Buna
December 1942 to January 1943
The Japanese Model 10 3-inch naval gun could fire a 6-kilogram shell to a height of 8 kilometres. When fired horizontally at a range of 500 metres, that shell would reach its target in less than a second. When Jack Lattimore saw the gun flash, his Stuart tank was already doomed. ‘It’s impossible to describe just how the impact was,’ he later said. ‘Everything just stopped.’ Hit in the front armour, his tank had jarred to a halt. When he looked down, there was a gaping hole in the hull gunner’s position, and Frank Forster was dead, smashed back over his seat. Ted Nye clambered out of his driver’s seat and out through the gaping hole the shell had made.1
Still looking down, Lattimore realised that both his legs had been badly smashed. Somehow, he managed to lift the mortally wounded turret gunner, Reg Leggatt, off the gun, and, with the help of Nye and the injured wireless operator, Frank Jeavons, push him out through the hole in the hull. Lattimore then dragged himself over Forster’s body and got out the same way. By this time the tank was burning, fed by leaking fuel. ‘The ammunition was starting to go up in the guns, in the boxes,’ Lattimore observed. ‘It was really merry hell.’2
The valiant attacks of the 2/9th Battalion from 18–22 December were only the opening act of the 18th Brigade’s offensive against Buna. The next stage would take place on the inland flank of the 2/9th. Lieutenant Colonel James Dobbs’ 2/10th Battalion, which had followed the 2/9th around the coast from Milne Bay, would attack the southern side of Simemi Creek, along the old Buna airstrip.
Buna: 23 December 1942–2 January 1943
Patrols had already moved along Simemi Creek, and on 23 December Captain Austen Ifould’s company had captured the bridge, a goal that had eluded the American infantry for over a month. The 2/10th then extended the attack along the centre of the kunai-covered airstrip while the American engineers repaired the bridge. On the next day, 24 December, Brigadier Wootten decided to send four Stuart tanks across the bridge to support the drive up the strip. Japanese guns were known to be in the area, but they had been silent for some days, and the commanders hoped they had been destroyed by air attacks. Lieutenant Vic McCrohon, who would lead the four tanks, knew nothing of this and, at 0935, after a short barrage, his and Evan Barnet’s tanks crossed the bridge and headed up the strip.3
They advanced 250 metres in short order, and McCrohon began engaging machinegun posts. Then, at about 1000, McCrohon saw a flash off to his left front and his tank was hit down low on the body of the tank. The wireless was dislodged and the tank slewed into a flooded bomb crater, where it remained bogged. Barnet’s tank went next: a hit in the turret killed the gunner, Tom Jones, and wounded Barnet, who would later lose his arm.4
Lattimore’s tank moved forward at 1030, with John Church’s 15 minutes behind. The infantry had fired two Very flares to indicate the enemy gun position, and the tanks moved in that direction. Lattimore’s tank made a turn to the right and became the next target. Lattimore’s frozen watch recorded the impact time: 1127. After he exited the tank, Ted Nye headed towards Church to warn him of the danger, but just as he got close, Church’s tank was struck in the turret.5 The four tanks had been knocked out by a pair of Japanese 3-inch naval guns concealed under light scrub at the western end of the airstrip. They had an excellent line of sight across the cleared expanse of short kunai grass that covered the airstrip. At such short range on level ground, the light tanks were easy targets for the canny Japanese gunners, who had previously kept their dual-purpose guns silent to deceive the Australians.
With the tanks gone, the infantry took a hammering from the enemy machinegun positions, and the advance stalled. Particularly deadly was a triple-barrelled quick-firing 25-mm anti-aircraft gun that had been levelled to fire along the airstrip. With three 15-round magazines, it could fire 5 rounds a second per barrel and be depressed ten degrees below the horizontal, which made it a murderous weapon against infantry. Major James Trevivian’s company was on the right flank, hard up against Simemi Creek, with Ifould’s company in the centre and the Americans on the left. Ifould, leading from the front, was immediately picked out by an enemy sniper and shot dead as his company left the start line. On the right, however, under cover of the vegetation along the creek, Trevivian’s men kept moving forward.
