The Battle for Kokoda

History of the Kokoda Track

From its entry into World War II with the surprise destruction of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the Japanese Army quickly established a reputation of invincibility. Pearl Harbour signalled a massive onslaught which saw Japan invade Malaya and Thailand and attack Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island.

On January 23 1942, 20,000 troops from the Japanese South Seas Detachment (the Nankai Shitai) overwhelmed the 1400-strong Australian garrison at Rabaul on New Britain Island in PNG, an Australian Protectorate. For the first time in our history, Australian territory had been invaded.

This shock was compounded when the supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore fell on February 15 1942. Some 130,000 British and Allied troops were trapped there, including virtually the entire Australian 8 th Division – about 15,000 Diggers. They began the tortuous road which would see them decimated in Changi and on the Burma-Thailand Railway.

The war was on Australia’s doorstep and we were hopelessly ill-prepared, as war correspondent, Osmar White, pointed out in his book Green Armour:

“It is difficult to imagine a nation more completely open to even the most hastily prepared invasion than Australia was in the first three months of 1942. All that stood between her and the Japanese were a few hundred miles of unguarded sea, a few hundred miles of uninhabited jungle, a few groups of palm-filled, roadless islands and her own shellback of desert – the inert armour or a neglected and undeveloped north.”

The government rushed back our most experienced troops from the Middle East and, in the meantime, sent a handful of untried militia battalions to Port Moresby to try to hold on until the AIF troops could return to defend their homeland.

These young militia soldiers had volunteered just months earlier and had received minimal training before being put on to transport ships and sent to PNG. They were under-trained, under-equipped and vastly outnumbered. Their average age was eighteen and a half.

Yet it would be these young Diggers who would shatter the myth of invincibility surrounding the Japanese invaders – hardened veterans who had been undefeated in almost constant combat since they invaded Manchuria in 1937.

Japanese Landing

On July 21 1942, the first of 14,430 troops of the Japanese South Seas Detachment from Rabaul began pouring ashore at the tiny seaside village of Buna on the north-east coast of the PNG mainland. They planned to march across the Owen Stanley Range, which formed the mountainous spine of New Guinea, using a native walking track which meandered from Buna to Port Moresby. Once the invaders had secured Moresby, Australia would be at their mercy.

The 39 th Australian Militia Battalion was rushed up that track from the Moresby end with orders to stop the invaders and to hold the only decent airstrip along the track, at the village of Kokoda, about halfway between Moresby and Buna.
The Kokoda Track, as it became known, would be the scene for some of most ferocious hand-to-hand fighting of the Pacific War. The Diggers of Kokoda would write themselves into history by initially stalling and later defeating the Japanese march on Moresby, against all the odds.

Conditions along the Track

The Kokoda Track began with gentle slopes from Buna on the coast through to the Kokoda valley. Then it crumpled and folded into excruciatingly steep ridges, plunging to even deeper valleys, as it progressed through Deniki, Isurava, Eora Creek, Templeton’s Crossing, Kagi, Efogi, Menari, Naoro, Ioribaiwa, Imita Ridge and Ower’s Corner where it joined a primitive vehicle road leading to the coastal plains of Port Moresby.

On many parts of the Track, gradients were so steep that the heavily-burdened soldiers were reduced to staggering up them a few metres at a time. Much of the Track was covered by a canopy of dense rainforest, dripping with moss and leeches and, after each energy-sapping climb, the troops would jolt their way down to rocky creek beds and mosquito-infested swamps. Constant tropical downpours and searing heat and humidity meant the soldiers were almost permanently wet. Then, at night, temperatures would plummet at the higher altitudes.

39th Battalion: Withdrawal from Kokoda

The young men of the first Militia battalion ordered up the Track, the 39 th Battalion, had never fired a shot in anger before being thrown in against the Japanese invaders. Most volunteered around October or November of 1941 and by Christmas that year they were on the steamship Aquitania heading for Port Moresby. They’d done their basic training in Victoria using wooden replica weapons and the first time they handled Bren machine guns was when they unpacked them and cleaned the grease off them on the ship.

Even their opportunity to train for combat at Port Moresby was wasted as they, and their sister battalion, the 53rd, were used as labourers - building defences and unloading supplies - instead of learning the techniques of jungle fighting.
Ordered up the Track in the face of the Japanese landings at Buna, the young Diggers of the 39 th were burdened with packs weighing almost 30 kilograms and wore desert khaki uniforms instead of jungle camouflage kit. Many were already malarial because their anti-malaria medicine had been administered too late.

