On 11 September, while the infantry brigades of the 9th Division were held up on the east bank of the lower Busu River, the 2/4th Independent Company had moved up to the east bank of the river further upstream above the Sankwep River junction. ‘We were to be flank cover and explorer to find where the Japs were,’ Ralph Coyne noted.1 Lieutenant Gordon Hart, the commander of B Platoon, was more specific as to the role of the commandos. The company ‘had explicit orders not to cross the Busu and not to go beyond Musum 2,’ he wrote.2 After crossing the Sankwep River via a fallen tree, Lieutenant ‘Sam’ Cox’s A Platoon reached the Busu River about midday on 11 September. Like Hart, Cox was under orders not to cross the river and the platoon dug in along the east bank overlooking a flimsy kunda (cane) bridge some 30 to 40 metres long which spanned the torrent. As the commando’s padre, Arthur Bottrell, later wrote, it was ‘not much more than a decorated tightrope’.3
About two hours after reaching the Busu, the commandos allowed a Chinese carrier and two natives to cross the bridge unmolested before they were stopped by some native policemen accompanying the commandos. An hour later a larger party of about a dozen Japanese soldiers approached with twenty native carriers and the first two men started across. One of them was a Japanese naval officer resplendent in white gloves with his sword hanging by his side and he would not be allowed to cross. ‘They got in the centre of the bridge, this big captain and we had to shoot him,’ Norm Miles said. Miles was somewhat disappointed because ‘I wanted him on our side because he was full of medals, swords and whatnot.’ The commandos then turned their fire onto the Japanese ‘lined up on the beach waiting to come across’ and they lost a lot more men before they could dig in. ‘We all had machine guns,’ Norm Miles said, ‘and they just fell down like flies.’4 However, once they were under cover the Japanese troops replied with mortar and machine-gun fire. On the next morning of 12 September, twenty more Japanese troops arrived but were unable to cross the river while Cox’s platoon remained in place. With the Japanese garrison in Lae cut off from the east and west by the Australian advance, the 2/4th commandos had effectively blocked the only alternative Japanese escape route.
Early the next day, 13 September, a section of men from Hart’s platoon tried to wade across the river upstream of the bridge under covering fire from another section on the east bank. However, the current proved too strong in the narrow river channel and most of the men were carried away downstream past the Kunda bridge. The section commander, Lieutenant Wally Staples, managed to drag himself ashore but was shot and wounded during the subsequent fighting. It was then decided to use the Kunda bridge to get Hart’s platoon across to the west bank.5
Lieutenant David Trevaldwyn’s 18-man section went across the bridge first with six men from the scout group leading, each man about 3 metres apart. The Bren-gun group followed, with Alan Haly carrying the Bren and Brian Jaggar in support. ‘The river was running very fast with turbulent wave action, creating a loud roaring noise,’ Jaggar noted. The first men had almost got across when a sharp metallic clang from the equipment of one of the men on the bridge alerted the Japanese troops who opened fire with two machine guns, one aimed at each end of the bridge. Ken Markham was about to get onto the bridge ‘when the machine-gun fire struck its main supports and it partially collapsed into the water’. Halfway across the bridge, Brian Jaggar ‘was first aware that we were under fire when I saw my comrades falling in front of me’. Of the ten men on the precarious bridge, seven managed to reach the west bank as the weight of fire collapsed the bridge into the river. Three of the commandos were killed on the bridge: Bruce Veitch, Dudley Sheldrick and Doug Sidney. While Jaggar and Haly struggled with the Bren gun up towards the A-frame support on the far bank of the river, David Trevaldwyn was thrown off the bridge when his rifle butt was hit and he was washed downstream for about 300 metres. Back on the east bank, one of the Bren gunners, Norm Miles, was hit across the scalp by a bullet as he raised his head, ‘neatly parting his hair and belting him down into his foxhole’.6
Meanwhile, Jaggar and Haly had got across the bridge and found shelter with the other five men in low scrub about 10 metres from the river bank. The Japanese positions were further upstream where the river came closer to the bank and Jaggar threw two grenades as the seven commandos continued the attack. Out in front with the Bren gun, Haly was hit and badly wounded by a nearby machine gun hidden in the thick scrub but Jaggar took over the weapon and soon silenced the enemy post. The Australian attack, helped by covering fire from Cox’s platoon on the eastern bank, drove the rest of the Japanese off, abandoning their weapons.7
