Kokoda (32 page)

‘Why do you want Brigade?’ the captain asked.

‘I’ve got six Bren guns for them.’

‘This is Brigade Headquarters,’ Bidstrup told him, and scribbled an unintelligible signature for authorisation. Of course the officer risked almost certain court martial if caught, but given that they were leaving at sunrise the following day and were about to get to grips with the Japanese, it seemed reasonable that they were going to need the Brens much more than Brigade Headquarters would.
¹²²

The Bren, he knew, was a bloody beauty. The gun was a Czech invention that came with 28-round magazines, which you could empty in fifteen seconds or fire as individual shots, depending on which switch you hit. While the usual fashion of firing was to set the gun up on the bipod that was part of the weapon, it was also possible for a strong man to lift it and fire from the hip, even as he charged forward. It was a lethal bit of weaponry, and squarely in the frame of what General MacArthur was referring to when he had remarked: ‘Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.’ Brens were going to be important up there, and would maybe help to even the odds a little.

Back at Kokoda, Colonel Owen decided he just had to make the best of what he had and prepared to defend the village with his eighty good men and true. He told the soldiers to dig in atop the tiny natural plateau on which the outpost was based—a small lump on the valley floor and at least forming a natural defensive position. At this point, the level of confidence among the young Australian soldiers was not particularly high. More than a few Diggers would later acknowledge to looking around at their young comrades, and thinking that things were pretty grim when only the likes of them stood between the Japs and Moresby, which in turn stood as the gateway to Australia. But there was naught to do, for most of them at least, but to keep on keeping on; pack up your troubles in your old kitbag and smile boys, that’s the style.

One of their number, Lieutenant Peter Brewer, had been posted by ANGAU at the Kokoda Government Station before the Japanese had landed and, when he had received orders telling him to return to Moresby, had buried his supply of grog in a back garden, for the day… And
this
was that day! Now returned to his home he dug it up on the sly, and doled out some much prized whiskey to his mates. One of the recipients was Jack Wilkinson, who put a good whack of it in his canteen and mixed it with water. On the one hand Jack was thrilled to have some grog right there whenever he wanted it, but on the other hand, he decided he daren’t risk having even a sip. They were in a game of life and death here, the Japanese might attack at any time, and he was all too conscious that the tiniest slip on his part might be the difference between eternal blackness and ongoing light, for both him and his mates. Better to keep the lid on, and be safe, as they stayed in their defensive positions and peered into the encroaching jungle for signs of movement.

This sobriety was as well, for about an hour before dusk, one of the soldiers reported seeing what he thought was some suspicious movement at a distance of about 150 yards to their north. There was a palpable tightening of the tension, as their eyes squinted and strained, searching the distant shadows for signs of malevolence. Bayonets were fixed, and ammunition supplies were checked one more time. The men softly murmured to each other. It looked like it was going to be
on
, and more than one man wondered as the sun went down whether it was to be his last.

Just after dusk fell, mortar fire with scattered machine-gun bursts gave the first indication that the Japanese were indeed on the Australians’ northern perimeters. Some of the mortar fire exploded on impact with the rubber trees, spraying shrapnel over a wide, and even more dangerous, area. With each ‘
cough
’ in the distance to signify a mortar was on the way, all the Australians could do was to hug tighter into the embrace of Mother Earth and pray that not even a tiny part of the incoming shell had their number on it. In his own trench, with Wally and Ray tight beside him, Joe Dawson fingered his rosary beads furiously, thought of Elaine waiting for him at home,
focused
on her and felt calmer. Something just told him that he and Elaine were meant to be and that he was destined to live. Christ, he hoped so, anyway. The mortars kept falling, amid the odd call from the Japanese now that they had crawled closer. ‘Corporal White’ still did not move forward, however…

The sole Australian on the whole plateau who didn’t hear the mortar barrage and gunfire was deaf Doc Vernon who, exhausted, had arrived in the late afternoon and a short time later—after ensuring that the Regimental Aid Post was up to scratch—had gone for a kip in one of the old houses that stood on the edge of the government station. He had left instructions that he be woken at the first casualty and, because no one had been hurt in the first skirmish, they let him sleep on, reckoning all too grimly that he really would likely be needing all his energies when the attack did come. Though at one point in the early evening he woke briefly from the vibrations of Japanese machine-gun bullets hitting the far wall from where he was sleeping on the lounge with a large ginger cat, the good doctor was never a man for panic and, when the bullets stopped, went back to sleep. For he, too, sensed that the night ahead would be tiring.