Next day, Christmas Day, Trevivian’s company advanced about 300 metres in the early morning but got stuck for the rest of the day in the heat of the kunai. Some of the wounded were still lying out there after midnight. On 26 December, Trevivian gathered up the remnants of the other companies and managed to press on under artillery and 2-inch mortar support. Creeping up under the mortar fire, the Australians got two Bren guns onto the top of an aircraft bay and opened fire on the enemy’s 3-inch gun positions.6 As the Japanese fired down at the Australians in the kunai grass, Tim Hughes ran forward, killed two defenders on top of their post with a grenade, then took on another post. The platoon was able to get established on one side of the bay while Hughes kept the enemies’ heads down with a Tommy gun.7
Captain Hugh Matheson’s company was sent forward on the left side of the strip, and by late afternoon the men had captured key positions and linked up with other troops to the right. Mortar smoke rounds were fired onto the enemy bunkers, allowing Matheson’s men to close up to them from the south. All three platoon commanders were wounded in the first rush, and many of their men besides. The fire from the 3-inch guns was murderous. One gun fired blank rounds to set the kunai grass on fire around the attacking Australians. Matheson’s men responded with Molotov cocktails, trying to burn the defenders out. To make any progress, the men had to get in close with grenades under cover of supporting fire directed into the narrow slots of the Japanese bunkers.8
To counter the Japanese guns and help wipe out the bunkers, a 25-pounder gun from 2/5th Field Regiment under the command of Sergeant Rod Carson was brought up close to the front that night. At each creek crossing, the breech had to be dismantled and the separate pieces dragged through the water, then reassembled. By morning, the gun had been set up in an abandoned Japanese bunker on New Strip with a camouflage net draped across it.9
The artillery observation post, originally built by the Japanese, was in a tall banyan tree on the southern side of the Old Strip. At its direction, the gun fired on the defences at the western end of the airstrip. At such close range, the trajectory of the 25-pounder shell was very flat. By using fuses with a slightly delayed action, the Australians were able to penetrate the bunkers and explode the shells inside them, to devastating effect. With friendly infantry between the gun and its targets, the ranging had to be meticulously accurate. Even so, the shells were barely clearing the top of the aircraft bays behind which the infantry sheltered: the draught from their passing wore a track across the top of the embankments. The first shot fired, an armourpiercing round, went through an embrasure only 30 cm square, disabling a 75-mm gun. Over the next six days, Carson’s crew systematically flattened every bunker in the target area. The centrepiece of the bunker system protected the enemy’s triple-barrelled 25-mm anti-aircraft gun. When Carson’s gunners first opened fire, it fired back, one round hitting Carson’s emplacement only a metre from the gun shield. The Australians then found the range and silenced the gun, which was later found with one barrel blown off.10
At 2000 on 27 December, after the Japanese recaptured one of the positions on the right of the airstrip, Lieutenant Murray Brown led a night counterattack to get it back. ‘Fix bayonets,’ he told his men. ‘We’re going into them, boys.’ The men closed up to within 10 metres of the position before Brown put up some Very flares. ‘There they are! Into them!’ he cried. More fighting, more flares—and then Brown was hit.11 When the Japanese counterattacked again that night, aiming to retake Brown’s position, Trevivian’s men fired 2-inch mortar flares, which lit the place like day. The Yanks on the left flank knew that a flare was the signal to fire, and they obliged, with great success: about forty Japanese soldiers were killed within 20 metres of the Australian positions. ‘The place was stinking,’ Trevivian observed. Many Australians were also killed, Trevivian’s three platoon commanders among them. At the end of the fighting, only four men from Trevivian’s original company were unscathed.12
Major General Yamagata, commanding the defenders of the Papuan beachheads, but who was still in the Gona area, wrote in his orders of 27 December, ‘On account of the attack on Buna by the enemy of the 26th, it seems that the last stage has been entered.’13 For at least one defender, that stage had passed. An Australian signaller sent out to repair a signal cable between the guns and the observation post found a 3-metre gap in the wire, which he duly repaired. Suspecting that a Japanese infiltrator had been responsible, he looked around and, spotting a path through the kunai, came to a clump of trees. There he found the culprit swinging from a branch, he had hanged himself with a noose of signal wire.14
Flying Officer John Archer was a RAAF Wirraway pilot. When the war began, the Wirraway was the front-line Australian fighter aircraft, but as the air contest over Rabaul clearly showed, it was no match for the Japanese Zero and was soon relegated to a reconnaissance role. On the morning of 26 December, Archer’s Wirraway was looking for indications of Japanese landing-barge movement along the coastline between the Kumusi River mouth and Gona. Flying at about 300 metres, Archer lined up to strafe the so-called Gona wreck, the rusting hulk of the Japanese freighter Ayatosan Maru, which had grounded on a reef five months earlier. The wreck was a known Japanese unloading point and also held anti-aircraft guns, so it was a good target. Archer dived down across the wreck, strafing it once before rising for another run. As he did so, he spied another plane approaching the wreck at a lower altitude, heading along the shoreline towards Buna. Archer’s first thought was that it was another Wirraway: his relief had arrived early.