The first elements of the 39th met the Japanese just north of Kokoda – one company or about 120 Diggers faced the first wave of Japanese, about 1500 seasoned troops. Not surprisingly, the untried Aussies found the first skirmishes difficult and although they caused considerable Japanese casualties, the weight of enemy numbers forced them to fall back to Kokoda where they regrouped. By this stage, the battalion’s Commander, Lt Colonel Owen, had 77 men left, most of whom had not slept for three nights. Nevertheless, Owen deployed his men around the Kokoda plateau and prepared to hold it against the invaders.

The young Diggers acquitted themselves well in the face of overwhelming numbers but, sadly, Colonel Owen was killed during the night of 29 July and the survivors were forced to withdraw from Kokoda and fall back down the Track. The rest of the battalion joined them at a tiny village named Isurava and they decided to make a stand - about 500 Diggers against about 6000 Japanese.

Isurava Battle

Using bayonets, bully-beef tins and their steel helmets, the 39 th Battalion dug in at Isurava. Their new CO, Lt Colonel Ralph Honner, arrived from Australia on July 16, the day before his 38 th birthday. To the teenage Diggers of the 39 th, Ralph Honner, seemed like their grandfather. But his appointment was an inspired move. Honner was one of our finest tactical commanders, having proved his brilliance in the Middle East and Crete.
While the Japanese regrouped at Kokoda, Honner set his defences at Isurava and, equally importantly, set about instilling his young troops with confidence.

“Isurava provided as good a delaying position as could be found on the main Track. To the front and to the rear, tributary creeks flowed eastwards, down into the Eora Valley, providing narrow obstacles with some view over them. The creeks, which became known simply as ‘front creek’ and ‘rear creek’, were bordered by a belt of thick scrub, but between them were cleared spaces either side of the Track. In a flat clearing on the right was Isurava village, commanding a track dropping steeply down to Asigari in the Eora Valley. Above the clearing of long grass on the left was timber thickening into almost impenetrable jungle beyond. Forward of front creek, to the left of the northward Track to Deniki, was an overgrown garden through which a path from the main Track ran westward toward the Naro Ridge.” (Ralph Honner)

Ralph Honner knew how to draw the best from his young charges:

“War is largely a matter of confidence. If the troops have confidence in their mates, their weapons, their leadership and sufficient confidence in their numbers – in that they’ve got a fair chance and are not hopelessly outnumbered – they’ll fight well. When that confidence goes, then something snaps and the force can be dissipated.”

Honner’s orders were simple: hold Isurava until you are relieved. He knew the AIF forces, which had been rushed back from the Middle East, were on their way to reinforce him. He just had no idea when they would arrive. The young Diggers of the 39 th , like Private ‘Spud’ Whelan, knew what was expected of them:

“We got a message from Port Moresby that the 2/14 th were on the way and we had to stay there and fight till death. That was horrifying. I thought, ‘Well, I won’t see my family again, I won’t see Australia again.’ But I was prepared, like the rest of us, to stay there and fight to the finish.”

The 39 th responded to Honner’s leadership and, when the inevitable attacks came, they acquitted themselves magnificently. The onslaught began on August 26, first with Japanese mountain guns raining down on the Australians’ position, then with relentless human wave attacks up the steep gullies. The Australians hurled them back, with grenades, rifles and machine guns and then with bayonets in ferocious hand-to-hand fighting.

“There were countless acts of unrecognised courage as the young Diggers held on grimly. They ignored their lack of sleep, their hunger and their fear as they waited for the next assault. Some positions rebuffed as many as ten human-wave assaults in a day. The Japanese dead piled up around their perimeters like sacks of grain. But they kept on coming.” (from The Spirit of The Digger)

The 39 th Battalion withstood these withering attacks for a day and a night. They were on their last legs – outnumbered by ten to one, almost out of food and ammunition and racked with malaria and dysentery – when the first troops of the 2/14 th AIF Battalion reached them in the early hours of August 27. Even after the reinforcements arrived, the 39 th remained with them and continued to fight against the growing number of Japanese throwing themselves at the Isurava perimeter.

