‘…by some act of God your brigade has been chosen for this job. The eyes of the Western world are upon you. I have every confidence in you and your men. Good luck and don’t stop’
—General Douglas MacArthur to the departing Australian troops
A cavalcade of generals, politicians and military police accompanied by ‘war correspondents galore’1 drove up the muddy road to Owers’ Corner. From this point, above the Goldie River Valley, the Kokoda Track starts its winding route over the mountains. Deceptively, the first step is down; the trail plunges to Uberi, on the riverbank, and then ascends the Golden Stairs to Imita.
It was the morning of 3 October 1942. General Douglas MacArthur sat imperiously in his open jeep, serene and apparently unshaken, notwithstanding the severely potholed road. The supreme commander’s first appearance in New Guinea achieved its goal of demonstrating to a sceptical world that Port Moresby was safe, and the Japanese in retreat. As a publicity stunt, it was impressively timed. The American correspondents were obliged to tone down their panic-stricken reports of September. Perhaps Port Moresby wasn’t going to be ‘another Singapore’.
The only Australian journalist at this historic media outing was a photographer from the Department of Information—the rest had slept in or missed the bus. When they woke up they officially complained that MacArthur’s PR men had failed to alert them to the event.*
Singularly out of the loop, the Australian media were unable to correct one politician who was quoted in the Sydney papers as saying, ‘Australians were now fighting in country almost impassable to motor transport’.2
The entourage climbed out of the jeeps and mingled with the troops. They were not here merely for appearances. MacArthur had come to Owers’ Corner to energise the counteroffensive and to witness the departure over the Owen Stanleys of Australia’s 16th Brigade. He and Blamey briefly scanned the country from the precipice across the valley to Imita Ridge beyond which successive razorbacks melted into the blue-green haze. The heavy guns at Imita were silent now, as the Japanese had retreated as far as Myola.
Grinning jovially in his pith helmet, the Minister for the Army ingratiated himself with the troops, promised them the world, and posed for photographs. Frank Forde cut a blimpish presence: ‘It was indeed an inspiring sight,’ he noted, ‘to see these lads stripped to the waist and toiling in the tropical heat and rain to keep the roadway continuously open…’3 The troops later had some fun with this slightly ridiculous figure; Forde went away burdened with the idea that the Japanese soldier’s ‘peculiar manner of waging warfare’ involved donning ‘a suit of body armour which is invulnerable to submachine gun fire’.4
Lieutenant Dalrymple Fayle kept an entertaining diary of the morning’s photo opportunity:
The civilians in the party caused much mirth. They were clothed in semi-military clothing which fitted in a very unmilitary manner and they were arrayed in tin hats and pistol belts of air force pattern…
The politicians spent their time getting about amongst the troops promising them all sorts of impossible things and promising to write to their folk etc. They certainly admired the scenery and got frightfully sunburnt, especially behind the knees, but as far as we could see did nothing much but waste a lot of valuable time and use jeeps which were vitally needed for some real purpose.5
The dignitaries were a long way from the front line. Australia’s 25th Brigade had by then reached Nauro, and advanced ‘by double pincers and central block’.6 General Tubby Allen, commander of the 7th Division, was bored by the whole occasion. He muttered that he’d far prefer to be slogging over the Kokoda Track with his men than milling about for a photo opportunity and talking to the press. His wish would soon be granted.
At 10.30 a.m. the entourage took morning tea. ‘Gen MacArthur impressed everyone…extremely friendly and considerate and very much a leader,’ wrote Fayle. Army Minister Forde was, however, ‘a washout, but we all hope he can do at least some of the things he promised.’7 After tea, the generals inspected the departing troops.
Australia then had no fitter soldiers than the 16th Brigade. It comprised some 3000 men (divided among the 2/1st, 2/2nd and 2/3rd battalions) of the 6th Division. They were highly trained, experienced combat infantry, veterans of the Middle East and North Africa, with an average age of 25. ‘They looked like the greatest specimens of soldiers we’d ever seen,’ said a few militiamen who witnessed a bayonet charge.8
Most had been trained in the jungles of Ceylon (Sri Lanka); they garrisoned Colombo on their way back from the Middle East. Their jungle training was thorough. They had been taught to use the jungle to advantage: to ‘melt’ into the foliage; to retrace their steps at night; to use camouflage properly; to detect human presence by crushed twigs and disturbed leaf mould; to move silently over undergrowth; to build shelters; and to discern human from animal sounds. They were taught even to detect the enemy’s peculiar smell, ‘an unpleasant dank odour which is most persistent’.9 They were repatriated on 4 July to ticker tape parades in the capital cities at which the people welcomed them home as conquering heroes. Thirty-six days later, they were dispatched to Port Moresby.
Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Cullen (now Major-General Cullen, DSO, AC, CBE, ED) led the 2/1st Battalion. Cullen was a veteran of the Middle East and Crete, where he met the English novelist Evelyn Waugh. When attacked by German dive-bombers, Cullen recalled, ‘We all dashed to take cover under the nearest twig. Waugh remained standing on the road. After the attack, we asked why he did not take cover like the rest of us. “I have got such a large arse that it makes no difference whether I am standing up or lying down,” Waugh replied.’
In 2004, at the age of 95, Cullen was sharp as a tack and still riding his horse around the family farm near Goulburn. A great, rambling raconteur, he interrupts his stories with loud, foghorn laughter:
And they [journalists] asked another question…what happens when your friend is wounded or killed? Well, two thoughts happen, I said. One was you’re bloody glad that it wasn’t you…and the other was the joke. I remember at the battle of Bardia, Geoffrey Cox [loud laughter] was hobbling off, and he was shot in the arse, and we said, ‘You’re a lucky bastard, Cox, you’ve got five arse holes’ [uproarious laughter]. I mean, this is the cynical humour engendered by casualties in war. A few hours before, one of my friends, Scott Jones, was the first officer killed in my battalion, and I’ll always remember that one, because he was lying with his hand like that [clutches glass] holding the glass—he was a bit of a drinker you see. But you laugh at that…you think that’s funny, holding a glass when you’re lying there dead. That’s what you think about, you have to laugh don’t you? [laughter]
That was after the Western Desert. You see, one of the factors why the 6th Division did so well in Kokoda was that we’d fought in three different continents in the first six months of 1941, three different continents against three different European nations; in the Western Desert against the Italians [laughter]…Greece and Crete against the Germans, where we lost but were not disgraced…and then against the Vichy French in Syria which we won, and we were pretty bloody experienced soldiers…I mean what other division fought in three different continents against three different European nations in six months? We were perfectly equipped…
If anyone was going to beat the Japs you were?
Absolutely. It was wonderful preparation.
Did you feel confident about victory at Kokoda?
Well, we were confident about everything. I was always confident about anything, that’s been the tragedy of my life…I don’t have any complaints; I’ve had a wonderful life [laughter]…We really weren’t frightened of anybody. We were light, headstrong, impulsive. We were pretty bloody good. That’s the whole secret of leadership, you’ve got to convince yourselves that you’re the best.
We just got on and did it…like Private McDonald. The doctor said he’d got appendicitis, you might die from it, and we’ll have to operate. He had no anaesthetic you see, so I said to McDonald, you’ve got to have this out without an anaesthetic. I’ll hold your hand. So we took him and laid him on the table, I held his hand, we gave him a bottle of Scotch, and took his appendix out. But that was life, I wouldn’t dare do it today, you wouldn’t have had to…but our lives then were like that—you had to, you had to.10
Cullen distilled the art of war into three inviolable principles: 1. No bad soldiers, only bad officers; 2. Woolly orders get woolly results; 3. That which is not inspected is not done.
For once, the digger looked the part: no more the khaki-clad, baggy-shorted Anzac in a slouch hat. The 16th Brigade wore a steel helmet camouflaged with a Hessian net; long-sleeved shirt and trousers dyed ‘streaky green’ (shorts were acceptable in malaria-free areas, so long as all bare knees were stained green); and American green gaiters and boots fitted with sprigs, of ‘first class condition’. The soldier carried a green veil to cover his face. Underpants and singlets were at the soldier’s discretion.
All badges of rank were removed to avoid detection by Japanese snipers. The 25th Brigade had taken the same precaution. ‘Jap snipers had an unhappy knack of choosing as a target any soldier who seemed to be in a position of authority,’ wrote one lieutenant. ‘We were told if we wanted to survive…we must not draw attention to ourselves.’ Pistols were carried not on the hip but slung around to the back. Officers were told not to wave their hands about or shout orders to the men.11
In his haversack the soldier carried a green beret (the slouch hat was on the wane); a ‘golf jacket’, or windcheater; foot powder; a featherweight, waterproofed sleeping bag; half a towel, half a dixie, six tins of bully beef, six packets of biscuits, a spoon, tea, sugar, quinine and powered milk. All webbing equipment was dyed green. In his large front pockets he carried a field dressing and emergency rations. One entrenching tool, or shovel, in a green bag was allocated to every three men. Ammunition included 100 rounds of .303 bullets for each rifleman; or ten magazines (300 rounds) per light machine-gunner, plus two grenades per man. Each soldier also had ‘a good supply of salt’.12
The Anzac had changed utterly: ‘On Kokoda,’ said Hank Nelson, ‘the Australian army transformed itself from the image of the World War I digger to the green-clad jungle fighter, an image…the Australians were to retain for the next sixty years.’13
Their mentality was different, too. They were prepared for the onslaught. They were jungle-trained, and confident. They’d closely studied the enemy’s tactics, and had heard all the usual horror stories. To say they hated the enemy is inaccurate; it implies they recognised the enemy as human. On the contrary they were trained to see the Japanese as inhuman: ‘The Jap’ was something bestial, an unspeakable brute to be hunted down and systematically slaughtered. The Australians had become predators; the Japanese, the prey.
