Eric Bergerud,
Touched With Fire.
108
His name was Nik, and he was a young native of the Orokaiva tribe living in the village of Buna. In the humming late-afternoon sun of 21 July 1942, he was walking along the sands of the nearby Basabua beach when he chanced to look seawards and saw something that would remain with him for the rest of his days. It was a ship, perhaps a mile offshore, and hovering around it were smaller craft onto which many soldiers were climbing. The little boats were flat-nosed barges about ten yards long, powered by quiet motors. Now only a few hundred yards off the shore, one of those landing craft was coming over the breakers. A just-discernible white flag with a red spot in the middle and red rays coming out of it indicated where they were coming from. When Nik looked to the part of the beach it was heading to, he could see hundreds of soldiers had already landed. Nik ran back to the village proper… ‘JAPON E CUM! JAPON E CUM!’
Some of the curious villagers accompanied him back to the shore to see for themselves, but they had no sooner gained the soft sand than some shots rang out. The low drone of a plane close overhead told them they were observed and it was clear that they were no longer welcome on their own shore where, coming off three troop transport ships—protected by cruisers and destroyers—were some eighteen hundred Japanese soldiers ready to establish their beachhead. With them, in boats behind, came twelve hundred Rabaul natives and fifty packhorses, there to do a lot of the hard work of hauling the Japanese supplies forward. A new power had arrived in the land bringing in its wake the worst feature of the twentieth century— war on a massive scale…
In the nearby village of Gona, just one mile to the west of Buna, the news arrived quickly and caused immediate action. The picturesque village—perched between the dark jungle on one side and the shining Solomon Sea on the other—had a red-roofed Anglican mission with church and schoolhouse, headed by Father James Benson with two other priests and two sisters, Sister May Hayman and Sister Mavis Parkinson. In this tranquil place by the sea, the two sisters were doing their mending and listening to some wonderful gramophone music in the lovely cooling shade of the mission’s verandah amidst the wonderful fragrance of the hibiscus and frangipani flowers, when the news reached them.
‘O JAPON MUN E CUM!’
Suspecting only too well what could happen if the Japanese caught them, they quickly gathered a bare minimum of personal possessions and, with a few other mission staff, took off down the track towards the small settlement of Kokoda where they hoped they would be able to catch a plane to the safety of Port Moresby.
As they took their first hurried steps up the track, one of the Japanese ships fired a few shots of artillery towards an unknown target—more than likely just as a warning to whatever minimal resistance there might be on shore.
At Awala, Sam Templeton and his men heard the distant rumbling coming from the cloud-lined coast and put it down to the thunder one frequently heard in New Guinea.
Damien Parer and Osmar White, on the other hand, were then far to the west with Kanga Force, camped high on Mount Tambu. Guessing what the rumbling signalled, they immediately made plans to trek to the nearest airfield and return to Moresby to file their copy and photographs, and make reports on the war hotting up in New Guinea.
Most importantly, however, the booming of the guns attracted the attention of both Lieutenant Alan Champion and Sergeant Barry Harper where they were working at the administrative outpost of the Buna government station. Harper had arrived in New Guinea as a member of the 39th, but had quickly transferred to the Air Warning Wireless Company as a spotter, and had now no sooner heard the sound than he climbed up to his lookout point to see the shore. Quickly scurrying back to his radio, he flicked it to the emergency frequency and furiously began intoning: ‘Moresby this is Sergeant Harper. A Japanese warship is shelling Buna apparently to cover a landing at Gona or Sanananda. Acknowledge, Moresby. Over…’
‘Moresby this is Sergeant Harper. A Japanese warship is shelling Buna apparently to cover a landing at Gona or Sanananda. Acknowledge, Moresby. Over…’
And on and on he tried, greeted only by silence and static. Still he kept going.
