Kokoda (43 page)

The rain kept on through all of the afternoons and early evenings, drenching men to the core and setting them up for the bitter chill of the night to do its work.

‘Only the morning brought a gleam of comfort,’ Honner later wrote of it. ‘A turn at sleeping and forgetting; a chance perhaps to lie and dry in the warmth of the glowing day. But little light filtered through the leaf-roofed murk where Merritt’s men guarded the front creek cliff, pale ghosts crouching in the dank-dripping half-dark, hidden from the healing of the searching sun… ’
¹⁶⁵

So, too, at home it remained the waiting that was the most wearing. Back in Melbourne, Elaine Colbran just couldn’t stop thinking about Joe Dawson, up there somewhere in New Guinea with the 39th Battalion. She missed him so much, and life just wasn’t the same without him around, taking her to dances, for a coffee when she finished work, or a simple walk in the park, holding hands. Plenty of her friends in similar situations had consoled themselves by stepping out with one of the many Americans who were now abounding all over Melbourne—blokes who just bowled right up to you and introduced themselves, without being introduced first! But she had never felt remotely tempted. She just wanted to wait for Joe.

And she wasn’t the only one who was feeling down, not by a long shot. A general pall had fallen across Australia with the absence of so many loved ones, mixed with the regular blows of terrible news about those killed in action, of battles lost and the Japanese getting closer. All of this news against a backdrop of strict wartime rationing, with even such essentials as soap, sugar and flour sometimes hard to come by. Not to mention, for the men, horse racing, alcohol and gambling were severely restricted, and the skies seemed greyer than ever.

Finally, finally, there was a chance for redemption. After well over six months of working as a ‘comfort woman’ in Rabaul, servicing the sexual needs of roughly 2500 Japanese soldiers, Okryon Park had been put on a ship going back to Korea. In all the viciousness of her experience in Rabaul, there had been one or two men who had been kind to her, including one who had pressed money upon her, to perhaps start her in a new life at home. And now—after she and many of the comfort women who had originally come with her to Rabaul had at last been replaced by a younger, fresher bunch— she was heading home with fifty others.

Okryon just about couldn’t believe it. With the crush of Japanese soldiers arriving in Rabaul in the past few weeks, every day had been like Sunday for herself and the other comfort women, as the queue of men was neverending. But now it seemed her agony was at an end and she would soon be with her son again. Okryon was just washing some dishes in the ship’s galley when suddenly there was a loud explosion and her whole world was overturned again as water started rushing in. A bomb or a torpedo from an American plane had hit them amidships, and within seconds Okryon was in the water, sinking, drowning, struggling, grabbing on to a piece of driftwood and staying afloat. For nine hours she and just fourteen others drifted around until another Japanese ship picked them up… and took them back to Rabaul. There was only one place to stay, back in the comfort station to serve the soldiers again. Not even the fact that she had suffered a bad injury on her forehead in the course of her ship sinking saved her…

It had been a long journey but, following in the muddy footsteps of the 2/14th, Osmar White, Damien Parer and Chester Wilmot were now getting close to one of their main destinations, the flats of Myola. It was here, they had already been informed, that the 2/14th were holed up waiting for their supplies to get through from Moresby. The reporters, too, were finding the endless rain to be a total drain on their spirit.

‘It is difficult to describe the abysmal depression that had me in its grip,’ White later wrote of his feelings as they drew closer to Myola. ‘The rain did not vary in intensity for as much as a minute— an endless, drumming, chilling deluge. It roared and rustled and sighed on the broad leaves of the jungletop. It soaked through the green pandanus thatches of shelters and spilled clammy cascades upon the bowed backs of exhausted men. It swamped cooking fires. Creeks ran in every hollow. One’s very bones seemed softened by the wetness.’
¹⁶⁶

The following day the reporters had arrived at Myola and, after resting up and lazing like lizards in a rare burst of sunshine, White and Wilmot were right there with their notebooks, and Damien Parer with his cameras, when the transports from Moresby at last began to arrive. Only superhuman efforts in Townsville, Brisbane and Moresby over the previous three days had got them loaded and off the ground. As a matter of fact, Osmar was close enough to the action to be nearly killed by a case of tinned beef, but survived to see from a worm’s-eye view for the first time, just how this biscuit bombing was done. The key seemed to be to get the plane to as low an altitude as possible—to maximise the chances of the booty surviving—while still retaining the capacity to pull out of the dive into the saucer and rise above the distant treetops. The planes lined up thus, and roared in, one by one, just a few hundred feet from the ground, with their side door open. At the instant before the drop, the pilot would tilt the plane to make the job of the unloaders easier. Inside, men who were tied to a rope would give the cargo a heave or a kick and it would tumble below. The only things that came down by the very rare parachutes which were available were the mortar bombs, machine-gun ammunition and fuses. Everything else hit the ground at a furious pace and then began to bounce… bounce… and keep bouncing.

Hence the worst job of all in the whole process. Right next to the designated dropping area was the marker. This unfortunate’s job was to stand like a statue and, with the aid of a compass, mark precisely where the bundles came to rest in the jungle, giving compass coordinates and approximate distances from where he stood. Then, when the planes had gone, it would be for the rest of the battalion and the native porters to seek out the booty. It was far from a perfect method, and as much as twenty-five per cent of the supplies were lost forever. But it still served to bring in about fifty tons over the next two days as the sky continued to rain food, bullets, blankets, sweaters, shirts, shorts, cigarettes, grenades and, most impressively of all, five three-inch mortars with three hundred bombs to ram down the Japs’ pants. (Now on site, Potts had entirely countermanded General Morris’s previous instruction that mortars were of no use on the track, and they had been close to the top of his priority list in his requests back to Moresby.)

