Turning Point

by Michael Veitch

  ‘Do you think I’m bloody deaf?’ was Les’s characteristic response.

  For Jackson, getting back at the Japanese was a deeply personal matter. The squadron’s former and beloved CO, his own older brother, John, had been shot down and killed on virtually the last day of the six-week campaign earlier in the year defending Port Moresby. Now, as his replacement, Les would have a chance at revenge.

  Soon all the pilots were awake and consulting with their ground crews, who had been working throughout the night in the most trying of conditions to ready as many machines as possible. Well before they could see the runway, the men were seated in their cockpits, praying for the night to pass.

  Truscott, enlivened at the prospect of finally being able to get to work, strode over the mud to as many of the pilots as he could, offering a grin and a wisecrack, and assured them that the Japanese had come here for one purpose and one purpose only – to be defeated – and we lucky few were to be the ones to deliver the defeat. Always a natural leader of men, Truscott’s enthusiasm was infectious.

  Gradually, the trunks and palm fronds around them began to emerge out of a ghostly grey light. Propellers turned over and spun, and fourteen Kittyhawks lined up to take to the air, the roar of their powerful twelve-cylinder Allison engines instilling confidence in the hearts of the Australian soldiers, and dismay in those of the Japanese.

  At 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 26 August, the Kittyhawks roared off the runway at Gurney into a gradually lightening sky, to begin their own campaign in the fight for Milne Bay.

  •

  Eight miles away, Paymaster Captain Chikanori Moji surveyed the scene before him, his spirits sinking. For the Japanese, the dawn had come far too soon. The Beach Master, Platoon Commander Mitsumi, had been quite correct, and they had landed at least four miles east of their intended point. Despite working tirelessly through the night, the several hundred Korean labourers – augmented by the men of Moji’s own pay corps, now performing manual work – had yet to complete the unloading and stacking of the mountain of stores, ammunition and rations needed for the Rabi operation. Everyone was exhausted.

  Along the beachline, crates, rice sacks and boxes were piled high, but in the encroaching dawn great swathes of material had simply been dumped into the water from the landing barges, whose impatient drivers had no time to linger at the water’s edge before shuttling back to the supply ships. With the cover of darkness to be soon lifted, the ships were anxious to pull away to beat the dawn and escape the prospect of air attack. As a result, hundreds of aviation fuel drums, aircraft drop tanks and countless other supplies were floating in the water, to be gathered as best they could and piled up chaotically on the shingle beach.

  Moji shook his head. Everything was dangerously concentrated in this one spot. This was not the way it should be done, but at least they were protected from view by the palm trees.

  Scant news had been heard from the troops further up the track, but it was obvious that, wherever they were, neither Rabi nor the Australian airfield had been taken; possibly they had not even been reached.

  Moji looked around at this small 150-metre strip of beach, which he would later learn was called Wahahuba. The plan had been to come ashore much further west near the Australian garrison, where the distance to their objectives would be short. But without proper maps, everyone was blind, and now the Australians were fighting back – much harder than anticipated – and starting to inflict casualties.

  The sound of aircraft engines drew Moji’s attention, and for a moment hope stirred that they were Japanese planes, whose support would soon be greatly needed. Instead, emerging from a cloud like a flock of great dark birds was a formation of American B-17 bombers, having been called up during the night from their base at Mareeba, in Queensland, now heading east in pursuit of the Japanese convoy. His men could just make out an attack on the destroyer Urakaze, which opened up a furious anti-aircraft barrage, sending one of the American aircraft fluttering down into the water. A cheer went up among the men on the beach, stirring them with confidence – and leading one of them to commit an error of diabolical proportions.

  As the B-17s turned around and headed back, they passed over the Japanese landing activities. Prompted by the success of the naval gunners, one soldier rushed to a quick-firing anti-aircraft machine gun which was sitting among the stores, awaiting transportation to the airstrip once it was captured. Ignoring his comrades’ shouts to desist, the soldier swung the barrel into the air and let out a stream of bright-red tracer fire, which sailed high into the sky above the tree line, instantly pinpointing their position for passing aircraft. As the drone of the B-17s receded, a sharper, harder sound took its place: that of the approaching Kittyhawks, who could not believe their luck.

