Kokoda (48 page)

It was for this reason that Honner’s offer to keep the 39th at Isurava was so highly appreciated. On such an occasion, Potts could not help but look at the reality of the situation he had inherited and try to make it fit with the orders he had been given. Two weeks prior to this the Western Australian officer had attended a meeting with Major General Morris back in Moresby where he had been given orders to check the Japanese advance, turn them around and then retake Kokoda. As it was, in the grimness of the situation, Potts was all too aware that they would be flat out holding the Japanese up for long, let alone routing them and turning their tails for home. For now, there was nothing for it but to make the most of what they had…

The sound of gunfire rolling dirty through the jungle from the direction of Isurava told them that there was unlikely to be any let up on this day and, as it turned out, the decision of the 39th to stay and fight with their AIF brothers proved crucial. For in the middle of the afternoon, right on the edge of the sector defended by the 2/14th’s mighty B Company, the sheer weight of the Japanese numbers and the ferocity of their constant attacks saw them push their way through the perimeter and—worst of all possible things— fire on the two vulnerable flanks of Australians that had been opened up to them.

In the barest nick of time, with the 39th covering their previous positions, it was Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Key himself with soldiers from A Company and his own Headquarters Company who arrived and, after a bout of furious fighting, were able to push the Japs back beyond the original perimeter. But it was close.

For every ounce of Key’s elation at stemming the breach, General Horii, sitting on his white horse and watching the whole thing with his binoculars from a high point just under a mile away to the north, felt sheer desperation. Put together with all the reports he had received from his field commanders, Horii had come to a very troubling conclusion. Australia’s 39th Battalion which had been opposing his men for some weeks—who had seemed so exhausted and starving they were ‘eating stones’, to use the Japanese expression— had clearly been reinforced with fresh troops. There was no way the extraordinary number of casualties the 144th Regiment had taken on the previous day could have come from the 39th alone; no way that they could have thrown back his best soldiers once they had breached the perimeter.

What to do? It was out of the question to retreat, and General Horii was becoming ever more aware that time was of the essence. Every day in the jungle weakened them—in these first three days of the battle of Isurava alone, they had lost 350 soldiers and suffered another one thousand wounded. Each passing day strained their supply lines, blunted their thrust and made clear victory less likely. They had to break through, and quickly.

That evening as the fighting lulled, Second Lieutenant Noda wrote in his diary: ‘The Australians are gradually being outflanked, but their resistance is very strong and our casualties are great. The outcome of the battle is very difficult to foresee… ’
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Lieutenant Colonel Key and his Intelligence Officer Stan Bisset felt much the same way. That night they had a long meeting in Key’s hut where, by the light of the lantern, they tried to collate the many reports that had come in of estimated Japanese strengths on the various sectors, and the number of casualties both sides had taken, to try to work out how best to situate their own forces on the morrow. There was no doubt the Australians had performed well, but the unknown factor was just what resources the Japanese still had to throw into the battle.

When the meeting was over at about eight o’clock on the evening of 28 August, the two decided to personally reconnoitre the frontlines, to see that all was in order. With that in mind they headed off to make contact with the forward platoon on the northern perimeter, where the track led to Deniki. They had gone no more than a hundred yards however, when an Australian voice whispered to them,
‘We’re
the forward troops, Sir.’

At that very instant, both Key and Bisset saw some scurrying figures in the darkness ahead, briefly flitting across the track, and realised they were Japanese. Sweet Jesus, they really were that close.

Assured that all the defensive positions were well manned and all was relatively stable for the moment, both men returned to Battalion Headquarters, such as it was.

It was that very stability that General Horii could bear no more. For it was around this time, completely frustrated by the Australian resistance, that the Japanese general decided to throw his two fresh reserve battalions into the fray. If that didn’t shift the Australians, then nothing could. It was time for total assault…

29 August 1942. Different day. Same plan of attack. The Australians had missiles and mortars rained upon them, even as heavy fire came at them from out of the jungle. Then there was a sudden pause before the wild Japanese charges began.

It was a measure of the renewed Japanese ferocity, and their sheer weight of numbers due to the two fresh battalions, that by late morning many of them were actually getting through to the perimeter and fierce bayonet battles between Australians and Japanese broke out. It was fast and furious, and very, very bloody.

Early on that afternoon of the 29th, the Japanese very nearly broke through on the right forward sector of the perimeter held by C Company facing Deniki, where the attrition rate among the defenders had been so severe that the level of resistance was thinner. The gunfire and grenades between the two sides had been so unrelenting that most of the lighter vegetation separating them had been all but wiped out, meaning there were fewer and fewer places to hide. Colonel Key sent in a platoon from A Company to bolster the defence, but as the afternoon wore on, they too were in trouble as
still
the Japanese kept coming. Again, the Isurava defenders were only just managing to hold on.

The high ground above the village, now being held by Butch Bisset’s 10 Platoon, was taking perhaps the most heat of all, and the number of their dead and wounded had been high as the Japanese continued to thrust for this crucial terrain. Butch’s men were a frenzy of activity, covering each other as they kept up their rate of fire and tossing a few grenades Tojo’s way for good measure. One thing was certain: this was as unlike their experience in Syria as it was possible to get. In the Middle East it had been all open country with both sides able to get a look at each other and make rapid, sweeping flanking movements. Here… well, here you were lucky if you could see the bastards before they were right at your throat.

