Kokoda (8 page)

‘And what I hope,’ the Colonel continued as he surveyed with military bearing the assembled mass, ‘is that over the next few months we will be able to raise your levels of physical fitness, give you an understanding of how the army works, an appreciation of military tactics, and turn you all into good soldiers worthy of bearing arms for this country. Australia deserves no less, and you will deliver no less.’

Still, to look at them, Colonel Conran could see that they really did have a
lot
to learn. Physically, he could see that they came from disparate militia units, as well as straight off civvy street, because they were dressed in a range of outfits—the 39th’s new uniforms had not yet arrived. But more significantly, having looked at the personnel files over the previous fortnight, he knew… well, he knew that the raw material he had been given to work with was not straight from the top drawer.

All put together, they were a rum lot these blokes of the 39th, essentially a snapshot of the very young Australian male population at that time who had been left behind by the AIF—some so young they didn’t need razors, and the rest chosen from older generations, including a few
really
old codgers who in turn had been just about taken from the retirement home. One young bloke there was blind in one eye, the bugler had just one arm, another was an epileptic, yet another was a severe asthmatic, while others were reasonably physically fit but had résumés that wouldn’t get them a job anywhere else. Lined up for their first parade it was not straining fancy to say that within their ranks could be found all of the ‘butcher, baker, candlestick-maker, rich man, poor man, beggar man and thief’ of popular folklore.

As one, however, they were bound by their common oath, which was taken with their right hand raised (if they had one), their left hand stiff by their side and their eyes staring straight at the Australian flag.

‘I swear,’ the new blokes had intoned as one, ‘that I will well and truly serve our Sovereign Lord, the King, in the Military Forces of the Commonwealth of Australia until the cessation of the present time of war or until sooner lawfully discharged, dismissed, or removed, and that I will resist His Majesty’s enemies and cause His Majesty’s peace to be kept and maintained, and that I will in all matters appertaining to my service faithfully discharge my duty according to law. So help me God.’

So help them, God. And so they began. For the next two months they trained the best they could.

One among them was Joe Dawson—now
Sergeant
Dawson, if you please—who had lied about his age to join the militia a couple of years earlier, and had been one of fifty or so who had transferred from the 32nd Battalion, Footscray Regiment, to join the 39th Battalion. Joe figured it was his best chance to see some action overseas, just as he had always wanted to do with the AIF, and he was delighted to be there.

Another was a rough ’n’ ready kinda bloke by the name of Smoky Howson, one of nineteen children who had at last found a way out of working all day in the bloody market garden his alcoholic father had run. The kids at school had called him ‘Smoky’ because he always smelt of smoke, ’cos at home the only way he could get warm was to practically get right
in
the open fireplace the family also used as its stove, and it wasn’t as if his clothes got a wash too often anyway. Smoky had come to the 39th by way of the 52nd Battalion and, all up, he just couldn’t believe how luxurious the army life was! Three meals a day! A real bed! Weekly pay! Frankly, he had never had it so good, and he couldn’t quite believe it when the other guys sometimes complained about having to get up so early, train so hard, and eat such ordinary grub in the Mess Hall. Plenty of them, to be sure though, simply weren’t fit, whereas Smoky was as strong as a mallee bull. For most of his twenty years he had worked like a human bullock, carrying bags of spuds, and bags of fertiliser weighing 180 pounds, and now that strength was going to be useful.

While by this time the likes of Joe Dawson were familiar with much of military life, most of the wet-behind-the-ears newcomers had a lot of learning to do. And so it began…

Each morning at 5.30 a.m. the newly formed battalion band, led by their one-armed bugler, marched up and down between the huts thumping out the one martial tune they’d been able to master, ‘Sussex by the Sea’. After that the soldiers’ days would be filled with instruction in basic military skills and endless training to improve their physical fitness. Over the coming weeks they learnt such things as how you set up a defensive perimeter; how you could penetrate such a perimeter when you were attacking; how you set up an ambush; how you reacted when ambushed; how you cleaned a .303 rifle; and how to operate and maintain Lewis and Vickers machine guns left over from the Great War. (The men would have liked to work with more modern guns, but there simply weren’t any available.) At a cost of great fatigue and terrible blisters, they came to understand what a ‘route march’ was, and how you could move overland in a straight line by the dead reckoning of a compass. They learnt to fire three-inch mortars, and how to dig trenches quickly to take shelter when the enemy were firing mortars and bullets at you. They also received rough instruction on how to stem the flow of a bloody wound, should the last lesson not have worked for everyone.

Most of their military manoeuvres were done out in open fields with a few sparse trees scattered here and there. At other times— and the men liked these best—it involved the troops being moved into different positions with trucks, with an official ‘umpire’ to decide who had won.

They spent time in what was called ‘the bull ring’, essentially an open-air spot where some straw dummies swung from a rope beneath a tree, and you had to practise slashing the bayonet into its gizzard, pulling the bayonet out and swinging the rifle butt into its face in two very quick movements. Speed was everything in this, it was explained to them. If ever it came to it, you had to kill the enemy soldier not only quicker than he could kill you, but
so
quickly that you would have time to kill the next one coming at you. It was a matter of life and death, both your own, and that of the enemy. Again and again and again, they went at the grisly business of it, most of the soldiers of the 39th at least quietly wondering how they’d go if ever they were ever obliged to stick those cruel bayonets into an actual person. How would they go,
then
?

