Kokoda (67 page)

Shattered palm trees lay every which way. At a Regimental Aid Post a member of the 39th was screaming as they tried to remove a bullet from his stomach. And yet he was one of the lucky ones who had survived. The first duty of the victorious 39th was to bury their own men who hadn’t made it—six had been killed in the action— and of these the gallant Lieutenant Sword was among the first to be buried, before the bowed heads, silent prayers and tears of his comrades.

A God-forsaken place it seemed. Just a short distance away, the old Gona Misson house and church were blown to bits, though, oddly enough, the only thing in the whole place that didn’t seem to have a mark on it was the one large white cross out the front.
²⁹⁶

Ralph Honner got a message through to Brigadier Ivan Dougherty, commanding 21st Brigade back in Moresby. It was as simple as it was appropriate: ‘Gona’s gone’.

Later that morning, Joe was leaning on his backpack trying to get some sleep, and trying not to worry that Wally and Ray still hadn’t shown up, when suddenly someone shouted: ‘Hey Sarge, there’s a couple of wounded Japs over here.’ Joe grabbed his Owen Gun, which he’d just recently taken over from one of his wounded comrades, and ran towards the voice.

And sure enough, there they were. It was strange to suddenly come across, face to face, two soldiers he’d likely been fighting against for months and then see them so helpless. But that was the case. One Jap was lying face down, breathing heavily, while the other was sitting crosslegged, using his right hand to hold together what remained of his left bicep, which looked as if it had been torn apart by shrapnel. It must have happened at least a day or two before, because the whole thing was rotten with maggots. Joe put down his pack and pulled out a field dressing, bound up the wound and was just about to turn his attention to the other Jap, when the bloke who had first called out to him asked the question.

‘Why don’t you just shoot ’em, Sarge?’

The question hung in the air for a moment, before Joe made reply. ‘You found them, so I suppose for the same reason you didn’t.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Probably because you don’t want to be like them!’

It was a good thought, but evidence that some didn’t mind being ‘just like them’ was soon upon them. Just when some native porters had the wounded man on a stretcher, an Australian lieutenant came up with a .38 pistol and shot him dead. Just like that. The Japanese soldier was almost certainly going to die anyway, but Joe found it brutal and shocking.

Gona had been a long, brutal and bloody fight, but even then the Australians were far from done. The Japanese remained in possession of Buna. By 18 December, MacArthur got what he deserved, which was the humiliation of asking for help from the Australian Army and senior officers he had criticised, ridiculed and indirectly sacked. For by this time it was clear that the Americans couldn’t on their own capture Buna—the Japanese holdout that
they
were supposed to take, the place where they were going to show the Australians how it was done. They retained a masterly inactivity, and at MacArthur’s humble request it was the Australian 18th Brigade, the heroes of Milne Bay, who, with the help of the the survivors of the 39th, began to move in on Buna to save the day…

Lost. Wandering. Exhausted. Where was he?
Who
was he? Joe. Joe Dawson. Snatches of things came back to him. Two nights before, he’d shown a sore on the inside of his leg to a medical orderly, who had taken his temperature and diagnosed him with scrub typhus— an often fatal infectious disease common in Southeast Asia, transmitted to humans via the bites of mites. Shocked at how hot he was, the bloke had given it to Joe straight: ‘If it goes up any more, mate, you’re on your way out.’ Then Joe had sweated through the night. Then the next day too. He needed Ray or Wally to look after him. But they were gone. Dead. Killed by the Japs at West Gona, near ‘Haddy’s Village’. At the news of Ray and Wally’s death, Joe had wept. Then he’d tried to get to the Regimental Aid Post on his own, but had got lost in the fog of his own sickness. He kept wandering. Was he near Jap positions or his own? Was Christmas yesterday, or next week?