By midnight the firing between the two sides was almost continuous, though to that point the Japanese officers had not sent their soldiers on any full-throated charges. Rather, the Australian soldiers were simply being softened up for the charge to come, and the hope was that some might turn and flee.

Not bloody likely, mate. Maroubra Force held their positions and kept firing, even as those who’d drawn the shortest straw of all scurried in the darkness, head down, to keep the ammunition up to their brothers in arms.

Just before 2.00 a.m. though, a force of four hundred Japanese soldiers indeed laid siege to the Australians’ defences with devastatingly accurate mortar fire. They were aided in no small part by a moonlight so strong it would not have put the earliest hour of the day to shame. Platoons of Japanese infantry began to probe close to the Australian positions and the battle for Kokoda was on in earnest.

In one of the most oft-recounted episodes of the American Civil War, during the Battle of Spotsylvania, the Union General John Sedgwick was prancing up and down behind his soldiers, exhorting them to ever greater efforts, when one of his aides ventured to say: ‘Sir, don’t you think it would be a good idea if you were to present a less obvious target to those damn Rebels?’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ boomed the fearless general. ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist… ’ The fullstop to his sentence was a single shot from a Confederate soldier, and the general had breathed his last.

Whatever the truth of the story, it is certain that since war began military leaders have taken it as bad form to take cover as the missiles begin to fly, and there is equally no doubt that Colonel Owen was of their number. For, sure enough, as the action became thicker and the Japanese got closer—even as just a few of the Australians suddenly did disappear from their frontline positions— Owen not only constantly exhorted his men to greater efforts, but was singularly active himself with both grenade and gun, right at the front of the frontline, much of it while standing fully upright.

To Colonel Owen’s left, about ten along from him in the defensive position on the perimeter, Sergeant Joe Dawson was firing hard in the direction of the fire-flashes of the Japanese guns in the jungle. Other blokes used to aim just a little to the right of those flashes, thinking that was the best chance of scoring a hit on a Japanese soldier’s body, but Joe aimed directly
at
the flash, reasoning there had to be a Japanese head in direct line behind it. The Japanese themselves, of course, were doing much the same in the direction of the fire-flashes generated by the Australians, and bullets were whistling around them all the while as they tried the impossible task of keeping their heads and bodies out of harm’s way while still aiming effectively at the approaching swarm of jungle Japs.

Only Colonel Owen seemed to have no fear at all. There was no doubt he was ‘as game as Ned Kelly’—as the men referred to the type—but one who could barely stand the unnecessary risk he was taking was Lieutenant Gough ‘Judy’ Garland.

‘Sir,’ he said carefully, ‘I think you’re taking an unnecessary risk walking around among the troops like that.’

‘Well,’ Owen replied equably, ‘I’ve got to do it.’ Alas, just before 3.00 a.m., while Lieutenant Colonel Owen was in the process of hurling a grenade at one of the scurrying figures in the darkness, a Japanese bullet hit him just above the right eye and dropped him cold as a spud.

Doc Vernon was woken partly by the hand on his shoulder, and partly by the ginger cat, which had suddenly bounded off the couch in alarm at the sight of the intruder in the moonlight. It was Lieutenant Peter Brewer.

‘Colonel Owen’s been hit,’ Brewer said. ‘You’d better come.’

Under heavy fire, Doc Vernon, Major Watson and Jack Wilkinson got to the severely wounded officer—now regularly shuddering with seizures—and managed to drag him back from the frontline. But in fact, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been taken straight into the best Sydney hospital. From the first moment that Doc Vernon got a look at him in some decent light and established that not only was there no exit wound, but brain tissue was visible around the edge of the entry wound, it was obvious that Owen had taken a bullet with his number on it and there remained only the barest breath of life in him.

