Kokoda (59 page)

So persuasive had MacArthur been with Curtin, that when the Australian Prime Minister heard a few days after their initial conversation that his commanding general was
still
in Australia, he called him and said with uncharacteristic venom: ‘General Blamey, I thought that you had gone to New Guinea. If you value your position you will not remain in Brisbane another day!’
²⁴³

The news of Blamey’s imminent return to Moresby, essentially to take command so soon after he had returned from an inspection tour, received a mixed reaction. Many of Blamey’s detractors all but openly celebrated, in the manner of the Minister of Supply and Development, Jack Beasley, who reportedly exclaimed: ‘Moresby is going to fall. Send Blamey up there and let him fall with it!’
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On the other side was the likes of General Sydney Rowell whose role as the commanding officer of all forces in New Guinea was clearly being usurped—however much Blamey might have tried to dress it up otherwise when he did in fact arrive. Though they had worked closely together since the war started, Rowell had never liked Blamey, regarding him as a womaniser, a drunk and worse, and in fact was still appalled by Blamey’s actions in the fall of Greece where, à la MacArthur, he had taken a plane to safety leaving his troops behind to the mercy of the enemy. And
this
was the man who was now going to take operational command from him, to prove that he was, after all, a great battlefield commander? Rowell could barely stand it…

Beware the false dawn. The light of the late wee hours was notorious for tricking those who gazed upon it into thinking that dawn was close, and the men from the Land of the Rising Sun were as susceptible to the phenomenon as any. Dawn meant light, meant warmth, meant the lessening of the evil pressing darkness, meant sure confirmation that they had lived to fight another day, and each sunrise was a tiny triumph. And each time the dawn proved to be false was equally just that little bit crushing.

Bit by bit, though, through the middle of September, the advancing soldiers of General Horii became aware that the faintest of all faint lights to their immediate south was not false at all but was something close to their own version of the Promised Land—Port Moresby. After long weeks, stretching into months of fighting, of disease, of death, of disaster, of dysentery and all the rest, the desired destination of the whole campaign was now so close that as the Japanese dug into the just-abandoned ridgeline of Ioribaiwa, they could even
see
the city and then, wonder of all wonders, the shimmering ocean beyond it in the daytime. They had made it through…

The Japanese war correspondent, Seizo Okada—working for the great Tokyo newspaper
Asahi Shimbun
—was in fact among the soldiers when they gained the top of the ridgeline of Ioribaiwa. He reported: ‘The sea! It’s the sea of Port Moresby! Wild with joy, the soldiers who were stained all over with mud and blood, threw themselves into each others arms and wept.’

The Japanese soldiers were now ninety per cent of the way towards their goal, but had lost fifty per cent of their number through the attrition of battles, jungle, malaria and scrub typhus. So, too, there were many who had died in the manner of Bruce Kingsbury from a simple excess of courage.

Despite having been pushed to their limits of exhaustion, still the news galvanised the Japanese soldiers as nothing else could. It was possible, just possible, that from here they could see the end of their long campaign and be the authors of as hard fought a military victory as any Japanese troops had ever achieved. A week earlier General Horii had given the order that the wounded were not to be evacuated to the Buna beachhead, and instead were to be kept just back from the frontline in the expectation that they would soon be in real hospitals in the New Guinea capital—and now this decision looked to be a wise one.

Steady though. If the Japanese had learnt one lesson over previous months it was that all advances had to be consolidated, and with their remaining strength the soldiers began to dig in, carving out trenches from the thick soil, branching into weapon pits, together with a massive ‘fence’ of felled trees placed side by side to give even more cover against the Australians.

Even while this defensive preparation was underway, though, the plan was formulated to attack. Yet so exhausted were the surviving Japanese soldiers who had made it this far—and so starved, as their rations were now only a few stray grains of rice north of zero—that it was all they could do in the first days after arriving at Ioribaiwa to send out a few patrols to test the strength of the Australian defences on Imita Ridge.