‘Moresby, this is Sergeant Harper, do you read me? Over… Moresby, this is Harper, do you read me, over? Moresby, this is Sergeant Harper, if you read me a Japanese warship is shelling Buna. Possible cover for a landing at Gona or Sanananda. Over… ’
Unfortunately, such were the vagaries of radio communication in New Guinea that Sergeant Harper received no response from Port Moresby because his message was not received. It
was
picked up, however, by another government station, Ambasi, to the west of Gona, which was manned by three soldiers also formerly of the 39th, Sergeants Holyoke, Hanna and Palmer, and later that afternoon they succeeded in getting the urgent message through, before tearing off into the jungle on their own account desperately trying to outrun the Japanese.
All up, it was a comfortable trip. A neat four months after Douglas MacArthur had arrived in Melbourne, he set off for Brisbane with his entire entourage to establish his new headquarters a little closer to the action. His wife, Jeannie, still refused to fly, so the Australian Government had provided them with a train. But not just any train. It was a train replete with plush carpets, mahogany furnishing and the royal coat of arms, as it had been constructed for the Prince of Wales for his state visit several years before. An appropriately regal conveyance for such as the American general and, as the MacArthurs moved north, crowds of Australians formed up on platforms, overpasses and simply by the track just to see them go past.
The good general had just pulled into Sydney, though, when a top priority urgent dispatch reached him. The Japanese had landed at Buna and were already in control of the immediate area. The Japs had, in short, beaten him to it.
Clearly, there seemed to be an urgent need to get Allied soldiers between Buna and Kokoda to thwart any Japanese attempts to move inland. Still, MacArthur wasn’t too worried. By the time he had conferred with his two experts on this part of the campaign—his former Chief of Staff, General Richard Sutherland, and Major General Charles A. Willoughby—they had assured him that the Japanese landing at Buna was likely a minor incursion, much as it had been at Lae. Certainly, the codebreakers had warned them two months before that the Japs might try to invade in force across the Owen Stanley Range and all the way to Moresby, but MacArthur and his team still viewed this as impossible.
With this judgment, there seemed to be no need to send the men of the 7th Division to New Guinea. The AIF men could be safely kept in Australia for the main game, which was to retake Rabaul as a stepping-stone to the Philippines. Certainly, Allied aircraft had been quickly sent over the ranges in New Guinea to strafe and bomb the Japanese landing craft at Buna and had achieved some limited success. But it was the nature of the terrain that once the Japanese soldiers were on the ground it was really only other soldiers that could effectively counter them. So, at least as a nod of recognition to the fact that the situation had changed, and after discussions with MacArthur, General Blamey ordered General Morris in Moresby to send the rest of the 39th Battalion over the Owen Stanley Range to parry whatever minor thrusts the Japanese might make.
Well, he’d be blowed. Bert Kienzle had just arrived in the village of Nauro on the ridge overlooking the distant village of Ioribaiwa, while on his way back to Moresby for more supplies, when who should he spy sitting under a tree—sheltering from the infernal pelting rain and having a cup of soup—but ol’ Doc Vernon. The two greeted each other warmly and compared notes.
Kienzle told Doc how they had fared on the TREK with all the PORTERS and how very TOUGH it had BEEN!—speaking very loudly to compensate for Doc’s near profound deafness. Doc replied that he was moving up the track to check out the medical facilities at each of the staging posts that Kienzle had set up. Doc had been a very keen walker all his life and was coping admirably with the hills. But he was also gaining insight as to how badly the terrain would knock around both porters and soldiers carrying heavy loads. He had already taken copious notes on the medical wear and tear he had witnessed so far—from blisters to badly twisted ankles and knees, to terrible respiratory infections brought on by the mountain air. But no time to tarry. Each had his work to do and they headed off in opposite directions. There was a war to be won and they had to get on with it.
Was his life jinxed? The 55-year-old English-born Father James Benson could be forgiven for thinking just that with every step, as he continued along the track heading south with Sister May and Sister Mavis and others from Gona mission. As they tried to escape the Japanese, who they knew were in hot pursuit, several things worked at Father Benson’s spirit.
