noted the 21st Brigade War Diary. Of course, the scale of the cock-up can be easily seen with hindsight; at the time, Potts knew little of the size of the army he was about to confront, and the extent to which the supply failure would cripple his offensive. But from his vantage point it was a grave crisis—Potts never underestimated the importance of supply. He maintained an outward calm, as his battered sense of military precision cast around for a solution.
All around him the windswept lakebed, suspended like a great dish in the heart of the mountains, rolled away to the peripheral clouds; and the silent emptiness seemed perhaps to reflect the forlorn state of the Australian army. They were stranded in the mountains without adequate food or ammunition. Over the next range was Isurava, where the few hundred men of the 39th were dug in; far below them, at Kokoda, the forward troops of the Nankai Shitai had arrived and were steadily absorbing Yokoyama’s men into their ranks.
Potts signalled Port Moresby and demanded, immediately, nine days’ reserve rations for 2000 troops—the figure included the 53rd Battalion, which was then coming up the track—and several hundred native carriers.
His wire to Rowell that day—23 August, the very day Potts became commander of Maroubra Force*—was perhaps the most vital of the campaign: ‘Must have 14 days’ reserve of rations by 26th August, also 100,000 rounds small arms ammunition, 3600 four-second grenades, 1000 seven-second grenades, and 2-inch mortars.’16 He then dispatched a trusted officer, Major Cameron, back to Port Moresby to press the unit’s needs.
A shocked Rowell relayed the news directly to Blamey in Brisbane, and wired Potts the next day with emergency instructions: ‘…It is possible for the rations to have been moved forward from MYOLA. Until the matter is cleared up and an adequate reserve established you will not repeat NOT make any fw’d move.’17
The response was swift; Potts would get some rations and ammunition. Rowell, with the help of Major-General Arthur ‘Tubby’ Allen**, organised the immediate dispatch of several planeloads of supplies. Between 23 and 24 August, some 5000 emergency rations, 4480 pounds of biscuits, 1500 balanced rations, assorted ration components, and—unnecessarily, since the mountains were mosquito-free—21,000 quinine tablets, tumbled out of the rear doors of Dakota biscuit bombers and bestrew the lakebed.
The airdropped arsenal included: 237,000 rounds of .303 ammunition; 1050 four-second grenades; 140,000 rounds of Tommy gun ammunition; two 3-inch mortars and 120 mortar bombs. Sent the next day were 4000 grenades, 714 mortar bombs, 1000 blankets, 1000 sweaters, 1000 green-dyed uniforms, 2000 packets of cigarettes and a quantity of soap.18
It was not enough, but it was something. The blankets were welcome; in the alpine climate, the troops had used their groundsheets to keep warm. The green-dyed uniforms, albeit better than light khaki, were one tone of green, but the jungle tended to be mottled-green. It seemed Australia’s Quartermaster’s store misunderstood the concept of camouflage. War correspondent Chester Wilmot threw in his usual withering assessment of the incompetence around him:‘It is strange that six months after the return of…General Blamey there should be no green uniforms in Australia.’19
With packages raining down, the problem was retrieval. Hundreds of heavy great bales suddenly littered Myola. There were not enough tribesmen to gather them—despite Kienzle’s unceasing efforts. Potts needed at least 2000 carriers for the job; there were only 933 (including the sick) shuttling between Myola and Isurava at that time. About a third had deserted—protesting their lack of pay, fear of the Japanese and exhaustion. ‘The carriers’ spell of two half-days a week was merely a cherished memory…and none forgot that his contract had long since expired.’20
The broken carrier lines drew hostile criticism. Little or no foresight, thundered the brigade’s operational report, had been shown ‘by those responsible’ for calculating the number of natives needed to maintain Maroubra Force and pick up from drop zones.21
How was Potts to commit his troops to battle? As little as 30 per cent of his emergency supplies would survive the plunge into the Myolan lakebed. Parachutes were not yet attached to airdropped packages, many of which were lost, pilfered or damaged. The consequences of the supply failure cannot be overstated. It fatally delayed Potts’s planned offensive: he lost his momentum, and had to rethink his entire strategy. The recapture of Kokoda and the thrust to the sea were impossible without a huge arsenal and a reliable food supply.
