Kokoda (62 page)

Now more experienced in the ways of jungle warfare, the Australians knew enough to start moving towards the flanks, and it wasn’t long before they were able to shut the woodpecker down, but as always it had come at too great a cost. On this track, advances always came at the cost of blood.

Another common problem was snipers up trees, but the Australians soon learnt that one way of helping to increase their security was simply to spray with machine-gun fire any tree
likely
to hold snipers, and take it from there. If they were lucky, a Japanese soldier would fall from the branches.

Chester Wilmot could bear it no more. Infuriated at the way Blamey had organised the New Guinea campaign from the outset, and appalled at the resulting waste of Australian lives, he had been further outraged at Blamey’s treatment of both Brigadier Potts and General Rowell. Wilmot further felt stifled. Not only had the censors kept the truth of what happened in Kokoda from getting out, but Blamey had ensured that the report Wilmot had written for Rowell about what had ailed the campaign was destroyed. (Although, as it turned out later, one copy had survived.)

In this report, Wilmot said that he believed Blamey had lost the confidence of the Australian troops. Specifically on the subject of the New Guinea campaign, Wilmot was blunt. ‘It may be argued that the AIF were not trained because their role had been the defence of Brisbane and for this they had been trained. But what of the troops in Moresby? Why were they not trained? It may partly be the fault of the local commander, but it must be remembered that New Guinea Force was directly under the command of Land Forces Headquarters…’ Step forward, General Blamey.

Wilmot’s final line summed up the thrust of his report: ‘If the troops sent to the Owen Stanley Range in August had been properly trained, acclimatised and equipped, and if they had had adequate air support, the withdrawal and the consequent considerable losses of valuable personnel need never have taken place.’

Wilmot simply felt that the truth about Blamey
had
to come out one way or another, and that it was up to him to make it happen. And there was, after all, a notable precedent for a journalist taking action. In the Great War, one of the foremost Australian war correspondents and the founder of the Murdoch dynasty, Keith Murdoch, had decided to ignore the censors entirely to ensure that the truth of the situation in Gallipoli was published.

In this new circumstance, however, there was no way that Wilmot’s employer, the ABC, could go against the censorship laws promulgated by the government of the day. So, on a quick trip back to Australia, Chester decided to go directly to the head of that government, John Curtin, and convince him personally that General Blamey was an incompetent commander who had no business filling the Australian Army’s highest post. To get to the prime minister, he decided to seek the good offices of the most famous correspondent of the Great War, Charles Bean, who was a good friend. One letter from Bean to the prime minister, and it was done. On a day in mid-October Prime Minister Curtin received Chester Wilmot in his office in Parliament House in Canberra.

Speaking to the prime minister in urgent though still deeply respectful tones, Wilmot, who had never served in the army, listed what he thought were the most flagrant shortcomings of the army’s most distinguished and senior officer—an officer whose own military pedigree boasted the white sands of the Gallipoli shore. But let the devil take the hindmost and stand in the queue, Wilmot didn’t hold back. With the quiet forensic focus of the superb journalist he was, the ABC man detailed Blamey’s most insane decisions, from the saga of the green uniforms to the inadequacies of supply; from the decision to sack Rowell to the insanity of removing Potts, both of whom were among the few good things that the Australian soldiers in New Guinea had going for them.

The prime minister heard Chester out—as was ever his way, throughout his entire political career—and then made a grave, regretful reply. Though John Curtin didn’t ‘pull rank’ and say what he could have—that it was entirely improper and presumptuous for a journalist to speak about the nation’s foremost military commander in this fashion—he did make it clear that he effectively had no choice but to side with Blamey in the matter. He told the aggrieved journalist that nothing he had heard here was anything new, and that he was quite aware that Chester had long been a fierce critic of General Blamey.

Nevertheless, it had been Curtin’s experience as prime minister that in just about every instance General Blamey had effectively been able to predict what the Japanese were going to do before they did it, and that it was obvious to him that Blamey must have a first-class military mind to be able to do this. That mistakes had been made, he did not doubt. That it could have been done better was of course clear with the benefit of hindsight. But Blamey resided at the head of a massive military organisation of 250 000 men, making decisions on the run for many different theatres of war, and Curtin wasn’t going to sack him because Chester Wilmot wasn’t happy with the colour of the troops’ uniforms. Curtin equally knew that it would be bad for both public morale and the morale of the military men if the prime minister stepped in and sacked the most powerful military figure in the country. What kind of message would that send about how the war was faring?

Case dismissed, and with this the ‘power struggle’ between Wilmot and Blamey was at least officially over. What remained to be seen was the fallout.

Yet, while the power of radio broadcaster Chester Wilmot in this instance proved to be limited in its capacity to change the course of events, the same could not be said of other radio broadcasters in New Guinea, even though they used different methods and had an entirely different target audience.

Back in June 1942, the Far Eastern Liaison Office, known as FELO, had been set up by the Australian authorities with the specific purpose of winning the hearts and minds of the New Guinea native population, while also lowering the morale of the Japanese soldier through strategies such as leaflet drops. Throughout the following October, as the Australians continued to push the Japanese back along the track, there was a strong effort by FELO to use the power of radio—and many wireless sets were by now dotted around the villages under the auspices of ANGAU and FELO and others—to ensure that the natives remained loyal to the Allies and worked against the Japanese on all fronts.

