The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific (41 page)

For this section I relied on a number of fascinating books: Gavin Souter’s
New Guinea: The Last Unknown;
Osmar White’s
Green Armor
and
Parliament of a Thousand Tribes; New Guinea: Crossing Boundaries and History
by Clive Moore,
Documents and Readings in New Guinea History,
edited by J. L. Whittaker and a host of others; Tim Flannery’s
Throwim Way Leg; Prowling Through Papua
by Frank Clune; W. N. Beaver’s
Unexplored New Guinea;
F. Hurley’s
Pearls and Savages;
L. M. D’Albertis’
New Guinea: What I Did and What I Saw;
and Captain J. A, Lawson’s
Wanderings in the Interior of New Guinea.
Stephen Anderson’s article, “How Many Languages Are There in the World?” which appeared in the May 2004 edition of the Linguistic Society of America’s scholarly publication, was also very helpful.

Souter’s book, in particular, describes successive stages of exploration in New Guinea, and is full of fascinating anecdotes about the von Ehlers expedition and others.

First Contact
tells the story of the “discovery” of the New Guinea Highlands by Australian gold prospectors Michael Leahy and his brothers. (There is also a film called
First Contact
based on Leahy’s film footage. It is widely considered an ethnographic classic.) The bulk of the book is about the events of 1933, when Leahy led a series of prospecting expeditions into the highlands and initiated the first contacts between highlanders and Europeans. The account is based on his diaries and later writings and on interviews with the native highlanders who witnessed the events. The book is full of photos taken at the time.

Chapter 6. Forlorn Hope

Many of the Company E details are derived from Lutjens’ diary, a series of lectures he delivered on the Papuan Campaign after returning to the United States, E. J. Kahn’s fascinating two-part series in the
Saturday Evening Post
called “The Terrible Days of Company E”, Art Edson’s letters home, James Hunt’s notes on the company’s early days in New Guinea, and his correspondence with Herbert “Stutterin’” Smith.

When General Kenney got news from Port Moresby that Lutjens and his men had arrived safely, he, in his own words, “rushed upstairs to General MacArthur’s office to give him the good news” and asked him if he could “haul the rest of the regiment.” Kenney continues, “He congratulated me most enthusiastically but told me that he had already ordered the rest of the regiment shipped by boat and that the loading had already begun. I said, ‘All right, give me the next regiment to go, the 128th, and I’ll have them in Port Moresby ahead of this gang that goes by boat.’”

Shortly after the 32nd landed in New Guinea, Harding’s staff threw him a birthday party in Australia. Harding made a speech, urging listeners to remember three important values: “time, equipment, and lives.” His preference was “to save human lives and take just a little longer to accomplish our mission.” As Anders notes, Harding wrote his wife: “I must admit,” he said, “that I rather like the idea that the men, that I’ve grown to think so much of, should think the ‘Old Man’ is all right. I hope that I never give them any reason to think otherwise during the tough times that we are destined to see together.”

Descriptions of the village of Gabagaba and its people are based on my 2005 and 2006 interviews with a number of village elders there, Lieutenant James Hunt’s recollections, and Art Edson’s letters home. The natives, according to Edson, “run around with nothing on.” Edson adds, “There is times when we feel like doing the same thing, and a lot of times too.” Edson also writes about how much weight the natives are able to carry. He says, “I saw one yesterday that carried a heavy pole about forty feet long on his shoulder.”

Native villages were decimated by ANGAU recruitment practices. In
The Third Force,
Alan Powell includes two native songs that reflect their sense of dislocation and sadness:

“All the women were standing by the river bank for their husbands.

All the children were standing by the riverbank for their fathers.

On the riverbank all were standing.

On the canoe bank all were standing.

When the husbands looked back they saw their wives and children were waving to them.”

“We have left our homes and beaches

To labour for the war in different places,

In far flung places. In these hard times

We wander aimlessly from home.

…In our little homes before the war

Partings from dear ones were unknown.

…We now wonder by our campfires

Of our homes, our dear ones, and our wives.

Longing, hoping, praying deeply.

