War in New Guinea

UNTIL the historian can write in full detail and in the perspective of a completed operation, only a loose and incomplete summing tip of operations which held New Guinea against the Japanese for many months is possible. After a swift, disastrous opening-with the engulfing of New Britain and its dependent islands-there followed a long period of almost entirely static defence. There were further small losses of territory; and large gains in experience and preparedness. These were only the preliminary skirmishes. The real battle has only just begun as this is written. Until it is decided we have only the frame, not the picture.

From its beginning, the New Guinea campaign has defied comparison with any other of this or the last great war. New Guinea is a primitive country, placed in a category apart by its enormous difficulties of terrain and the absence of any but fringe and pocket development. When this hitherto obscure territory had suddenly become one of importance , it was realized that all the assistance a threatened mainland could give only scratched its stubborn surface. Beyond new military roads stretched native footpads. Beyond again were tumbled rock and strangling jungle. To fight the enemy was nothing compared with the conquest of the land itself.

This is the picture that must be kept clearly in mind in any consideration of the New Guinea War. Not since the end of the last century has there been such a campaign, of commandos and guerrillas, of lone scouts and spotters, calling primarily on the courage and initiative of the individual soldier. The inaccessibility of the terrain, making each centre an island just as effectively as if it were surrounded by water instead of jungle and mountains, dictated the conditions of warfare.

Thus we had in New Guinea a rifle war in a tank era - a war in which the developments of the last 30 years meant very little as far as getting to actual grips in ground contact with the enemy was concerned.

The story, in the first nine months after Japan entered the war, falls automatically into three parts, divided and changed by the battle of the Coral Sea ;in May and the battle of the Solomons in August. Possibly those battles decided the fate of the second greatest island in the world. That remains to be seen. This review, meanwhile, can deal only with the first two phases - before and after the Coral Sea battle.

Although that Japanese move, whatever its objective, was thwarted, it had a great effect on future developments. It presented the first close-up picture of the strategic dangers in the south-west Pacific area, and was followed by a steady improvement in the hitherto incredibly slender defences of the island. The stocktaking in that danger period had shown how weak was our hold. It had to be strengthened and, although the process was slow, it was strengthened.

It will clarify the picture to recount briefly the development of the New Guinea defences.

In mid-1939 it was decided that a coast battery should be established in the Port Moresby area. The original elements of this battery arrived in July, 1939, and with slight additions of personnel this was the only military unit in the territory until July, 1940, when a small advance party of a militia battalion was installed for garrison duties. The battalion force was increased in March, ig4i, and when Brigadier B. M. Morris, D.S.O. (later Major-General Morris, G.O.C. N.G.F. until August, 11942) took over the area in May, ig4i, there was a small fortress command comprising a coastal battery, with engineers and a small signals detachment, and one infantry battalion-all established within a three-miles' radius of Port Moresby.

On this basis the defences of the great territory of Papua had to be organized, until the swift tide of Japanese movement through the Pacific made reinforcement imperative. Even then the action taken, though swift enough, was inadequate. Two additional battalions of the Australian Military Forces, with their subsidiary troops and one field regiment of artillery, arrived at Port Moresby in the first week of January, 1942. They had had no war experience and were to complete their training and become conditioned for tropical service after disembarkation.

That was the position on the New Guinea mainland. Over at Rabaul, principal town and former capital of the mandated territory of New Guinea, there was one A.I.F. battalion and a few other troops-less than 1500 men to hold a front of almost WOO miles. One infantry battalion, an anti-aircraft and a coastal battery, some engineers and a few anti-tank guns were all that could be spared to hold Australia's great island perimeter. Detachments of an independent company-Australia's first commandos-were scattered from their headquarters at Kavieng, on New Ireland, out to Lorengau, Bougainville, Tulagi in the Solomons and Vila in the New Hebrides.