Crouched behind the river bank, Jaggar did what he could for the badly wounded Haly, binding his broken leg with driftwood and ammunition belts and giving him morphine. In the mid-afternoon a grenade launcher on the eastern bank fired across an empty grenade with a message attached telling the seven men they should recross the river, so the men decided to try to swim back across as soon as it got dark. The three best swimmers—Brian Jaggar, Bill Hunter and Bob Timmins—helped Alan Haly but all were swept off their feet by the current. However, the lion-hearted Jaggar, an experienced surf swimmer, had bound himself to Haly and, despite the battering he took against the rocks, was able to progress by diving down to the bed of the river and pushing off with his feet. He somehow managed to get Haly to the other side where Billy Hanlon saw that Haly’s leg ‘was absolutely shattered—but not a murmur out of him’. Meanwhile, Bob Timmins had grabbed onto the cane vines from the fallen bridge to drag himself across and, despite having his trousers and leggings torn away by the current, also made it back. Bill Hunter also lost his clothes but was thrown out of the current onto the safety of the east bank further downstream. Meanwhile a gallant Jim Pitos had draped the weapons of Jaggar and Haly around his neck but that only added to the difficulties he already had in being a poor swimmer, and once the current grabbed him he was never seen again.8
Andrew Hamersley and a wounded Frank Mannion were the last to enter the Busu and the current soon swept both off their feet. Hamersley was pulled under and never seen again but Mannion managed to stay afloat and got ashore a kilometre downstream, although still on the western bank. Next morning his mates on the east bank spotted him but he had to hide to avoid a large group of enemy troops. He then went further upstream above the Sankwep junction before drifting down to where a human chain had been set up out into the river from where he could be grabbed and brought ashore.9
•
On 7 September, with the situation in Lae desperate for the Japanese, General Nakano sent for Masamichi Kitamoto, the engineering officer who had pioneered the route across the Saruwaged Range from the north coast. When Kitamoto entered Nakano’s headquarters he saw the Lae commander was in conference with his key officers poring over a map that was spread out across the table. Under orders from General Adachi, Nakano had decided that there would be no Gyokusai or final battle to the death for Lae, and had ordered a retreat. Civilian employees had already left, beginning their trek west to Madang carrying twenty days of rations on the day of the landing, 4 September.10 Nakano saw two options for the retreat of the Lae garrison, either across the Saruwaged Range to the north coast or through the foothills of the Finisterre Ranges heading west parallel to the Markham Valley. Kitamoto, who had the best knowledge of both routes, was asked for his opinion. ‘It was a responsibility too heavy for just a Lieutenant to decide,’ Kitamoto thought, but, well aware that Allied aircraft could easily interdict the route through the open kunai of the Markham Valley foothills, he told Nakano that ‘the second plan is impossible’. He then added that ‘The first plan is difficult but there is still some chance of success.’ Kitamoto said he ‘would choose plan one. However, the sacrifice will be great.’ Nakano agreed and issued the retreat order, which was drawn up and distributed to all Japanese units on the following day, 8 September. ‘We should ready our packs as we would retreat over the mountains from 10th to 15th of September,’ Kitamoto wrote.11
The orders for the Japanese withdrawal specified there would be four retreating groups totalling about 8650 men. The naval forces would travel in the first and fourth echelons, the army forces in the second and third groups. Standard infantry equipment was to be carried including 120 rounds of ammunition, two grenades and provisions for ten days. Infantrymen also had to carry their machine guns and small mortars while the artillery unit had to manhandle their 75 mm mountain guns, and the machine-cannon company their 20 mm guns, across the daunting ranges. The signals units were required to take their wireless and the medical units their surgical gear. Valuable installations, including the airfield and nearby roads, were to be destroyed and military equipment smashed, burned or thrown into the sea.12
