Kokoda (35 page)

The other discovery was rather more grisly. It was Colonel Owen’s bloated and decomposing body lying like a piece of forgotten rubbish beneath a tree not too far from where he had been left by Doc Vernon ten days before. A small crew remained to man the defensive trenches while the rest gathered to respectfully bury the battalion’s courageous commander on a section of the plateau with a wonderful vista overlooking the terrain he had died to defend. A soldier’s grave, they buried him as he would have wanted—with his boots on—and then got back to it. Always in this war, whatever the circumstances, you had to quickly get back to it, but at least there was no doubt that, because of the intense experience they had all been through, this was an entirely different bunch of men to the ones who had set off from Ower’s Corner those few short weeks ago.

For by this time the men of the 39th were, if not exactly comfortable with their surroundings, at least beginning to adapt to them and maximise their chances of surviving. One thing they had all learnt in the previous weeks was to abandon everything in their haversacks that wasn’t absolutely essential. Lifting that weight up and down the mountains was near killing them, so every ounce saved was a precious ounce of energy that wasn’t wasted. Did you really need, for example, a whole towel, when you barely ever got to wash anyway? Towels were cut in half and sometimes even shared between two mates who were particularly close. Did you really need the whole shaving kit when all you really wanted was the razor and a tiny bit of soap? Out it went. Many others abandoned shaving altogether, not just for the weight, but for the fact that a thick beard gave them one tiny bit of flesh protected from the little brute insects that continued to pester them. Close mates decided that by the simple expedient of sharing their mess tins, one could have the luxury of throwing his own away. Finally, all sets of underwear had been abandoned, including the ones you wore, for the simple reason that wearing underwear meant trapping heat in the groin area, which meant even more humidity, which in short order meant horrible and infuriating rashes that near drove a man
mad
.

They had also learnt a few more skills that were on display this particularly wet afternoon. One of the most crucial they had learnt was how to get a fire going even in a downpour that would kill a brown dog. In such conditions the only way to get dry wood was to do what the natives did: get a huge log and with a machete hack away the pulpy wet outside of the log and get to the tinderbox dry wood inside. Then, while your mate held the groundsheet above you, you got a precious dry match to the tinder and, hey… presto… fire. Once the fire was going all the other wood could dry and you were away. A cooking pot? Why not your helmet, or ‘panic hat’ as the soldiers called them? First one bloke had tried it, then another, then the whole battalion had taken to using their helmets for saucepans, or perhaps they’d been using their saucepans for helmets, it didn’t really matter. Admittedly, their first few meals tasted remarkably like burnt paint, as the insides of their helmets seared, but you could get used to that too.

The Diggers were adapting to their circumstances the best they could, and one who had taken particular satisfaction in the way they’d done it, because he’d seen much the same thing happen in the last war, was Staff Sergeant Jim Cowey. He was perhaps the oldest soldier there, now that Sam Templeton was no more, and a distinguished one at that, having won a Military Cross in the Great War while serving with the 46th Battalion.

Right on dusk, as per Major Cameron’s plan, and Captain Symington’s reluctant order, Sergeant Jim Cowey let off a Verey flare that exploded with a burst of green on the night sky to signal that they were indeed in possession of Kokoda. In return… stone cold nothing. Not a cheery answering flare to indicate that they’d got the message and would soon be on their way, not even a good ol’ rifle shot from the Japanese to let them know that
they
at least were nearby and A Company weren’t the last survivors left on the planet. Nevertheless, they still hoped that either their flare message would have got through to Deniki, or at least Lance Corporal Sanopa had.
¹³⁰
One way or another, the important thing was that Port Moresby get the news that Kokoda was theirs once again. This would hopefully mean that planes could land on the morrow with supplies and, more crucially, reinforcements.

As it happened, Major Cameron indeed had received the news from Sanopa, and in turn got the message through to Moresby. He was promised in return by General Morris that a plane
would
arrive the following day on the Kokoda airfield.

