Kokoda (19 page)
No sooner thought of than done, and there he was soaking with his knees tucked up under his chin, sitting out in the open and just starting to relax, when he heard them… and then saw them. Zeros. A dozen of them, coming his way and strafing all before them.
‘They were literally strafing the shit out of us,’ he later told author and fellow 39th Battalion soldier Victor Austin, ‘and that is what I was doing, shitting while scrambling out of the tub, and running like hell, “starkers”.
‘I ran until I came to a big trench, and in I dive. The planes turned and came in from the opposite direction, so low you could see the whites of the pilot’s eyes, and down I crouch. After a few sweeps there was a lull and I decided to leave the trench and go to the gunpit up the hill for greater safety. But just afterwards the Zeros zoomed in for another sweep. I started to run, but head over turkey I go, tripped by a big stone. Someone yells out, “They’ve got Smoky!”… But they hadn’t, and as soon as the strafing stopped I got up and dived into the gunpit, panting like a billy-goat which had just finished a lap of Flemington Racecourse…
‘After everything finally quietened down I realised that I was covered in shit—and it wasn’t all mine, because that first trench I dived into was the platoon latrine!’
70
Some days later, in the wee hours of 20 March, a radio transmission from Australia informed the garrison at Port Moresby that, this time, the Kittyhawks were definitely on their way and should be arriving at Seven Mile Airfield just after 7.00 a.m. The aerodrome would need to be whipped into shape to receive them.
Just as promised, at a quarter past seven the following morning, a drone in the distance signalled that the planes had arrived and all the Australians on duty charged out of their slit trenches, abandoned their Ack-Ack guns and began cheering, scrambling forward to give a wonderful greeting to the long awaited planes.
But that was funny, those four planes didn’t seem to have the classic shark-nosed shapes of Kittyhawks. As a matter of fact they rather looked like… like…
ZEROS!
Just what the Japanese pilots thought when they came over the low hills at the northern end of the runway to find that instead of flak and gunfire there were crowds of cheering Australians waving them in and inviting them to land will never be known, but the moment they opened fire and started shooting up the whole aerodrome the Australians reverted to type and charged straight back to their slit trenches and Ack-Ack guns. A strange, strange people, these Australians.
And of course it had to happen. Had to! That was just the way things were in Moresby at that time. If things could go wrong, they would go wrong.
Bang on a quarter past seven the following morning, again there was the rumbling of aircraft in the distance, but this time the boys on the Ack-Ack were not going to be fooled. From the moment they saw the red and white insignia on the side of the plane they recognised the symbol of the Japanese Rising Sun flag and they let the bastards have it until… oh… shit!
They’re Kittyhawks! The red and white were the roundels of the RAAF. It was too late though, and two of the arriving planes were hit, including that of the squadron leader, John Jackson. This time they knew exactly what the incoming pilots thought of the reception they received because they were very quick to express it, and expressed it at such volume that soldiers some distance away were also privy to their thoughts. Still, at least no one was killed, and Jackson proved to be a nice kind of bloke anyway, reportedly saying to Colonel Conran ‘Congratulate your blokes on their shootin’. I’ve been over in the Middle East and that’s the heaviest ground fire I’ve ever been through!’
71
In any case, spirits rose because that afternoon thirteen more Kittyhawks arrived to complete the No. 75 RAAF Fighter Squadron.
And still the best was to come when, shortly afterwards, a big Jap bomber trundled over the mountain, insolently sure that it could take its time to do whatever it wanted to do. But no…
At a point where the bomber was well away from the airfield, and so couldn’t see him taking off, one of the newly arrived Kittyhawk pilots went after it. As the thousands of men around Moresby watched, the bomber was on its return run back to the port, when out of the clouds the Kitty suddenly swooped down, its guns chattering something that sounded close to the Australian national anthem. In seconds the bomber was trailing smoke and screaming earthwards, crashing into the reef.
The men cheered, the men laughed, the men fell all over each other in celebration. You bloody beauty! Get that up yer, Tojo!
72
And this was just the beginning. In next to no time at all, those magnificent men in their flying machines were going out after the Japs on regular sorties. Soon after arriving, Jackson led a raid on the Japanese airbase at Lae, flying in from the north across the sea and destroying a dozen Zeros, with five more reported damaged.
Now
it would be a fairer fight against those bloody Japs. And it wasn’t a bad effort from a squadron that had had just one week’s training back in Townsville.
Certainly, the war in the air was unequal. There remained the problem that Kittyhawks operated poorly above 12 000 feet and just about not at all above 20 000—meaning that the Japanese bombers only had to remain above that level to stay relatively safe— but it was still a whole lot more firepower than Moresby had had before.
You beauty. Tom Grahamslaw was on patrol less than an hour’s walk from the government outpost of Kokoda when he saw a fine sight. A group of Japanese bombers were returning from a raid on Moresby when two Kittyhawks dived at them out of the clouds, shot the front bomber out of the sky, and then disappeared back into the cloud cover before the furious escorting Zeros could exact retribution. Before Tom’s eyes the Japanese bomber hurtled towards a mountain behind Kokoda station, trailing smoke all the way, and he could just see plumes from the wonderful explosion when it hit. That was one more for the good guys.
As the government’s man on the ground in that area, he searched for the crashed bomber and located it, and the remains of its crew, a day later at an altitude of 7000 feet on Mount Bellamy. Each dead Japanese crew member had a little cotton bag of sand with him, presumably as a memento of the home town in Japan they would now never return to.
Two other things took Tom’s interest, and he wasted no time in passing them on to Army Intelligence. One was a Japanese code book. And the second was an accurate map of New Guinea and North Queensland, with notations on the latter, possibly targets.
Meanwhile, back at Moresby.