With supplies no longer being sent to the Salamaua front, there were provisions available for the retreat.13 The chief of staff of the 18th Army, Lieutenant General Kane Yoshihara, later wrote that the generally healthy men from the Lae-based naval units were able to carry enough provisions for fourteen or fifteen days but the army units, most of whom had been fighting at Salamaua for months, were ‘in an extreme of exhaustion’ and only able to carry half that amount. ‘With these meagre supplies they set off for [Saruwaged] Peak,’ Yoshihara added.14
Lae field hospital would be closed on 12 September with some patients to be evacuated by submarine but the majority ‘sent back as speedily as possible overland’. The first food dump would be set up near Bungalumba, the second at Iloko village and the third at Melanpipi or Ulap, on the northern side of the range. The 1st Field Hospital would be set up near Bungalumba, part of the 3rd Field Hospital at Iloko and the 2nd Field Hospital at Kiari on the north coast. A water purification section was sent to Boana. All medical facilities would later be moved across the ranges to Sio with the rearguard.15
The naval medic Kamesaku Iwata had been attached to a scratch infantry unit comprising slightly injured or sick men and deployed to guard the Busu River. Around 12 September he was summoned to headquarters where a commander’s aide told him the unit would soon commence a withdrawal from Lae. ‘How many men are seriously injured or sick in your squad?’ the aide asked. After Iwata told him there were about 200, he was handed a bottle of about 500 disinfectant tablets. ‘Give two tablets of this medicine to each man unable to move, saying they are for malaria,’ a shocked Iwata was told. ‘Killing by poison. All men,’ Iwata wrote. ‘To think that they are to be poisoned because they would encumber the living.’ He decided to bury the bottle and ran to the hospital telling the patients to assemble to leave immediately. ‘Those who are unable to walk must follow even if crawling,’ Iwata told them.16 Fortunately there was another way out for some of them.
Masamichi Kitamoto also had concerns about the sick and wounded after being told that there were 500 hospital patients unable to walk. He wanted to carry them out on stretchers, though that would require 2000 men and there were no native carriers left in Lae. Kitamoto reported the problem to the divisional logistics staff officer Lieutenant Colonel Motoaki Suzuki, who responded angrily, ‘Your duty is to guide the 10,000 men. Any other problems including the patients at Salamaua is none of your business.’17
It was obvious to Colonel Suzuki that the sick would die in the mountains but would also die if they remained. ‘There was nothing for them to wait for but death,’ Kane Yoshihara wrote. Suzuki thought that the shipping engineers may be able to do something as the Allied navy may have grown a little careless and would not expect an incursion past their blockade off the coast. In the ten days since the Allied landing, the Japanese MLCs had been used to bring most of the troops from Salamaua to Lae and the boats were now available for other tasks. The 5th Shipping Unit (three large landing barges, and one small barge) and the 8th Shipping Unit (two large landing barges and one raft) loaded up the wounded and, under a full moon on the night of 14 September, ‘daringly went straight into the heart of the enemy’. Under the command of Captain Sadaichi Teramura and Lieutenant Ishihara, the seven MLCs headed east along the coast between the shore and the Allied ships and, although one barge was lost, the others safely reached Finschhafen before dawn, saving some 300 men. That was Iwata’s version of the story but an engineering sergeant who was later captured said that, of the ten barges that were involved, ‘eight were destroyed by enemy action and nothing was ever heard of the other two’. Whatever happened to the barges, one thing was clear: for any sick or wounded who remained in Lae ‘there was nothing left for them but an extreme measure,’ Yoshihara wrote.18
Although it was thought that all the patients had been loaded onto the MLCs that night, thirteen patients including Lieutenant Masayoshi Yoshikawa had been left stranded on the beaches. These men had already come across from Salamaua and, with nothing to wear but their loincloths, they waited for days for the barges to return but they never did. ‘I never felt so angry at the army at that time,’ Yoshikawa thought, ‘I wanted to die but I could not.’ He decided he had no choice but to walk out if he wanted to live, so the wounded men began their death trek. ‘Near naked half dead men marching,’ as Yoshikawa saw it. At one point a well-educated soldier, a graduate of Takasaki Technical School, accompanied them for a few days before moving on. ‘If I stay with you I will die,’ he told the struggling group of men, ‘I must return to Japan because there are so many things I must do.’ Yoshikawa’s group took heart from that and pushed on. Yoshikawa later pondered how ‘If we didn’t meet up with him, we may not be alive today.’19
