Turning Point

by Michael Veitch

  To confuse the Australians, the Japanese threw fireworks in all directions, and resumed their unnerving calls in English: ‘Stand up, Corporal Smith,’ and so on. They also fired mortars and grenades, which sometimes exploded high in the coconut trees. Corporal Louis James recalled receiving ‘a shower of red “hopper” ants and the biggest spider I’d ever seen that must have been blown out of the coconut trees right near my face’.

  Working in tandem, the tanks drove back and forth among the men, attempting to shoot the Australians or run them down. The Australian positions were identified, and subjected to withering machine-gun fire.

  Fortunately, the machine gunners inside the tanks had limited vision, as well as a restricted field of fire, particularly at closer targets. Nevertheless, it became clear to the Australians that, without sufficient weapons to counter them, they had little chance of winning the engagement. Corporal James recalled the frustration: ‘I can remember people virtually screaming, “Where are those bloody anti-tank rifles – when are they coming?”’

  Realising the extent of his error in not including the anti-tank rifles in the battalion’s armoury, Dobbs immediately sent word to rush several forward. Time, however, was running out. With increasing desperation, the Australian attacks on the tanks became bolder, with men using the only weapon at hand which could potentially stop them: the sticky bombs. One of B Company’s lieutenants had three at his disposal, but each of them failed. Some, he found, were corroded with mould, or had faulty fuses or detonators.

  With incredible bravery, the men of B Company launched attack after attack on the Japanese tanks, hurling their useless ordnance from closer and closer range. Each time, the sticky bombs refused to stick, rolling off the sides of the tanks, and even failing to explode. A little before midnight, the Japanese tank commanders realised that the Australians possessed no weapons that could harm them, and their tactics became bolder. They charged larger groups of men with the intention of running them flat; the Australians had no choice but to scatter into the night.

  Nor would there be any help this night from the big guns of the 9th Battery of the 2/5th Field Regiment, whose 25-pounders were situated back towards Gili Gili. The reasons for their non-appearance at KB Mission are contested. Two artillery observation officers – Lieutenants Esmond Gilhooley and Athol Baird – along with a small escort, had been sent to KB Mission to liaise with the battery by telephone, but most accounts simply state that, with the hasty set-up at the end of the day, there was no time for them to be deployed.

  Military historian Nicholas Anderson argues, however, that Dobbs himself refused to allow the battery to fire its guns, believing they could not be calibrated or ranged in time, given the available light and maps. According to Anderson, ‘the battery proved on subsequent occasions that these concerns were unfounded’.

  When the attack came, Lieutenants Gilhooley and Baird, along with their escort, became riflemen and fought alongside the 2/10th Battalion infantry, firing from one of the mission’s grass huts. Both men were killed early in the engagement when their position came under heavy fire. Signaller Clem Constable remembered seeing Gilhooley firing his pistol and advancing towards the Japanese, and did not see him alive again.

  Aided by the tanks, the Japanese began making a series of frontal attacks on the Australian defensive perimeter, but rarely strayed from the line of the Government Track. Some men reported explosions in the jungle to the north, but these turned out to be feints, designed to draw the Australians towards supposed encircling movements. Not once did the Japanese deviate from their directive to crash forward through the Australian defences, being content to hold the small amount of ground on either side of the track, and from there to proceed straight to their goal of the airstrip.

  Parts of the defensive perimeter began to crumble, but in other areas the Australian resistance was fierce. Firefights erupted everywhere. Bullets made odd swishing and popping sounds as they passed through the fronds of trees and the long kunai grass. The Bren guns were found to draw instant retaliation from the Japanese when fired, so Miethke had them shift their position constantly, firing in bursts, but not so long as to allow the Japanese to range on them.

  In one such position, Private Bob Abraham – of Semaphore, Port Adelaide, and whose occupation was listed as ‘Canister maker and farm labourer’ – was attacked by a group of ten Japanese and shot multiple times in the legs. Clutching his Bren but unable to move, Abraham would heroically endure the most terrifying of nights.