‘Now, let’s try it again…
’
Captain Merritt said to the attentive men of the 39th Battalion’s C Company encamped at Port Moresby, enjoying a rare day off from working as labourers, and receiving instructions about the newly issued Thompson sub-machine guns.
‘You take an aggressive stance, like so,’ Captain Merritt said, holding the Tommy gun before him in a fierce manner. ‘An expression of pugnacity and determination on your face…
’
‘Begging your pardon, Sir…
’
a voice called out from the back, ‘but are we supposed to
frighten
the bastards to death, Sir?
’
73
All the men fell about laughing, and even Captain Merritt, after he’d calmed down, saw the funny side. It was to be a rare moment of levity in the otherwise serious business of getting ready for the Japs, who were expected to fall on Moresby at any moment. And at least they were doing some much-needed military training, which had tended to get lost in the recent flurry of work details. It was a lot more than the still worrying 53rd had managed.
‘What is the truth about MacArthur?’ his son Tom once asked him. ‘The best and the worst things you hear about him are both true,’ Blamey replied.
Hetherington,
Blamey
74
Way to the south General Douglas MacArthur masterfully hid the despair he had been feeling about the lack of troops at his disposal. He alighted at Spencer Street Station in Melbourne just before noon on 21 March 1942, greeted by some five thousand citizens, sixty reporters, an honour guard 360 strong, and Australia’s Minister for the Army, Francis M. Forde.
Stepping imperiously from the train, MacArthur looked every inch the conquering hero, and was greeted as the same. Nevertheless, he took the opportunity to note to the press (and so bring to the attention of both the Australian and American governments) that his genius alone could not win the war.
‘I have every confidence in the ultimate success of our joint cause,’ he stated, ‘but success in modern war requires something more than courage and a willingness to die: it requires careful preparation. That means the furnishing of sufficient troops and sufficient material to meet the known strength of the enemy. No general can make something out of nothing. My success or failure will depend primarily on the resources which the respective governments place at my disposal… ’
75
The following day, General Sir Thomas Blamey returned from the Middle East, making his first landing at Fremantle, and on the dock he was officially given a letter from Prime Minister John Curtin, advising that he had been appointed Commander in Chief of the Australian Military Forces, concurrent with his present position as Commander in Chief Allied Armies in Australia. In essence, this meant that while Douglas MacArthur was the Supreme Commander of all the Allies in the Southwest Pacific Area, Blamey was the top Australian dog of the Army, Navy and RAAF. While still on the ship bringing him back to Australia Blamey had been informed of MacArthur’s arrival in Australia and appointment to the supreme commander position, he remarked: ‘This is the best thing that could have happened. MacArthur will be so far from his government that he will not receive any interference, and as for our own government he will take no notice of it.’
76
Which was as may be, but MacArthur was at least reasonably diplomatic with the Australian Government when in public. Just three days after arriving in Melbourne and now, along with his family, a little more settled, MacArthur flew to Canberra to have his first personal meeting with John Curtin and also with the prime minister’s bi-partisan Advisory War Council. It was an important meeting and came at a time when President Roosevelt was exerting pressure on the Australian Prime Minister to put MacArthur in charge of all Australian forces in the Southwest Pacific Area. (Curtin was of a mind to do exactly that, though had held back formal approval until he had met MacArthur and had been able to agree on the many details such an appointment would entail.)
Prima facie, MacArthur and Curtin were not a natural fit. MacArthur was a rich and highly educated Protestant patrician of abstemious nature, a born-to-rule man’o’war with right-wing politics and a detestation of journalists. Curtin, meanwhile, was all of the above in exact reverse. The son of a Catholic policeman and sometime publican and prison warder, the West Australian had left school at thirteen and educated himself thereafter. He had risen to prominence through a combination of his leadership of a trade union, his anti-conscription activism during World War I—which had led to him being briefly jailed—and his political representation of the socialist left, suffering a severe bout of alcoholism along the way.
Nevertheless, the two got on remarkably well, and when they emerged from their meeting in Curtin’s prime ministerial office, MacArthur was comfortable enough, and presumptuous enough, to place a protective arm around Curtin’s shoulders and tell him: ‘You take care of the rear, and I will handle the front.’
77
In the short term, however, MacArthur decided to handle that front in Melbourne itself, some 4000 miles from the nearest Japanese base, by settling into the best suite of the exceedingly plush Menzies Hotel, which as it turned out, still wasn’t quite plush enough for the MacArthurs.
Indeed, one of the general’s first instructions was that a piano be installed immediately. Jeannie MacArthur would often play while their son, Arthur MacArthur IV, bounced around, and the general gazed benignly upon the hundreds of Australians who gathered outside hoping to catch sight of their saviour.
MacArthur’s office was set up in an old insurance building at 401 Collins Street in downtown Melbourne and was officially known as GHQ, General Headquarters. Indicative of his primary focus of returning to the Philippines in triumph, the phone at GHQ was always answered with a single word—‘Bataan’ and his immediate staff continued to refer to themselves as the ‘Bataan Gang’.
And a very tight clique they were, a kind of military Manchu Court, devoted to the advancement of their emperor, General Douglas MacArthur. He was, after all, the one who had found space for them on his flight from the Philippines, despite the fact that Washington had given authorisation for only one of them, Chief of Staff General Richard Sutherland. The rest of his retinue had been meant to stay there with the troops.
Despite another command from Washington on 3 April 1942 that MacArthur was to include Australian officers on his senior staff, the Lion of Luzon had refused to do so. The general disregarded the fact that the high command of the Australian troops in the most crucial year of WWII would be peopled by Americans with little or no combat experience and absolutely no knowledge of the ways of the Australian soldier or the conditions the men were fighting in.