109
One was the conversations he’d had with a young ANGAU officer by the name of Tom Grahamslaw. That young man had implored him to send Sister May and Sister Mavis back to Australia out of harm’s way. If the Japanese landed, he had said, it wasn’t just those beautiful young women who’d be in trouble, but also the ANGAU personnel who would be sent out to save them. He’d been so convincing that Father Benson had proposed the idea to his Bishop, but it had been the view of that good man that it was the Sisters’ duty to remain. And, dedicated young women that they were, remain they had. And now here they all were in the middle of a war in a jungle.
And the other thing that worked at Father Benson was the same thing that had pressed at him every day of his life, as his mind turned to the events of many, many years before when his life had all been so different. Then, he’d been a supremely happy rector on the south coast of New South Wales, living in Bodalla with his darling wife and three young children. One dark night he’d been driving the whole family home when up ahead he saw the light of the car ferry pulled into the siding to take them across the Clyde River.
Taking the car straight on to the ferry he had only realised at the last instant that the light was in fact simply a lantern left there by a workman as a warning of work they had been doing on the siding… but by then it was too late. The car had plunged into the waters. Time and again after bursting to the surface he had dived back into the waters trying to get his family out, but nothing. When they were retrieved the following morning they were all blue and swollen. Why were
they
the ones to die, while
he
was the one to survive? Could there have been anything crueller than to have to live with the knowledge that because of his mistake the four people most precious to him in the world had died a terrible death? Nothing had tested his faith more, and after a long unsettled period he had moved up to the north coast of New Guinea where he had done fine work in educating and improving the health of the natives. But now this.
When the Japanese had started shelling Buna and sending their boats into the shore, the missionaries had gathered essential supplies in barely five minutes and started trekking to another mission some thirty miles inland where they could both warn of the approaching danger and get some immediate refuge. Just two hours later, though, while resting briefly in a small clearing off the track, they had heard approaching voices and looked through the tall, razor-sharp kunai grass to see a Japanese patrol moving forward. Where to now? Japanese soldiers behind, Japanese soldiers ahead. There was only one way. Through the jungle. With Father Benson and his compass in the lead, they’d stumbled and staggered through the night, trying to make their way to another mission, this one on the Lower Kumusi River.
Sam Templeton moved quickly when he realised that the ‘thunder’ they’d heard the previous evening was nothing of the sort as it continued the following morning through blue skies. The Japs were obviously attacking, and this was confirmed shortly afterwards by a runner coming from the coast.
On the morning of 22 July Templeton was also able to get the radio message through to one of his best men, Lieutenant Seekamp, who was in charge of 11 Platoon, then positioned at Kokoda. The soldiers were to come forward urgently, he instructed, and be prepared to engage the Japanese. Just near Awala, they would find a small force of Major Watson’s Papuan Infantry Battalion set up in defensive positions, and they were to reinforce them. Templeton also instructed 12 Platoon to move down about halfway to Awala, to the village of Gorari, and provide a fall-back position, while 10 Platoon under Lieutenant Gough ‘Judy’ Garland was to hold the fort at Kokoda and set up for the massive reinforcements that should be arriving shortly. Templeton, meanwhile, headed back to Kokoda to receive the 39th’s Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Owen who, he had just been informed, was being urgently flown in.
Completely exhausted, 11 Platoon marched through the day and night, and were getting near Awala just as the forward scout of a PIB patrol led by Lieutenant Chalk sent a signal that a Japanese patrol was on its way and would shortly be upon them. The Japs were many. They were few.
But, despite the disparity, these young Australians were not without confidence as they waited for the Japanese to walk into their trap. After all, everyone knew that one on one the Japs were not formidable foes. Popular legend had them as short-sighted brutes of minimal intelligence and tiny stature, no more than five foot three or four. Yes, the Japs had registered some impressive victories in recent time, but that was no doubt due to their sheer weight of numbers more than anything and…
And here they come now. It was slightly before four o’clock on the afternoon of 23 July, at a time when the searing quality of the day was starting to be replaced by a certain sleepiness. Through the tips of the kunai grass on this rare long straight stretch of track, they could just see the caps on the heads of the Japanese bob-bob-bobbing along towards them. Funny, that was pretty high grass, so it seemed odd that they should be seeing their heads already…