But the aircraft was moving too fast for a Wirraway, and it kept straight on, probably lining up to strafe the Allied lines at Buna. Archer was about 400 metres away at right angles as it belatedly turned towards him. But the Australian was higher and quicker to open fire. Dropping his nose, he sent a burst of fire at the plane’s front quarter before pulling away. As he looked back, he saw the Japanese fighter hit the water and explode in a fireball, belching thick smoke. Though thought to be a Zero, the downed plane was in fact an Oscar, the Zero’s army counterpart. Piloted by Hiroichi Fuji-i, who was killed in the attack, it was the only Japanese fighter confirmed to have been shot down by a Wirraway during the war.15
New Year’s Day 1943 saw the third battalion from Wootten’s brigade, Lieutenant Colonel ‘Wolf ’ Arnold’s 2/12th, ready to complete the third phase of Wootten’s plan. Its objective was the coastal strip between the mouth of Simemi Creek and Giropa Point—a small enough area, hardly worth the candle, one might think. The 2/12th, which had been garrisoning Goodenough Island, scouring the jungle and rugged hills for Japanese remnants, had arrived at Oro Bay on the night of 28 December. A nightmarish march up the coast followed, much of it in darkness, with each soldier clasping the bayonet scabbard of the man in front of him.
For the attack, Arnold would have two American battalions and part of Dobbs’ 2/10th in support on his flanks. More importantly, given the nature of the defences, he would also have the support of six tanks under the command of Captain Rod May. Captain Alex Murray’s A Company and Captain ‘Harry’ Ivey’s D Company would advance on the left while B Company, under Captain Colin Kirk, and C Company, led by Major Keith Gategood, would advance on the right.
A Wirraway skidded and weaved at minimum height down the airstrip before the attack, drawing fire from the Japanese positions in front of the 2/12th so the Australian gunners could pinpoint them. Lieutenant Mike Steddy had six Vickers guns supporting either flank. Lieutenant Norm Sherwin considered Steddy ‘one of our best bloody officers, a real fighting he-man type bloke.’16 Steddy’s gunners strafed the coconut trees, concentrating on the upper trunks to bring the tree-tops down. One of the gunners, Geoff Holmes, recalled: ‘We used thousands of rounds of ammunition before we went in there, but they were still there. As soon as we stopped firing and started to go over, that’s when they got into our blokes.’ A slight crosswind had prevented the use of smoke rounds to mask the attack.17
Zero hour was 0800. The tanks went in first, the infantry closing up behind them once they reached the plantation. One of the tank commanders, Lieutenant Max Schoeffel, watched the men advance across open ground at the western end of the airstrip: ‘Some jogged along, some with heavy guns walked, some crouched a little as they came on . . . I saw a couple go down.’18 Dudley Leggett watched through field glasses from the banyan tree where the artillery observation post had been sited, overlooking the enemy defences 450 metres away. ‘Beyond the first low line of pill boxes I could see the forbidding humps of more pill boxes,’ he observed. ‘Innumerable smaller pill boxes and deep trenches were hidden in the undergrowth between the long rows of coconut palms . . . every minute the crackle and ripple of rifles, tommy guns and machine guns became louder and more sustained.’19 Things went well on the left side of the attack, and by 0900 the Australians had broken through to the beach. Leggett watched as ‘red [Very] lights soared above the tops of the coconuts from the direction of the sea front, the signal that our troops were through to the sea.’20 Those two companies, accompanied by two tanks, then turned left to roll up the Japanese line up to Giropa Point.
With the infantry having passed, Steddy decided to move his Vickers guns forward on the left flank to give better support. He went with the first three guns, under cover from the rest. Geoff Lowe’s crew had one gun and Charlie Knight’s another. When they reached one of the bunker mounds, Knight climbed up to look over the lay of the land, and was felled by a sniper’s bullet. Steddy then ordered Lowe to get his gun set up on the left side of the bunker while he went to the right to try to locate the sniper. Moments later, Mike Steddy was also dead.21
A mortar crew came up to help, and two of them were also killed. Lowe sat back in the pit behind his Vickers gun while his loader lay at his right, feeding the belt. One of the dead men was on Lowe’s left. Hearing a noise to his right, he looked up and was astonished to see George Silk, the photographer. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Lowe demanded. ‘Get down, you bloody fool. They’ve just got my cobber.’ Silk later reflected, ‘I just stood quickly up . . . shot only one picture and down again.’22 On this day, Silk had been responsible for some of the most extraordinary photos ever taken on a battlefield. Unfortunately, the Department of Information did not appreciate his achievement. The bureaucrats’ stultifying attitude would soon drive Silk to work for Life magazine for the rest of the war.