The catastrophe undermined Potts ‘even before he met his enemies’ and altered his mission from an offensive to defensive one. ‘He should not have been given orders which, through no fault of his own, he could not fulfil’22—thus Australia’s official war historian, a writer subject to military censorship, condemned the logistical disaster. Others were less polite. The disaster at Myola exposed an ill-equipped Australian infantry to the full brunt of the Japanese invasion.* The great cost of such spectacular incompetence was the loss of time. It delayed for seven days the relief of the 39th, whose exhausted survivors had been dug in at Isurava for weeks, fighting off sporadic Japanese patrols.
Stalled at the highest point of the Owen Stanleys, unable to advance, with barely enough ammunition and food to sustain the most threadbare resistance, Potts could only wait as his supplies were hauled in.
Meanwhile, Horii’s troops were streaming into Kokoda. His patrols had alerted the Japanese commander to the weak Australian resistance at Isurava. The Japanese knew nothing, yet, of the two AIF battalions then marooned at Myola.
Horii saw no reason to change his schedule. Officially he planned to reach Isurava within two days, and Moresby within five.23 No doubt he still had deep misgivings. But his orders of 18 August were to ‘advance to the southern slopes of the Owen Stanley Range and destroy enemy troops there’.24 And orders were orders.
His biggest headache, similarly, was supply. Horii’s vast supply line extended to Buna–Gona (by human carrier) and then by transport ship to Rabaul. If Allied air raids destroyed the ships the loss rippled all the way into the heart of the mountains, and broke Horii’s tenuous lifeline. For now, the line seemed to be working relatively well, and Kokoda had a large stockpile.
But there was no room for error; his troops had no emergency rations. A Japanese soldier’s usual prescribed daily field ration, according to Lieutenant-Colonel Tanaka Kengoro, was two pounds of rice and tinned meat. In the Owen Stanleys, they received twenty pounds of rice to last fifteen days, and no tinned meat—‘a reduction of one third in the normal daily rice ration’.25
Their famous spirit would see them through; that was a constant refrain. Many Japanese soldiers carried little tomes of spiritual succour; one military pamphlet issued during training (and later found on several corpses), said:‘The spirits of over 100,000 warriors are guarding us.’
The Shitai’s camp site reading was never light: ‘In this war…after landing, a small detachment may have to march deep into the enemy country. Be prepared to abandon your dead…Be ready to die at any time and any place’,26 the pamphlet continued. It is hard to imagine the troops actually reading these grisly documents. But presumably they’d acted on one snippet of advice before leaving Rabaul: ‘Make the necessary will, and have your hair and nails cut’—locks of hair and nail ends were sent to the soldier’s home before departure in case his remains were not forthcoming.
The Shitai were briefed on the correct treatment of prisoners and natives. On the face of it, the rules (in their unit war diary) seemed civilised—and certainly some soldiers observed them, in spirit if not to the letter. For example, the troops were not to harm prisoners, women or tribal inhabitants: ‘If we, in a moment of excitement, kill a man who has thrown away his arms and surrendered, this will not be the true warrior spirit. Particularly are the natives to be respected, for they are included in the unification of East Asia. To harm non-resistant natives is to shame the banner of the Imperial Army…’27
No ‘senseless counter-measures’ were to be taken against Australian POWs; these included ‘useless murder caused merely by anger…or cruelty caused by a man seized by emotion’.Australian officers, especially, were to be spared ‘the third degree’. This was totally ignored, of course: the Japanese bayoneted or shot all Australian and American prisoners in the Papuan campaign, from Templeton on.
Indeed, other ‘instructions’ contradicted the rules of the Shitai’s war diary, and suggest the extent to which they were honoured in the breach. These were the ‘Essentials’ of Japanese interrogation, for example:
Tie up four or five men at a time…
Inform them that they will be shot if they cause any disturbance.
Officers will be placed in a separate room…28
The degree of severity towards the Papuans seemed to differ from soldier to soldier.Yamasaki said his unit treated the local people very well, always gave them food, and enjoyed ‘good relations’ with them.29 One readily believes this small, smiling man, who recalls being ordered to carry a 180-pound bag of rice to Kokoda. So, too, Shimada and Imanishi are convincing when they say they never hurt the tribal people.Yamasaki has a black sense of humour. When he heard that some of the Papuans were former cannibals, he asked a local, ‘Would you care to eat a Japanese man?’
By 26 August, Potts had salvaged whatever supplies he could, and ordered the 2/16th Battalion up to Myola. The two Australian battalions continued along the track towards Templeton’s Crossing. It is a dark, gloomy place, perpetually wet, ‘with a general air of depression’.30 It was the first point on the track to be named after a dead Australian officer. In time ridges, corners, track junctions, and even single rocks and trees would be named after dead Australian and American troops, evoking the macabre impression that an army of ghosts had conquered and then colonised this primeval land.