Two platoons of the 2/14 th, 10 and 12 platoons, held the key position during the battle - the high ground dominating the ridge. They beat off perhaps 40 attacks from waves of 100 and 200 Japanese throughout the day and night. Lt Harold ‘Butch’ Bisset commanded 10 Platoon superbly but was mortally wounded by a burst of machine-gun fire when handing out ammunition. He was brought out by his men but died later that night in his brother Stan’s arms.

By August 29, the enemy’s numbers began to take their toll.

Gallant Soldiers

One of the most remarkable feats of sustained bravery came from Corporal Charlie McCallum of 12 Platoon of the 2/14 th.

“Charlie had already been wounded three times when his platoon was ordered to withdraw just as the Japanese were about to swamp their position on the high ground at Isurava. Despite his wounds, Charlie held off the charging enemy, allowing his mates to pull back to another position down the Track. Charlie held and fired his Bren gun with his right hand and carried a Thompson submachine gun in the other hand. When his magazine ran out on the Bren, he swung up the Tommy gun with his left hand and continued to cut down the surging Japanese as he changed magazines on the Bren. When the Tommy gun was empty he used the Bren gun again, and continued his one-man assault until all his comrades were clear. At least 25 Japanese lay around him. One got so close he actually ripped a utility pouch from Charlie’s belt before falling dead at his feet. When he knew his mates were clear, Charlie fired a final burse and calmly moved off back down the Track.” (from the Spirit of The Digger)

Charlie was recommended for the Victoria Cross – a recommendation endorsed by brigade and division commanders – but it was inexplicably downgraded to the second-highest award for gallantry, the Distinguished Service Medal.

Bear and Kingsbury

At the height of the battle for Isurava, the weight of enemy numbers placed the entire position in jeopardy after they broke through on the north-eastern perimeter and directly threatened battalion headquarters. A group volunteered to lead a counter-attack to try to block the hole in the defensive position. Among them were three of the 2/14 th‘s finest sons, Bruce Kingsbury, Lindsay ‘Teddy’ Bear and Alan Avery. With Teddy Bear firing the Bren gun, the patrol fought back. The firing was so intense, the barrel of the Bren gun glowed red and teddy could only hold it by its folding legs. Teddy began to wilt from loss of blood from his wounds and he handed the Bren to Bruce Kingsbury.

“There are turning points in battle - as in life – critical moments in which the course of events is frozen for an instant, waiting for someone bold enough to seize a fleeting chance at immortality. At that very moment, the Japanese were poised, ready to make a final triumphant charge through to battalion headquarters. It would have been the terminal blow to the 2/14 th. Bruce Kingsbury saw his chance. Firing from the hip, he charged straight at the stunned attackers. Alan Avery watched in awe: ‘He came forward with this Bren and he just mowed them down. He was an inspiration to everybody else around him. There were clumps of Japs here and there and he just mowed them down. He just went straight into them as if bullets didn’t mean anything. And we all got a bit of the action, you see. When we saw him - when you see a thing like that – you sort of follow the leader, don’t you?” (from The Spirit of Kokoda)

Kingsbury’s extraordinary charge sent the Japanese diving for the jungle. He personally cut down as many as 30 enemy and enabled his comrades to follow up and restore their defences.
Sadly, at the height of his glory, Bruce Kingsbury was killed by a single shot from a sniper. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the first ever won on Australian territory. Bruce’s Commanding Officer, Lt Colonel Phil Rhoden, believed it was the turning point in the campaign:

“Nobody knew its importance until later. But it gave us time to consider action, gave us options. If he hadn’t stopped them it would have been like water pouring through a hole in the dam wall. They would have come through and it would have been a domino effect. You can argue his action saved Australia because, at the time, the 25 th Brigade was still on the water and the 16 th Brigade was still in Australia. Without Kingsbury, the Japanese could have been waiting for them in Moresby when they arrived.”

Australian Withdrawal

After four days of almost constant fighting, the Australians were forced to withdraw under the relentless weight of the Japanese numbers. On the night of August 29, the Diggers withdrew from Isurava back down the Track to Templeton’s Crossing.
They began a telling series of hit-and-run guerrilla attacks at the pursuing Japanese, inflicting casualties at the rate of ten to one before withdrawing again under cover of their mates to a pre-chosen position further down the Track.