To return to home once more.”

The first European to make contact with the simple, seafaring Motu people south of Port Moresby was Captain John Moresby. He spent days trading with them and asked in his diary, “What have these people to gain from civilization?”

During the early days of colonial occupation, a simplified Motu language, called “Police Motu,” was spread throughout the territory by native constables. In the nothern half of the island the German planters faced the same language barriers the British and Australians did in the south. The Germans’ solution was Pisin, a local word that became known as Pidgin. Pidgin has taken many words from various languages, including German and English. Be careful, for instance, is “Lukautim gut!”

A few of Gabagaba’s village elders remember how fascinated villagers were by America’s black engineers.

Chapter 7. The Bloody Track

Scenes of jubilation are taken from Seizo Okada’s
Lost Troops.
Captain Nakahashi’s quote is taken from Paul Ham’s
Kokoda.

The Battle of Bloody Ridge was perhaps Guadalcanal’s most famous battle. In it, U.S. Marines repulsed an attack by the Japanese 35th Infantry Brigade. The Marines were defending Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, which they had captured from the Japanese in early August 1942. Kawaguchi’s unit was sent to Guadalcanal to recapture the airfield and drive the Allied forces from the island. Kawaguchi’s six thousand soldiers conducted several nighttime frontal assaults on the U.S. defenses. The main Japanese assault occurred on an unnamed ridge south of Henderson Field that was manned by troops from several U.S. Marine Corps units, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Merrit Edson. Although Kawaguchi’s men nearly defeated the Marines, the Americans held. The battle became known as the Battle of Edson’s Ridge or Bloody Ridge.

Accounts of General Horii’s deception and the Japanese supply situation are from Lida Mayo’s book. Specific quotes are from ATIS documents. Details of the messages received by General Horii and Horii’s horror at being asked to retreat are from Mayo’s book.

Ham writes that Captain Nakahashi uttered the same words about the message coming “like a bolt from the blue,” though the rest of the quote is different. Ham writes that Nakahashi said that the news, “caused an overflowing…of emotion, which could not be suppressed; it was compounded by feelings of anger, sorrow and frustration. The purpose, the dreams and the desires of the officers and soldiers of the South Seas Force had vanished in an instant.”

Ham writes that it took fifty Australian “sappers” using a powerful pulley system to get the cannon up the steep spur of Imita Ridge. The Australian engineers had cut two thousand steps ino the ridge, creating what the Australians called with irony the “Golden Staircase.”

Details on the beginning of the Australians counterattack are from William Crooks’
The Footsoldiers.

MacArthur’s quote to Brigadier John Edward Lloyd is from Ham.

MacArthur took great personal satisfaction from his appearance at Imita Ridge. American war correspondents had written that Port Moresby might go the way of Singapore. In reality, MacArthur was not anywhere near the front; it was five miles to the north at the village of Nauro.

According to McAulay, the 16th Brigade was made up of crack troops, Australia’s best. They had fought in the Middle East and in North Africa. Most, prior to returning to Australia, had also trained in the jungles of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). They were also well outfitted with camouflaged, long-sleeved shirts, long pants, gaiters, steel helmets with nets, and new boots with spikes.

In
General Vasey’s War
, Horner writes of Vasey’s speech to his commanders: “The Japanese are well trained in jungle warfare. In this form of warfare they are like tigers, cunning, silent and dangerous. Like tigers, too, they are vermin; they must be destroyed. One does not expect a live tiger to get to give himself up to capture so we must not expect the Japanese to surrender. He does not. He must be killed whether it is by shooting, bayoneting, throttling, knocking out his brains with a tin hat or by any other means our ingenuity can devise. Truly jungle warfare is a game of kill or be killed and to play it successfully demands alertness of all senses but particularly of ears and eyes.”

Chapter 8. Marching into the Clouds

Details on Jim Boice and his trek are from Boice’s diary, newspaper articles, and conversations with Boice’s son William Boice Jr.

Boice sent back 1st Lieutenant Bernard Howes with his trail notes, saying that he believed that subsequent groups would “take proportinately greater time on these trails.”