There was a saying in the Japanese armed forces that ‘Java is heaven, Burma is hell, but you never come back alive from New Guinea.’20 Defying that saying, Kamesaku Iwata came back alive from New Guinea and in June 1946 another Japanese veteran, who had recently been repatriated home from Australia, visited him. The returned veteran told Iwata that he had been captured while lying unconscious in a critical condition in the Lae field hospital in September 1943. ‘He thanked me for what I did in Lae in those days,’ Iwata wrote of his refusal to administer the poison to the hospital patients. ‘I am convinced that because I did not carry out the order, several dozens of men are alive today.’21
•
The original plan for the retreating Japanese echelons was for the first and third groups to cross the Busu River at the Kunda bridge and then travel via Gawan and Bungalumba to the summit of the Saruwaged Range. This was the route pioneered from the north by Kitamoto during his journey across the Saruwaged Range five months previously. The second and fourth groups were also to cross the Busu at the Kunda bridge but then head to Kemen, Hanobmain, Bainduang and Avin before following the Sanem River valley up across the main range further west. However, the plan was thrown into disarray once the Kunda bridge crossing was blocked by the Australian commandos on 11 September. This action was not lost on the Japanese command in Lae and it was noted how the Australian advance ‘seems to have cut off the retreat route of the Division’.22 In the end all four echelons would have to find another way across the Busu further upstream from the Kunda bridge and then take the second route across the mountains.
The first echelon comprised the 7th Base Force headquarters, the 85th Communications unit, the 23rd Anti-Aircraft unit and part of the Sasebo 5th SNLP, 1054 men in all.23 This echelon was under the command of the recently arrived Rear Admiral Kunizo Mori and left Lae at dusk on 12 September carrying rifles, ammunition and ten days’ supply of food. Lieutenant Kitamoto’s engineers led the way, setting up sign posts and repairing the track as they went. With the planned route across the Busu River to Musom now blocked at the Kunda bridge, the echelon left Lae further west and headed up the Butibum River valley north of the rugged Atzera Range, looking for a way out between the advancing Australian pincers. On the morning of 13 September the leading troops came under attack from a patrol of the 1/503rd Parachute Battalion that had been operating east of Nadzab and this forced the echelon to divert through the jungle towards Yalu.
•
A clever Australian ploy had led to considerable information being obtained from captured Japanese documents and equipment at Lae. The soldier finding any such items could put his name and address on the captured equipment label and the item would be returned to him as a souvenir after intelligence had had a look at it, and this led to excellent cooperation from the troops. When the 2/25th Battalion captured Heath’s Plantation on the morning of 14 September, considerable equipment was found, some of it unused and still packed in grease. As the Australians looked over the abandoned site, a member of Lieutenant Don Macrae’s platoon took a satchel from a dead soldier of the 15th Anti-Aircraft Machine Cannon Unit. The unit, equipped with 20 mm anti-aircraft guns, had been based at Heath’s Plantation and the satchel, which was handed to the battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Marson, contained a number of papers and maps. Among the maps was one showing enemy dispositions around the Markham River and Lae, and ‘Judging the documents to be important’ Marson sent them off to 25th Brigade headquarters. From there Vasey’s divisional headquarters was advised that the orders were on their way for translation.24
There were three US Army interpreters attached to 7th Division headquarters, all of Japanese descent. They were Sergeant Yoshikazu Yamada, Master Sergeant Arthur Ushiro and Sergeant Munnekawa.25 All prisoners, captured documents and captured material came to these interpreters for assessment. The divisional intelligence officer was present at any POW interrogations and a copy of all reports was forwarded to each brigade as well as to I Corps and New Guinea Force headquarters. By mid-afternoon the translations had been made. Marson was later told that ‘a most uninteresting paper in appearance’, the last one to be translated, was the Lae evacuation order.26 The intelligence officer at Vasey’s headquarters considered the paper important enough to immediately send a copy across to Port Moresby.27
