‘Basil Catterns did something that day which was the bravest thing I have ever seen a man do.’
—Major-General Paul Cullen, former commander of 2/1st Battalion
Brigadier Lloyd, indulging in one of his MacArthur moments, stood on the Sanananda Track ‘like Napoleon’ and was asked the day’s objective. He pointed north and theatrically declared, ‘The sea!’1 (It seemed Lloyd had taken to heart MacArthur’s remark about ‘the eyes of the Western world’ being upon him.) Captain Thomas Silk later wryly noted, ‘So the battalion started for the sea.’ They marched north towards Soputa, about five miles from the coast.
A little way beyond Soputa, on the road leading north, an enemy mountain gun blocked the forward Australian troops of the 16th Brigade.* As he studied the position—astride a horse he’d bought for five pounds at the Kumusi River—a Japanese mortar narrowly missed Lieutenant-Colonel Cullen and flung both man and horse into a ditch.
Captain Basil Catterns, Cullen’s second-in-command, who was standing beside his superior, was similarly thrown. Cullen raised his head: ‘What do you think, Basil?’
‘There’s only one thing to do,’ Catterns said, ‘we’ve got to get that bloody gun.’ Catterns volunteered to lead the manoeuvre, because, as he said later, ‘I knew it was my turn’.2
Sixty years later Cullen still dwells on this episode: ‘Basil Catterns did something that day which was the bravest thing I have ever seen a man do.’ (Cullen recommended Catterns for a second Military Cross.)
But it was not bravery alone—extraordinary as it was—that distinguished this action. The two-day struggle showed, with terrible clarity, what was required to defeat the invader. Catterns’s action combined all the elements that made the infantry war in Papua and New Guinea one of the most savage in military history.
Catterns led a fighting patrol of 90 hand-picked troops (including ten platoon commanders) to silence the mountain gun. On 20 November, loaded with food and ammunition, they set off on a wide flanking march to the west. They moved all day through jungle and swamp. Late that afternoon they swung east, in accordance with their compass calculations, and came upon a well-used track that led to a watering hole.
At 6.00 p.m. Catterns and Corporal Ralph Albanese crept forward to a clearing. They had expected to find a large gun position. But they had come too far, and stumbled upon one of the main enemy camps, with troops ‘huddled over fires cooking their evening meal’ in the midst of a group of huts.3 Through the trees were scores of Japanese troops, milling about, eating, drinking. Unknown to Catterns, there were 1200 Japanese troops in the wider area.
He faced a difficult choice. He could withdraw and report the position. Or he could attack. He was heavily outnumbered; his men had no signals, and could not call for reinforcements. Their medical aid amounted to one field dressing and a stab of morphia per man. They might all die. Yet success held out the prospect of capturing the main track—as wide as a small road here—deep inside enemy lines. Catterns consulted his men, and they agreed.
They moved up in a long line parallel with the track, five paces between each man. Catterns pointed to a large fig tree to the right of the Japanese, as a rendezvous point. Then they set off slowly through the scrub. One soldier compared the adrenal charge with the feeling before ‘the football kick off at school’.4
Trained in jungle movement, they crept silently forward and drew up, unnoticed, within a few yards of the Japanese. Then they were seen. So great was the shock of their own fire bursting on the clearing it was said a few Australian soldiers fell to the ground. ‘And then they were up again…They smashed through apron fences of vines. They hurdled networks of trenches. They were fighting like wild cats in the very midst of the surprised defenders, some of whom, rallying, manned gun pits and cut swathes through the attackers.’5
The stunned Japanese died at their guns. Soon the huts were ablaze, and ‘grenades exploded in the fires and scattered sparks. Those of the defenders who were able to do so ran into the bush…’6
No two soldiers have the same memory of battle: ‘There was a crash of fire along the whole front as the 18 Brens and 36 Tommy guns, rifles and grenades opened up,’ said Lieutenant Don Murray. ‘Momentarily some men went to ground but responded to the call, “Keep moving!”’7
‘Everyone fought like a demon,’ recalled Private Allan Gamble. Soldiers fell around him as he ran towards the Japanese camp: ‘I grabbed hold of Jack [Hazelton] and dragged him out of the line of fire but he was dead. So I dropped my empty magazine and took Jack’s full one. There were running Japanese, screaming Japanese [and]…fighting Japanese.’
Private John Dyer crashed through the wire fences and raced up to the first bunker, where his Tommy gun jammed. With the help of a platoon sergeant he freed the weapon, which ‘spewed into the crowded bunker’.