But it was the tiny force at Rabaul that had to meet a Japanese invasion force estimated at 17,000. That episode began on January 25, 1942, and was over very soon. Much was written about it in the weeks following. Much is still obscure; and much more will be released later when considerations of security are no longer necessary.

In that story perhaps the greatest credit of all will be given to the few men who led small rescuing and guiding parties, and plied their small schooners and launches under the noses and the wings of the Japanese. They brought out hundreds of troops and civilians, using with great courage their knowledge of the islands and the waters.

Allied plans for making Rabaul a great protective base had been anticipated. It was now an offensive base, swiftly adapted and conditioned by the enemy, reoriented .against Australia. But the mainland of New Guinea came between the two. It seemed that Port Moresby would inevitably be the next major point of attack, and soon. Moresby had its first air raid on February 3, and raids continued with increasing violence for many weeks, piling up to a total of 8o in eight months.

Soon enemy feelers were moving from that ideally situated base at Rabaul, touching here and there among the islands, settling firmly at a few points.

Gasmata, on the southern point of New Britain, was a desirable air and sea base. It became that, for the Japanese, a few days after Rabaul. The probing continued.

On March 8, with naval support, strong invasion parties began landings which ended in the occupation of Salamaua and Lae, goldfields airport towns on Huon Gulf. Now the Japanese warplanes were less than an hour from Port Moresby; within a few minutes of Wau and Bulolo.

But that was all for the time. The enemy had air supremacy and control of the best northern airfields. On land, however, the story was different. The country was fighting for us. Each of those captured points was easy of access from the sea, important to the air strategy of the holders; but each was an isolated pocket-geographically an island with water on the one side and a sea of jungle on the other. Lae and Salamaua were useless as-bases for land attack. Later they were proved in our commando raids to be traps for attack from the land.

Beyond the towns were jungled mountains. Through these no heavy striking force could move with any probability of success. The enemy had been trained for jungle warfare, for the infiltration tactics that had succeeded so well elsewhere, but against them were men who had lived in and patrolled that jungle for many years. In the months following the occupation they proved that they could beat the Jap at his own game. No enemy patrol went out that was not seen by our scouts, and none achieved more than our watchful handful of defenders was prepared to permit. In that period and from that country was born a guerrilla force comparable to-day only with the fanatically efficient Russians fighting on their own ground and for their own home against forces too big, too well-trained and well-equipped to be tackled in the open.

The New Guinea struggle was not a parallel, naturally, but it was a good small-scale imitation. When the world has forgotten this campaign as an infinitesimal sideshow in its war, the story of those men and their fight will live on in their territory and in Australia.

Most of the scouts came from the ranks of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, a local defence unit compounded of able-bodied men in the territory-men formerly in the employ of the gold-mining companies and in the district services, with others from various civilian jobs. These men had given months to their training, thinking probably of the defence of their homes. Their actual role proved to be far more valuable.

When the enemy landed at Lae and Salamaua most of the volunteers were centred around the goldfields. Their elements in the coastal towns destroyed installations and withdrew to a secret base, carrying information of the enemy's strength. But they did not stay withdrawn.

Swift evacuation of women, children and aged and unfit left the volunteers free to do their war job, and they did it magnificently. It was they who kept the command informed of every Japanese move in the Huon Gulf and other north-eastern areas. They did the scouting and the guiding for our patrols, helping also to lay the groundwork for later successful commando raids against the enemy beachhead positions.

They set the example and the pace for the tough and eager, but raw, commando troops who were flown over the massive Owen Stanley Range to form, with the N.G.V.R., the picturesque fighting force which operated north of the mountains. Hardly less creditable was the work of the commando troops. In cruelly primitive country, under indescribable difficulties, they maintained vital patrols and communications. And, much more, they took the offensive, giving out heavy punishment in sharp raids carried right into the enemy's strongly held bases. For months this force's was the only activity on land in the huge south-west Pacific area. Perhaps in the general scheme this action did not bulk large. But to Australia it was important, and to New Guinea it was vital.