Details on the Kapa Kapa and plans for the overland advance are from Milner, Gailey, Mayo, the National Archives, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, and interviews with veterans of the march.

Specifics of Medendorp’s march are from his report, his lengthy reminiscences, and interviews with his sons and his sister Alice.

Description of the carriers are based on Medendorp’s writings, conversations with villagers of Gabagaba, Powell’s book
The Third Force
, photographs, and T. E. Dutton’s comprehensive study,
The Peopling of Central Papua.

Powell contrasts the American soldiers’ relationship with the villagers with the way they were treated by the Australians. He writes, “The problem…was not merely that the Australians had and gave less, but that they actively discouraged or forbade the generosity of the Americans.” One villager said, “If an American was going to give something to me, he had to look around and make sure that none of the Angau were present. If an Angau saw an American give one of us something, then he would come and take it away.”

Leslie Anders portrays Harding as the consummate renaissance man, a writer of prose and poetry, a voracious reader, and an avid and accomplished student of history.

Details on Roger Keast are from interviews with his son Harry, interviews of men who served with Keast, and a variety of newspaper articles.

It is occasionally dificult to track the patrol’s journeys, since no detailed maps of the area existed and often Medendorp did not use place names. Much of the country, including the rivers and the countless peaks, did not have names. Although some of the most prominent features had native names, many did not.

Descriptions of the jungle are based in part on my own trek on the Kapa Kapa and my observations.

American and Australian soldiers greatly feared the Japanese soldier. They viewed him as cunning, stealthy, and deadly, despite Allied commanders’ continual attempts to dispel the myth of the Japanese warrior’s superiority.

Boyd Swem is one of the soldiers about whom Medendorp writes very fondly. Medendorp wrote, “Nothing dismayed Swem.” Swem was a member of Service Company when Mendedorp invited him to join the Wairopi Patrol.

Captain Buckler’s group was just as stunned to discover the Americans. According to Raymond Paull in his book
Retreat from Kokoda
, the Americans were “an image of wishful thinking to a man who had endured a month of strain and vicissitude.” Lewis Sebring, a correspondent for the
New York Herald Tribune
who saw Buckler’s group when they reached the coast, described them much as Medendorp did: “Sunken eyes looked at us from bearded faces…” Mayo writes that it was Boice who encountered Buckler’s group, but Medendorp’s group surely encountered them, too, for Medendorp writes, “They were dirty, hungry, bearded, and many were nursing old wounds…” In additon to feeding them, Medendorp wrote that they were welcome to “all the food that they could carry, and with our blessing.”

Details on the Japanese invasion of Rabaul are from Ham and Paull.

That evening a runner from Boice’s Pathfinder Patrol also stumbled into Arapara. According to Medendorp, he had “malaria and was partly delirious.”

I witnessed the natives’ lack of concern about rats and cockroaches; they consider our sqeamishness laughable.

Details on the beliefs of carriers are derived from numerous interviews with people in Papua New Guinea, Powell’s book, and conversations and e-mails with Bill McKellin, a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

The quote is from Lieutenant William D. Hawkins, Harding’s G-2 (from Anders’
Gentle Knight
).

The old village of Laruni was situated on a hill overlooking the Mimani River, a one-hour climb from the present-day village of Laruni (or Larun), which lies on the western bank of the river.

Medendorp was a cigar man, but almost everyone in the army learned to smoke cigarettes.

All that Medendorp and Keast had to work with was a hand-drawn map listing the villages along the trail. The map did not even include mountain peaks and rivers. Medendorp and Keast would draw their own map, called
Map C: Operations of the Wairopi Patrol,
which would show villages and drainages along the Kumusi River from Jaure down to Wairopi on the Kokoda track. This map can be found at the National Archives.

North of Laruni, the terrain becomes extremely steep, as we would discover on our trek. Natives, especially those recruited in Gabagaba and other coastal villages, would have been unfamiliar with the mountains and frightened by them. They believed that the mountains were populated with evil spirits. To this day, natives of seaside villages are reluctant to venture into the mountains. Mountain people are also frightened of the high peaks.