  •

  Fourteen Kittyhawks had been sent aloft to attack, with another fourteen remaining behind at Gurney to respond to any threat to the airstrip. Leading their men, Turnbull, Jackson and Truscott initially thought their time would be wasted. The targets were the ships, but in the early-morning gloom they had not located them. In fact, they saw nothing as they headed down the length of the bay, so as they came back again they chose to hug the beach, which itself was difficult to make out. Then, right in front of them, a red stream of tracer shot up from the trees like a beacon. Ducking down even lower, the Kittyhawks inspected the shoreline. There, under the trees, was a line of motorised barges and, on the beach, pile upon pile of supplies.

  It was this moment, according to Captain Moji, ‘which marked the beginning of the nightmare battle of Rabi’.

  From a position under cover a little way up the beach, Moji and the 5th Kure commander, Lieutenant Fujikawa, at first thought not much harm had been done, as a couple of the aircraft made strafing runs close to the beach without hitting a thing. But when the Kittyhawk pilots found their aim, devastation erupted. Like cabs on a rank, the pilots took turns to swoop down, line up and press their firing buttons, then turn around and do it all again. Boxes disintegrated, ammunition exploded and fuel caught fire, creating an inferno. Thick black smoke began to rise up, and the shredded crowns of trees caught fire.

  Flying Kittyhawk A29-133, 75 Squadron’s Pilot Officer Bruce ‘Buster’ Brown remembered that first morning’s attack clearly:

  We began in line-astern formation, each aircraft coming in from over the bay and diving at the beach. With our firing run at a selected target completed, we did a left-hand turn over the bay and left again to bring us back for another attack. When we landed at about 7.20 a.m. we had each fired off 1500 rounds of ammunition. We did not carry bombs: the ammunition loading was one tracer, one ball, one incendiary, one armour-piercing and one explosive, which meant that whatever we hit was either damaged or destroyed.

  Brown’s aircraft, named ‘Polly’ after his wife, survived the war and is today on permanent display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

  As Truscott came in for another swoop, he noticed, bobbing among the fuel drums in the water, the elongated shapes of drop tanks destined for the bellies of the Zero fighters. This filled him with fury. The arrogance of it, he thought: as if they could simply walk in to Gurney, get handed the keys and start using it. ‘Over my dead body,’ he yelled into his radio/telephone, and urged his charges to target the water. Soon the sea itself was an inferno. Then came an almighty explosion as the aerial bombs, likewise destined for the airfield, cooked off in the blaze and exploded. Now attention was given to the ten or so Daihatsu landing barges, which, as they had on Goodenough Island, shattered under the bullets and caught fire.

  In disbelief, Moji and the Japanese on the ground watched their entire supply of food and ammunition vanish. Then all headed for the jungle as the ground they crouched on was targeted by the Kittyhawks. As was to be the pattern, the pilots could rarely see what was beneath the roof of the palm trees, but they raked their unseen enemy nonetheless. Such was the ferocity of the attack, the explosions could be heard by the ground crews back at Gurney Field, who w
ere enthralled to know their pilots were bringing the attack to the Japanese.

  Moji’s men scattered as best they could. Many were caught as bullets flew in from above or ricocheted noisily off rocks. Moji himself dashed into the conflagration to rescue tins and briefcases containing unit records, before retreating to the meagre safety of a palm tree stump.

  All day the Kittyhawks attacked. When their fuel ran low and their ammunition was spent, they would return to Gurney, skid down onto its slippery surface and yell, ‘Quick, refuel and rearm!’ to their indefatigable ground crew, who in seconds would be crawling over the aircraft like ants. Then off they would go again, firing futher thousands of rounds into the Japanese positions. Later that day, the attack was joined by a Hudson from 6 Squadron, which dropped a series of bombs onto the beach, creating large craters by the shoreline.