With his inimitable grasp of metaphor, General George Vasey drilled the message into unit commanders, in a circular on 23 September:
The Japanese are well trained in jungle warfare. In this form of warfare they are like tigers, cunning, silent and dangerous. Like tigers, too, they are vermin and like vermin they must be destroyed. One does not expect a live tiger to give himself up to capture so we must not expect the Japanese to surrender. He does not. He must be killed whether it is by shooting, bayoneting, throttling, knocking out his brains with a tin hat or by any other means our ingenuity can devise. Truly jungle warfare is a game of kill or be killed and to play it successfully demands alertness of all senses but particularly of ears and eyes. The latter must not be focused on the next footstep but continually looking all about including upwards at the trees.14
Vasey’s words resonated with senior officers. The 16th Brigade’s commander, Brigadier John Edward Lloyd (DSO, MC) said his men ‘would clean up the Jap in quick time. They have…a complete hatred of the Jap and what he stands for.’ Echoing Vasey, he added, ‘They…realised it was a matter of KILL or be KILLED and that it was TOTAL WAR with a vengeance [Lloyd’s capitals].’15
The troops were trained to think as conquerors, not defenders. It was essential to dislodge the crippling idea that the Japanese troops were somehow superior. The warrior myth must be utterly vanquished from their minds. ‘The Jap’ must be ruthlessly dehumanised. ‘Any illusion that the Jap is a superman leans strongly towards the ridiculous,’ wrote Lloyd. ‘His minor tactics, by our standards, are unsound, ie, he bunches during the assault, chatters during the approach, and his forward patrols blunder into ambushes…’ But, Vasey warned: ‘The Jap soldier has, however, the cardinal virtue of all soldiers. He will fight to the death…’16
Lloyd, a veteran of World War I, had led the 2/28th Battalion at Tobruk before being promoted to command the 16th Brigade. Described as a genial leader with the manner of an English regular officer, he was 49 when he set off over the Owen Stanleys. His orders were to relieve the 25th Brigade, drive the Japanese over the mountains, recapture the Kokoda airfield and, with two American regiments and fresh Australian units coming up from the east, destroy the enemy in detail.
MacArthur fixed his eyes on the brigadier and his men as they marched past, and famously declared: ‘Lloyd, by some act of God your brigade has been chosen for this job. The eyes of the Western world are upon you. I have every confidence in you and your men. Good luck and don’t stop.’17
Company after company poured off the edge of Owers’ Corner to confront the southernmost arrow of the Japanese empire. MacArthur’s tall frame and flashing eyes worked their magic. There was a real sense that this was the start of the rolling back of the Imperial Army. At that moment the Japanese controlled all East Asia and Oceania, with the exception of Australia, southern Papua, and parts of the Solomon Islands. The very sight of the gilded general and his posse of powerful commanders had the desired effect, and the troops disappeared off the edge of Owers’ Corner ‘eager for action’.18
MacArthur spent an hour at Owers’ Corner, returned to ‘A’ Mess for lunch, and left for Brisbane the next day. His brief appearance was nonetheless rousing stuff. On this occasion, the supreme commander hit the mark. He spoke with the pomp and circumstance of a leader of greatness, a fact lost on those unable to comprehend the grandeur of MacArthur’s vision. Alone among commanders, he grasped the essence of what needed to be done: to force the Japanese juggernaut, island by island, back to the heart of Tokyo. MacArthur was that rarity, a man who believed his thoughts and actions were integral to the fate of the world. Only Churchill and Hitler—for good and evil—appeared to share the same colossal self-definition and sense of personal destiny.
