‘A TERRIFYING BUT MAGNIFICENT SPECTACLE’
The decision to make the amphibious landing 22 kilometres east of Lae had its pros and cons. The key advantage was that it ensured the beachhead could be established out of range of enemy artillery fire but, with the advance now underway, the difficulties of the terrain had an immediate impact. The ground over which the troops had to advance was a coastal plain about 5 kilometres in depth covered by dense jungle inland with kunai patches and mangrove swamps closer to the coast. The major terrain problem came in the form of the six rivers and many minor creeks between Red Beach and Lae. All these watercourses were liable to flooding when rain fell on the adjacent Rawlinson Range, and that was pretty much every night.
Having established the two beachheads on D-Day with no significant resistance on the ground, the Australians began the advance on the following day, 5 September. After the 2/13th Battalion advanced east from Yellow Beach and reached the Buhem River, two companies crossed over and occupied the overgrown Hopoi airfield. This secured the eastern flank of the beachhead against any Japanese counterattack from Finschhafen.
After a strenuous day moving west towards Lae from Red Beach on 5 September, a patrol from the 2/23rd Battalion, now commanded by Major Eric McRae, reached the Buiem River without any enemy contact. At dusk Sergeant Don Lawrie was ordered to take out a patrol to establish a forward post at the mouth of the Bunga River, about 4 kilometres further west towards Lae. That night Corporal Alan Schram woke with a fright, a hand clamped across his mouth by one of the men from his section. The other hand was pointing to a line of enemy troops filing past almost within touching distance of the two Australians hidden in the shoreline scrub. The Japanese were moving along the beach from the direction of Lae. Schram started counting as a group of 40 men passed followed by another 87; 127 troops in all. Nearby, Don Lawrie had counted the same number, ‘all big fellows, heavily armed with machine-guns and mortars’.1
The Japanese, a company of naval troops from the 82nd Naval Garrison, were heading east towards Singaua Plantation, cutting off Lawrie’s route back to the battalion.2 With the radio not working, some other means of alerting battalion headquarters of the enemy incursion had to be found. Stripped of arms and equipment, Dave Fairlie and Schram waded into the sea and then made their way back towards the 2/23rd lines, at times almost neck deep in the ocean. Once he thought he was past the Japanese positions, Schram moved inshore but, when a match flared at the edge of the scrub, he could make out an armed enemy soldier. Schram and Fairlie then slid back into deeper water but the noise alerted the Japanese sentry who moved to the shoreline and cocked his rifle. The men ducked underwater until out of breath, letting the current carry them further away from danger. Day was breaking when they finally emerged from the water at the mouth of a creek where men were washing. They had found their battalion lines but had only arrived with the warning fifteen minutes before the enemy patrol would have reached the perimeter. Schram told his company commander, Captain Joe Dudley, that the enemy company was only 200 metres away. ‘Good, we’ll bash em,’ Dudley replied. Fairlie and Schram also met Major McRae, the new battalion commander, who went forward to where he could clearly see enemy troops digging in.3
At 0635 Dudley sent two platoons down the coastal track and within 100 metres they had clashed with the Japanese in dense jungle near a copra shed on Singaua Plantation. Bill Harrison was shot and killed by a waiting sniper before Lieutenant Jack Atkinson’s platoon attacked. Atkinson’s men were soon forced to ground while Lieutenant Stan Morey’s platoon fared little better with three men including Morey wounded. Meanwhile, Captain Max Thirlwell’s company had been sent through swamp and dense scrub to get in behind the Japanese position, followed by a second company tasked with hitting the Japanese flank. At 1030 Atkinson’s platoon attacked again and forced the Japanese to pull back along the beach past Thirlwell’s positions.4 By early afternoon resistance was overcome with 30 enemy troops killed and the rest fleeing. The Australians had hit them before they had had time to dig in. Nonetheless the Japanese naval troops had fought hard and some committed suicide with their own grenades rather than surrender. All of the Japanese wore life vests so had apparently been landed by barge on the east side of the Busu River.5
Those Japanese troops that did withdraw came up against Sergeant Lawrie’s platoon, still trapped further west. Lawrie’s men held off six attacks between 1400 and dusk, each time warned by bugle calls and shouting. Lawrie noted that, ‘the closer the attackers came in the faster they fell … after each futile attack the Japs walked back to their start line like bowlers in a cricket match’. Lawrie took care of at least ten enemy soldiers himself while directing the actions of his sections, at all times conscious of conserving ammunition.6 By nightfall McRae’s battalion had crossed the Bunga River having taken 30 casualties during the day’s fighting.7