  Occupying the ground inland from the Government Track was B Company’s 11 Platoon, under Lieutenant A.R. Scott, who led a series of desperate counterattacks on the tanks with sticky bombs, only to be let down by his equipment as they bounced off like tennis balls. Lieutenant Murray Brown, commanding 14 Platoon, became infuriated by his impotence in the face of the Japanese armour. ‘I emptied my pistol into it,’ he recalled. ‘I might as well have pissed on it! I was just furious because there was nothing you could do!’ At one stage, a tank suffered a direct hit from a 3-inch mortar round, but to no visible effect.

  Everywhere, Miethke’s and Brocksopp’s men performed dozens of astonishing feats of spur-of-the-moment valour, charging into the dark-grey shapes moving towards them, firing from the hip and hurling hand grenades. The latter proved one of the most effective weapons, scattering many Japanese forward thrusts.

  Private Jim Kotz, a 28-year-old labourer from Adelaide, grabbed a Bren gun, the use of which had already caused three men to be wounded, charged forward under fire towards a Japanese machine-gun position 15 yards in front of him and wiped it out. Then he turned and ran, again under fire, and scattered hand grenades at three other groups of Japanese who had broken the perimeter and were firing on the company command post. Wounded in the chest, he refused to be carried out; he would walk back with the remainder of his company. He was later awarded the Military Medal.

  In the dark, hand-to-hand fighting broke out, with the bayonet used extensively. Private Harry McLennan of C Company – a 30-year-old labourer from Broken Hill – leaped from his position to kill at least five and as many as eight Japanese in the semi-darkness.

  At one point the Australians watched as, almost for the first time since any of them had been there, the clouds parted and a bright moon cast an unearthly pale glow over the battlefield.

  •

  By the early hours of Friday, 28 August, the Australian casualties were mounting: there were around 40 dead and another 30 wounded. Those figures could have been much higher had the Japanese been more accurate with their shooting. As it was, many aimed too high – a common error when firing at night – sending bullets whizzing over men’s heads and into the trees. On one or two occasions, soldiers reported being struck by falling coconuts from the tree under which they were sheltering.

  While the fight was intense for the men of B and C Companies, forward of the mission, the soldiers of A and D Companies, to the rear, had little to do but lie in their positions in darkness and observe the fireworks of battle occurring a few hundred yards ahead. Many were itching to move forward and join their comrades, but their orders were clear: any movement was forbidden.

  Battlefield communication began to break down. All orders and instructions were issued by voice and runners, but with a number of officers killed or wounded, many positions had no idea of the overall situation. Runners were targeted and shot down by the Japanese, meaning some messages to advance or withdraw remained undelivered.

  With the Japanese beginning to infiltrate the mission defences, the Australians were forced to move back to avoid being surrounded. In the darkness and with the poor communication, some suddenly found themselves in the midst of advancing Japanese.

  C Company, on the beach side of the track, was bearing the worst of it. Their commander, Captain John Brocksopp, a 29-year-old Adelaide solicitor – described by one of his fellow officers as ‘the coolest man you ever saw, you would have thought he was at a garden party’ – ordered a counterattack,
which nearly resulted in the death of one of his platoon commanders, Lieutenant Brown. Moving against a group of Japanese sheltering near a grass hut, Brown emerged to throw several grenades in their direction, unaware of the tank idling beside them. The dreaded spotlight came on, illuminating him like a candle, and immediately a burst of machine-gun fire wounded his right foot and took the top of his left ear clean off. By incredible luck, he escaped by dashing back into the darkness.

  Brocksopp concluded that there was now no position left for any counterattack to restore, and contact with much of his rapidly fragmenting company was faltering.

  Battalion adjutant Theo Schmedje went forward to assess the situation firsthand, only to be confronted by a group of advancing Japanese. Drawing his pistol, he opened fire and yelled with such gusto that the enemy temporarily scattered, giving Schmedje a chance to turn and run hard the other way. ‘We’re not bright,’ was the profoundly understated message he delivered to Dobbs. Both agreed that a withdrawal was imperative, and runners were sent out ordering a pull back to Motieau Creek, 300 yards to the rear, which the still intact A Company was ordered to defend.