And then someone had grabbed him, one of his own blokes fortunately, and led him to this place and gave him some pills, and put something around his neck to identify him, and then they’d tried to walk him out some more, till he collapsed and the next thing he knew it was later, much later, days later, and he’d been roasting all that time on some hospital bed, and then the fever had started to get even
worse
and he was burning, burning, burning for days and days and days… and then it was cooler, a little cooler, and he’d opened his eyes and a nurse was looking down at him, a kind nurse, a very kind nurse, and now she was speaking to him. He had to concentrate because his hearing had never really come back properly since his near bombing on the
Macdhui
. But he could make out her words, all right.

‘They brought ten soldiers in with you the day you came in, all with scrub typhus… ’ she said. ‘They’re all dead, and everyone thought you were going to die too, but I didn’t think so. I thought you were going to live, and I’ll tell you why… ’ And then she smiled, reached under his pillow, brought out his rosary beads, and put them on his chest. He clasped them, and rested his hands on his chest. He wanted to go home. He wanted to be with Elaine.

Finally, on 22 January 1943, it was over. In one of the great feats of arms in Australian history, the Australians had captured the critical ground at Buna, allowing the Americans to come in over the top and take the Buna Government Station—meaning that the last Japanese resistance was now wiped out in the area. Yes, there were many Japanese still on the loose along the beachhead, but they were foodless, and fleeing west in the hope of eventual evacuation. They had to be found and killed or captured—mostly killed. It would take months. But the war was effectively over. In their previous six months’ fight to control the track and its approaches, Australia had mortally lost 2165 troops, with another 3533 wounded. The United States, which had only come into action very late in the piece, had 671 troops killed and 2172 wounded. It was the Japanese, operating so far from their homeland, with military officers perhaps less concerned with the sanctity of their soldiers’ lives, who suffered most. Some twenty thousand Japanese troops were landed in Papua and New Guinea, of which it is estimated that some thirteen thousand were killed, with nearly
all
the rest wounded or debilitated in some fashion.

On that last day, Ralph Honner led his survivors away from the battlefield. It was a wonder they could stand at all. The bulk of the men had been in battle for most of the previous six months with only short respite. They had been shot at, bombed, wounded, starved, deprived of sleep, frozen and boiled, they had suffered malaria, dysentery, scrub typhus and the constant trauma of seeing their dearest friends killed and blown apart, while always wondering if they were next… Yet standing they were. And walking. And
marching
.

‘Higher authority refused us vehicles for the less fit,’ Honner later explained to his biographer, Peter Brune. ‘[They ruled] that no one could ride unless he fell out on the march. In the 39th’s book, marchers didn’t straggle, so we all marched, all the way, to Dobodura— for some a long torture on the verge of unconsciousness.’
²⁹⁷

It was at this point, coming into Dobodura that an amazed bystander, staggered at the sight of such exhausted, ravaged and debilitated men marching in this fashion, was heard to enquire, ‘What mob’s this?’

Honner’s men didn’t flinch, but kept marching with their eyes straight ahead. But Honner’s second-in-command, who had heard the remark, couldn’t contain himself.

‘This is not a mob!’ he barked. ‘This is the 39th…’

EPILOGUE

How do we remember them?… They died so young. They missed so much. They gave up so much: their hopes; their dreams; their loved ones. They laid down their lives that their friends might live. Greater love hath no man than this.

Ralph Honner
²⁹⁸

In Papua New Guinea the war was especially more painful for the Japanese. ‘I hate war. Peace is a must.’ This was a shout that rang out from the bottom of their heart for the soldiers and sailors who participated in the Papua New Guinea campaign…

Kengora Tanaka
²⁹⁹

Nothing will ever be the same again in Papua. Anyone who toiled over the Owen Stanley Range in wartime knows, it will never be the same silent, sweet-smelling jungle track where man and his indecencies were almost unknown. It is a trail of blood and iron now, and in the memory of this generation will remain so.

Geoffrey Vernon
³⁰⁰

In July 1943, the word came that the 39th Battalion was to be disbanded, with its survivors broken up and scattered to units of the AIF. For two years they’d withstood everything the Japs and the jungle could throw at them, never buckled and always given more than they got, and now they were wiped out by the stroke of some bureaucrat’s pen.