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Following up the air attacks on D-Day, Japanese aircraft returned the next day with two attacks in the early afternoon, one on Red Beach and the other on the Aluki track, the route heading west from the beachheads to Lae. There were other air attacks on 6 September, the major one against Red Beach by seventeen bombers with a heavy fighter escort. However, only nine bombers managed to bomb the beachhead, the rest driven off with four of the escorting fighters also shot down. On the same day a Boomerang reconnaissance aircraft, flown by Flying Officer Tom Laidlaw, was shot down by a Zero east of Hopoi.8 Laidlaw had been flying close to the ground directing artillery fire while another Boomerang, piloted by Flying Officer Syd Carter, provided top cover. Neither plane had any chance in a dogfight against so many Zeros but Carter managed to evade them by heading into the mountains to the north. After this incident the Boomerangs arranged to have American fighters patrolling as top cover during such missions.9
As always in New Guinea, the toughest fight was against the terrain. The construction of corduroy log roads through the swampy terrain from the beachhead to the front lines was slow and difficult. At times the use of a bulldozer exacerbated the problem as it would tear up the ground surface while clearing the jungle. An angled dozer was preferred as there was less backing up and slewing around, but in the end it was found to be more efficient to cut through the jungle by hand and then lay the corduroy track onto better ground. Steel mesh runner strips were then laid along the top of the corduroy road to prevent the trucks from ripping the road to pieces with their chained wheels.10 Brigadier Victor Windeyer later said that he had ‘never seen a more devoted effort than men building roads through hopeless swamps towards Lae’.11 Merv Weston also knew how important the development of a suitable road was to the operation. ‘Most of the work has been done by American and Australian engineers and by Australian pioneers who work in the fierce sun with a fury I have never seen equalled,’ he wrote, ‘stopping only to throw themselves into ditches or foxholes when the ack-ack [anti-aircraft fire] opens up at their elbows.’12
Greater problems started in the Apo–Singaua area where the jeep track was blocked by swampy ground west of Aluki village. Without firm ground, the corduroy road could not be laid so from there on it just became a foot track. However, due to the demand for men for unloading work at the beach, none were available to bring supplies up to the front line. Brigadier David Whitehead’s 26th Brigade landed on 5 September and Whitehead soon realised that supply by landing craft was necessary. Later in the day he was told that landing craft would come into Apo fishing village that night if the beach was suitable. The boat engineers looked at the beach that night and, despite the offshore reefs, two LCMs arrived at dawn on 6 September.13
The further the Australians advanced towards Lae, the greater the need was for that amphibious supply. On the night of 6 September, another LCM was diverted to Apo and on to Singaua Plantation where it was guided ashore by 2/24th Battalion troops. The solitary Australian Army Service Corps corporal on the beach worked like a Trojan to break down the bulk loads for distribution to ensure the brigade could continue the advance on the next day. It was upon the broad shoulders of such men that this battle was to be won.14 On the night of 5–6 September, Wootten’s third brigade, Brigadier Bernard Evans’ 24th, disembarked at Red Beach. The weather had been fine for the first three days of the operation but on the night of 6–7 September very heavy rain fell, turning all creeks into major obstacles and making the tracks near impassable. ‘That night it rained as it has never rained before,’ Harry Wells wrote.15
On 7 September Evans’ 24th Brigade took over on the coast while Whitehead’s 26th Brigade moved further inland up the Burep River. That night landing craft were requested to land at the mouth of the Burep where brigade headquarters had been established and supplies were subsequently landed on G Beach, west of the river mouth. Two jeeps and an amphibious DUKW were also landed but without a petrol reserve; by mid-morning the DUKW was idle and one of the jeeps had broken down. That day Whitehead’s brigade reached the east bank of the Busu and the 2/48th Battalion, up until then used for labour at Apo, had rejoined the brigade.16 G Beach became a key supply point, considerably shortening the supply line to the front; if a landing craft left Red Beach at 1730 then they could make three supply runs per night.17 On the night of 8–9 September two 25-pounder guns were brought down to G Beach to provide artillery support.
