‘SUCH A DANGEROUS LOOKING MOB’
Following his dramatic escape from the Philippines and arrival in Australia on 17 March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur had been appointed the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the South West Pacific Area on 18 April 1942. When the official historian Gavin Long met the famous general in June 1944 he wrote of him, ‘This is a man of mind and feeling rather than a man of iron,’ who was ‘convinced that he was born to command’.1 In May 1942, just two months after the fall of Lae and Salamaua, General MacArthur urged General Thomas Blamey, the Allied ground forces commander, to raid or even retake the two towns. The latter option was unrealistic at this stage but reality was not MacArthur’s strong suit in mid-1942.
With the threat to Port Moresby eased following the turning back of the Japanese invasion force at the Battle of the Coral Sea, Major Paul Kneen’s 2/5th Independent Company, which had been in Moresby since 17 April, was flown across the Owen Stanley Range to the Wau area. Most of Kneen’s company plus an attached mortar unit was flown to Wau on 23 May. Six transport planes were used, a mix of former civilian DC3s and USAAF C-47s, escorted by about a dozen P-39 Airacobras. The six aircraft made two flights into Wau that day and five of them made a third flight. A further two flights of the five airworthy transports flew to Bulolo on 26 May with the final platoon. Stephen Murray-Smith wrote that ‘the planes were only down a few minutes and were then off again’.2 Earlier that month Captain Hugh Lyon had called Bob Emery aside and told him, ‘I don’t want everybody to know, the AIF are landing in Wau, our reinforcements are coming.’ When Emery finally saw them he noted, ‘Oh God, were we pleased to see them, all these young men with the latest killing equipment … you never seen such a dangerous looking mob in all your life.’3
On 5 June some of the commandos were trucked from Bulwa to Sunshine and the next day Lieutenant Bill Doberer’s 8 Section and Lieutenant Keith Stringfellow’s 9 Section began the trek down to the Markham River. Three nights later Doberer’s section, accompanied by Major Kneen and some NGVR troops, moved down to the river bank by night and crossed at dawn in native canoes. That afternoon the commandos arrived at Diddy camp, the NGVR base west of Lae.
Lieutenant Mal Wylie’s 4 Section, all but one of them West Australians, arrived in mid-June. ‘The quarters at Diddi were in fairly open country, and the subsection left at camp had to man the lookout,’ Jack Boxall noted. ‘This was situated in a tree, on a knoll overlooking open, flat country, with trees covering the hilly outcrops.’4 Keith Stringfellow’s section reached Diddy camp on 26 June and four men were used to bring Doberer’s and Wylie’s sections up to strength for a proposed commando raid on Lae.5 General MacArthur would get his wish.
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The raid was planned for the night of 30 June and would target Heath’s Plantation, about 10 kilometres north-west of Lae. This was the former home of Bertie Heath, the pilot who had flown out of Lae to Bulolo during the first Japanese air raid in January only to have his Junkers aircraft shot up on the ground. The Japanese had set up an early warning station at Heath’s at the end of April and a field gun, believed to be of 75 mm calibre, had been installed there.6 A sand-table model was made up at Diddy camp showing the area around Heath’s in small scale to help with planning and, while inspecting it, ‘each soldier was invited to have a small Scotch and a smoke’ laid on by Major Kneen who believed ‘what is good enough for the officers is good enough for the men’.7
There were thought to be 30 to 50 enemy troops at Heath’s with two sentries posted at the junction of the road to Heath’s with the Markham Road. A wireless aerial at the house meant that the garrison may be able to call on reinforcements if required. Accompanied by his intelligence sergeant Bob Booth, Kneen made a reconnaissance of Heath’s Plantation and then drew up his plans for the raid. The objectives were to blow up the bridge across the Bewapi Creek east of Heath’s, destroy the nearby field gun and any wireless equipment, gather any papers or articles of intelligence value and to cause general mayhem. It was also the intention to destroy all Japanese personnel in the area. Four officers and 54 men would take part in the raid, split into three sections, one section made up of NGVR troops under Lieutenant Bob Phillips with the two commando sections under Doberer and Wylie.8 The attack would follow what would be a very successful commando raid on Salamaua by other members of Kneen’s company under Captain Norm Winning in the early morning hours of 29 June.9
