Kokoda (82 page)

Australians prepare for a battle at Eora Creek village. The native village huts often provided a good spot for the wounded to rest away from the incessant rain.
(Photograph by Damien Parer.)

Two stills of wounded soldiers from Damien Parer’s
Kokoda Front Line
film. The soldier below, from the 2/14th, is on a stretcher, with a native stretcher bearer— a Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel—behind him waiting to carry him back down the track.

The wounded who could manage to walk back down the track often formed ‘conga lines’ to support each other. These men from the 39th had a six-day trek to reach a hospital.

A welcome sight for soldiers heading back from the front: the Salvos moved up the track offering relief for the wounded.

Colonel Ralph Honner proudly addresses his 39th Battalion at Menari. The 39th had long been considered an inferior force, but after weeks of intense fighting on the track they proved themselves to be ‘ragged bloody heroes’. Damien Parer was there to capture the bedraggled 39th’s moment of redemption.

Major General Basil Morris, General Officer Commanding New Guinea Force.

‘Australia looks to America’: General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander Allied Forces Southwest Pacific Area with John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia.

(
Left to right
) General Kenny, General Thomas Blamey, General Douglas MacArthur and Frank Forde, Australian Minister for the Army, during a visit to New Guinea in 1942.

Native porters provided the Australian troops with invaluable support, carrying supplies up the track and over temporary bridges like this one in New Guinea or by slowly stretchering wounded Australians back down the track, despite the steep slopes and mountain streams
(below)
.
(Top photograph by Damien Parer.)