The 2/48th commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Ainslie, noted the difficulties of moving through the jungle where it was impossible to determine the swampy ground from aerial photographs. It was only while cutting through the jungle that the swamps were discovered and the heavily laden troops then had to just plough on through—‘an exhausting and slow process’.18
On 8 September the 26th Brigade moved across country from the Burep to the Busu River without any enemy contact. When Lieutenant Ed Shattock’s platoon from the 2/24th Battalion reached the Busu, Shattock was told not to cross, although he thought he could do so. ‘The Japs were not in position opposite me; we could have done it,’ Shattock said. It then rained heavily during the night and the river rose.19 Brigadier Whitehead also thought that there were no Japanese forces on the west bank of the Busu at this stage. However, the battalion had reached the Busu at its narrowest point where the locals had formerly constructed kunda-vine suspension footbridges. The river current was at its fastest at this point with the central river channel producing standing waves over a metre high, making crossing without a bridge nigh on impossible.20
Meanwhile the brigade was trying to build up a three-day ration reserve before crossing the Busu. Ammunition was less of an issue given the light fighting up to that time but there was a shortage of 3-inch mortar rounds and, until regular artillery support was available, this was a concern. On 8 September five landing craft brought in supplies plus four more jeeps and two 2.5 ton vehicles to G Beach. A bulldozer was also landed but it had given up the ghost a few hours later. The following day the entire brigade was used to carry supplies forward and to widen the track between the Burep and Busu into a jeep track.21
As the principal outlet for the tropical rains that fall across the mountain range to the north and then funnel down towards Lae, the Busu River always runs fast and strong. Swollen into a raging river by heavy rains and with enemy defenders behind it, it was the most daunting of obstacles. After seeing that the river was running at full spate at over 20 kilometres per hour, Whitehead informed General Wootten that bridging equipment would be required to get across. When Wootten replied that the movement of artillery had priority, Whitehead argued that artillery fire would be ineffective against the heavily wooded western bank and that his mortars could handle the suppression job. He urgently needed a box-girder bridge brought forward before enemy opposition built up and severely hampered any bridging work.22
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On the coastal flank Brigadier Bernard Evans’ 24th Brigade also reached the Busu River. Evans later wrote that ‘The advance was gruelling … we had unloaded our own gear, pressed on with the march, overtaken the leading troops of the day before and continued the advance in contact with the enemy—cutting our way through mangroves.’ He noted that ‘The advance to the Busu was very fast but could have been faster with two LCVPs.’23
The West Australians of Lieutenant Colonel Colin Norman’s 2/28th Battalion led the way along the coast. ‘The worst factor was the stifling heat in the kunai patches plus boots full of water,’ Allan Henderson said of the advance. ‘It always rained at night and you virtually slept in water.’24 When Norman asked Major Keith Mollard, who was second-in-command of the 2/32nd Battalion and who had spent two years in Lae before the war, ‘Where do we cross the river?’, Mollard told him that the natives always crossed at the mouth or else at the narrower point further inland. However, Mollard thought Norman ‘wasn’t in the race to cross higher up’.25
‘We were told to push as fast as possible through fairly thick jungle and keeping in earshot of the ocean close on our left,’ Allan Henderson noted of his company as the men approached the Busu. ‘We proceeded cautiously towards that ominous roar.’26 The 2/28th Battalion reached the east bank of the Busu River on the afternoon of 8 September and at dawn the next morning a patrol under Lieutenant Peter Rooke tried to get across 250 metres upstream of the mouth. However, they only made it across the minor channel to the island in the middle of the river. A few hours later a platoon tried the local route directly across the mouth to see if it would be suitable for getting the mortars and Vickers guns across. Captain Leo Lyon watched as the two leading scouts moved across the sandbar about 50 metres apart with their rifles at high port. The lead scout was about 80 metres from the far bank when the Japanese opened fire from near the mouth of the river on the west bank. Both men fell and were quickly washed out to sea but one was only wounded and ‘fought his way back through the current to our side of the river’. The platoon withdrew under covering mortar fire. Lyon ‘reported the incident to CO by phone who decided it was too dangerous to cross at the mouth’. Nonetheless, soon after midday Norman received orders to somehow cross the Busu and establish a bridgehead.27
Ed Benness led a patrol upstream to look for another way across. His men made a number of attempts but it was hopeless, so ‘as a last resort I persuaded the signaller who had accompanied the patrol to allow his cable to be tied around my waist’, Benness related. However, he soon lost his footing and was swept downstream before he was dragged back to shore by the cable. Norman now considered that the best place to cross was directly across from the island where there was a slight bend in the river with the current drifting towards the west bank.28