The three sections departed Diddy camp at 1410 on 29 June, arriving at Narakapor three and a half hours later and spending the night in the teeming rain hounded by mosquitoes and dodging snakes.10 However, dinner was good as some sheep had been brought along and roasted, the cooks heading back to Diddy camp the next morning. The raiders departed Narakapor the next morning and made their way along the northern bank of the Markham River to the form-up point at Bewapi Creek, twenty minutes from the Markham Road. At 1630 two scouting parties, one led by Major Kneen and the other by Bob Booth, set out to make a final reconnaissance of the target. Kneen’s party returned two hours later. Though Booth confirmed that two enemy sentries had been posted at the road and that there was no barbed wire around the house, he did not return until 2230. The two sentries had come and sat on the log behind which Booth had been sheltering and he had been unable to move until the sentries had left. As Jim Hamilton noted, Booth ‘was late back which upset our plans’.11
The three sections moved off in single file up Bewapi Creek east of Heath’s. The moon was up ‘but in the creek it was too dim to see more than five yards,’ Stephen Murray-Smith noted. Murray-Smith and his mate Rob Hamilton had been given the bridge job as both had been well-trained in the use of explosives. The two men had earlier waded up the creek with Kneen and Bob Booth to inspect the bridge, a sturdy log construction built over the ruins of the original crossing about 10 metres long and 3 metres wide and unguarded. Murray-Smith and Rob Hamilton were dropped off at the bridge with Bob Booth to cover them. By then ‘the rest of the party had already vanished into the gloom of the bush flanking the road’.12
The three sections moved along the south side of the Markham Road until they reached the grove of kapok trees at the junction of the drive to Heath’s. Doberer’s section was then to move diagonally across the paddock to a clump of trees east of the house where a sentry was to be knifed. Meanwhile Lieutenant Wylie’s section was to move off along the line of kapok trees and be responsible for killing the guards at the top of the drive. Wylie’s men would then move down to the front of the house and open fire. In the event, the section was held up 200 metres from the house because of a lack of cover due to the cleared grass in front of the house. Doberer’s section was also held up, choosing to stay back from the house after a dog started barking. Doberer’s task was to move his men up to the east side of the house and prevent any enemy troops escaping out the back while the NGVR section was to move to the north-east corner of the house with Doberer’s men on their left covering the eastern side. Meanwhile, after destroying the bridge, the bridge demolition party was to move to Heath’s and destroy the Japanese field gun.13
Up at the road junction Wal Strickland and Ted Solin silently stalked the sentries, who were manning a machine-gun pit. However, any hope of a silent killing was stymied by a barking dog which came from the house then ran up and down the drive, waking some of the Japanese in the house. Twice a voice told the dog to be quiet but the barking continued and prevented Strickland and Solin getting close enough to the sentries on the other side of the brightly lit driveway. At 0215 Solin realised he would have to use his rifle and fired two shots followed by a grenade to deal with the first sentry. Two more grenades were then thrown into the adjacent machine-gun pit. Then, as Stephen Murray-Smith wrote, ‘all hell was let loose in the calm of that tropical night’.14
Hearing the gunfire, Major Kneen gave the order to attack the house. Fred Wilsher was with Doberer’s section as the men dashed forward to the Japanese slit-trenches along the driveway. ‘Prepare to throw,’ Wilsher heard Kneen order, and then ‘Throw grenades. Dive!’ Heath’s was a timber house, built on stilts with steps up to the door and, as Jack Boxall wrote, the men from Wylie’s section ‘sprinted to the front of the house and each man threw grenades into and around the house’. Major Kneen had ordered them to throw their two grenades before opening fire. He then told Mick Dennis to throw a grenade onto the roof, but despite Dennis holding it a few extra seconds, the grenade rolled back off the sloping roof before exploding. Jack Boxall watched as ‘Japanese trying to escape were still in their pyjamas, and were picked off’. However, a group of about fifteen Japanese were allowed to escape as it was unsure if they were men from Doberer’s late-arriving section.15
A light mist had now settled across Heath’s and, despite the bright moonlight, Doberer’s section was out of view of Kneen by the time they were halfway across the paddock heading for the driveway. Dick Vernon, a NGVR man, had led Doberer’s section to the tree clump but the two men tasked with dealing with the sentries were still not in position. Then unexpected firing broke out on the far right of Doberer’s section and the men returned to the driveway where Wylie told them to head down the drive to the house. Jim Hamilton later said, ‘Well, I might as well tell the truth about it. The firing started right beside us, and we all ran back to the road.’ Once at the road, Doberer’s men found most of the rest of the commandos in a trench along the left-hand side of the drive while Wally Hulcup had been sent to deal with the field gun. Meanwhile Kneen stood up out of the trench with Lieutenant Phillips, giving orders. The men would come out of the trench, throw their grenades and then return to the trench. ‘That will do, we will go through the house now,’ Kneen told his men.16