When Captain Murray moved back to the same area, he was killed. Murray’s 2IC, Lieutenant Talbot Logan, was also killed, and two of his platoon commanders were wounded. Captain Ivey’s company had three officers wounded, including Ivey. On the right, Kirk’s and Gategood’s companies struck trouble early. Gategood was wounded even before he had crossed the open ground, and Kirk was killed soon thereafter. By the end of the day, the two companies would have only one officer, Lieutenant Owen Curtis, left standing. Curtis, who had taken over Gategood’s company, observed that ‘instead of being like we thought it would be, possibly one line of pillboxes, there’s line after line of pillboxes. Sometimes six feet of earth around them and on top of them.’23
There were more than forty well-constructed and well-manned bunkers within the small area from the start line to the coast. One, which measured 6 by 18 metres, contained seventy Japanese.24 Sand-filled 200-litre drums were used as supports, and coconut logs were interlaced at the sides and on top of the bunkers. There were usually two layers of logs on top, separated by a layer of earth and covered with more earth on which vegetation could grow, forming perfect camouflage. Some of the bunkers were partitioned inside to provide protection from grenades. The firing slits were only narrow openings, almost invisible from outside, and the entranceways were just as cunningly constructed, often barred by a log. The bunkers were mutually supporting, with interconnecting crawlways, and each sent out snipers to hide in the trees or among the thick scrub, where they were often protected by sandbags. On hell’s battlefield, this was the devil’s garden.
Bill ‘Tojo’ Etchells, who was with Gategood’s company, could hear the bullets whistle past as the company advanced. He saw one man fall wounded and then take a sniper’s bullet through the head. Etchells soon faced the same treatment: shot in the knee, he attracted another shot each time he moved. He was targeted like crippled prey for five hours before a tank approached and used its main gun to cut down the sniper’s tree. Etchells then ducked in behind another tree, where he found a fellow Australian sheltering, apparently unwounded. ‘Where’s the rest of them Tojo?’ the soldier asked. ‘Up the bloody front, where you should be,’ Etchells retorted. The soldier poked his head around the butt of the tree, and a sniper shot him straight between the eyes. He was the sixth man from Etchells’ section to be killed that day.25
The tank that rescued Etchells was one of seven used in the action. As Sergeant Eric McGill’s tank advanced, one of the crew cried out that the tank was on fire. McGill extinguished the fire, but the tank ground to a stop. The gunner, Clive Brien, fired his machine gun at a band of Japanese who were trying to get close to the tank, then let go a high-explosive round from the main gun. Out on its own, McGill’s tank stayed buttoned up. The stagnant heat drenched the men in sweat, and without engine power the fan could not extract the gun fumes. The Australians, almost suffocating, took turns getting air from a small slit in the hull. Only one man at a time could stand the conditions in the turret; he would keep an eye out and fire at any enemy movement. When the infantry did arrive, Sergeant Jim Condon stood by the tank and directed the gunner, despite continuing to ‘draw the crabs’ himself. After five and a half hours, the crew began fainting, so it was decided to bail out. McGill went first, and the others following through the turret hatch. They crawled away from the tank before sprinting from tree to tree back to the Australian lines.26 Two Vickers guns were then brought up to cover the tank from further attacks.
The tanks were vital for destroying the bunkers but, as Max Schoeffel explained, they could not operate alone. The problem was in ‘trying to pick targets from an almost impossible background. You’d be not more than ten yards from something before you’d see it.’27 Directed by the infantry, who had the wider field of vision and more eyes to use it, the tanks would go right up to the bunkers and blast the firing slits or doorways at close range, opening a gap large enough for a blast bomb to be shoved in. From his tree perch, Dudley Leggett saw one in action. ‘Its cannon was depressed, there was a puff of smoke from it, a spout of sand and smoke from the pill box . . . another puff and another and two more shells were pumped into the pill box.’ Then the infantry would move in. Leggett watched five men take shelter behind the tank before one ran forward ‘with something in his hand that glinted in the sun.’ It was an improvised blast bomb, a grenade attached to a tin of ammonal explosive. The man threw it inside, ‘then the pillbox was hidden by a cloud of sand and smoke and less than two seconds later the roar of the explosion reached us in the tree.’28
Vic McCrohon watched as another infantryman, ‘the coolest man I’ve ever seen,’ ran up to one of the largest bunkers and put a Tommy-gun burst into it. He then got on top of the bunker, ‘pulled out a tin, rolled himself a cigarette, lit it and had a few puffs.’ His smoko finished, the Tommy-gunner went back to work, firing a few more bursts into the bunker before once again retiring to the roof to sit down and finish his smoke.29 They were a special breed, the Aussie infantry.