With the island and the raised opposite bank offering some cover, Norman decided to send the battalion across the main channel from the island in four lines just before dusk. It was anticipated that this time of day was Japanese ‘rice time’ and surprise was possible. The men would carry minimum equipment but maximum ammunition. Having waded across several narrow channels to the island during the afternoon, Lieutenant James ‘Pat’ Hannah’s company was the first to step out into the raging torrent of the main channel, which was about 50 metres wide. Some men ‘couldn’t swim and must have had grave reservations as to their long term future,’ Benness observed. It would be like going into battle without a weapon. Following 22 rounds of artillery fire on suspected Japanese positions at the river mouth, Hannah gave the order and the company entered the water in extended line led by Hannah, who was also the first to emerge onto the far bank. Many of the men lost their weapons as they were swept off their feet but most of the men were washed up on the far bank. The bank was over a metre high and provided shelter from enemy fire although most of that fire was being directed towards the river mouth. However, an enemy machine gun soon found its range. ‘One of my men, a young lad and recent reinforcement raised his head above the kunai and was killed instantly,’ Ed Benness noted. Corporal Neville May went forward alone and found the machine-gun position about 100 metres inland from the coast. Using grenades and his Owen gun he wiped out the post.29
Leo Lyon’s company followed with similar results although helped ashore by human chains formed on the far bank by Hannah’s men. The rest of the battalion followed, ‘as though on parade until the current hit them’. The companies went across in line, the men not hesitating as they entered the swirling waters and were swept onto the far bank, generally still in formation. There was now intermittent enemy fire from the far bank and the Bren gunner next to Colonel Norman was hit and went under. He was one of 30 men that were swept away during the crossing. Of these, thirteen had drowned, the remainder able to scramble out at the bar about 50 metres out to sea beyond the river mouth where the water was only one metre deep.30 As William Loh later wrote of the river crossing, ‘It was a terrifying but magnificent spectacle.’31
Keith Mollard watched the men crossing. ‘If it was included in a Hollywood film it would have been panned by the critics as a highly improbable possibility,’ he later wrote, ‘it looked for all the world as though a giant hand was snatching them across to the far bank … this was the most dramatic event I saw during the entire war’. Mollard and two other men were trying to get across at the river mouth, having waited until five minutes after Norman’s men began their crossing. They figured that the Japanese defenders would have their attention diverted by the main crossing and that they wouldn’t be seen in the low light at dusk. ‘We couldn’t have been more wrong,’ Mollard later wrote. ‘I am reasonably sure that not one shot was fired at the battalion and the three of us copped a veritable hail of lead … the three of us fell flat on our faces in one of the shallow water channels and paddled away from the shootin’.’ Given his earlier advice to Norman to cross at the mouth, Mollard later reflected, ‘I still go hot and cold when I think what would have happened if Colonel Norman had taken notice of me.’32
The Japanese noted how they had stopped the morning attempt to cross at the mouth and thought they had killed 20 to 30 men in doing so. They also thought that the attempt by 200 to 300 men later in the day had also been stymied despite there being ‘insufficient men to protect the upper stream of the Busu River’.33 As General Herring observed on 12 September, ‘The Jap missed a great opportunity of cracking the 28 Bn when isolated across the river in a small perimeter.’34
Norman’s men had lost about 25 per cent of their weapons during the crossing and the signals gear was not working. Despite slight wounds, John Crouchley swam back across the river that night to tell Brigadier Evans what had happened and supplies were organised despite the river continuing to rise. John Threnoworth and Bill Swift also swam back across with a signals line and communications was established later that night. Organising the defence of the newly won bridgehead was difficult, with companies mixed up in the five-metre-high kunai grass along the river bank, but fortunately there were a few sandy patches that were covered with low scrub instead of the kunai and they were slightly higher than the swamp. As Norman later wrote, ‘we had a perimeter and were in a position to fight’. Despite the cold and rain, the men waited out the night. During that night Alec Wilson, who had been swept out to sea during the crossing, managed to get ashore behind enemy lines and reach the bridgehead.35
Around midday on the day after the crossing, the bridgehead came under attack from machine-gun and mortar fire. ‘Right out of the blue hand grenades were exploding all amongst us immediately incurring casualties,’ Allan Henderson recalled. The Japanese had obviously got up very close but could not be seen in the kunai grass. The platoon sergeant, Alex ‘Sandy’ MacGregor, slid over the bank and down onto the beach for a better view. He saw that about six enemy defenders were holed up in a drain-like depression in front of the Australian lines. It was probably where the nearby swamp drained out to the sea. Sandy was able to point out the enemy party to his platoon but because of his exposed position on the beach he was killed by machine-gun fire while directing the platoon’s weapons.36