The Tommy-gunners moved in and riddled the house before throwing their grenades inside. Firing and grenade explosions continued for about twenty minutes and, in the intervals between explosions, ‘a considerable amount of groaning and bumping noises came from the house,’ Wylie wrote. Wylie also thought that a number of attempts by the field-gun crew to get to their gun were stopped but at least one gunner made it and managed to fire off some rounds.17
Back at the bridge Murray-Smith and Rob Hamilton had set the charges and waited for the attack on the house to begin before they lit the fuse. The first three of only seven dry matches would not light before the fourth caused the fuse to splutter into life, blowing the bridge away in a huge explosion. When the smoke had cleared Stephen Murray-Smith saw that ‘the bridge was virtually matchwood: a heap of splintered wood smoking in the bed of the creek’. Murray-Smith, Rob Hamilton and Bob Booth then headed for the house but as they moved through the kapok grove there ‘was suddenly a violent explosion ahead and a great crackling rushing sound immediately above our heads’. The sound came from the Japanese field gun firing three or four shells which impacted near the bridge.18
Meanwhile a Japanese machine gun fired from a hill on the Lae side of Heath’s as Major Kneen called ‘cease fire Australia’ and moved up to the house with Jack Boxall, Les Matthews and Fred Howe alongside him. Kneen was standing beside a banana tree wiping his glasses when there was a ‘terrific flash’ and the tree toppled over. Kneen, who had been blown into the air by the blast, was killed while Matthews and Howe were wounded. As Kneen had suffered a severe wound to his midriff, Fred Wilsher thought that one of the grenades on Kneen’s belt may have gone off, though Wylie later said that the explosion had come from the second round fired from the field gun. Jim Hamilton agreed with Wilsher. ‘I think he was hit by one of our own grenades,’ he later said.19 Whatever the cause, Kneen’s decision to be at the forefront of the attack was a poor one given he was responsible for directing the entire operation, and the plan fell apart with his death.
Wylie, who had been called for by Kneen just before the fatal explosion, found his commander dead and, not surprisingly, it ‘had an upsetting effect’ on him.20 There was an argument about who would take over command and a shaken Wylie finally did so. When a cool head was required Wylie panicked and ordered the raiding party to withdraw west along the Markham Road. Bob Emery and the other experienced NGVR men were ‘astounded by this order’.21 With Wylie’s order, the attack broke down and the house was not even entered, let alone searched. The men who had been on the house steps, about to enter, hesitated then turned back and withdrew. Doberer’s section never even got into position for the attack and the men now withdrew without firing a shot. All the men’s packs and belongings, which had been deposited at the kapok grove prior to the attack, were abandoned. This was despite Wylie’s later report clearly stating that ‘In the event of anything unforseen [sic] happening every man was to report back to where the packs were dumped.’22
Wylie’s section followed Doberer’s section out. Showing some modicum of calm, the more experienced Bob Phillips, ‘the only one who kept his head’ and whose NGVR section came under his own command once Kneen was killed, formed his men into a rearguard. As Stephen Murray-Smith moved back past the house ‘there was not a sound, neither groans from the Japanese nor calls from our men’.23 No one went inside to look for intelligence, one of the key objectives of the operation. The field gun was also left undamaged despite Kneen’s plan to use it to fire on Lae before removing the breech block and destroying the barrel with some of Murray-Smith’s explosives.24 Murray-Smith carried those explosives all the way back to Diddy camp. By the time Wylie caught up with Murray-Smith at 0420 it was considered too late to go back and destroy the gun. Shortly after this the field gun started firing again, this time in the direction of the withdrawing raiders who were fortunately now out of range.25 As the sections withdrew down the track towards Nadzab, Captain Eric Shepherd and Lieutenant Stringfellow met them at Munum with a truck which was used to evacuate the two wounded men from Wylie’s section.26
Wylie’s report on the raid stated that 21 Japanese were definitely killed, presumably outside of the house. Another twenty defenders were estimated to have been killed or wounded in the house. At least twelve Japanese had escaped.27 The Japanese only admitted to ten casualties from the raid on Heath’s. The more important effect was that two companies of marines from the 5th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Party were rushed from Rabaul to Lae on 1 July and then on to Salamaua, where the commando raid had been much more successful.28 Having to deploy these crack troops to Lae and Salamaua meant they could not be used during the crucial operations at Milne Bay or Guadalcanal.