As a small historical point it should be noted that this independent company was the first Australian unit to be moved by air to its stations. The men were taken in right under the noses of the Japs, only a few minutes' flight away.

Earlier, history had been made when a militia anti-aircraft unit at Port Moresby fired what it claimed to be the first Australian shots in the war against the Japanese, bringing down an enemy plane in the first test of their newly established guns.

For a time these 3-7 A.A. guns were the only heavy defence against raiders, and they covered primarily the harbour. The main aerodrome, a soggy runway only partially carved from a coastal marsh, had only rifles and machine-guns to protect its pitifully few fighters. It was strafed again and again by confident Zero pilots. The whole Moresby area was strafed, and there was little that could be done about it. Kittyhawks were promised as fighter protection against the constant bombing and strafing raids, but for a long time they did not come. In the slit-trenches from which 'infantrymen sent futile small-arms fire against the Zeros' cannon there were bitter demands for "Tomorrowhawks" and then for "Neverhawks". But at last the Kittyhawks arrived. Within a few weeks they had fought themselves out of the air. All their planes were gone; but they had so soundly punished the Japanese, with the help of light anti-aircraft ground defences which had also arrived, that the strafing days were ended.

Bomb raids continued; but with the development of new aerodromes and the increasing use of Moresby as an offensive base-taking the air war to the Japanese occupied areas in the north-something of a balance was reached and the scales were even tipped the other way, in repayment. From the bad Rabaul beginning, when our few Wirraways lasted only a few hours, a stage was reached where a score of flying fortresses setting out with medium bombers in support and with adequate fighter escort was not uncommon.

Concurrently, the dog days were ending on land. The return of a large part of the A.I.F. to Australia early in the year meant that senior and junior officers with experience from several Middle East campaigns could be sent to New Guinea. The effect was soon evident in increased efficiency of troops and defences in the one brigade that had waited through Moresby's gloomiest days. After the Coral Sea battle, in May and early June, another militia brigade doubled the garrison strength. These also were raw troops, unprepared for the tropics; but they too had an infusion of experienced fighters, and at least they brought some reasonable hope that the area could be held. Much was being applied also from the lessons of Rabaul-in coastal installations, in anti-aircraft defences, in the planning of tactics for any Japanese invasion.

While Australian engineers worked on military roads their American colleagues built new aerodromes and extended the old, until Moresby at last reached something like sufficiency as an air base. Early in 1941 the only aerodrome was a small field three miles from the town, right on the coast, inadequate and vulnerable. In that year what was later to be the main field was begun under the direction of the administration, but it was not completed until the "great flutter" in February, 1942, when Moresby was expected to be mopped up in Rabaul's train. Then the army took over this work, with everything else in the territory. Three more aerodromes were built, and the others extended until they could and did accommodate the biggest and some of the fastest warplanes in the world.

From the earliest days supply was the greatest problem. Facilities meant for a pocket-sized civilian community were progressively over-taxed. As Australian engineers drove 200 miles of new roads into forest and jungle and marsh and mountains-elementary roads, but adequate in the long dry season-the land supply organization was developed and improved. But there still remained the much greater problems of getting the food and the military stores first to the island and then from the base to the scattered outposts.

In spite of the great handicaps of a long supply line from Queensland and farther south, a reef bound harbour and miniature port installations, the Royal Australian Navy did a wonderful job. In all those months only one ship was lost - the 5000-odd tons Macdhui, which was caught in a pattern of scores of Japanese bombs as she dodged across Moresby harbour.

"The Bombing of the Macdhui". Caught in a pattern of Japanese bombs, the Macdhui was lost in Moresby Harbour, New Guinea. By NX80056

Repeated raids failed even to damage the one small wharf which received all sea supplies. And the magnitude of the traffic may be judged from the estimate that it takes 400 railway wagons and 10 engines to move the cargo carried by one ship of 5,000 tons. Moresby had no railway installations. Infantrymen unloaded the ships and drove the supply trucks into forest dumps, over frightful roads.