Over a series of short, precipitous slopes, the troops descended into the Eora Creek gorge, a deep ravine into which the track seems to plunge headlong so that a soldier has to clutch at hanging branches for support. The men edged along feeder streams and reached the brink of ‘rushing water thick with white and yellow spume’.31 Little whirlpools swirled around huge boulders, and the backwash sent a film of spray into the air.
On the misty banks was the last Allied base before Alola and Isurava: a little cluster of huts thatched with palm leaves. Eora Creek was destined to become briefly the busiest Australian field hospital on the Kokoda Track.As the troops approached, files of wounded militiamen passed by like so many plaintive ghosts, ‘walking skeletons…their eyes…bright with fever’.They would shuffle forward a few yards, in little bursts, then pause for relief.32
On the banks scores of men stood about ‘in mud to their shins…slimed from head to foot, for weeks unshaven, their skins bloodless under their filth’.33 The village itself looked as though it were submerged in a sea of mud. Discombobulated native carriers sat on logs on the edge of the clearing eating ‘muddy rice off muddy banana leaves’, their eyes shining with exhaustion. The stretcher cases lay in rows, wrapped in dirty, blood-soaked bandages, waiting to be lifted upon the shoulders of tribesmen. The ubiquitous Vernon and his medical officers constantly attended them.When morphia ran its course, the wounded lay prostrate, numbed with pain,Vernon observed.When a soldier died, he was swiftly buried with a short service.*
Vernon’s diary offers a Rabelaisian glimpse of the hospital:
At Eora Creek I took over all white casualties as well as sick carriers with the aid of a rather untrained orderly. There were cheerful patients and grumpy ones, and the latter did not scruple to voice their complaints, but considering the extreme lack of comfort and the spent condition of the men, they were really a very patient and long-suffering crowd…
The kitchen was the best spot in the hut; there was a roaring fire there day and night and one of the most cheerful cooks I have ever come across, a sergeant with a badly inflamed leg who had volunteered to cook for the boys in spite of being a cripple. He managed to knock up some very artistic dishes, which we ate from any receptacle we could find.
The space around his fire was hung with muddy shirts and pants steaming with moisture; beneath the empty (petrol) drum that served as a stove was a heap of boots that never dried out, and all around the hearth lay men in the last stages of exhaustion, very thankful to get close to the blaze. The cook did not seem to mind how many men he had to shove through to get to his billy cans.34
Those with relatively light wounds faced the long walk back to Owers’ Corner. The 39th Battalion’s Lieutenant Alf Salmon had received a bullet through his pectoral muscle, ‘a nice little charmer in my right breast just missing the nipple’, as he described it in a letter to his wife. ‘My dear Gwen,’ he added, ‘don’t go rushing about sending a big bundle on…Honey, don’t worry about me and don’t worry about the mail not being regular as you have no idea what a job it is to get it in and out again.’35
On the eve of the battle of Isurava Brigadier Arnold Potts wrote to his wife, Dawn, from his tent in the Owen Stanleys:
My lovely lady,
Some paper to hand at last…My dear, there are such interesting things to see…not the least being gorgeous waterfalls…Give both my daughters a big hug and kiss…I love you darling and want you close to me as always.What fun when this row is finished…’36
It was 25 August. Potts was in good spirits despite the supply disaster. The day before he had succeeded Porter as commander of Maroubra Force. His troops (many of whom, as a battalion commander, he’d led in the Middle East) were at last approaching the combat zone.
No one doubted Arnold Potts was a fine choice to lead the first major land offensive against the Japanese. This short, tough, nuggety farmer from Western Australia, whose piercing blue eyes seemed to ‘flash and twinkle’,37 was an original Anzac with an outstanding military record.
He was born in the Isle of Man in 1896; his family emigrated to Australia when he was eight and settled in the Perth suburb of Cottesloe. He attended a private cadet school. In World War I, he fought at Gallipoli and in France, where, promoted to captain, he became the youngest company commander in the Australian forces—aged nineteen—and won the Military Cross. He was twice wounded; once a sniper’s bullet passed within an ace of his spine. Between the wars he became a grazier, married, and had children. He enlisted for the Second Australian Imperial Force, aged 44, despite family hopes that he may have been too old. Potts kept extremely fit (though his war wound prevented him from touching his toes).
