Jungle Fighting
Fighting a determined and fanatical enemy should have been challenge enough. However, the jungles of New Guinea added unimaginable suffering to the ordeal. The equatorial climate inflicted torrential rains, high humidity, and insufferable heat on those unfortunates who had to live and fight in it. Wet clothing, rusting equipment, omnivorous insects, and an endless variety of tropical maladies were the constant companions of every soldier.
As the battles raged on and around Guadalcanal in late 1942, U.S. Army forces were committed on the north coast of the Papuan Peninsula to take the port of Buna and to relieve another threat against Australia. As the campaign wore on, the Japanese defenders and the jungle took their toll:
The track is now knee deep in thick, black mud. For the last ten days no man’s clothing has been dry and they have slept when sleep was possible in pouring rain under sodden blankets… Every hour is a nightmare.188
…The troops were riddled with malaria, dengue fever, tropical dysentery, and were covered with jungle ulcers.189
…It was a sly and sneaky kind of combat which never resembled the massive and thunderous operations in Europe… In New Guinea, when the rains came, wounded men might drown before the litter bearers found them. Many did. No war is a good war, and death ignores geography. But out here I was convinced, as were my soldiers, that death was pleasanter in the Temperate Zone.190
There truly has never been a good place for a war. However, these heroes of the early days of World War II in the Pacific endured more hardship than most. With tenuous supply lines and great uncertainty about the outcome, they fought on for interminable months. During the darkest days of the war, they not only survived they also turned the tide of battle and gave a glimmer of hope to an Allied cause that had up until then seen only defeat.
Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus… If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him.
—2 Timothy 2:3, 1112
Battleships and cruisers in formation. (National Archives)