It was about 1545 on that afternoon of 14 September when Flying Officer Alex Miller-Randle was ordered to fly one of his squadron’s Wirraways from Tsili Tsili down to Nadzab to pick up an army intelligence officer. Miller-Randle was told that this officer carried documents ‘which must be taken to Port Moresby as quickly as possible’. Miller-Randle was confused by the order and even more so when he reached Nadzab and met the intelligence officer, Captain Andrew McLay. McLay was excited about something and emphatic that he needed to get to Port Moresby urgently but it was now after 1600 and the idea of crossing the Owen Stanley Range was a daunting prospect. Miller-Randle was unsure whether his plane had sufficient fuel for the flight and did not know what the cloud cover was like over Port Moresby. Any landing would also be at night and Miller-Randle did not have a radio operator to organise the landing or even a compass bearing to guide him to an airfield. He could also see that the weather over the mountains was building into something ominous and he was only dressed in shorts and tropical shirt, hardly the ideal wear for the high-level flight across the range. For all these reasons and despite strong objections from McLay, Miller-Randle only flew the intelligence officer back to Tsili Tsili.28
Nonetheless, somebody still had to fly McLay to Moresby and Flight Lieutenant Eric ‘Bob’ Staley volunteered to make the flight. Staley made the trip in patchy moonlight, firstly heading down the coast to Dobodura, before crossing the range to Port Moresby. General Berryman was at the outdoor cinema in Moresby when Colonel Ken Wills, his intelligence officer, notified him of the captured evacuation order. Berryman left Port Moresby at 0750 the next morning on a Wirraway, landing at Tsili Tsili before proceeding to Nadzab. He then returned to Port Moresby that afternoon where he met with General Blamey and General Herring to explain the situation at Lae.29
•
Following the translation of the Japanese order, General Vasey was given permission to use Lieutenant Colonel Tolson’s 3/503rd Parachute Battalion to try to intercept the enemy withdrawal. On 15 September the parachute battalion ‘moved out in single file along a narrow path covered with thick vines that had to be hacked away with machetes’. It was a gruelling trek into the Atzera Range to a log crossing of the Butibum (also known as the Bumbu) River where Captain John Davis’s lead company came under machine-gun fire from the west bank of the river. The position was soon silenced but, when Lieutenant Lyle Murphy’s platoon ‘collided headlong’ with the Japanese force, Tolson called up the rest of the battalion and heavy fighting ensued. That night the Japanese broke off the fight and headed off in a new direction to the north-west.30
Tolson’s paratroopers had clashed with the 34 men from the advanced guard of the first echelon, which had lost contact with the main group.31 Tolson advised that the enemy strength was greater than first realised and fighting had continued into the next day, 16 September. ‘Believe this to be the main route of withdrawal’, a perceptive Colonel Ken Kinsler advised General Vasey. Vasey, aware of General MacArthur’s directive that parachute troops were not to be used in infantry roles, ordered that the newly arrived 2/16th Battalion move to the area accompanied by the headquarters of 21st Brigade. The Australians would take over from the paratroopers who were to return to Port Moresby.32
Aware that it was vital to maintain the secrecy of the withdrawal route and not get engaged in a fixed battle, the first-echelon commander, Rear Admiral Mori, once again changed the course of the retreat. Instead of trying to reach Boana he would take his men north across the Atzera Range to Kemen.33 By the time the first 21st Brigade units reached the Bumbu River crossing on 17 September, they could only confirm that the Japanese had bypassed the area and were indeed now heading north.34 On that same day Mori’s first echelon, after blazing a trail through the jungle on a compass bearing to the north, had reached the Busu River.35 ‘After three days, we were finally able to escape from the enclosure of the enemy,’ Masamichi Kitamoto wrote. ‘With the enemy on our back, it was a precarious retreat.’36 Kitamoto had good reason to think that the enemy was on the back of the Japanese first echelon but the lack of urgency from the Australian side was staggering.