Lt Colonel Phil Rhoden sums up:

“We mauled them and caused them to stop, think and regroup. They gave us time and the chance to resupply. But they had no plans for resupply. They came out of Gona-Buna, their beachheads, with twelve days’ supply, thinking it was a walkover. They got to Isurava and only had eight days. Then they had four days. That was their undoing.”

The Aussie knew that every day they could hold up the Japanese advance would make it harder for the invaders. Conversely, each day gave the Australians more time for their reinforcements and resupplies back at Port Moresby.
Perhaps the best example of the spirit of the Diggers during the withdrawal came from a group separated from the main body of the defenders after Isurava. About 50 men, three officers and 47 other ranks, found themselves behind enemy lines during the confusion of the withdrawal. Under the command of Captain Sydney Hamilton ‘Ben’ Buckler, they began a six week odyssey to skirt around the Japanese and regain their own lines.

The party was slowed down by a group of wounded – four stretcher cases, three walking wounded and the remarkable Corporal John Metson.

“He’d been shot in both ankles but he refused to let his mates carry him. He knew how much energy was needed to carry stretchers through the thick jungle, a task made even more onerous because Buckler’s party had to avoid the Track and travel through the jungle for fear of running into the enemy. So John Metson wrapped a torn blanket around his knees and hands and he crawled. For three weeks he cheerfully crawled through the jungle, ignoring the growing pain in his shattered ankles and the damage to his hands, knees and legs as he kept up with his mates in the cloying mud and torrential rain. He was a constant inspiration to the others in the party as they lived off the land and avoided Japanese patrols before reaching a friendly village called Sangai on September 20 1942.” ( from The Spirit of The Digger)

Buckler was forced to leave John Metson and the other wounded at the village to give the main group a chance of making it to safety. Buckler ordered his party to ‘present arms’ in salute to the wounded before reluctantly leading the rest back to the Australian lines down a parallel track to the Kokoda Track and, finally, by raft down the Kemp-Walsh River.

Unfortunately, when a rescue party returned to Sangai village for the wounded, they found they’d been betrayed and massacred. John Metson won him the British Empire Medal – and a place in the annals of the Digger.

Supply Shortage and Papuan Carriers

The Australian supply line was critical. Here the local Papuan carriers played a vital role. The Diggers called them ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’ and revered them for their loyalty and compassion. The Fuzzy Wuzzies drew on their enormous strength and endurance to carry supplies up the Track to the forward areas and brought back the wounded on stretchers on their return trips. The terrain dictated that eight carriers were needed for every stretcher but, without the gallant and steady Fuzzy Wuzzies, many Diggers would never have made it home. Drawing on the same characteristics as the Diggers - courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice – the carriers enabled the Australians to hold their line against the Japanese while they withdrew down the Track.

General Douglas MacArthur
Despite the fact that the Diggers were outnumbered by up to ten to one, the Supreme Commander of the South Pacific Area, the American General Douglas MacArthur was portraying the Diggers as failures who were retreating before inferior forces.
Even when the Australians were fighting for their lives at Brigade Hill, under siege from a massively superior force, MacArthur sent this message to Washington (and made similar public announcements):

“The Australians have proved themselves unable to match the enemy in jungle fighting. Aggressive leadership is lacking.”

“This cruel libel was issued just two days before wonderful leaders such as ‘Lefty’ Langridge and Claude Nye were to charge at the head of their men into almost certain death at brigade Hill. Ironically, later in the Kokoda campaign, it was General Blamey, the Australian Army Commander, who reported back to MacArthur the real truth (after the Americans joined the Diggers in the final stages of the campaign when the Japanese had been forced back to the beachheads at Buna-Gona): ‘It is a very sorry story. It has revealed the fact that the American troops cannot be classified as attack troops. They are definitely not equal to the Australian militia and from the moment they met opposition they sat down and have hardly gone forward a yard.’ (from The Spirit of The Digger)

Brigade Hill

By the time the withdrawal reached Brigade Hill, the three AIF battalions were able to fight together for the first time. The 2/14 th, 2/16 and the 2/27 th battalions took up defensive positions on the high ground at Brigade Hill and Mission Ridge. But the Japanese brought up even more troops and made a final concerted assault, aiming to wipe out the defenders with a knock-out blow.

