Kokoda Track Foundation
Thursday August 28th, 2008
LAST UPDATED
Stan Bisset Turns 96
By Patrick Lindsay, Chairman
He’s not only the oldest surviving Kokoda veteran, he’s also our oldest living Wallaby rugby player, having played for Australia against the Springboks in 1937.
Perhaps more than any other, Stan represents to me the Spirit of Kokoda.
Even today, Stan Bisset still holds himself like the great leader he has always been ... and he refuses to give an inch in his fight against father time.
Stan was one of the leaders of the 2/14th Battalion which relieved Ralph Honner’s young 39th Battalion at the crucial Battle for Isurava in August 1942. Stan’s older brother Butch was a platoon commander in the battalion. A charismatic larrikin, Butch was much loved by his men and had proved himself a fierce leader in the Middle-East.
Butch’s platoon took over the high ground at Kokoda and held off between 30 and 40 massed assaults (of 100 and 200 men) by the Japanese. (To give an idea of the fierceness of the fighting there: months later, when the Australians regained the position as they forced the Japanese back up the track, they found around 250 Japanese graves around Butch Bisset’s platoon’s position.)
Stan was at the battalion headquarters at Isurava when a runner told him Butch had been hit. He’d been caught across the chest with a burst of machine-gun fire and was mortally wounded. Butch had ordered his men to leave him, even threatened them with his pistol. But they ignored him and brought him back to HQ, fighting their way out while holding a makeshift stretcher with one hand and firing their weapons with the other.
The harsh fact of life in the jungle was that if you suffered an abdominal wound you had virtually no chance of survival. No choppers, no medivac, if you couldn’t walk out or be carried out on a bush stretcher by the magnificent Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, you died.
One of the medical officers put it this way: “To deal with an abdominal wound you would have to have an operating theatre, an anaesthetist, a surgeon, possible an assistant surgeon and a good deal of gear. So you gave them a shot of morphine ...”
Stan spent five hours with Butch as the battle raged around them. Stan was, and still is, a wonderful singer with a great baritone voice, and he held Butch’s hand and sang his favourite songs and they told tales of their childhood as butch slipped in and out of consciousness and finally died.
Then, somehow, Stan had to put aside his grief at losing his beloved brother and continue the fight. He was able to do that magnificently, subsequently winning the Military Cross for his consistent gallantry through the campaign.
Today, Stan lives on the Sunshine Coast with his beloved wife Gloria. Today he celebrated his birthday with his family, a living Australian treasure.
He’s still dedicated to his battalion association and to keeping the story of Kokoda alive. He has been an inspiration to generations of Australians as a man of honour, courage and compassion.
If Stan and his mates had been American, they would be household names, celebrated in movies and on memorials across the nation.
Let’s make sure that they live in our hearts and that their story becomes part of our Dreamtime, to be handed down to future generations.
Ends//