The troops’ field commander followed, on 8 October. Tubby Allen was a portly veteran of great resilience and quiet courage much liked by the troops. Like Potts, he got too close to his men, and was willing to put his career on the line in their interests. His superiors were not persuaded that he had the necessary drive and aggression to lead the counteroffensive. But his superb record as a brigadier in the Middle East gave them pause for thought.*
The track swiftly wore him down. Allen’s chosen prophylactic was eminently in character: ‘Very difficult up to Ioribaiwa,’ he wrote on 9 October. ‘Camp pitched in pouring rain. Natives made a lean-to…Camp was on a narrow razorback with practically no movement possible off the track…It turned very cold during the night and whisky was a real lifesaver.’19
The enormity of the supply problem troubled Allen. There were no supplies at Nauro, the first depot on the track, nor were any found at Efogi on 9 October. There was a critical lack of carriers, and the job of finding them fell again to Bert Kienzle. The Australian army needed 5000 native men in fit condition to supply them; but sickness and desertion had depleted their ranks. There were about 900 carriers working on the track: these men had served as human ambulances and packhorses for fourteen weeks without a break.
In early October Kienzle rounded up as many ‘A’ class natives ‘as I could muster from Bisiatabu and the Base Camp Depot’.20 He needed many more. One method was to disseminate stories of how the Japanese had treated the Rabaul natives, who were found starved and beaten along the track. ‘They gave harrowing accounts of Jap brutalities…They were glad to be with us,’ said Kienzle. He used their testimonials to persuade the local people that their lot was far better under Australian than Japanese control. ‘This stiffened their morale…’21
The new troops acclimatised swiftly to the conditions. Their training in Ceylon had proved useful, and they moved with comparative ease, even finding time to admire the ‘beautiful butterflies’.22 Their sprigged boots offered better grip on the muddy slopes. They progressed rapidly over the first few ridges.
The track wound through the steaming aftermath of battle. It was as though the fresh troops had entered a lifesize diorama of war modelled out of the bodies of real men. Here and there, on the slopes and in dugouts and then, suddenly, in grotesque clusters where an ambush occurred, the corpses of Australians and Japanese could be identified—sometimes only a few yards apart from one another. The tactical pattern of pitched battles, ambushes and bayonet charges were readily discernible from the position of the dead and the kind of wound; the slashed trails through virgin jungle marked a flanking movement or an escape route.
The grassy clearings, creeks and forests disgorged the unwanted baggage of a retreating army: spoiled rations, tangled signal wires, field binoculars, logbooks, swords, papers, diaries, maps and punctured tins. Potts’s recently manned perimeters, shallow trenches and machine-gun posts, dug with helmets and machetes, were littered with spent cartridges, rusting weapons and the dead. In places, the bodies of Japanese snipers dangled from the branches of trees. At night, the moon shone on the bones of skeletons, eaten white by bull ants. Blackened stumps stood like lonely sign-posts amid the delineated lanes of fire, where heavy machine-guns had mown down the vegetation. There were areas where the whole canopy lay fallen and mangled across the wasteland like a great net thrown over an exhausted animal.
Booby traps were a constant worry for troops arriving at abandoned camps—both armies had set grenades primed to explode when disturbed in camp fires and rubbish. Near Menari, two carriers who lit a fire over a Japanese booby trap were blown up, but fortunately the ubiquitous Vernon was there to dress their wounds and to administer morphine.
The half-deaf doctor came forward a third time, to attend the wounded and assist the carriers. His presence seemed to hover over the track like Dante’s Virgil passing through the lower circles of hell. He seemed everywhere at once, assisting, inquiring and generally making himself useful. He crossed the mountains several times. Though short of a donkey, he deserves the recognition accorded to the famous Simpson of the Gallipoli campaign in World War I. Vernon observed in his diary, ‘many dead Australians still lying about’ alongside ‘piles of ammunition in the grass…It was a moving tale of destruction and death.’23
Vernon chatted to brigadiers and privates alike, in the same dry, halting phrases; his partial deafness meant he often left their company none the wiser. They, on the other hand, learnt a lot from Vernon. At Myola he popped up again, to record the story of the tribal Biagi people who lived along the track here. The war had forced them into the surrounding hills. When they attempted to sneak back into their village for food, the Japanese were said to have bayoneted many on sight. Later, 56 Japanese corpses were found at the very spot of the slaughter of the tribes, which satisfied Vernon: ‘The white man avenged them,’ he noted dryly.
The elderly doctor was especially sensitive to the raw beauty of his surroundings. Perhaps his deafness excited his visual appreciation of the natural world. He wrote exuberantly of the flora at Myola: ‘The meadows were gay with Alpine flowers, sheets of little blue violets patterning the grass, masses of yellow buttercups, and loveliest of all, shapely bushes of wild Forget-Me-Not, covered with sky-blue florets.’24 It was an incongruous, perhaps eccentric, observation amid the devastation; but it was how one man chose to record the broken world through which he walked.