In their first action against the Japanese, the newly-arrived 2/27 th held the forward position with the other two units on ridges behind them. In a furious attack, the Japanese threw themselves at the Australians and drove a wedge between the two positions. Many who had survived the cauldron at Isurava, like Charlie McCallum, fell trying to hold Brigade Hill. Others, like Captains ‘Lefty’ Langridge and Claude Nye died in magnificent but futile attempts to break through to brigade headquarters against impossible odds.

“I particularly think of blokes like ‘Lefty’ Langridge and Cluade Nye, one with a company of the 2/16 th and the other with a company of the 2/14 th who were ordered to go around the right flank where the Japanese were, to try to force a way through them to Brigade Hill. They knew they couldn’t do it. They knew they were going to die. Langridge handed over his pay book and his dog tags to one of his mates. He was a brave soldier. So was Claude Nye. They were both killed.” (Lt Colonel Ralph Honner)

Once again the Australian were forced to withdraw but, as always, they did so denying their pursuers free access to the Track towards Port Moresby and taking a heavy toll as the Japanese progressed.

Iorabaiwa

By September 17 the Australians had fallen back on Ioribaiwa, high on the slopes of a ridge in the last area of high country before the approaches to Port Moresby. This proved the turning point of the Japanese advance. Here, as a result of their maulings down the Track and their rapidly deteriorating supply situation, they were forced to reconsider their position.

Ioribaiwa would have been an excellent defensive position, except that the Australians were on its forward slope and the Japanese appeared with their mountain guns on the northern side of the valley. Unbelievably, they had managed to break them down into man-sized parts and lug them over the Track and reassemble them.

With almost every shot, the Diggers suffered casualties as Phil Rhoden recalled.

“Fellows who had got through the whole thing unscathed were shot dead. That upset me. By the time we got back to Ioribaiwa we were down from 550 to about 200 men. By the last days there we were five and 86 - five officers and 86 other ranks. The rest were killed, wounded sick or missing.”

But Ioibaiwa was the end of the line for the Japanese. Their commander Major General Horii was forced to finally accept reality and admit his Kokoda campaign was over. Because there was no word in the Japanese military lexicon for ‘retreat’ he ordered his men to ‘advance to the rear’.

It was the beginning of the end for the Japanese South Seas Detachment.

After Kokoda

Now the Australians became the pursuers as the shattered invaders retraced their steps back along the Track to the beachheads where they had landed two months earlier.

On November 2, Kokoda was recaptured. Shortly after that, General Horii and some of his senior commanders drowned while crossing the Kumusi River north of Kokoda. The retreat turned into a rout until the Japanese regained their beachheads at Buna, Gona and Sanananda where their comrades had prepared a network of interconnected defensive positions and from which they determined to fight to the death.

Clearly the South Seas Detachment no longer posed an offensive threat. But, instead of isolating it and starving it into submission, General MacArthur insisted that the Japanese be swiftly despatched.
The Diggers were joined by American forces but many of these underperformed and it was left to the Diggers, already veterans of the Kokoda campaign, to carry the brunt of the fighting. Again, many survivors of the horrors of the Kokoda Track lost their lives in attacks against an enemy that was heavily entrenched and grimly determined to fight to the last.

And, all the while, MacArthur was trumpeting about how he was leading his men from the front. Not so according to his biographer William Manchester:

“The great hero went home without seeing Buna, before during or after the great fight while permitting press articles from his GHQ to say he was leading his troops in battle. MacArthur … just stayed over at Moresby 40 minutes away and walked the floor. I know this to be a fact.”

In the pestilent swamps and beaches of Buna and Gona, every metre was paid for in blood. On December 9, Ralph Honner was able to send his famous cryptic report: ‘Gona’s gone’ Buna succumbed on January 2 1943. Eventually Sanananda fell on

January 22 1943, ending one of the most gruelling campaigns in Australian military history.

It was a total disaster for the Japanese. Less than 10 percent of the original 14,000 invasion force ever returned to their homeland.

Overall, in the Papuan campaign, 2165 Diggers were killed and 3533 wounded.

Ask any of the Diggers of Kokoda and they will tell you they were just doing their duty, as Phil Rhoden said:

“We were fighting for Australia, on Australian soil for the first time. It was important that we won because if we didn’t win who knows what would have happened.”

Content © The Kokoda Track Foundation 2009   |   Email : gen.nelson@kokodatrackfoundation.org for more information