Owen Curtis’ company, which had started the day with five officers and about eighty men, steadily dwindled. By the time it went to ground just short of the coast, Curtis had only eleven men left. ‘The last attack I did was myself, one officer and nineteen men . . . the last attack out of a company string. And so it’s all just whittled down. That’s why the casualties are so high . . . the Japanese won’t surrender, he won’t.’ Curtis had fought all day, yet ‘as far as live Japs went, I wouldn’t have seen more than half a dozen . . . you can be up to within ten feet of the enemy and you won’t see him . . . it’s not that you’re not going to get up and charge him—you don’t know where to charge, and he’s that close he can’t miss you.’30
Captain Angus Suthers had brought the headquarters company through behind the initial breakthrough to the coast. He had then led his men to the right, towards the mouth of Simemi Creek, to support the two struggling companies there. Colonel Arnold noted, ‘I threw in Headquarter Company and all the other fellows I could find.’ Suthers had brought all available men to the fight, with the dismounted transport drivers, under Lieutenant Bill Bowerman, to the fore. Bowerman led the way, dashing 30 metres over open ground to toss a blast bomb into one of the bunkers.31
The day had been costly for the 2/12th. Five officers and forty-five men had been killed, and another seven officers and 120 men wounded.32
Next day, two tanks were deployed on each flank, and by 1000 Giropa Point was in Australian hands. With its capture, the Japanese position at Buna Government Station became untenable. The station was finally captured by the Americans moving up from the south. On the 2/12th’s right flank, one final bunker remained, on a small island at the mouth of Simemi Creek. The Australians were taken aback when a Japanese officer in full dress uniform climbed atop the bunker and waved his sword. Arnold said, ‘Well, we can’t shoot him; we’ll give him to ten, count ten.’ The count was shouted out. When it got to eight, the enemy officer shouted back, ‘Nine, out!’ With sword in hand and a defiant smile on his face, he was shot down by two Vickers guns. The officer was probably Colonel Hiroshi Yamamoto, who had replaced Kusunose as the commander of the 144th Infantry Regiment and been tasked with the defence of Buna.33
More Japanese died at the mouth of Simemi Creek. Others, wounded, tried to crawl away. That night, lightning flashes illuminated a small group trying to wade across to Simemi Island. Another two men could be seen crawling from a burning bunker. One ran and was shot down; Captain Matheson shot the other after he went for a grenade.34 Most of the 2000 or so defenders of Buna went that way, fighting to the end.
When the combat was finally over, Dudley Leggett walked the battlefield and ‘wondered how flesh and blood withstood and overcame the terrific fire which the enemy poured out from their hidden defences.’35 Many of the Australians had had enough. Afflicted with every conceivable complaint, Colonel Dobbs was ordered out. On 5 January, James Trevivian watched him go: ‘He set off up the track carrying his gear—the most pathetic sight I’ve ever seen.’ When Trevivian offered to help, Dobbs replied, ‘No, Trevivian, while ever I’m a soldier I’ll carry my gear. And I’m still a soldier, Trevivian.’36 Good soldier Dobbs never returned to the 2/10th.
The stench of decomposing bodies was everywhere. The Japanese dead had been left unburied to rot in the fierce heat and humidity. Along the beaches east and west of Giropa Point, the bloated bodies of Japanese and some American soldiers lay half buried in the sand, lapped by the tide. George Strock’s photograph of American dead at so-called ‘Maggot Beach,’ published eight months later in Life magazine would jolt an American public growing increasingly complacent about the war. The Australian soldiers refused to let their dead, still lying out among the broken plantation rows and kunai, suffer the same ghastly fate. Instructions were immediately issued to bury them, and graves were hastily dug. When the graves registration units arrived, not all those bodies were recovered.
Among the unrecovered were four men of the 2/12th Battalion, including Lieutenant Talbot Logan. In 2006, after the author notified the Australian Army of a grave at Buna village, an investigation was begun. Using dental and other records, the scant remains were identified as those of Logan. Sixty-seven years after he fell in battle, he was buried among the other fallen from his battalion at Bomana cemetery, outside Port Moresby. They had died for love of country—‘Ducit Amor Patriae,’ as the battalion motto read.