•
The first two battalions of the second of General Vasey’s brigades, Brigadier Ivan Dougherty’s 21st Brigade, had landed at Nadzab on 15 September. The next morning a company from the 2/16th Battalion, accompanied by battalion headquarters, was sent up to the Bumbu River crossing where the paratroops had contacted the Japanese. Following the rough creek bed, with the men’s boots heavy with water, by the time the company reached the Bumbu log crossing on the following day, 17 September, the Japanese had gone. Orders were then issued to try to intercept the Japanese force, now thought to be headed to Boana, but that night the men were suddenly ordered back to Nadzab.
Meanwhile the first units of the 2/14th Battalion, which had landed at Nadzab on the morning of 15 September, were immediately ordered to Boana to secure the village and use it as a base to destroy any Japanese forces to the north and east. On 17 September the battalion crossed the Atzera Range after a five-hour climb to the top. ‘Very steep and hard going,’ as Sergeant James Milbourne wrote, but ‘Going down was worse than going up.’37 There were signs that the track had been used but it was not by the retreating Japanese force. However, there were Japanese troops in the area and, when the Australians reached the upper reaches of the Busu River south of Boana, they were held up by an enemy covering-force dug in on the other side of a flooded tributary. On 20 September a dilapidated wire bridge was found, but only three hours after the battalion began crossing the rebuilt bridge orders were received to withdraw to Nadzab.38 The reason for the sudden change of role for the 2/14th and 2/16th Battalions was a stunning coup by Captain Gordon King’s 2/6th Independent Company further west up the Markham Valley.
•
On 16 September General Vasey had flown into Port Moresby to discuss further operations in the Markham Valley with General Herring and General Berryman. Vasey had told Herring that he wanted the Nadzab paratroop drop replicated at Dumpu, 160 kilometres north-west of Lae in the Ramu Valley.39 Herring agreed despite the plan being for Kaiapit, 93 kilometres northwest of Lae in the Markham Valley, to be the next objective. General Berryman, who had a poor opinion of Herring, informed General Blamey of Herring’s idea and had Kaiapit confirmed as the next objective. Of Herring’s proposed change of plan, Berryman noted that Blamey ‘was a bit sharp with him and he richly deserved it for not following chief ’s policy instead of trying his own’. That evening General MacArthur’s senior operations officer, Brigadier General Stephen Chamberlin, told Berryman that Colonel David Hutchinson had landed his Piper Cub aircraft on the Leron River flats, 18 kilometres from Kaiapit and that the 5th Air Force was prepared to fly an Australian company there on the next day in order to capture Kaiapit. Blamey readily agreed to the plan and Vasey was ordered to organise the troops. Captain Gordon King’s 2/6th Independent Company was already standing by, ready to go.40
On 17 September King’s company was flown from Port Moresby and landed on the river flats on the western bank of the Leron River. General Vasey flew in soon thereafter and gave King his final orders which were to ‘go to Kaiapit as quickly as you can, destroy any enemy resistance there, occupy Kaiapit and prepare a landing strip 1200 yards long as soon as possible’.41 King then led his company from Sangan to the Japanese occupied village of Kaiapit, reaching it on the afternoon of 19 September. The commandos stormed and captured the village, killing some twenty defenders from the Takano platoon, part of Captain Teruyuki Morisada’s reconnaissance force from the 80th Regiment. As King’s men set up a defensive perimeter for the night, little did they know that a much stronger Japanese force of over 300 men was also headed to Kaiapit and would arrive on the following morning.