By the evening of 24 August, Potts was at last satisfied that they had enough supplies to take the Japs on. Bert Kienzle and his nine hundred odd hardy porters were in full swing, taking the new supplies forward, while in response to Potts’s previous urgent requests to Rowell and Allen, another three hundred fully-laden porters were also well on their way towards Myola with yet more supplies.

Potts gave the orders for the first of the 2/14th companies to prepare to move out to support the 39th. Now, if all went well, on 1 September the Australians would begin a full-blown attack on the Japanese positions, and start to fulfil their orders to push them back to the sea. This would be accomplished by the 2/14th Battalion pushing down the western side of the valley through Isurava and Deniki to Kokoda, while the 2/16th would push through on the eastern side along the Abuari–Misima ridge. And so, at dawn on the morning of 25 August, the forward elements of the 2/14th Battalion moved out, towards Isurava, towards their own date with destiny…

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE BATTLE OF ISURAVA

In Ralph Honner’s epic view of life and war, Isurava was not merely a battle on the Kokoda Trail, but Australia’s Agincourt…

Peter Brune,
We Band of Brothers
¹⁶⁷

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,

For he that sheds his blood with me today will be my brother

Shakespeare,
Henry V Part II
: Henry V

In the testing crucible of conflict… they were transformed by some strong catalyst of the spirit into a devoted band wherein every man’s failing strength was fortified and magnified by a burning resolve to stick by his mates.

Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner
¹⁶⁸

The morning of 26 August 1942 dawned on the village of Isurava as ever, a bright ball of heat searing down on the slight break in the intense green jungle. (It was, for the record, the very date that back in June Major General Basil Morris had asked Bert Kienzle to have the road from Moresby to Kokoda finished, but with one thing and another… that hadn’t quite happened.)

The first warning to Ralph Honner that the Japanese were on the move came when he heard the sound of booming gunfire rolling along the ridgetop where he had placed the forward patrol to give the defenders at Isurava fair warning of Japanese approach… and this was clearly it. When the gunfire continued and intensified it was clear that the battle was underway.

Among the 430 men of the 39th Battalion perched on the Isurava plateau, the effect was immediate. Individually there was a sudden surge of adrenalin, a stiffening of the sinews, a tightening of the stomach, a sudden itch on the trigger fingers, as they checked their ammunition belts and gripped their guns more tightly. It was
on
. The Japanese were coming and they would very shortly be in a fight for their lives. The enormous screeching flocks of parrots suddenly flying overhead—disturbed by either the guns or approaching enemy companies—added to the malice of the moment, as if the bats of hell had just been released.

Yet there was no panic. The 39th’s preparations over the preceding ten days had been thorough and, as much as they could be, the men felt substantially ready for whatever the Japs could throw at them. In some ways they took their cue from Ralph Honner, who was now striding around purposefully, talking to the men, giving orders, ensuring that everything that could be done was being done as the gunfire seemed to move marginally closer. One of the first orders that Honner gave was for elements of D Company, under the command of one of his best men, Lieutenant Bob Sword, to march out to reinforce elements of Lieutenant Don Simonson’s E Company in their now precarious position in the forward post as Japanese fire rained upon them.

It was as well, because the brave Simonson and his men were now engaged in heavy action, taking fire from the Japanese troops who had suddenly appeared. They were also aware that, at a point about five hundred yards from their current position, a mountain gun had started firing, with the missiles whistling over their heads and heading towards Isurava, where the first indication that the heavy Japanese mountain gun was operational was the sudden sound of incoming…

Shells. The Japanese mountain gun—dismantled back at Rabaul, then hauled up in separate bits and reassembled—was now sending round after round down upon those who were blocking their way on the path to Moresby and victory. One happy circumstance for the Japanese artillery unit operating the mountain gun was what an easy target Isurava was; it was the one speck in the whole vista that wasn’t green. When the shelling began, Ralph Honner was standing in the middle of the plateau with Lieutenant Keith Lovett and two other officers. As the first shot landed, the officers looked to Honner to see how he would react. Would he be one of those officers who insisted on strutting around in full view of enemy guns, thus making other officers who insisted on ducking for cover look guilty of cowardice… or would he be sensible?

Another
whump
in the distance meant that they had five seconds before it landed at some point on the target, of which they were the bullseye.

‘Look, there’s no point in us just standing around here when a bombardment’s going on. We’re only going to get ourselves hurt here. What I’m going to do when we hear the preliminary shot fired, I’m going to ground, and I think you’ll serve me well if you go to ground with me… ’
¹⁶⁹

Yes, Sir! They all laughed and, at the next whump in the distance, hurled themselves to the ground like Australian fielders in an Ashes test trying to stop an English drive for four runs. But this was no joke and within two minutes two great mates, Corporal Joe Reilly and Lance Corporal Jim O’Donnell, had been killed by a direct hit on the foxhole they were sharing, their broken bodies hurled ten yards away. With bullets whistling past him, Father Nobby Earl shortly afterwards conducted a simple burial service and buried them both, in adjacent graves, a short distance away.