  Across the track, Miethke’s B Company did not receive the order to retire, but with his 2IC, Lieutenant Scott, already killed, and his men down to just five rounds of ammunition each, he knew his company was fracturing. Miethke later described Scott as ‘a very tough, courageous officer’. Scott had been hit in the calf, and Miethke was attending to him personally, when a bullet struck the wounded lieutenant in the throat, killing him instantly.

  Having successfully fended off four frontal attacks by chanting Japanese soldiers and their tanks, B Company was slowly being split in two. Some platoons struck north towards the hills to beat their way around to the rear from that direction, while others retreated along the beach. With the Japanese now beginning to break through in numbers, distinguishing friend from enemy was almost impossible, and the risk of firing on one’s own in the near-darkness was real.

  Caught with a section of his men behind the rapidly advancing Japanese, Miethke led them back towards the creek in a series of fighting withdrawals: one group held off the enemy, while another leap-frogged between them. Eventually they reached the line of the creek. Where the remainder of his company was at that time, Miethke had no idea.

  Of the many individual encounters with the enemy this night, few were more dramatic than that of Sergeant George Spencer, a 33-year-old agricultural labourer from the tough Mallee country of eastern South Australia. In charge of C Company’s 13 Platoon, which was in position on the coastal side of the Government Track, Spencer suspected the Japanese had observed his unit’s location, as their advances seemed to split in two and make straight for him. He watched as B Company, to his immediate left, was hit first, then it was their turn. Around him, Spencer’s men began to be hit, suffering terrible wounds far worse than those inflicted by conventional bullets, leading him to suspect the Japanese were using dumdum rounds, which were designed to expand on impact and inflict the worst possible injuries.

  One of the tanks began to target his platoon directly, firing a withering stream of bullets into his meagre defences. Men were killed and injured beside him. Spencer knew his position was desperate and untenable. How he wished at that moment for one of the Boys rifles, which at this range could punch a hole straight through the tank’s thin armour. Instead, all he had was a small supply of the infamous sticky bombs. He had never used one but had been shown the method: pull the pin to remove the cover and expose the adhesive, then release to trigger the five-second delay fuse. Throw.

  With the tank preparing to charge down on their position, Spencer knew it was the time to act. Grabbing a bomb, clipping four grenades to his webbing and holding his rifle in one hand, he turned to the remainder of his platoon. ‘Hang on,’ he ordered, then leaped forward and ran.

  Bullets followed his path, hitting the tree trunks as he dodged between them. Then the dark swallowed him up. Spencer later remembered hearing the booming voice of Lieutenant Colonel Dobbs issuing some kind of command, and made towards the sound of the tank. The 30 yards to the enemy seemed like miles, and bullets again whizzed over his head, some smashing into a tree behind which he had paused for shelter. The trunk, he remembered, was sticky, and in a disconnected moment it occurred to him that these were rubber trees.

  Now the tank’s light was switched on, and it began to try to trap Spencer in its beam, lighting him up like a moth to give the following infantry a target. A macabre dance began, in which the tank fired and then manoeuvred to keep Spencer in its sights, while Spencer confounded it with desperate sideways dashes into the darkness.

  Seizing his moment, he emerged onto the track and, barely feet from the vehicle, pulled off the sticky bomb’s cover and hurled it. It hit the side of the tank – and rolled off. Undeterred, Spencer sprang even closer and, like a footballer, kicked the bomb along the ground, managing to lodge it directly between the tracks. Now the Japanese infantry, infuriated at his daring, advanced towards him.

  Spencer wrenched two grenades from his belt and threw, then dashed back behind a tree. Iron fragments blew in all directions as the grenades exploded and the Japanese, some screaming in pain, fell back. Not a sound, however, emanated from the sticky bomb, which Spencer realised was a dud.