Captain Symington’s men spent the night practically with one eye open and one finger on the trigger, ready to move into action in a second, and still scarcely believing that the Japanese weren’t out there, close and getting closer.

Indeed they were, but they were being careful. Lieutenant Colonel Tsukamoto was seriously aggrieved that the airfield that he had been responsible for holding was now in the hands of the enemy, and he was very eager to reclaim Kokoda. But the experience of the previous three weeks had taught the Japanese not to underestimate these Australian soldiers, most particularly when they were demonstrating confidence enough to let off signal flares to let the whole world know precisely where they were. Just after ten o’clock the following morning, after as much surveillance as they could muster, Tsukamoto carefully moved his men forward on the Australian positions, hoping to get as close as possible before beginning their assault.

The first of the Japanese soldiers were about two hundred yards away from the advance Australian positions, in the middle of a thick grove of rubber trees, when they heard one of the round-eyes shout something unintelligible in their strange language. In fact, it was: ‘Here comes C Company through the rubber!’, with the Australians having mistaken the attackers for their own men, coming from Deniki, as had been half expected.

Whatever it was they’d shouted, the Japanese didn’t care, the point was they’d been spotted, so they immediately opened fire. A bullet came and drilled and killed Private ‘Bluey’ Williams clean. Frank McLeod reckoned he could see the Jap who got him and dropped to one knee to fire a shot at the sniper. Somewhere about 150 yards forward the bullet missed, giving the sniper the half-second he needed. For just as Frank was pulling back the bolt to fire his second shot, a Japanese bullet pierced his temple and he was gone too. Two mothers’ sons from Australia, and good men too, had gone down, dead, in twenty seconds. But at least that would be the last of the Jap’s easy kills, for within seconds the rest of the Australian force were in their trenches and returning heavy fire. Five times through the course of the day, the Japanese tried sustained assaults on what they judged to be Australian weak points, but each time they were hurled back.
¹³¹

Out on the western flank of the Australian perimeter, and cut off from their main attacking force, a company of Japanese soldiers led by Second Lieutenant Hirano decided to make their own full-blooded attack as soon as dusk fell. After all, there had to be a limit to how long the Australians could hold out, and they had fired so much during the day that surely their supplies of ammunition had to be running low. Creeping low in the stinking mud that was made even more slippery by the driving rain, the platoon got to within seventy yards of the Australian perimeter before they were spotted, at which point a furious fire-fight ensued, which was so intense that Lieutenant Hirano had no choice but to withdraw his men to relative safety.

They would wait till full darkness, he told his panting desperate men and then,
then
they would take the Australians. Somehow, though, in the pitch black and the still pouring rain, it was well after ten o’clock before they moved on the enemy again… and then it was even worse.

On their hands and knees, one Japanese soldier’s head pressing against the next soldier’s buttocks, they snaked forward in the stinking blackness until they got to the forward outpost. The burst of machine-gun fire was like so many chattering flashes of torch light at five yards. Men were screaming and it wasn’t clear who was who, as your own men—or was it the enemy?—fired back and there was the flash of bayonet silhouetted against three more flashes of fire-light and still more screaming and grunting and groaning and was the shadow ahead enemy or friend, or just a shadow, and you had less than one second to decide and then it chattered too and the man beside you died and…

And suddenly Hirano himself was in a fight for his very life and was grappling with an enormous round-eyed man and each of them was trying to bring their bayonets to bear when Corporal Hamada, who had just killed an Australian, threw a grenade that exploded not five yards away. Suddenly the Australian groaned and Hirano could feel a slick wetness from the soldier’s back as he staggered, clearly hit and…

And in all the madness, Lieutenant Hirano gave the order to fall back. But where to? In the thick jungle, with the night so heavily black upon them, it seemed the sun would never rise again—which just wasn’t possible to form up the men. Hirano wandered, bleeding, hissing out names, looking for them, occasionally falling, but at least finding two of them. And then suddenly, there were explosions all around as the three inadvertently wandered to within forty yards of for several Japanese soldiers of Hirano’s company was the truth. It the Australian lines, where soldiers were now throwing grenades at them, and it was all they could do to break contact and crawl away.