  It was a spectacular opening bout in which the RAAF pilots and crews performed brilliantly, and although, on that first day, they were all ‘tired enough to die’, not a single aircraft was lost.

  With light fading, the fighters left and the Japanese emerged to assess the terrible destruction. Scarcely a rice grain or a piece of bread was left unscorched. Even worse, the landing barges were now shot to pieces and useless. The Japanese had hoped to use these to coast-hop around the Australian forces spread out along the bay, repeating the tactic which had worked so well in Malaya.

  As bad as things were for the men at the landing area, thought Moji, what would it mean for the exhausted – and hungry – men at the front?

  Yet the Japanese at Milne Bay were optimistic. Come nightfall, the ships would return and more supplies would be delivered. Casualties, despite the inferno, had been light. The men were still in good spirits, and those green ones had now experienced their first taste of war. They would regroup and continue the attack by night, when the aircraft were grounded.

  Indeed, although Moji did not yet know it, further along the Government Track towards KB Mission, the Japanese were gaining the upper hand.

  CHAPTER 21

  TO KB MISSION

  With their Ha-Go infantry tank nose-down in a muddy ditch, its driver dead, and with the sky now full of marauding Australian and American aircraft, the men of the 5th Kure and 5th Sasebo SNLF were forced to pause at their position on the eastern border of KB Mission to await supplies – and perhaps a clearer idea of where their objective actually was. It was becoming obvious that this supposed airfield was not the promised easy jaunt up from the beach. All night they had been marching along this hideous track, and so far there was no sign of anything except mud, jungle and Australian soldiers lying in wait. And where was this Rabi place anyway? Without proper maps, the Japanese had little idea where anything was, only that they were stuck in daylight on one side of a small bridge, with an unknown number of Australians on the other. For now, they would rest and wait.

  The Australians were happy for this lull, particularly at Clowes’ headquarters, to the rear at Hagita. Colonel Chilton later recalled:

  The Milne Bay Battle was often very confused. There were no maps, no real communications – you just didn’t know what was going on. We had this rough sketch … and that’s all we had to fight the battle on … you just didn’t know where people were.

  This included the Japanese, whose exact numbers were still unknown. The most important question, however, was whether it was their main force attacking, or a feint designed to draw the Allied forces away from the base at Gili Gili. Certainly, thought Clowes, it was curious that they had landed so far from their presumed objective, the airstrip. The Japanese were, after all, spoiled for choice in possible sites from which to launch an attack. Clowes could not discount a landing to his west, forcing him to defend on two fronts, nor one from across the Stirling Range to the north, pinning him with a double prong against the eastern attack – a tactic which, as we have seen, the Japanese had every intention of employing.

  Then there was the possibility of a direct assault on the long and thinly defended beach at Gili Gili itself, the most direct route to Gurney Field. Until he was convinced that the enemy had fully shown his hand, Clowes would tread carefully, keeping George Wootten’s battle-hardened 18th Brigade intact around his base at the far end of Milne Bay.

  He was, however, prepared to use some of Wootten’s men to reinforce Bicks’ inexperienced militia company at KB Mission. The daylight lull would allow a build-up on both sides, which, later that evening, would erupt into one of the most ferocious engagements of the campaign, centred on the hitherto tranquil grounds of KB Mission.

  In the meantime, Captain Bicks was ordered to send out a series of fighting and reconnaissance patrols to determine what kind of strength they were up against. The first of these, an eight-man team from 10 Platoon, departed just after dawn under Lieutenant Roger Sanderson, but it was a confused affair. The militiamen of the 7th Brigade were never properly trained in this type of aggressive fighting, which was why Clowes had earmarked them for defensive roles.

  One man who remembered the patrol was Corporal Cyril McCulloch. ‘We made our way along the track,’ he said, ‘half on the left side and the other on the right … the jungle was very dense … our forward scout was approximately 20 yards ahead of the patrol.’

  The 30-year-old Sanderson, from Adelaide, ordered his men to fix bayonets as they approached the jungle around Wagu Wagu Creek. Then there was a burst of fire and their forward scout fell. The men fanned out and entered the green wall of jungle, but found it so thick that no-one could see more than 10 feet in front of him. So close were the Australians to the Japanese that the shouted orders of their officer could clearly be heard.