At midday on the next day two Japanese bombers appeared and circled the area, obviously looking for the raiders. Crossing the kunai grass, the commandos tried to hide from view but, as Stephen Murray-Smith wrote, the kunai grass ‘cut us and stifled us but did not hide us … like hiding from heavy rain under a handkerchief ’.29 Gabmatzung village, which was adjacent to Nadzab, was bombed, badly shaking up some of the commandos though there were no casualties. Most of the men then crossed the Markham River but Wylie’s section was sent back to Heath’s to finish the botched job. This time a raid by US B-25 Mitchell bombers had been laid on to precede the attack. The Mitchells hit Lae but none bombed Heath’s so Wylie aborted the plan and once again withdrew his men.30
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One thing that neither the Lae or Salamaua raids produced was an enemy prisoner. Major Norman Fleay, the commander of Kanga Force which included the 2/5th Independent Company, now directed Captain Shepherd to send out a platoon to capture one. Shepherd did not have many fit men and to send out a platoon on such a task would invite discovery by the Japanese, so he sent out two four-man parties instead. The two parties, one led by Sergeant Bill Chaffey and the other by Sergeant Paul Beal, set off down the Markham Road and divided at Narakapor.31
Skirting previous tracks, Chaffey’s party reached the Markham Road east of Heath’s and set up an ambush. A Japanese truck approached but got bogged about 30 metres away, and when the Australians broke cover two guards with a machine gun opened up from the back of the truck. Chaffey shot one with his Tommy gun but the other kept firing, hitting Dick Vernon in the chest. Jack Gregson tried to drag the badly wounded Vernon out until Vernon said he was done for and pleaded for Gregson to get to safety himself. Meanwhile Chaffey had also killed two of the three men in the front seat of the truck before running out of ammunition. With more Japanese troops coming up the road from Lae, Chaffey and the other two men then withdrew, leaving the badly wounded Vernon behind. A single revolver shot and a burst of fire signalled the end for the brave rifleman. Meanwhile Beal’s group had reached Jacobsen’s Plantation near the airfield but the noise from Chaffey’s ambush alerted the Japanese and the men were fortunate to escape.32
On 21 July the Japanese responded by carrying out a mopping-up operation at Ngasawapum. There were two Japanese parties one hour apart, the first of 81 men, the second of 53 men. Twenty of the Australians were preparing to leave camp when the Japanese opened fire, hurrying their exit. Bill Underwood was wounded in the arm and remained behind under cover. George Whittaker went out that night, and after a six-hour search found Underwood and then brought him back to Nadzab and across the Markham in a canoe.33 Following this incident, all fixed camps north of the Markham River were abandoned by the Australians and it would be over 13 months before the Australian army returned to the area.
The commandos of the 2/5th Independent Company would remain in the front line in New Guinea for twelve months, engaged in critical battles at Lae, Salamaua, Mubo and Wau. By April 1943 only 104 men remained out of 340, including reinforcements, and 30 of these men were barely fit for action. The rest were sick and exhausted. As Jack Boxall later wrote, in early 1942 the men were ‘Physically as hard as stone, eagerly on to New Guinea—the next year glad to be back on the mainland.’34
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Lae stood out as a vital objective for the Allies in order to take the fight for New Guinea to the next stage and beyond. The abandoned airfield site at Nadzab, 30 kilometres north-west of Lae, provided a great opportunity to land troops close to the town. In August 1942 Major General George Kenney, the Allied air commander, had discussed a similar bold air-landing operation in Papua with Brigadier General Ennis Whitehead, his forward air commander in New Guinea. This involved using a bush strip well behind Japanese lines on the northern Papuan coast at Wanigela to get troops and supplies into Buna.35 However, Kenney found it difficult to get Lieutenant General Richard Sutherland, MacArthur’s chief of staff, to take such an operation seriously. Sutherland had an aversion to any risk and he was proving difficult for the Australian commanders to work with. ‘There is no use talking to him about Wanigela let alone Nadzab if the Aussies are to be depended on to do the job,’ Kenney wrote on 8 September.36 On 18 September Kenney went over Sutherland’s head and conferred with General MacArthur about sending troops by air to Wanigela in order to capture Buna. As part of that conversation he told MacArthur that ‘after Buna comes Nadzab and Lae’. ‘We’ll see,’ MacArthur replied.37 On 23 September Kenney was at it again. He wanted to begin planning the Nadzab operation but MacArthur told him ‘no decision would be made until Buna was occupied’.38