Most of the soldiers, like Smoky Howson, were disgusted. Because that would be about fucking right, wouldn’t it?
³⁰¹
The bloody government didn’t want a militia battalion coming home with all those battle honours when most of their AIF units would be coming home with Sweet Fanny Adams. Here they were, they’d fought their bloody
guts
out, shown the AIF they weren’t the only ones who could fight, and this was their reward. Broken up. Made to join the AIF. Seriously,
made
to join the AIF. They were told that if they wanted to go home, then they’d have to join up with one of the AIF units that would shortly be posted there, but otherwise they could stay and rot with one of the other militia battalions.

Well, Smoky had to do it, didn’t he? He told them they could go and get fucked, he was
not
going to join the AIF. So he ended up staying in New Guinea and rotting, while most of the others went every which way, and eventually home.

It just
gutted
Smoky to split up from his comrades-in-arms, who were now closer to him than brothers. When he’d joined up with this mob, he’d barely had a friend in the world, he’d been so bloody busy working in the market garden, but in this caper you always made friends just a bit faster than you buried them, and you ended up bound tight as a drum to the ones who stayed above the sod, while you’d miss forever the ones who were under it. Yes, they told each other they’d be in touch, that they’d catch up after the war was over—see you in such-and-such pub, and so on and so forth— but no one was fooled that much. It was over. They were scattered and would never be as they were—one unit of men, fighting under one flag. The 39th was finished.

With the men going in different directions, Ralph Honner took over command of the 2/14th Battalion, and was still at their head in October 1943 when, during the 2/14th’s campaign in the Markham Valley and Ramu to clear out the last remaining Japanese in New Guinea, he was caught by enemy machine-gun fire, taking bullets in his hand and thigh. After recuperating for ten months in a hospital back in Australia, he took a senior administrative role with the Directorate of Military Training in Melbourne. For his wartime achievements he was awarded a Distinguished Service Order and a Military Cross.

Another day, another landing, another assault, another chance for Damien Parer to capture graphic images of Allied forces doing the business, fighting on the beaches, fighting on the landing grounds, defending their islands, continuing to turn the tide against the Japanese. But by now, September 1944, Damien was no longer a relatively anonymous newsreel man, but had taken his place among the most acclaimed documentary-makers in the world.

Kokoda Front Line
had not only filled theatres around Australia, it had gone on to be joint winner of the Academy Award for best documentary in 1943—the Australian film community’s first such recognition. The citation said that Damien Parer’s film had won ‘for its effectiveness in portraying, simply yet forcefully, the scene of war in New Guinea and for its moving presentation of the bravery and fortitude of our Australian comrades in arms’.
³⁰²
Of course it was terrific, but as was his way, Parer continued to pursue his passion without pause. (Or just pause enough to have married Marie just a few months before. Already she was pregnant, and he couldn’t have been more thrilled.)

The current action he was filming was with the marines of US Task Force as they protected MacArthur’s eastern flank for his grand ‘I-shall-return’ gesture to the Philippines by invading one of the outlying islands where the Japanese had a base. Just before dawn on 15 September 1944, the battleship on which Damien had journeyed thus far, the USS
Pierce,
along with the many other ships in the battle group, plastered the beaches of Peliliu with heavy fire to knock out whatever coastal defences the Japanese had set up. Typically, Damien was with the first group of marines to storm the beaches and he remained with them, shooting all the while, over the next two days.

On the third morning he went out with them again, but never came back… A deeply distraught fellow film-maker, John Brennan, found him that afternoon, dead on the beach, and was able to work out what had happened by talking with the marines who had been with him. The Americans had been pushing across a stretch of relatively open ground and, because they had been under such heavy fire, the only possible way for the grunts to advance had been behind the shelter of lumbering tanks. Damien had always taken the view that to film advancing troops properly you had to be out in front of them, so had been walking backwards behind the lead tank, capturing the advance of the marines when a burst of fire from a hidden pillbox had cut him down. A small mercy was that in all likelihood he was dead before he hit the ground. He was a great Australian, an artist in his craft, and he was gone.