One way or another, though, this looked like it was going to be a donnybrook to beat them all…

Down at Brigade Headquarters at Alola, Brigadier Potts was monitoring the situation as closely as possible, and still endeavouring to convince Moresby of the need for reinforcements, when there was a commotion outside. He emerged from his tent to see what seemed to be a group of walking scarecrows staggering towards them out of the jungle. It was Lieutenant Bob Sword with his two platoons of men who, cut off by the Japanese advance, had been forcing their way through the jungle for three days and nights, avoiding the Japanese positions and endeavouring to reach relative safety… and now they had. Along the way they had been joined by another lost platoon from their battalion, and now the whole lot of them were staggering into the compound. Some of the men were barely able to stand as they had hardly eaten in their time in the jungle; all of them had their uniforms torn to shreds and their bloodied feet emerging from boots that were only just hanging together. Clearly they were all in need of medical attention on a dozen different fronts, but…

But it was a measure of the commitment that the Australian soldiers on the Kokoda Track had to each other, that once told of how grim the situation was at Isurava, Sword and his men
insisted
on leaving for the frontlines at Isurava again. After Nobby Earl and one of the doctors had done what they could for them, and the men of the 2/16th had given them whatever cigarettes they could spare, together with a cup of tea and some food, they were off, limping gamely up the hill towards Isurava. Brigadier Potts watched them go, his chest swelling with pride. Maybe they were outnumbered. Maybe they were outgunned. But with men like these, with
guts
like the Australians were displaying, they were, by God, still in the fight to give the Japanese something to think about.

Not that there weren’t some exceptions. Very early one morning Tom Grahamslaw—who had been attached to Potts’s Brigade Headquarters—was on his own and walking fast along the track to Alola when he came across a strange sight. As he would later recount it: ‘I saw two soldiers alongside the track. One of them had had it with the war and had prevailed upon his mate to put a bullet through his boot, the idea being to graze the top portion of his big toe at the same time. Unfortunately, his mate’s hand must have trembled, because the shot removed most of the toe. Then followed some choice language from the stricken one. No doubt I should have charged the men with having committed a serious offence. However, I couldn’t help reflecting that the wounded man would have a torrid time on the long walk back over the Owen Stanleys…’

All of the wounded men on the track winding back were indeed having a torrid time of it. But now some of them were needed again. The thirty walking wounded of the 39th who’d been sent back to safety by Colonel Honner a couple of days before, under the command of Lieutenant Johnston, now heard of their comrades’ plight. Of the thirty men, twenty-seven immediately turned around and headed back to Isurava. Of the three who didn’t, one had lost a foot, one a forearm, while the other had taken a bullet in the throat.

It was not so simple a thing as courage…

It was not so simple a thing as discipline which can be hammered into men by a drill sergeant. It was not the result of careful planning, for there could have been little. It was the common man of the free countries rising in all his glory from mill, office, mine, factory and shop and applying to war, the lessons learned when he went down the mine to release trapped comrades; when he hurled the lifeboat through the surf; when he endured hard work and poverty for his children’s sake…

This is the great tradition of democracy. This is the future. This is victory.

Despite Chester Wilmot’s exhaustion, as he walked on with Ossie White his anger continued to grow. As an experienced war correspondent, it was absolutely clear to him that these brave men had been let down by their high command. How could the likes of Blamey have sent up against hardened Japanese veterans these
kids
of the 39th, however valiant they proved to be? How could they be so underequipped? How was it that the 53rd had been sent forward with only a single week’s training, after spending all the rest of their time unloading ships? What was the story with the 2/14th and 2/16th heading to the front without their supplies being absolutely assured? And how was it that the
whole lot of them
had been sent into the New Guinea jungle without proper camouflage? How hard could it have been to work out that khaki uniforms in the green New Guinea jungle were going to be an invitation to kill an Australian?

It all fitted in with the overall picture of General Blamey’s incompetence that Chester had been building up for some time. It was well known that Blamey was a womaniser and a sot, and not for nothing did the troops sometimes refer to him as ‘Brothel Blamey’. Chester’s friend and fellow war correspondent and poet, Kenneth Slessor, had even once witnessed the Australian military leader drunkenly carrying on in a sleazy bar in Cairo with an Egyptian woman of low moral fibre, in full view of his senior staff officers.

And while covering the war in Palestine, Chester himself had come across a story that continued to work on him, even though he had never been able to nail it down hard enough to broadcast it and put it in the public domain. The story was that Blamey had done a deal with the provider of films for the Australian troops in the Middle East, a Mr Shafto, whereby Blamey received kickbacks and Shafto was able to provide inferior quality films with no problem from high command.
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All of that was bad enough, but now, when before Chester’s eyes it was clear that Australian soldiers were dying because Blamey wasn’t up to the job, Wilmot’s anger knew no bounds.

Back at Eora Creek busily filming, Damien Parer was appalled by the continuing stream of wounded men coming their way, but it was at least obvious that he would not be facing the same problem here as he did in the Middle East. In Syria, he found the enemy had often given up before he had a chance to get his cameras into place, thus denying him the opportunity to get the serious action footage he desired. Here, apparently, there was no such risk and it seemed more likely, from what he could gather from the wounded men and officers, that the action of the Japanese would soon be coming towards him.