From base to outposts was the next problem. Where only native footpads twisted through the jungle only native carriers could go. Thousands of natives, each carrying the maximum 40-POund load, toiled for hundreds of miles inland, over rivers and mountain ranges, taking weeks to carry supplies which were consumed too swiftly to permit any building up of reserve stock. It was a constant grind relieved only partially later by the substitution of mule trains as short easier stretches of pad were developed into wider tracks.

Not far from Moresby town, in the foothills, army engineers blasted a motor road through cliffs passable before only by mule track. In three months they did a job at which administration engineers had balked for 25 years. The mule trains moved farther inland, higher into the hills, deeper into the jungle, with axe-men and bulldozers carving out the motor road behind them.

As reinforcements flowed in and as warlike action grew steadily out of the period of preparation, the thousands of natives, the mules, and the rudimentary roads were not enough. Air transports began to shuttle from Moresby aerodrome to secret bases and dumps inland, carrying in a day's series of trips as much as all the primitive former services had been able to take in weeks. There were not enough transports, and the cloud which eternally blankets and drenches the heart of New Guinea often kept them from flying, but they gave sufficient results. Without them no action could have been fought; our forces could barely have escaped starvation.

Mules and packhorses were provided by a colourful little unit formed by volunteers from the Australian back-blocks. They formed an Independent Light Horse Company, capturing and breaking wild horses from the scrub and handling mules formerly used on the plantations.

Where planes, motor transport and mules could not go the natives continued the supply service. Their organization and control was one of the many responsibilities of a new establishment, half civilian, half military.

On February 15, 1942, a proclamation was issued by Major-General B. M. Morris, under which the army took over the administration of the entire territory of Papua and the mandate of New Guinea. All civilians fit for service were called up-many of them had been doing useful training for many months in local V.D.C. units-and all others were evacuated, by New Guinea Airways planes, from their scattered stations to Moresby, and thence by ship to the mainland.

Evacuees included the heads and some officers of the former administrations. Officers remaining from both services were then brought directly under army control, and, with military rank, were absorbed into the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit. This army service, created by the New Guinea command, carried on the work of the civil administration-the police, patrol, justiciary and medical services. The unit had control of production as well as administration. Plantation staffs still in the territory were absorbed also into the army, and continued, for instance, the important production of rubber. Total rubber output was relatively small, but the maximum was drained from New Guinea's trees to help compensate for the loss of the Malayan and Indies supply.

History had been made again with the fusion of the two territories, at least for the duration of the war. Officially Papua and the mandated territory of New Guinea no longer exist. To-day there is only Australian New Guinea. Some of the best features of each administration have been adopted and combined, and under the direction of officers who have been for many years in the territories, carefully trained for their work, a new era of development will open when the present threat has been removed.

In the meantime there is a campaign of extreme difficulty and hazard still to be fought. The static period ended late in July and August with the launching of the Allied attack on the Solomons, deeply affecting the future of the whole south-western Pacific; and with the further move of Japanese invasion forces on Buna and Kokoda. The tentacles were probing again, southward from Rabaul and Lae and Salamaua, inland from Buna to Kokoda, down by sea to the south-eastern tip of New Guinea at Milne Bay. At Kokoda and then at Milne Bay Australian militia troops went into action for the first time in defence of Australasian soil.

Their numbers were too few and their field relatively too small, to make any great impression on history's page, but they did courageously and very creditably the task given them. Soon they were reinforced, and the men who joined them were A.I.F. men, seasoned from campaigning in the Middle East. The A.I.F., too, had gone into action for the first time on Australian soil.

After many months of inaction, the battle for New Guinea had begun. And that is another story-the real story to which this is only the preface.

"VX17681"