‘JAPUN MUN I CUM. BIKPELA GUN. BIKPELA BOM. PLUNTI MUN E DI. JAPUN MUN NO GUT. WITMUN NA BLUKMUN MUS FAIT WUNTIM.’ ‘The Japanese have come with big guns and lots of bombs. Lots of men have been killed. Now the white man and black man must fight together.’
The natives would see a lot more of such things in the weeks ahead, as all over the north coast the white fellas burnt to the ground just about everything they had spent years building up, gathered whatever servants had remained loyal to them, loaded them with everything they could carry and tried to make their way south—
away
from the swarming Japs.
It was at last light on the day after the two groups of missionaries and soldiers had joined that the worst happened. Bullets from a Japanese patrol started whistling around them and the group did the only thing they could, which was to rush into the jungle and keep hurtling through as far as they could, the vines tearing at them and the undergrowth and roots constantly tripping them. In the madness of it all Father Benson became separated from the main group. Two days later, the group were just outside the village of Manugulasi, when again a Japanese patrol opened fire from a distance and again they dived every which way. This time though, they would not escape unscathed. Three soldiers were hit and killed on the spot, while another three were wounded and quickly bayoneted to death.
Two others got away, but were captured shortly afterwards and executed by the Japanese, one after brutal interrogation. The two Sisters, meanwhile, continued to wander through the jungle, as did Father Benson on another track. The Sisters were both relieved when they came out at the village of Dobodura, which they knew of and thought to be friendly. But they were mistaken, for in no time a village councillor by the name of Embogi, who was in the employ of the nearby Japanese, had betrayed their presence and they were captured and interrogated.
Shortly afterwards, the two Sisters were taken by four Japanese soldiers into the jungle. Two of the soldiers were carrying shovels. Sister Mavis had on a tattered red, white and yellow dress, while Sister May was in green.
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They went off the jungle track into a small clearing. The soldiers dug a hole in the soft jungle floor about three feet deep, which to the two Sisters looked a great deal like a shallow grave. Please, Dear God, oh merciful Jesus, son of the Father and the Holy Ghost, NO.
Sister Mavis made a sudden attempt to run, but was grabbed by a Japanese soldier who plunged a bayonet deep into her side. She fell screaming and died almost instantly. Sister May, praying to her Lord and Saviour, was ordered in a kind of sign language to put a towel over her head. The instant she tremblingly did so, a soldier cut her throat. Without ceremony, their bodies were thrown into the hole and covered as, unseen, a native lad witnessed the whole scene from behind the bushes.
The murders of the two Sisters left Father James Benson as the sole white-fella survivor of those who had originally set out to escape from the Japanese. Although he was yet to find out that Sister Mavis and Sister May were dead, he was all too aware of their likely fate and the fates of many of his other friends and colleagues on the north coast of New Guinea. Again, he could not understand that somehow he had survived while others close to him had died. For some time as he stumbled through the jungle, Father Benson contemplated suicide. At the precise moment he was looking at a promising vine to see whether it would hold his weight, he spied a Japanese patrol some distance away. He surrendered. If they killed him on the spot he would be no worse off. Putting on his priestly garb to indicate he was a non-combatant, he walked towards them with his hands in the air and asked if any of them spoke English.
At least one soldier had a basic grasp of it because he stepped up and roared ‘Spy!’ and punched him in the face. Two soldiers with bayonets drawn came at him giving him just enough time to make the sign of the cross before they…
… grabbed him and led him away. With that, his three years of imprisonment had just begun.
Many of the scattered Australians along the north coast were not so fortunate and met similar fates to Sister Mavis and Sister May. Often, after the Japanese had captured the Europeans they would be interrogated and then dealt with summarily. On one occasion nine captives from Sangara rubber plantation and a nearby mission— including two priests, two female missionaries, a young woman and a young child—were taken on to Buna beach as the villagers and Japanese troops gathered around. The Japanese soldiers from this most brutal of units, the Sasebo Landing Force might have known what was coming, but the gentle villagers of Buna did not.
One by one the captives, including a male plantation assistant, were made to kneel. Then, drawing a massive samurai sword, an enormous Japanese officer with the rank and name of Sub-Lieutenant Komai, shouted something unintelligible in his own language, raised the sword high above his head and brought it down hard on the back of each individual’s neck, smiting their head off with one clean blow.
In all the screams of horror, none was more frightened than those coming from the six-year-old son of the plantation assistant. This youngster was obliged to stand there as his kneeling and weeping father told him that he loved him, just before the Japanese officer brought down his sword. Immediately afterwards, the same officer took the weeping child, obliged him also to kneel and then took his head off too. In terms of the Kokoda campaign, it was the first piece of barbarous savagery done publicly, but by no means the last. To the villagers of Buna, it served as a warning: the invaders were here for a purpose and would brook no resistance whatsoever. Those who resisted in any fashion whatsoever would be dealt with equally summarily.
As it happened, however, the Japanese would not themselves escape from much the same barbarity. On their trek through the mountain ranges, Osmar White and Damien Parer had met an Australian soldier known as ‘Paddles’, who was travelling with—as White later described him—‘a small, pot-black native about four feet nine inches tall, nicknamed Lik-Lik, a cheerful-looking creature with a grin that spread right around his head. Paddles said that Lik-Lik was being sent back in disgrace and told us about his offence…’
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It seems that when Lik-Lik had accompanied an Australian patrol in a raid on Salamaua a short time earlier, the native had begged for permission to carry the ammunition bag for one of the sergeants. This he had done with great alacrity during the raid, and had even proved himself to the point of personally killing two Japanese soldiers with his bush knife. But immediately after the raid, as Paddles told them, Lik-Lik had suddenly disappeared.