The grim pinched faces of the survivors of those patrols told the story: the Australian defences were now, suddenly, very strong. Horii considered his position. So near, and yet still so far.

Where were the supplies that might have made his soldiers a still effective fighting force? His men were now so far from Buna that it had been virtually impossible to carry food and ammunition so far, as every porter would have to have eaten most of the weight he was carrying; and the plan to live off captured Australian supplies simply hadn’t worked. The Australians had either destroyed them, or doctored them as they had at Myola, causing an outbreak of the most debilitating dysentery among hundreds of the men. The only thing they had been able to salvage from Myola had been three hundred blankets, which had eased the crippling cold somewhat for a few companies.
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But that was pretty much it.

The bottom line was that there simply were no supplies, and nor were there any on their way down the track. The situation was grim and getting grimmer, however intoxicating the lights of Moresby might be.

The lack of serious Japanese thrust in this period did not go unnoticed by the Australians. In the previous days the rearguard of the Australians had noted that amid all the mortar fire and the rest, huge boulders, which came crashing and tumbling down the slope through the jungle in their direction had been added to the mix. They were frightening and damaging all at once, sure… But
boulders
? In the whole campaign to that point, and despite the fact that the Australians had been fighting up and down mountains, the Japanese had never used this tactic against them. Admittedly it was a good one—one boulder could create havoc and injury among succeeding layers of troops—but the question had to be asked. Were they reduced to using rocks because their own supplies of ammunition were running low?

It was part of a pattern that Stan Bisset for one had noticed. Whereas only a few weeks before every Japanese attack had been full-on and ferocious, now there was something more careful about them—either careful, or more exhausted. Plus, every Japanese corpse the Australians came across was always emaciated and, more often than not, diseased in some fashion. That things were grim for the Japanese, there was no doubt.

It was not long before, in pure desperation, General Horii gave orders that no bullet was to be fired from this point on unless an Australian soldier was actually in your sights…

Now ranged against the Japanese, the Australians were well dug into the top of Imita Ridge, with all of the officers well aware of General Sydney Rowell’s orders: ‘Any further withdrawal is out of the question and Eather must fight it out at all costs.’ That much, in fact, was already fairly obvious to all the Australians, given that Moresby lay only a short way behind them, past Ower’s Corner, and down the Laloki Road through the rubber plantations to the outskirts of the town itself.

At the same time, now that they were so much closer to Moresby, the Australian forces boasted greater numbers—with four fresh battalions bringing the total defenders to 2500 men—and had more firepower than ever before. Not just bullets either. Now, the Australians had heavy artillery shells. After an enormous and sustained effort, the big guns had been dragged into place onto the high ground between Uberi and Ilolo and on the morning of 21 September—ah, the pure relief of it!—began to do their work. It was the first time in the entire campaign that the Japanese faced artillery attack, and the survivors of the 2/14th and 2/16th could barely contain themselves. Take
that
, Tojo, and now here comes some more. At the time, men cheered as Alan Haddy yelled: ‘Mix that with yer bloody rice yer little yellow bastards!’
²⁴⁶

When Australian patrols carefully moved out from Imita at this time, feeling cautiously for the Japanese front, the word came back fairly quickly: there didn’t appear to be any Japs pushing forward from Ioribaiwa. It looked like they were dug in there.

On the night of 22 September—the eve of General Blamey’s return to Moresby—Damien Parer’s documentary
Kokoda Front Line
opened in Sydney at the State Newsreel Theatrette, on Market Street. The effect was immediate, once the word got out. Queues formed around the block. The public was agog at the conditions in which the Australian men were fighting, and were filled with deep respect— effectively for the first time—for what the Australian militia had proved themselves capable of. ‘Chocolate soldiers’, indeed!

