Kokoda (72 page)
And, of course, no great legend is complete without its villains. In the story of Kokoda they are spectacular. First and foremost there are the Japanese, great soldiers but with an appalling record of atrocity in the field, starting with their atrocious treatment of Australian prisoners on the Burma Railway and spiralling all the way down to hell from there, including the torture and murder of women and children in Papua.
Then there are those who were on our side: Sir Thomas Blamey, blaming everyone but himself for the logistical foul ups of the campaign, prepared to lie, cheat and deride the men who had served so heroically on the front-line so he could pretend to re-energise the situation, all to secure the credit for the Australian successes for himself; or Douglas MacArthur who, after misreading the intelligence telling him the Japanese were heading for Port Moresby, then tried to blame the Australians for his own failures, before trying to manoeuvre things so that both himself and the American troops would get the glory to win the final battles.
None of which is to say that when I was approached to write this book back in 2002, I knew all about it and immediately leaped at the chance. I didn’t. I knocked it back on two grounds. Firstly, despite its growing reputation, I personally knew next to nothing about it. Secondly, I didn’t think the nation, and most particularly its reading public, cared about it.
It was only chance conversations with Kim Beazley – a heavyweight student of military history and former Minister for Defence – and others that turned me around. I listened, and then began to read. Wonder of wonders, I, too, slowly began to
get it
, began to understand just how great the story was and one more thing besides…
That was that as a story from our past, it really did resonate much better with the Australians of the 21st century, than the Gallipoli legend did. With the greatest respect to those who revere the sacrifice of our soldiers in the Great War (as indeed we all should), the more I got into the writing of this book the more I came to passionately believe that Paul Keating was right. At Gallipoli, Australia was fighting for Great Britain and lost; on the Kokoda Track, the Australian soldiers were fighting for Australia, and won!
If, as is claimed by many historians, Gallipoli was where the nation was actually born – as soldiers from six former colonies were forged by the fierce heat of battle into one coherent whole for the first time – to emerge as the mother country’s proud son from the southern seas ready to fight at her command, then Kokoda is the battle where the proud and loyal son had grown up enough, and become independent enough, and even strong enough, to be fighting his own fights in his own interests!
Again, as Paul Keating put it at Kokoda: ‘There can be no deeper spiritual basis for the meaning of the Australian nation than the blood that was spilled on this very knoll, this very plateau, in defence of the liberty of Australia. This was the place where I believe the depth and soul of the Australian nation was confirmed. If it was founded in Gallipoli, it was certainly confirmed in the defence of our homeland.’
And they were doubly confirmed by our troops being there in the first place!
After all, had the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had his way, those troops of the 2/16th Battalion, 2/17th Battalion, 2/27th Battalion
et al
from the AIF, would not have been at Isurava, serving Australia’s interests. Rather, they would have been in Burma, trying to block the Japanese thrust towards the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, which was India. In just a little over two years, Australia had gone from Robert Menzies’ ‘loyal son’ notion – Great Britain is at war, and
‘as a result
, Australia is also at war’– to an entirely new stance. From early 1942 onwards, the new Prime Minister John Curtin took the position that while it was extremely noteworthy that Great Britain wanted Australian troops to defend against Japan’s westward thrust towards India, what was far more important was where the
Australian Government
wanted them to go. And that was home, home to Australia, to defend against Japan’s downward thrust towards Australia. The Kokoda campaign was of course where those very troops met that downward thrust head on, and so blunted the attack the Japanese were obliged to withdraw.
Clearly, rather than just an extraordinary saga in its own right, when viewed through the prism of modern times there is a special resonance to it. I cite particularly those of us – and I certainly put myself in the heart of the movement – who yearn to see Australia cut its formal ties with Great Britain, to at last become a free-standing republic. It was Paul Keating who formally put Australia on the road to becoming a republic at the very time he kissed the ground at Kokoda, and it’s not a large leap to think that he was effectively the first to recognise how powerful a story it was for the new age he wanted Australia to enter into.
For a fierce monarchist of yesteryear, the Gallipoli story was a wonderful example of the strength of the bond between Great Britain and Australia, where Australian blood was spilled in Great Britain’s service.
But, as republican, I personally cherish the Kokoda story as the essence of Australia not only forging a path independent of Great Britain, but doing it with staggering courage and with brilliant effect.
Of course, the story itself is strong enough that it may stand alone as deserving of our reverence, regardless of one’s politics seventy years later.
But while all of us can take inspiration from different parts of the story, I do think there are some lessons to be learned from it that ought to be universally acknowledged. Kokoda and the battles on the beachhead to capture Gona, Buna and Sanananda, raise important questions about our relationships with our great and powerful friends, the USA and Great Britain.
While having displayed commendable independent mindedness in resisting Churchill’s attempt to send our troops to Burma, almost immediately Curtin became subservient to the Americans, in particular General Douglas MacArthur. Yet at that time just about any Australian senior officer had more experience of combat than the American commander! What’s more, they had been much more successful. While MacArthur had just lost the Philippines, Australian troops had been winning battles against the Italians, the French and the Germans – at Tobruk the Australians gave Rommel his first bloody nose in the desert war. They did not deserve to be disparaged by this failed American general when, outnumbered five to one, 21st Brigade were grinding down the Japanese in a superbly executed fighting withdrawal. Indeed, in 1942, the Americans were sorely in need of advice from us – not the other way around. Yet the only Australian general to give MacArthur a much needed dressing down was ‘Tubby’ Allen.