At last though, as White wrote: ‘Lik-Lik arrived, exhausted, dragging a bulging copra sack. It contained 13 Japanese heads. He then had the effrontery to ask for leave so that he could take them back to his village in the hills and hang them on the pole of the
darimus
(men’s club-house). When it was pointed out to him that very little credit would devolve on him for cutting off the heads of men killed by other warriors, he replied simply: “But they were not dead [when I found them], boss. They were only wounded”.’
Securing the daily 3 tonne supply for the Force would require approximately 230 carriers per day reaching the front line. This amounts in total, given the 20 day round trip, to a requirement for approximately 4600 carriers. If the front were to advance to Port Moresby, some 360 km distant from Buna, then to supply food alone would require 32 000 carriers.
General Horii before the campaign began
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It was an experience I would not have cared to miss, and among the impressions of that exciting night, none stands out more clearly than the weirdness of the natural conditions—the thick white mist dimming the moonlight, the mysterious veiling of trees, houses and men, the drip of moisture from the foliage, and at the last, the almost complete silence, as if the rubber groves of Kokoda were sleeping as usual in the depths of the night, and men had not brought disturbance.
Diary entry of Doc Vernon, when the 39th left Kokoda
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Colonel Owen left a skeleton crew of men at Deniki—almost literally, as constant marching and fighting and lack of proper food had had its effect—and took eighty men of the 39th forward to reclaim possession of Kokoda late on the morning of 28 July 1942. As the weary Australians marched into the village, the feel in the air was eerily still, as if a big storm was brewing on the horizon. There was no sign of the villagers who continued to make themselves scarce while all the fighting was on and, more bizarrely still, there was still no sign of the Japanese even though the crucial Kokoda airfield had been left unguarded for over twenty-four hours. What the men of the 39th felt instinctively, though, was that the Japs were not far away. As far as the Australians knew, none of their own forces were north of this point, meaning that there was nothing between the Japs who had been at Oivi and them in Kokoda, so why wouldn’t the Japanese now be at least on the edge of the jungle, only two hundred yards away?
Just before noon, after having assessed the situation, Colonel Owen got a radio message through to General Morris in Moresby: ‘Re-occupied Kokoda. Fly reinforcements, including 2 Platoon and four detachments of mortars. Drome opened.’
Ahhh, the sheer relief of it! For just three hours later, Colonel Owen and the men of the 39th felt their spirits soar as they could hear the drone of approaching aircraft from the direction of Moresby. Up there! In a small break in the cloud cover, they suddenly saw two American Douglas transport aircraft. Though the men on the ground didn’t dance around, that was certainly the mood. Once the planes had landed and disgorged soldiers and supplies they
really
might be able to give the Japs a workover and…
And, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, but then you couldn’t mistake it, the sound of the aircraft
receded
again, ebbing away to nothing but the sudden roar of the flies all around. How could this
be
… ?
Up above the thick cloud cover, the Allied pilots had caught sight of Japanese Zeros in the distance and quickly hightailed it for home. In their view, it was not merely their lives at stake, but those of the soldiers each plane had on board. They were even keen to save the life of one of the brutes in the back of one of the planes who, with his brand new Bren gun, had smashed a hole in a window of the brand new aircraft and was poking his gun out ready to fire on the first Zero that came within range.
Unbeknown to the frustrated Owen below, the fact that the planes wouldn’t land was not for want of remonstrations by one Australian, Captain Max Bidstrup, who begged the American pilot to land as the troops below were in desperate need of reinforcements and it was worth the risk. The pilot refused.
Upon returning to Moresby, General Morris sent for Bidstrup and a key conversation took place.
General Morris. ‘I believe you flew over?’
Captain Bidstrup: ‘Yes, Sir.’
General Morris: ‘What’s the track like?’
Captain Bidstrup: ‘I was quite surprised. It has very thick cover in most places, but there were quite a few open spaces where I believe we could use mortars on the Japs.’
General Morris: ‘Rot, boy! Bloody rot! The mortars would burst in the treetops!’
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Interview over.
So mortars were not provided. No matter that Colonel Owen had specifically requested them, and Bidstrup had affirmed that they would be useful. It was yet one more example of the military mindset in this New Guinea war where the leadership had extremely set ideas of what the situation was and what needed to be done, and held fast to that view whatever information was provided to the contrary. Regrettably, there would be many more occasions to come.
In the then and there, though, the net result of the plane’s failure to land was that what would have been a mere twenty-minute trip for the men on board, became a six-day slog to get there the hard way. Only a short time after returning to Seven Mile Airfield, the remainder of the 39th Battalion headed off on Shanks’s pony—their own two legs—to once again try to get to their comrades at Kokoda. Time and again over the next few days as they pushed their exhausted way forward, these troops would think of how very close they had got, of how easy it would have been; but now they had to face this…
The only break these unfortunates got on the way up was, sometimes, when they arrived at a clearing and the lieutenant would call a halt and they were allowed ten minutes or so of practice-firing with the Thompson sub-machine guns they had been issued the day before leaving. Most of the men had never fired a machine gun of any description in training and the lieutenant thought it best that they have a rough idea of what it was like before facing the Japanese. What they learnt too, soon enough, was that while the Thompson had received rave reviews from the AIF who had used it in the Middle East, here in the jungle with all the humidity and mud, it all too frequently jammed up. D Company, under Captain Bidstrup, were the only ones to have the far more highly prized Bren guns, and then only by a stroke of good fortune.
On the eve of departure—right after his frustrating conversation with General Morris—the good captain had been at Company Headquarters when a bloke with a truck had pulled up asking where Brigade Headquarters were.