  ‘I could hear Lt Sanderson firing his Tommy-gun,’ remembered McCulloch. ‘He was the only one with an automatic weapon.’

  In the confused jungle firefight, Lieutenant Sanderson and another soldier were killed before the remainder withdrew, none the wiser to the strength of the enemy.

  It was here at Wagu Wagu that the Japanese first employed what would become a feature of their attack on Milne Bay: their use of English to throw doubt among the Australians. As English had been taught widely in Japanese schools, many had a passable facility with the language, but even those with no command whatsoever would try it out in the jungle battlefield, with varying success.

  ‘Give up the fight!’ was one of the phrases Corporal McCulloch remembered hearing, in what he thought was very convincing English. Other Australians would recall a myriad of false orders, insults and often disconnected sayings and phrases being thrown about during the campaign, particularly in the early stages, when Japanese morale was still high. ‘Take it easy! Don’t fire! Pull back, Dig! Aussie man go, Japan man come!’ were all heard in an attempt to unnerve the Australian soldier, or lead him astray.

  Usually the peculiar context gave the Japanese away, such as when ‘Keep to the middle of the road!’ or ‘Good morning!’ was shouted in the afternoon. Only one example was recorded of the tactic being effective when a Japanese soldier managed to ‘order’ some Australians to pull back with a convincingly pronounced, ‘Withdraw!’ About 50 men from three separate companies fell for it and began to pull back towards Gili Gili via the beach. They were intercepted near the company command post, where they were greeted by Captain Bicks, clutching a rifle.

  ‘Where are you fellows going?’ he demanded.

  ‘Sir, we were told to withdraw,’ offered the bewildered men.

  ‘Like hell you were,’ said the CO. ‘This is where you stay!’

  The men formed a defensive position around their company HQ, where they remained, still somewhat bewildered, for the remainder of the engagement.

  Another, larger patrol was planned for later that day, involving two fresh companies from the 61st, which were to bolster Captain Bicks and his men at KB Mission, and another from the as yet unused 25th Battalion, currently awaiting the call to action in their camp around Gurney Field. Brigadier Field’s orders to the 61st Battalion’s commander, Lieutenant
Colonel Meldrum, were succinct: ‘Take your A and C Companies and push them in … we must get the job done today in case reinforcements arrive tonight.’

  •

  Around this time also, an exhausted Major Wiles turned up, emerging from the jungle with the remnants of his D Company, having run headlong into the Japanese invasion force onboard the Bronzewing. They had managed to scramble ashore, but had left several of their number dead in the water. Nothing had been heard from them since the invasion.

  Their appearance at KB Mission was doubly relieving, as Wiles was one of the few people who could report on the Japanese force firsthand. Captain Bicks had estimated himself to be facing around 150 Japanese, but Wiles put the estimate closer to 1000. Bicks related this sobering news to battalion commander Meldrum, who told Brigadier Field that facing an enemy of that size was far more than his raw company could cope with. Field’s assurances of reinforcements only partly assuaged Meldrum’s concerns.

  The second patrol that day was another messy affair, not even getting underway until late in the afternoon after several hours awaiting the arrival of the 61st Battalion’s A and C Companies. When they still had not shown up by the start time, Bicks decided he could delay no longer and began with the forces he had at his disposal: his own B Company and the 25th Battalion’s C Company, under Captain Phillip Steel.

  Bicks ordered Steel to advance his men up the beach side of the track, while he would move up the mountain side. At 4.30 in the afternoon, with many of the men well aware that by 6 p.m. it would be virtually dark, they advanced up to their start line along Eakoeakoni Creek, the eastern boundary of KB Mission, where the Japanese tank had come to grief.

  Private Eddy George recalled: ‘As we moved up … to take up our positions, I thought to myself – this is not a movie – we are not acting and it’s for real. I’d done a bit of boxing pre-war and I felt much the same as the first fight I had, a bit nervous.’