This was the advance force of Major General Masutaro Nakai’s 78th Regiment which had been ordered to secure Kaiapit as quickly as possible to protect the withdrawal of the 51st Division from Lae, at that stage thought likely to be via the Markham Valley. The main force, which would include a battalion from the 26th Field Artillery Regiment, was to follow in order to attack the Allied airbase at Nadzab.42 There were some 400 men in the advance party under the command of Major Tsuneo Yonekura, made up of the two infantry companies from the 3rd Battalion with attached headquarters, machine-gun and engineer units. Carrying ten days’ rations, Yonekura’s force had left Kankiryo on 12 September facing a forced march of seven nights to reach Kaiapit. The force would travel only by night to avoid being spotted from the air during daylight hours. While King’s men were attacking Kaiapit on 19 September, Yonekura’s force was held up crossing the Umi River, 12 kilometres to the west. Yonekura didn’t begin the move to Kaiapit until dusk and, with about one-third of his men dropping behind as stragglers, this meant he was leading about 270 men towards Kaiapit.43
Expecting Kaiapit to be Japanese occupied, Yonekura’s men were totally confused and disorganised as they came under fire in the dull light of dawn that morning. Gordon King was also confused but quickest to react. Reorganising his perimeter to free Lieutenant Derrick Watson’s platoon, King had them counterattack the Japanese column. Watson ‘blew his whistle, which was the signal, and off they went and killed over a hundred Japanese in the first hundred yards,’ King later recounted.44
Captain Morisada later stated that the first 100 men of the advance force reached Kaiapit at 0300 on 18 September determined to attack the Australians at dawn. Morisada, who was probably not present at the battle, had his date out by two days and Yonekura was not attacking Kaiapit but was instead caught unaware with his troops spread out in a column of march. Nonetheless he got two things right: it was a sudden encounter in kunai grass and the enemy had superior firepower. As Morisada stated, the battalion headquarters personnel ‘was annihilated in the disorder’.45 Following this defeat, the rest of Nakai’s force withdrew to the mountain strongholds above the Ramu Valley. After the war Nakai confirmed to Australian interrogators that Yonekura’s advanced force was almost wiped out at Kaiapit.46
Late on the afternoon of 21 September the first units of the 2/16th Battalion landed at Kaiapit. On the morning of 23 September the first units of 2/27th Battalion joined them, followed by the first units of 2/14th Battalion the following afternoon. General Vasey now had a fresh brigade in position to advance deep into the Markham and Ramu valleys. General Vasey had an exciting new campaign to run and was keen to wipe his hands of the failure to stop the Japanese evacuation from Lae. ‘I have no desire to chase a retreating Jap towards Sio,’ he wrote to General Herring, ‘I am sure to do so would be good experience for 9 Div!!’47
•
Back at Lae, word had reached 9th Division headquarters during the night of 14–15 September that the Japanese order to evacuate Lae had been found and translated. In response, the 2/24th Battalion was ordered back across the Busu River and north along the east bank to Musom and Gawan to block the supposed line of withdrawal. The first warning order to move was not received by the battalion until 1100 on 15 September, and recrossing the Busu and changing the direction of the battalion’s advance took another 24 hours. An extra 640 personnel also had to be organised to maintain a new supply line into the mountains.48 It was not until 18 September that patrols from the 2/24th Battalion reached Gawan and Musom, but due to the blocking of the Kunda bridge crossing the Japanese evacuation route had now moved further west. A Japanese prisoner captured at Gawan on 19 September said that 50 Japanese troops had been at the village but had now moved on.49
With the 2/24th Battalion now available to take over control of the Kunda bridge crossing, the commandos from the 2/4th Independent Company were able to patrol along the Busu River further upstream to try to intersect the new Japanese evacuation route. Having lost over 40 men before it had even reached Lae, the company was well under strength for the task at hand. Nonetheless, a section patrol had reached Musom 2 as early as 10 September, but not Musom 1 on the other side of the valley. Although Gordon Hart later said ‘It turned out that was where the Jap get-away line went, through Musom 1’, that was not now the case. There were relatively few Japanese troops that had already crossed the Kunda bridge to ‘plod unmolested on their long journey over the high ranges to Sio’.50 Most of them were still trapped on the wrong side of the Busu further upstream.