Finally, at three o’clock in the morning, Lieutenant Hirano could go on no longer. It had been a terrible day and a worse night, here in the highland hell of New Guinea, so far from his home, fighting an infernal enemy that simply wouldn’t quit. As unaccustomed as he was, he began to cry tears of rage and bitterness.
¹³²
He was hungry, cold, and devastated at the loss of so many of his men, as well as the pure futility of the exercise they had just been engaged in. A heartbeat in the jungle, when so many hearts around had grown cold, he awaited the dawn, thinking of his home and his mother and father and wishing he could be with them, safe.

His name was Brigadier Arnold Potts and he was the Commanding Officer of the 21st Brigade—made up of the 2/27th, 2/14th and 2/16th battalions—and he had flown into Moresby ahead of his troops to get the lie of the land. This thorough approach was typical of him.

In civilian life, Potts was a grazier from Kojonup in Western Australia, but had also fought with distinction with the 1st AIF, and had the supreme badge of honour among the Australian fighting men of the time in that he, too, had stormed the shores of Gallipoli. He had also served on the Western Front in France, where he had been awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry in action. Indeed, he had finished that war with the rank of captain. At the outbreak of World War II he’d again joined up, and by the conclusion of the campaign in Syria he had not only become the Commanding Officer of the 2/16th Battalion, but had won a Distinguished Service Order for valour under fire.

The 45-year-old was, in short, a vastly experienced soldier and military commander of great capacity, and this had been recognised when, after commanding the 2/16th in the Middle East, he was promoted to Commander of the 21st Brigade.

Now at the beginning of his next important campaign, getting any solid information about the Kokoda Track was proving extremely difficult. Shortly after arriving in Moresby, Potts had gone to New Guinea Force Headquarters hoping they might be able to hand over a document or dossier or some such detailing information on such things as the military positions, native food sources, difficult terrain, and so forth. In response, there was a fair amount of head scratching and some nervous coughing, the upshot of which was that no such document existed!
¹³³

Despite the fact that the 49th Battalion had been in Moresby for nigh on eighteen months by this time, they had never set
foot
on the track leading to Kokoda. And no one had thought to collate any of the information that had come back with the refugees from the north coast who had made their way down the track, nor from the medical evacuees from the 39th who had been out there on the track for well over six weeks. There was no sense at all of a military organisation that was, well,
organised
, and Potts left in high dudgeon. In sheer desperation, he himself ventured a small way up the Kokoda Track to the Imita Range, just to get some idea of what his men faced.

CHAPTER TEN

HOLDING ON

Yes, you knew them well, the bank clerks, farmers and schoolteachers; the factory workers, jackaroos and mechanics who go to make up ‘our patrols’. But they have changed in some indefinable way since you last saw them… The evil vapours of the jungle, and feverish fires of malaria, have sapped the sun-bronze from their faces, have drawn their muscular bodies to sinew and whipcord: their faded green shirts and slacks are continuously mud-bespattered, clammy with sweat and rain.

The jungle stamps an indelible imprint on those who fight in it. But guts, endurance, self-sacrifice and initiative, all stretched to breaking point many a time, have left their imprint, too, so that a less war-weary age could say, ‘These men have the look of great fighting men… ’

Jungle Trail,
1943
¹³⁴

It had been another terrible day on the plateau at Kokoda, this tenth day of August 1942, with still no sign of the hoped-for reinforcements. Even though early in the morning an Allied plane had flown low over the valley, and a few of the Australians waved their hats and helmets, the plane just as quickly disappeared, somehow managing to give the impression that it really didn’t care. And that was it. No more planes. No messages. No
nothin’
.