In the course of the early days of the formation of the 39th Battalion, many soldiers who were in the military for the first time were also learning something of the building blocks of the army structure, and the way this structure ideally worked. Each of them was a private, and it usually took ten privates to make up a section. The section was composed of four riflemen, two scouts (whose job it was to get themselves in forward positions and act as the eyes and ears), a machine gunner and his ‘number 2’, a second-in-command (2IC) called a lance corporal and the section commander, who was a corporal. Three sections made up a platoon, which was commanded by a lieutenant, with a sergeant as his second-in-command. Three platoons formed a company, under the command of a major, with a captain 2IC and company sergeant major—a warrant officer class 2. As well, each company would have its retinue of cooks, medics and the like.

Four companies, usually designated A, B, C and D, formed a battalion—although the militia, like the 39th Battalion, also had a machine-gun company called E company. And each battalion, incidentally, had its own colours which it was their job to—both metaphorically and physically—hoist high in the course of their actions. In the case of the 39th, the colours were a mélange of brown and red, which the men knew colloquially as ‘Mud Over Blood’. These were always visible as a patch on their lapels, as well as on the battalion flag, which was used for ceremonial occasions. And speaking of blood, if they were injured in the course of a battle they were to fall back to the RAP or Regimental Aid Post, for a preliminary assessment. But moving along…

Battalions were usually commanded by a lieutenant colonel, known as the CO or commanding officer, and his wider staff included a major as 2IC, and other officers with such responsibilities as intelligence, logistics, operations, mortars, medical services, signals and administration, while transport formed essentially the fifth ‘support’ company. Battalion HQ was an entity in its own right and the nerve centre of the battalion. Each soldier learnt that in any battle it was essential to protect battalion HQ as it was the brain of the whole body—now composed of over five hundred men—which gathered in all intelligence from the battlefront and issued hopefully intelligent instructions. Three battalions formed a brigade, commanded by a brigadier, and higher still than a brigadier— way up high in charge of a division of three brigades—was a major general, then further up a lieutenant general and general. All put together, it could get very complicated from a lowly private’s perspective and, for many of the new recruits, the only safe way forward was to snap off salutes to anyone with insignia on their shoulder indicating that he wasn’t a private, and try to work out their rank and significance later on.

Mind you, it could be a lark sometimes to have a go at officers the men didn’t like—and there were a few of them—by lining up one after the other and walking up and down the street past the targeted officer to make him salute till his bleedin’ arm near fell off. Ah, how Smoky and the boys laughed, most particularly if the officer had a sheila on his arm and he had to let go of her every time to do it properly.

Naturally enough, as they trained and learnt the mechanics of military killing, each and every man thought about death. The possibility of a sudden and violent end changed men, made them keen to put as much into their remaining life as possible. Oh, a bloke didn’t really think
he himself
was going to die—it was mostly other blokes you worried about—but the fact that you might die kind of gave justification for doing things you otherwise wouldn’t. There were at least two or three of the 39th who went on an ‘11.59’ pass—meaning they had to be back before midnight—to Melbourne, and came back with a glazed expression on the Sunday night… and not a few thereafter would be visiting the battalion doctor shortly afterwards, complaining that it burned every time they pissed. (A popular expression at the time was to say someone was ‘all dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk’, and now many of them were finding out just what that meant, for real.)

One who didn’t make such trips to St Kilda for such a purpose was Joe Dawson. He’d been extremely happy going steady with Elaine Colbran for a couple of years now, they were both devoted to the teachings of Catholicism, and apart from all that, he just wasn’t that kind of bloke.

In mid-November 1941, General Thomas Blamey returned briefly to Australia from the Middle East to have, among other things, consultations with John Curtin—the new prime minister who had just taken over the helm from Robert Menzies. General Blamey also took the opportunity to make a nationwide radio address to inform the Australian people of how the AIF was faring against the Germans, the Italians and the traitorous Vichy French, and also to achieve something else besides.

Since his return from Europe Blamey had been staggered by how little worried Australians seemed by the still far-away war; how they continued to go to the pub, the races, their dances and the football as if nothing was happening, as if his men weren’t then and there putting their lives on the line every day in the desert. It angered him, the more so because the only way the Australian troops could prosper at the front was if there was a committed war effort at home and the nation as a whole was behind them, aware of the sacrifices they were making and prepared to make their own sacrifices in at least some small way. Blamey was conscious also, even if the people weren’t, that Australia risked having more enemies in the near future than the aforementioned and he felt obliged to make at least oblique reference to it, though diplomatic niceties prevented him from making direct statements.

Still, after preliminaries, he got to the nub of his message: ‘And to come from that atmosphere and its scenes back to

Australia gives one the most extraordinary feeling of helplessness,’ he grated in his rather clipped military tones. ‘You are like—here in this country—a lot of gazelles grazing in a dell on the edge of the jungle, while the beasts of prey are working up towards you, apparently unseen, unnoticed. And it is the law of the jungle that they spring upon you, merciless…
’
¹⁵

CHAPTER THREE

BATTLE STATIONS

The Japanese warriors—the samurai—had always lived to die. Their maxim was to expect death every day and to comport themselves in a fashion to be ready for it. That was also the way in which the Japanese soldiers lived in this new army, and it explains why the Japanese had the attitude they did towards dying in battle and taking or being taken prisoner. There was no place in the Japanese military code for prisoners. If you won, you were victorious. If you lost, you were dead. It was as simple, and as cruel as that…

Edwin P. Hoyt,
Warlord—Tojo Against The World
¹⁶

It is now generally agreed that the Australian defence policy between the wars and until the fall of Singapore was at the best, naively optimistic, and at the worst… close to treason.

Professor David Horner,
Crisis of Command
¹⁷

As Sunday mornings went, it was a typically quiet one at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941. Many of the regular residents were just getting ready to head off to church, and many military personnel were trying to shake off hangovers from the previous night’s carousing when, almost as one, they turned to the northwest to the noise of a sudden massed droning. What was that?