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)