Potts was an intriguing mixture of romantic idealism and ruthless pragmatism—a devoted husband, sensual letter-writer, and fastidious commander. He was also pragmatic. He shocked a unit padre by advocating the use of ‘French letters’ over the muzzles of machine-guns, to keep out mud and water, and later joked to his wife that it would ‘protect their weapons’.
After their last weekend together before he sailed, Potts wrote to his wife:
Belovedest of women, It was delightful to hear your voice this morning…it is torture Beloved though very sweet torture. You’re such a delicious girl that the voice alone is most unsatisfactory and I can’t pretend that the ‘half loaf ’ satisfies me. What a marvellous weekend you gave me Heart’s Delight…Even though I squeezed my memory I couldn’t dig up anything but dreams—splendid dreams—all woven around a valiant heart and a wonderful woman—my wife.38
That day, he’d departed for the Middle East, as commanding officer of the 2/16th Battalion. Again he proved a superb soldier, earning the Distinguished Service Order at the battles of Sidon and Damour. The citation reads: ‘Major Potts was particularly outstanding not only for his personal bravery in going forward under fire…but in his own personal leadership and example.’39 Promoted to brigadier, he returned to Australia with the 7th Division—the very formation Curtin had fought so hard to repatriate—to command the forces in the Owen Stanleys. Potts was the genuine article: a war hero and a brilliant leader.
There was something eminently sensible about Potts the soldier.Very much his own man, he always did what he thought right for the troops. He decided, for example, to establish his base camp in the hills above Port Moresby, in defiance of New Guinea Force’s instructions. Here, he reasoned, the men would have a few days to acclimatise to the jungle, and the risk of malaria was less.
One anecdote tells a great deal about his gutsy resourcefulness. When he got to Port Moresby he met the resigned mentality of ‘can’t’, as in, ‘You can’t carry more than 15lb in this country; you can’t move without carrier lines.’40 He dismissed this as tropical inertia, and within a day secured a promise that 40,000 rations would be dropped at Myola before his men arrived there (the fact that it was unfulfilled perhaps vindicated the ‘can’t’ brigade).
He was said to care too much for his men. He led from the front; he instinctively shared their ordeal over the Owen Stanleys: ‘There was great strength in his thickset frame, despite his 46 years, and even greater strength of spirit behind the round cheerful English face which smiled from beneath grey hair cut en brosse.’41 His startling blue eyes smiled on everyone under his command, whatever their rank or status. On the track he seemed to be ‘everywhere’, recalled one private.
It was unusual to find a free spirit so highly ranked in the Australian army. Potts was politically artless and highly critical of incompetence, a dangerous mixture in any human organisation. Sometimes, his blasts unwittingly indicted his superior officers. ‘He could cut a man down in just a few words. If he thought it was wrong he’d say so, even to his superiors. That could be a problem at times,’ concluded Bill Edgar, Potts’s biographer.42
The brigadier put the lives of his men ahead of the approbation of his superiors. His desire to save his army and thwart the Japanese invasion led him to adopt new tactics in response to the terrible circumstances. As Lex McAulay said, ‘he could simply have retreated; instead he chose a fighting withdrawal’.43 Potts may have become ‘bogged in the soft sands of other people’s logistical errors’;44 but he resolved to fight his way out.
Uppermost in Potts’s mind at Isurava was whether the 39th Battalion could hold on—at least until his reinforcements were combat-ready. The militia’s condition so shocked him he alerted Rowell to the state of the men: ‘weak due continuous work…wet every night…Morale good but troops useless for holding job.’45
They’d performed a holding job for five weeks: lost, recaptured and lost Kokoda; withdrawn to Deniki; then to Isurava, which they’d held for the past ten days against Japanese attacks. They were highly praised: ‘…at no period has this unit lost its cohesion…and there has been no complaint whatever from it apart from…the difficulty of removing stretcher cases’, concluded one report.46
Unfortunately, the same could not be said of elements of the 53rd Battalion, whose disgruntled troops pulled up at Isurava a few days before Potts’s men.The fresh militia were ‘the most spent and disheartening looking of our troops I had yet seen’, observed Captain Vernon, as they passed him at Efogi.47 On 25 August, Porter, their temporary leader, described the officers of the 53rd as lamentably weak and the men, ‘in a state of bewilderment’.48 Potts sent them into battle that day.