On 18 October 1942, after two regiments of US troops had been successfully flown across the Owen Stanley Range from Port Moresby to the rough landing ground at Wanigela, General Blamey had told General MacArthur of his desire to follow up the expected defeat of the Japanese in Papua with operations against Lae and Salamaua. At that stage intelligence showed that there was a Japanese regiment at Lae and Blamey thought that an air operation to retake the town was feasible. Blamey considered that it was possible to land troops at the former airfield site at Nadzab and wanted two Australian brigades under Major General George Vasey’s command deployed for the task. One of the brigades would be Brigadier Murray Moten’s 17th Brigade, at that point uncommitted to the Kokoda campaign. Brigadier Ron Hopkins flew to Wau on 18 October to discuss the plan with the commander of Kanga Force, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Fleay.39
Two days later MacArthur, understandably concerned about the threat of Japanese naval and air strength, replied to General Blamey’s proposal. ‘Operations against the north coast of New Guinea must be approached with great caution and implemented by carefully drawn plans,’ he advised. He was also against moving the 17th Brigade from Milne Bay due to intelligence that the Japanese may make another landing there in November. He rightly stressed that the 7th Division would be needed to reduce the Japanese-held Papuan beachheads first and it had not yet even retaken Kokoda. However, MacArthur did send a staff officer to look at Blamey’s Nadzab proposal.40
On 24 October General Kenney was informed that the Australian army had adopted the Nadzab plan and he was to allocate all available transport aircraft including Australian civilian models to the operation, 70 transport planes in all. ‘We want to pour troops into Nadzab fast,’ Kenney was told. An experienced transport pilot had flown in to Wampit and trekked overland to Nadzab to confirm whether the airfield site was suitable for such a sustained operation.41
At a conference in Brisbane on 27 October Blamey again pressed his Lae plan onto MacArthur, the intention now being to land both the 17th and 21st Brigades at Nadzab. Three weeks later on 18 November an outline plan, code-named Haggis, was put forward for implementation once the Papuan beachheads at Gona, Buna and Sanananda had fallen. The plan anticipated flying the Australian 7th Cavalry Regiment to Wau and then moving it down the Bulolo Valley and across the Markham River to capture and repair Nadzab airfield. Brigadier Moten’s 17th Brigade would then be flown in to make the assault on Lae. At the same time Kanga Force would carry out diversionary actions against Salamaua before a second infantry brigade was flown in to Wau, Salamaua or Nadzab as appropriate. Artillery, anti-aircraft, engineer, medical, signal and service corps troops would also be required. It was expected that the ground forces would be available by 14 December.42
At that stage the Australians were still on their way back across the Kokoda Track and well short of winning that battle let alone retaking Buna and the other Papuan beachheads. It would be over three months before Papua was secure and the cost would be great, severely limiting the ability of the Allies to carry out other offensive operations in the short to mid-term. The 7th Cavalry Regiment ended up being sent to Sanananda in December 1942 where it was all but destroyed in the fighting while the 17th Brigade was flown to Wau in January 1943 to counter the Japanese threat against that area. The 21st Brigade would also be unavailable for some time as it needed to be totally rebuilt after the Papuan campaigns.
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Meanwhile the transport of troops and supplies over the Owen Stanley Range was stretching General Kenney’s air transport planes to the limit. Even if the troops were available to land at Nadzab, Kenney just did not have the transport aircraft available to support the operation. In early December 1942 he only had three transport squadrons available in New Guinea. The newest of these, the thirteen C-47s of Captain John Lackey’s 6th Troop Carrier Squadron, had left San Francisco on 2 October. Due to the fuel required for the first leg to Hawaii, eight extra fuel tanks were installed in the aircraft cabin in addition to the four wing tanks. Each aircraft took off with twice the normal maximum payload which meant it would not be able to stay in the air if one of the two engines failed within the first ten hours of the flight.43
Staff Sergeant Ernie Ford was one of the pilots in Lackey’s squadron. ‘The bird was straining and groaning for all she was worth to break ground’, he wrote of the take off from San Francisco.44 When Captain Lackey’s C-47 touched down at Hickam Field on Hawaii after a 14-hour flight, it was the first such aircraft to have flown directly from the US mainland. Ernie Ford’s aircraft was the second one down. From Hawaii the squadron flew via Christmas Island and Canton Island to Fiji and New Caledonia before touching down at Amberley airfield west of Brisbane on 9 October, one week after leaving the US mainland.45 The aircraft then flew to Townsville where they loaded maintenance personnel and equipment and headed for Port Moresby, reaching there on 13 October. Lackey’s squadron joined the 21st and 22nd Troop Carrier Squadrons. The 33rd Troop Carrier Squadron, delayed on New Caledonia, would not reach New Guinea until late December.