Lieutenant John Brooks was a quiet, unobtrusive man who had never so much as raised his voice to his men during training. He was considered the perfect gentleman. However, following the loss of the courageous MacGregor, Brooks was ‘fighting mad’. ‘Right chaps, fix bayonets, follow me,’ he told his men as he led the way forward. The men crossed about 150 metres of open ground before enemy fire broke out from a large kunai patch immediately ahead. ‘All hell broke loose,’ was how Allan Henderson described it. ‘John Brooks was everywhere, exhorting us to keep up the momentum, completely oblivious to personal danger.’ The three platoons of C Company were involved in the attack, moving forward a section at a time searching out the Japanese positions on small sandy islands scattered about the waist deep swamp. As Allan Henderson struggled out of the swampy ground, ‘suddenly my luck ran out,’ he recalled. An enemy rifleman hiding in thick kunai grass to his left waited until Henderson had passed by before shooting him, ‘bringing to an untimely end my aspirations and my military career,’ as Henderson saw it.37 Nonetheless, the attack succeeded and 63 Japanese soldiers lay dead in its wake.
Further inland, B Company also moved forward through freshly prepared defensive positions that fortunately had been abandoned. The men then turned towards the coast, moving through two-metre-high kunai grass to the beach before turning west for Lae. Again, as Ed Benness observed, ‘there was plenty of evidence of Japanese occupation with slit trenches, machine-gun posts and bush shelters but fortunately all were unoccupied’.38
Meanwhile Brigadier Evans stripped his 2/43rd Battalion of weapons and ferried those weapons across to the 2/28th to replace the ones they had lost in the crossing. ‘This battalion was spent after so much effort but I had to keep them going,’ he later wrote of the 2/28th. Evans also tried to get one or two LCVPs allocated to help land supplies and troops on the west bank of the Busu mouth to support Norman. The request was refused, although one boat did turn up.39 Lieutenant Henderson McPherson’s boat crew had volunteered to ferry the remaining troops around the river mouth and for 48 hours their landing craft took fresh troops across the Busu and brought back the wounded under Japanese fire. The landing craft’s rudder was shot away but the crew improvised another while McPherson sat exposed in the stern, steering the boat. The LCVP made 40 trips, taking some 1200 troops and considerable supplies across to the west bank of the Busu.40
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Both the 24th and 26th Brigade had been ordered to cross the Busu and establish bridgeheads in depth with fighting patrols to gain and hold contact with the enemy. Whitehead’s 26th Brigade had been held up at the Busu for 36 hours waiting for rubber boats and suitable rope to get the men across. An attempt to span the river with fallen trees failed when the river rose and all attempts with the rubber boats ended in them being swamped. ‘Rubber assault useless,’ the brigade report noted.41 On the night of 9 September bridging supplies were landed at G Beach but the urgently needed material remained on the beach until it was discovered the next morning.42
The 2/24th Battalion worked with the engineers to get across the Busu at a place where the river separated into three channels of 20, 30 and 14 metres wide and ran at about 25 kilometres per hour with a depth over 2 metres. After the heavy rain of the previous night, it was apparent on the morning of 10 September that ‘a crossing was impossible with the materials available’. Nonetheless, at midday Warrant Officer Bill McCallum and two engineers swam the river with signal wire and managed to then drag a rope across and secure it to the far bank. Despite enemy fire, boats were then hooked to the rope but they were soon swamped and this method had to be abandoned.43
On the next day, 11 September, the men began to build a bridge using felled logs supported on stone pylons to bridge the first 20-metre stream. That night the river again rose and the logs had little chance against the raging torrent. The ‘current was so strong that logs, anchored at both ends by pylons of rocks, would break in the middle,’ Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Gillespie later said. The next day, with the river dropping, the men again tried to bridge the river with logs. The first bridge was replaced but all attempts to get a log across the second stream failed and the attempt was once more abandoned.44
On the morning of 13 September a span of box-girder bridging arrived to bridge the 30-metre-wide second stream. Although the crossing point was still under enemy fire, the box-girder bridge was launched soon after midday, but, when almost across the gap, it overbalanced and was swept away downstream. Later that afternoon more box-girder sections arrived and another attempt was made. A 25-metre single box-girder bridge was assembled using three box and two hornbeam sections. A box section from an auxiliary loading ramp was then fastened to the near shore end of the bridge to provide an additional counterweight. One hundred men then picked up the bridge and carried it through water over a metre deep across the first 20-metre channel to a mid-river island from where it was launched across the main 30-metre channel. However, it did not reach the far bank and the launching nose provided the last six-metre length. It was a unique operation, launching the box-girder bridge with no bridgehead on the far bank with only a mortar barrage to keep the enemy at bay. Once the bridge was secured on the second island a third section was put in place early on 14 September. The first infantry company from the 2/24th Battalion crossed the Busu at 0630 that morning and headed north, mopping up one enemy strongpoint by 0830, leaving 30 defenders dead and capturing a 20 mm anti-aircraft gun.45 ‘Two platoons across before the Japs woke up,’ Brigadier Whitehead later said.46 By early next morning the rest of Whitehead’s 26th Brigade had also crossed.