Damien was able to use the attention that the film attracted to warm to his theme. Just two days after the film opened, he was quoted by his friend and fellow war correspondent Reg Glennie in
The Age
: ‘I hear a lot of grumbling here about shortages of this and that. Men are complaining that they can’t get enough cigarettes or tobacco. Women are upset because they can’t buy silk stockings.

‘Up near Efogi in the Owen Stanley Range, a fortnight ago, I saw men smoking dried tea leaves and rushing like madmen to pick up rations that were dropped down to them from our planes. But they weren’t complaining. People here have little to complain about. They should make the sacrifices demanded of them gladly. Their men are fighting in appalling conditions. Not so far away, either. Only about 300 miles off the Australian coast… ’
²⁴⁷

In the film itself, Damien had been able to slip in support for General Rowell, whom he greatly admired as a military commander. As the narrator of the documentary, Damien looked straight down the barrel of the camera and stated: ‘When I returned to Moresby I was full of beans. It was the spirit of the troops and the knowledge that General Rowell was on the job and now we had a really fine command.’

All up, the film made an enormous impression, and it wasn’t merely on the public at large. When American troops, at last, were making ready to leave for New Guinea, they contacted General Blamey’s Land Forces HQ to determine whether or not green camouflage uniforms were necessary. Despite everything, the firm answer came back: ‘No’. And then General Eichelberger and his staff went to see
Kokoda Front Line
and had their eyes opened, as the khaki uniforms of the Australians so clearly stood out. The Americans were concerned and contacted both Damien Parer and Ossie White to get their view, and an even firmer response came back: ‘You are mad if you don’t’. The Americans subsequently ignored the Blamey view and had their uniforms dyed mottled green.

Blamey himself, meanwhile, sent the following coded cable to MacArthur on the evening of 23 September: ‘Assumed command as from 1800 hours today, September 23rd. Consider inadvisable any publicity, may induce enemy to strengthen forces.’
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As it happened, the likelihood that MacArthur would allow Blamey’s presence in Moresby any publicity at all—unless things started to go very badly indeed—was always minimal.

The arrival of Blamey in Port Moresby on a semi-permanent basis proved to be every bit as bad as Major General Sydney Rowell had feared. Blamey arrived with little more than a couple of senior staff, meaning he would have to use Rowell’s staff to operate, effectively neutering the previous head of the New Guinea Force. It seemed likely to be untenable, but for the moment Rowell decided to grit his teeth, gird his loins and put up with it.

In the correspondents’ hut on this same night—and aware of what Blamey’s arrival would likely mean for Rowell—Chester Wilmot did what he could. Banging away on his trusty old typewriter he finished his report for
ABC Weekly
thus:

In New Guinea today the lessons of this campaign have been rapidly appreciated, and under General Rowell’s direction most of the mistakes, which were the result of previous unsuitable training, have been remedied. Some can only be remedied by training, which takes time, but the most prompt and far-reaching steps have been taken by him to see that our troops can meet the enemy on even terms.

Chester Wilmot

War Correspondent,

HQ New Guinea Force.

23.9.42
²⁴⁹

Cooler now… Always the blessed darkness brought some relief from the crushing heat beating down on the forward forces of the Imperial Japanese Army at Ioribaiwa as they looked to Moresby on the horizon of their dreams. On this evening, the Japanese war correspondent Seizo Okada decided to visit Major General Horii in his tent. A longtime correspondent, Okada had felt in his bones that something was happening, and naturally gravitated to the highest authority on site. With his friend Sato by his side, they looked into the tent. There was the Major General, looking suddenly very old and extremely emaciated by the light of a single candle, sitting on his heels on a straw mat, facing one of his key officers, Lieutenant Colonel Tanaka, who seemed to be avoiding his gaze. The mood was tense, grim, desperate. The Major General nevertheless courteously bade the correspondents to enter with a wave of his hand, and—after bowing in deference and deep respect—they had just taken their seats on the guest mats, when there was a rustling outside.
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