It was a plan that entirely changed the natives’ views of radio, who to this point, believed that the radio was ‘SAMTING BILONG MASTA’, ‘something belonging to the boss man’. Now, on appointed days at specified times, the agents of FELO would gather the natives around the village sets and the program would begin with some favourite SING-SING music. Then to the point… As the natives stared with wonder at the amazing box making the wonderful music, an authoritative voice would ring out with a specific instruction for a man named ‘Anis’, a common native name. To wit:

‘MI IGUT TOKTOK LONG ANIS,’ ‘I have a message for Anis’. ‘ANIS YU HARIM MI?’ ‘Anis, can you hear me?’

Then there would be a long pause, giving every Anis listening across the country the chance to rise up and cry: ‘KIAP, MI ANIS! ME HARIM YU!’ ‘
I’m
Anis, and I’m listening to you!’

Now that the box with the magical powers was satisfied that it indeed had the attention of Anis, it would reel off instructions. First and foremost, as Anis was especially selected from the whole village, he must be responsible for telling everyone in that village that the Australian and American soldiers were coming and that they were GUTPELAS, ‘good fellows’, who were coming to help and the villagers must do everything in turn to help them—get them food, water, shelter and whatever they asked for. But Anis was also charged with bearing the bad news that if the Japanese came they were BADPELAS, they were there to hurt everyone, to take the natives’ land and rape the women. Everything must be done to deny them, to damage them, to make them go away—
Everything
, Anis.

‘ANIS YU SARWEY WUNEM MI TOKTOK?’ ‘Anis, are you listening?’

‘MI HARIM YU!’ ‘I can hear you!’

More SING-SING music and then goodbye, until the same time next week… It was a popular program at all levels.
²⁶⁶

MacArthur was furious. Yes, the markers on his office map showing ‘Allied’ positions—read Australian—were now moving forward along the track and it was clear that the Japanese were in full retreat. But one thing he would not abide was any pause in this retreat. For the life of him he could not understand how the Australians were being held up at Eora Creek. (The Australians on site had no trouble understanding. The Japanese were now closer to their own supply lines and were being reinforced by fresh troops; all up they had gathered the necessary wherewithal to mount something of a rearguard action.) But MacArthur wouldn’t hear any of it. He had a very strong opinion about what was
really
going wrong with the leadership of Tubby Allen, and he passed it on via General Blamey in Moresby.

On 8 October General Blamey issued the following missive to Allen: ‘General MacArthur considers quote extremely light casualties indicate no serious effort to displace enemy unquote. You will attack enemy with energy and all possible speed at each point of resistance. Essential that Kokoda airfield be taken at earliest. Apparent enemy gaining time by delaying you with inferior strength.’
²⁶⁷
Again, it was extraordinary the kind of vision MacArthur had some three thousand miles away, but Allen now took the view that if his men weren’t dying in sufficient numbers to gain the respect of the American general, then that was just too damn bad.

Allen’s return message noted that the attacks made by the Australians had been very energetic indeed, and ‘I respectfully submit that success in this campaign cannot be judged by casualties alone.’ This was at least a lot more politic than a message he formed up a short time later, when the missives from MacArthur and Blamey kept coming: ‘If you think you can do any bloody better come up here and bloody try.’
²⁶⁸

And fair enough too. Of all the men on the planet at the time, there were few with as much experience in commanding men—all the way from platoon level to battalion to a division—as Tubby Allen. He had fought with great distinction in World War I, was now deeply involved in another world war, and his battlefield experience was several times the combined total of MacArthur and Blamey. As a matter of fact, Allen had more or less already shown his feelings to MacArthur back when the American general had visited Ower’s Corner in early October, and Allen had been there. On that occasion MacArthur had made some grandiose comment about the need for Allen to push through hard, and the Australian had simply been unable to contain himself, informing the American that when
American
troops started to do a bit of pushing through themselves, they would earn his respect, but not before.

On this occasion, though, Tubby Allen was dissuaded from sending the ‘come up here and bloody try’—message by his chief of staff. Yet tragically, when it came to casualties one would have thought there were soon enough to satisfy even MacArthur, as in devastatingly bitter fighting, Brigadier Lloyd’s 16th Brigade lost a total of three hundred killed and wounded, over ten days fighting at Eora Creek.
²⁶⁹

Nevertheless, it was now clear that Allen remained right on the edge of being dismissed, as certified by Blamey when he told one member of the press: ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that it takes six days to send in a relief I’d sack the old bastard.’
²⁷⁰

As it turned out, Blamey was in the mood for doing quite a bit of sacking at this time, and not just Tubby Allen. For now Pottsy was in his sights. And if it wasn’t Blamey’s last bit of bastardry, it was among the most hurtful. After calling him back to Moresby for consultations, and briefly returning him to command 21st Brigade, on 22 October Blamey relieved Brigadier Potts of his command, just as he had Rowell, though in Potts’s case he was sent to Darwin.

Before leaving, Potts penned a letter to his men.

Special Message to Officers, NCOs and men,

HQ 21st Aust. Inf. Bde,

23 October 42.

On relinquishing my command of the 21st Brigade, it is impossible to express my feelings adequately to all its members.

Though in command of you for only six months, my association has been for the full period of service of the Brigade. It has so grown to be part of my life, that even when not facing you or speaking directly to you, the task of saying goodbye is the hardest job in my life and one I flunk badly.