Closer to the coast, Brigadier Evans’ 24th Brigade finally moved out of its bridgehead on 14 September and reached Malahang anchorage and airstrip. It was expected that the Malahang area would be strongly held, so the plan was to bypass the area and push on to the Butibum River to cut off any enemy defence positions. However, on reaching the outskirts of Lae, only Japanese stragglers were encountered and on the afternoon of 16 September a signal came through indicating that troops from 7th Division were already in Lae. ‘Have occupied Lae prevent your troops engaging my troops,’ the message read.47
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While the infantry brigades advanced on Lae, a major part of General Wootten’s plan to capture the town, the artillery component, was struggling to get forward. Wootten’s experience at Buna as the commander of 18th Brigade had undoubtedly influenced his planning for the Lae operation. At Buna his men had paid a heavy price attacking strong interlocking defence positions with very limited artillery support. Here at Lae he had wanted to ensure that he had the artillery that he had so lacked at Buna.
Although General George Kenney considered that aircraft could do the job of the artillery in New Guinea, General Wootten knew that it was not that simple and that artillery had considerable advantages over air support. The aircraft were based at Port Moresby or Dobodura and there would be a significant delay in reaching the target and it would be difficult to cancel or adjust air strikes. Any friendly forces would have to retire a safe distance back from the bomb line beforehand. Artillery missions were easier to control with the forward observation officers in the front line. Wootten also stressed his experience with artillery at Milne Bay, Buna and Sanananda where what artillery he had had been very effective. Wootten had a lot more artillery available at Lae and, as he later noted, ‘At this stage as far as was known the Japanese were defending Lae and intended to continue to defend it.’48
One battery from the 2/12th Field Regiment was landed in the first wave at Red Beach on 4 September with the remainder following in later waves. The regiment deployed sixteen standard and eight light 25-pounder guns. Subsequently a further twenty standard 25-pounder guns from the 14th Field Regiment plus another battery of eight light 25-pounder guns and a medium battery of two French 155 mm cannon from 2/6th Field Regiment were also landed. Twenty-four 40 mm Bofors guns from the 2/3rd and 2/4th Light Anti Aircraft Regiments provided antiaircraft support. Because the light 25-pounder guns had a shorter range, they had to be moved more often, but this proved difficult. The wheels were smaller than on the normal gun and were too small for the rigours of jungle tracks and the guns had to be loaded onto the back of trucks or onto landing craft to relocate. The Bofors guns were even harder to shift.49 By 11 September, fourteen 25-pounders, eight light and six standard, had been brought forward to provide close fire support and were in operation east of the Burep River. With Australian troops now across the Busu, the impact of these first artillery rounds was profound. Following this shelling, the Japanese command considered that ‘Lae’s doom was imminent.’50
The two First World War–era French 155 mm guns were the toughest to move. Wheel chains and considerable manhandling was required just to get the guns from Red Beach to positions about one and a half kilometres inland. On the night of 12–13 September the two guns were moved down to G Beach by LCT but unfortunately one of the LCTs returned to Buna without unloading its ammunition. The gun personnel had had limited training with these guns and did not get them into action until the afternoon of 14 September.51
For the final attack on Lae, General Wootten had 52 field guns and two medium guns available and each was allocated 1000 rounds. The 2/12th Field Regiment was firing from positions along the Burep River while the guns of the 14th Field Regiment only reached the Busu River late that afternoon. The convoy consisted of twenty tractors and guns, eight heavy trucks and half a dozen other vehicles which had to cover 25 kilometres of track including 4 kilometres of corduroy road. The 2/3rd Field Company sappers had worked tirelessly to get the road finished. On 16 September 22 guns were in range of Lae town and eighteen of these began firing, but were soon told to stop as they were firing on troops from the 7th Division.52