  Bolting back to 13 Platoon, the unhurt Spencer found a runner waiting for him, with orders to return to talk to Lieutenant Colonel Dobbs, who assured Spencer he was going to recommend him for the Distinguished Conduct Medal. He then handed Spencer another sticky bomb, promising him that if he attacked again and was successful, he would put him up for the Victoria Cross.

  Spencer assured his CO that he would do his best, but Dobbs was renowned for being reluctant to recommend decorations for valour to anyone, so he was sceptical of his chances.

  Returning to his position, Spencer found that it had already been abandoned, and that the tanks had pushed on to somewhere behind him. Looking around, all he could see were advancing Japanese. Pulling back to the reserve line of the scrub, he encountered Captain Schmedje, who informed him that A and D Companies had also scattered, and that a general withdrawal back to the line of Motieau Creek was in progress. By now the Japanese were all around them, and the best Spencer could do was lead a small party of men from various companies north into the foothills to safety, where they awaited the dawn.

  For George Spencer, the battle of KB Mission was over. Although he’d shown tremendous gallantry several times, the recommendation for a medal never arrived.

  At the line of Motieau Creek, confusion reigned as the fractured Australian units tried to find each other in the dark. As Captain Schmedje later recalled, ‘withdrawal at night in the heat of battle, no matter how well trained you are, cannot possibly succeed very well’.

  C Company’s commander, John Brocksopp, had by now lost contact with so many of his men that he decided to return with his sergeant, Mick Winen, to locate them. As the two men moved carefully around the now Japanese-occupied mission, they came across a group of their dead and began to remove their dog tags. Engrossed in the grim task, Winen felt a sudden nudge from Brocksopp and looked up. Standing just a few feet from them, leaning against a coconut tree, was a lone Japanese soldier, staring at them blank-faced. The two Australians slowly stood, and the three watched each other in silence for a series of eternal seconds, before Winen and Brocksopp backed away into the dark.

  From the Motieau Creek line, a new defensive position was agreed upon, a mile or so back along the Government Track to Gama River. But as the shattered 2/10th began pouring west along the track and through the scrub and jungle, they found themselves amid a Japanese advance in the same direction. In the awful confusion, Australian officers and sergeants called orders to groups of enemy soldiers, and men quickened their pace to catch up with others marching ahead of them, only to realise at the last second that they were the enemy.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE BLOODY TRACK

  There was
no confusion as to the intentions of the two tanks which now began to rumble their way along the Government Track, west of the now conquered KB Mission. The efforts to stop them, however, were largely chaotic. Improvised ambushes were hastily organised and badly executed. Sergeant Winen’s dairy noted that at about 2 a.m. on the morning of 28 August:

  Within minutes the Japs came down the road behind the two tanks but we never got a chance to use the last of our ammo. Some trigger happy bloke gave the game away and again lead started flying. Lt Mackie yelled to us to get moving and keep in front of the Japs.

  Another diary recalled simply that ‘there were a lot of panicky troops about’.

  As they approached the ford overlooking Gama River, a Boys anti-tank rifle, which had finally been delivered by launch from Gili Gili, was set up alongside the track by Corporal John O’Brien. Captain Schmedje was seated right beside him. ‘He and I were on a little rise on the top side of the road and the tank was quite visible to us,’ he said. ‘Then he fired. We reckoned that he put a shot straight up the tank’s barrel.’

  Schmedje’s assessment was optimistic. O’Brien managed to get away three shots from the Boys before the Japanese riding on the tank – no doubt startled by the enormous noise made by the weapon – returned fire by way of several hurled hand grenades. In fact, O’Brien had never fired a Boys rifle in his life, having only had a quick verbal instruction on its use that afternoon, which may account for his shots being inconclusive, although one of the tank’s commanders was killed. Shrapnel from one of the grenades wounded O’Brien in the arm and a skirmish ensued. For his efforts, Corporal O’Brien was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

  Schmedje dashed over to Brocksopp, who was also taking cover. ‘John, we’re not going to hold here,’ he said. ‘I can see them going around us in the bush. Come on, we’re not going to sacrifice troops for a stupid little fight like this.’