Even while they were treating him, and trying to ascertain whether he was still breathing, the Japanese fire around them was as thick as mosquitoes in a swamp and getting thicker still. At one point, Major Watson was holding a lantern for Doc to see by, and every time he raised it above the level of the window, a burst of bullets from a distant machine gun hit the building all around. Courageous defence was one thing, but mass suicide quite another. With Colonel Owen now only twitching there was no doubt he would die within minutes, so the surviving Australians took advantage of a propitious deathly white mist which had suddenly rolled in and, under the command of Major Watson once more, began to withdraw. Doc Vernon reluctantly followed the order to leave the colonel where he lay and joined the others, after moistening the colonel’s lips and making him as comfortable as possible. Only a short time after the doctor left, Daisy Owen, sleeping restlessly at her home in Moonee Ponds as she waited for her husband William to return to her, became a widow.

Getting out now. So thick was the mist on the Kokoda plateau, it was like languorously pushing through a cottonwool too light to feel other than by its moisture. Just two members of the 39th disobeyed the direct order to retreat. Deciding that the opportunity was too good to miss, Private ‘Snowy’ Parr and his offsider, ‘Rusty’ Hollow, hid on the edge of the main clearing in the village and waited, with a Bren gun between them. Among the other soldiers Snowy was known as a bit of a ratbag; he was always getting into scrapes and never cared what anyone wanted him to do, and this was a case in point.

Sure enough, not long after the chatter of gunfire had ceased, the first flitting figure in the darkness appeared ahead, followed by other Japanese soldiers who were soon in the mood for celebrating the victory. In no time at all, in the ethereal light of the pre-dawn, a group of them was raising a Japanese flag up Kokoda’s one flagpole and dancing a kind of jig around it.

Steady, steady, steady… NOW! Snowy opened up with his Bren gun on the Japs, while Rusty kept the ammo up to him. Both had the grim satisfaction of seeing as many as fifteen of the brutes fall to the ground, and the air was rent by their screams. Take that you bastards. That was for Colonel Owen and the six men of the 39th who’d been killed in the previous actions. It felt good to shoot straight into a massed bunch of mongrels who’d killed their mates and they kept firing at the now writhing figures on the ground. At that distance each Bren bullet made a hole as big as a Jap’s bloody head every time it hit a body.

In no time at all, taking advantage of all the confusion and fear, the two Australians had hightailed it into the mist themselves. Yes, they knew they would no doubt catch hell for disobeying orders, but it was worth it to get some revenge. Before long both soldiers were well into the rubber trees. Somehow, the early light through the scattered mist and branches made such crazy shadows, and alternating shades of light and darkness, that it formed something like the haze between life and death that many men from both sides had just passed through.

It was well after daylight before the last remnants of the 39th got back to Deniki where the two sections of D Company had set up the defensive position. It was time to regroup. Again, even though they were retreating in front of the advancing Japanese, there was a strong sense among the men that they were going all right and, at the very bloody least, were letting the Japs know they had a dinkum fight on their hands.

On the one hand it went against the grain to be constantly moving backwards, but on the other there was really no choice because to make a firm stand against such a far superior enemy could only result in their own quick annihilation. And, by constantly making hit and run attacks, the Australians had the added advantage that they could keep the Japanese off-balance, always uncertain about just how many soldiers they had ranged against them. This proved to be an effective tactic, because even though at this early stage of the fight the Australians had never added up to more than 110 soldiers, at a much later point, documents recovered from the Japanese Battalion Headquarters showed that the Japanese thought they had a body of no fewer than six thousand Australians against them.

Of the specific action at Kokoda, the diary of Second Lieutenant Noda Hidetaka, of the 3rd Battalion, 144th Japanese Infantry, when it was later found and translated, had an entry that was illustrative of how well the Australians must have fought, confusing the Japanese as to their true numbers.