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With the deployment of so much artillery alongside three infantry brigades and other support services, there was enormous pressure on the supply services and a major conflict between the US Navy and Australian Army requirements played itself out on the landing beaches. While General Wootten required the landing of a considerable supply reserve to guard against the supply line being broken, the US Navy considered the best way to guarantee the supply line and particularly the supply vessels was to limit the time the landing craft remained on the beach. The US Navy also wanted to gain the maximum cover of darkness while at sea moving to and from Lae. Once landed, the army had its own problems moving the supplies forward from the beaches as all carrying was being done by the troops.53
Every man had carried two operational and three emergency rations when they had landed. One of each type was dumped at the beachhead to create a reserve so each man initially had rations for three days.54 However, after those three days most of the men ended up on short rations. On 11 September Captain John Davies, the Regimental Medical Officer from the 2/23rd Battalion, reported, ‘Over the past five days quantity of rations has been quite inadequate, considering the strenuous physical exertion involved … men are constantly complaining of weakness and inability to stand up to the work. Unless the quantity of food is increased the men will not be able to carry on under the existing conditions.’ On the next day Davies was killed when an enemy shell hit a nearby tree.55
Brigadier Whitehead had questioned the adequacy of the ration scale for his brigade during operational planning at Milne Bay and the other two brigades had raised similar objections. At that time Whitehead had been told that the reduced scale was to be used for the first seven days and normalised thereafter but this never happened and the troops were on low rations for 24 days.56 The 2/23rd Battalion commander later noted that ‘Physical conditions have been extremely hard, and were by no means improved by the shortage in quantity and lack of nutritive value of rations available during the campaign.’57 One of the 9th Division signallers, Lieutenant Ken Lovell later drew a cartoon captioned ‘Tokio radio reported—40,000 Australians are lost and starving near Lae. Lies—there were 30,000 and we were not lost.’ Under another cartoon he captioned ‘Never before have so many been fed by so little!’58
Without a balanced ‘one man’ or even section ration pack, the breaking down of bulk supplies into individual amounts also became a huge issue, delaying the time units could move off in the mornings. The front-line troops were also feeling the lack of tea, coffee and sugar, staple fare for hard working infantrymen. The rain and damp also affected clothing and such supplies as salt, Atebrin anti-malaria tablets and water sterilising tablets. As no replacements came up in resupply, these problems only got worse.59
Whitehead was later told that the ration scale was based on what the 7th Division had used during the earlier campaign in Papua. Vasey’s division had actually increased the ration scale for Operation Postern despite the fact that the division would be supplied by air transport where weight was such a critical factor.60 It was only when an American base moved into Lae that food could be bartered for. This was because the Light Aid Detachment from Whitehead’s brigade managed to get three of the freezing chambers from the Burns Philp plant back into operation. This cold storage space was then offered to the Americans in exchange for an adequate supply of eggs and butter which could be issued to the Australian troops.61
Operations had also been hampered by communication difficulties with the radio link between General Wootten’s headquarters onshore and the US Navy offshore inoperable. Any communication had to go via I Australian Corps headquarters at Dobodura and then via the command ship Conyngham if it was at Buna or else via naval command in Port Moresby. An army radio set on Conyngham would have been useful but its radio channels and coding facilities were already overloaded, as was its limited accommodation. The radio link between the 532nd EBSR shore battalion and its bases at Morobe and Oro Bay also didn’t work.62 Due to the tropical conditions there were difficulties with both the 108 radio sets and the walkie-talkies used by the army and the sets had to be systematically and continuously maintained to stay operable. Communications were also affected by the supply shortcomings. Of 50 kilometres of signal cable that was available to the 9th Division, only 26 kilometres was D3 type on drums suitable for infantry carriage, the rest being D8 cable on heavy wooden drums.63
Nonetheless, despite the difficulties of terrain, rainfall, supply shortages, communications failings and a fanatical enemy, General Wootten’s 9th Division had managed to reach Lae within two weeks of the D-Day landing.