In fairness, after a second explosion by the peppery Australian, MacArthur became apologetic, an indication of what might have been achieved if Curtin had been prepared to back the judgement of his military advisors. (Blamey did put the boot in later when, on being offered American reinforcements, he told MacArthur, ‘I’d rather have Australians, at least I know they’ll fight,’ but that was kicking a man when he was down.
All of this needs to be part of the Kokoda story along with the battles of the beachhead. This is why this book concludes with Ralph Honner and his ‘boys’ of the 39th Battalion capturing Gona. Increasingly I have come to believe that we have much to learn from the later battles too, and I am glad Peter Brune and Neil McDonald insisted to me that I had to include them in my book as part of the one campaign. Taken as a whole, they teach us to be more independent in dealing with our allies. If we hadn’t been so anxious to prove ourselves to the Americans there would not have been so many unnecessary Australian graves.
Like Gallipoli it is a dark story, but one that remains vitally important. The habits of subservience that cost us so dearly in 1942 remain with us. That kind of dependence was there when we decided to send troops to Iraq on the basis of American and British intelligence reports that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction.
The same thinking had previously led to our involvement in Vietnam. To be sure, Australian troops performed admirably. But, in my view at the time, and I think more and more in the long view of history, they should never have been there in the first place. We now know Australia’s involvement came about because the government of the day believed it was essential to Australia’s security for America to be deeply committed in South-East Asia. Military and strategic folly!
This is why we need to remember the Australian soldiers in Papua 1942. We can take a legitimate pride in their achievements on the Kokoda Track. We should never forget the Australian soldiers inflicted Japan’s first land defeat of the Pacific War at Milne Bay. Having wrested the initiative from the Japanese, the Australians annihilated their remaining forces in the bloody battles of the beachhead. Papua New Guinea 1942–43 is also a cautionary tale that should teach us to be wary of our allies and to have confidence in our own judgement.
But in the wider scheme of things were our victories in New Guinea
really
that significant? Did our ‘ragged bloody heroes’ really save Australia from Japanese invasion? Certainly if you are writing a history of the war in the Pacific the Kokoda/Beachhead battles have to be viewed in a wider perspective that includes the Battle of the Coral Sea, and Guadalcanal. And yes, no one to date has found specific Japanese plans for the invasion of Australia.
For me, this is irrelevant.
In 1942, the soldiers fighting on the Kokoda Track, the government and the commanders, and the Australian public, believed they were preventing an invasion of the mainland. The Japanese had invaded Australian territory and that was it. This is the reality the writer must first imagine then recreate.
To deny this reality is profoundly offensive to the survivors, their families and the descendants of the men who fought and died in New Guinea. I am not suggesting that we should make ourselves comfortable with lies and half truths. But it is absolutely certain the Diggers believed they were fighting to protect Australia.
Was that belief so wrong? The Japanese were undoubtedly heading for Port Moresby. Had they reached their objective they would have launched devastating air raids on northern Australia. The Japanese tended to only make short term plans, and a victorious commander would have been obliged to exploit such an important victory. This exploitation would at least have included raids on Australian coastal towns. The ragged bloody heroes of Maroubra force made certain that did not happen.
Should Anzac Day therefore become Kokoda Day?
I’m not sure I’d want to go that far, but I would like to see less emphasis on the Gallipoli landing and more on Kokoda and beyond.
This does not imply any disrespect to the memory of the Great War diggers.
It is beyond dispute that the Anzac legend has enriched our culture; it has never detracted from our achievements in nation building or involved the denigration of our allies. The battles at Kokoda and beyond remind us that Australians properly led are capable of winning through against overwhelming odds. They underscore the vital importance of relying on our own judgements and retaining a healthy scepticism about our allies. After New Guinea and Tobruk, Australian soldiers really didn’t need to prove themselves to anyone. Moreover, in New Guinea 1942 they fought our enemies on Australian territory for the first time. They demonstrate that while fighting against Australian soldiers is always a formidable proposition, when those soldiers are on Australian territory and believe they are defending Australian soil, they are nothing less than mighty.
A book of this nature has involved drawing on a wider than usual range of material: published and unpublished, interviews and oral history. I have tended to cite the original edition of books used, and I have relied greatly upon the generosity of many to give me access to much unpublished material. Many have been thanked elsewhere in this book—and my apologies for any I have neglected to name. As mentioned previously, Neil McDonald and the ABC were especially helpful in relation to material relating to Chester Wilmot—and sincere thanks are due to them.
Austin, Victor
To Kokoda and Beyond: The Story of the 39th Battalion, 1941– 43
, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988.
Benson, James
Prisoners Base and Home Again: The Story of a Missionary P.O.W
, Robert Hale, London, 1957.
Bergerud, Eric
Touched with Fire: Land War in the Pacific
, Viking, New York, 1996.
Bertrand, Ina (ed)
Cinema in Australia: A Documentary History
, NSW Press, Kensington, 1989.
Bleakley, Jack
The Eavesdroppers
, AGPS Press, Canberra, 1991.
Brune, Peter
A Bastard of a Place: The Australians in Papua,
Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2003.
——
Those Ragged Bloody Heroes: From the Kokoda Trail to Gona Beach 1942
. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, First edn 1991, 2nd edn 1992.
——
We Band of Brothers: A Biography of Ralph Honner, Soldier and Statesman
, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2000.
Charlton, Peter
The Thirty Niners
, Macmillan, Sydney, 1981.
Chatterton, Percy
Papua: Day That I Have Loved,
Pacific Publications, Sydney, 1974.
Day, David
John Curtin: A Life.
HarperCollins, Sydney, First edn 1999, 2nd edn 2000.
——
The Politics of War
, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2003.
Dornan, Peter
The Silent Men: Syria to Kokoda and on to Gona
, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999.