Murray was among the first to reach the Sanananda Track: ‘I quickly placed the few men with me in a defensive perimeter…I then sent a runner to my company commander “that I was astride the track”.’
The Australians cleared the empty enemy foxholes and dugouts, and planted their automatic weapons in a ring around the giant fig. Darkness came, and the firing died. The wounded were laid between the buttress roots of the tree: ‘This was a gigantic tree, and the root system…formed cubicles which were ideal to place the wounded in.’8 They dug a circular perimeter around the tree and prepared for the counterattack.
Catterns’s men waited in the darkness. They could hear talking and shuffling in the undergrowth, as the Japanese noisily encircled the Australians, most of whom were alive. Nothing could be done for the badly wounded, who died during the night: ‘Jock is finished. Not quite dead but nearly,’ a soldier would call out.
Catterns kept his head. He scanned the area for a break-out route, a better shelter, anything to save his men. Shortly he realised that their position straddled the main Japanese signal lines between the beachhead and the forward troops: ‘…I saw the maze of heavy telephone cables running north and south…we were astride the line of communication of a massive defensive position to the south. So I ordered the cables to be cut…’9
This action attracted fresh enemy troops concerned by the breakdown. Their scouts started picking off the Australians in the darkness. Within fifteen minutes two men were shot in a rear bunker: ‘Near midnight,’ said one soldier, ‘we heard noisy chattering…coming along the track to our rear. We decided to hold our fire and let them have a couple of grenades…Judging by the screams they were effective.’10
At dawn, the Japanese counterattacked with ‘a withering mass of small arms fire’. Snipers ‘had lined us up from the start’, said Gamble. Unceasing firepower splintered the buttress roots—the bullets grazed the protruding heels of the wounded sheltering there, and thudded into exposed corpses.
Gamble recalled: ‘The slightest movement anywhere would bring intense fire—the bullets flicking across our backs and touching our shins.’ One soldier ‘managed to slide in between two large roots, which offered some cover from enemy fire. It hacked at the roots within inches of me all day.’
Sometime—nobody knows when—a heavily built Japanese soldier launched a lone bayonet charge at the fig tree: ‘When I first saw him I asked if anyone…had a weapon but we were all unarmed,’11 said Corporal Albanese. He quickly found a gun, stood up, carefully took aim and shot down the attacker.
For a whole day the two sides fought yards apart. Private Arnold Varnum ‘had his Bren gun going all day’ against enemy troops running up to within a few feet in front of him.’12 Lance-Corporal John Fletcher waited until the Japanese were within fifteen yards of his bunker then leapt out and hurled a grenade among them.
The Japanese retaliated with incessant fire and running mauls; they fought ‘like Red Indians circling a covered wagon’.13 The Australians were being gradually eliminated. Five of Catterns’s ten officers were dead and a rising number of troops were either dead or severely wounded.
All day, Catterns and his rapidly diminishing force held their positions until, as night fell, he got a message from a runner: ‘Captain Catterns? Paul Cullen wants to see you.’ Catterns crawled out, eluded the Japanese, and got back to the battalion HQ. ‘So I find Paul in a tent, and he’s got a hot billy for me, which was wonderful, and I tell him all about it—and then he says, “How do you feel, Basil? Do you think you could take back [the relieving force]?” That was an order, and all I could say was, “Yes, Paul, I’ll take them back”.’14 It was midnight when he departed. Intermittent flashes of lightning guided Catterns and forward patrols of the 2/2nd and 2/3rd Battalions back to his men.
They broke open a line to the tree, where dozens had expired between the splintered remnants of the buttress roots, which were blown apart by the Japanese guns. They rushed in ammunition, biscuits, tobacco and medical supplies. Rain sheeted down through darkness split by lightning as the wounded were ferried out. Twelve stretcher-cases emerged into the waiting care of field medics. The walking wounded came next. Then the men withdrew. Catterns was among the last out. He greeted his commanding officer with his usual high spirits—the two men were close friends.15
Out of 91 troops who took part, there were 57 casualties: 31 were killed (including five officers) and 26 were badly wounded. But Catterns’s attack cleared a passage to the enemy’s coastal strongholds, and captured a great deal of ground. The mountain gun that had held up the Australians was later found buried in the mud.
*During the clash, one soldier was shot in the stomach in no-man’s-land and cried out for hours—yards from the enemy lines. Unable to bear the sound, Colonel Jim Miller slithered forward through the tall grass with morphine and dressings; later that night, with a corporal’s help, the pair dragged the wounded man out. Colonels did such things in this war.