Captain Brocksopp agreed and pulled his men back into the bush. The rout of the 2/10th Battalion continued.
•
Exhausted and broken, the 2/10th would play no further major part in the Battle of Milne Bay. Now it would be the turn of another of the 18th Brigade’s untried militia battalions: the 25th, drawn from the farming areas of Toowoomba and Queensland’s Darling Downs.
The 25th Battalion was under the command of another veteran of the First World War, Lieutenant Colonel Edward ‘Ted’ Miles, who had served in it for over a decade. Miles was said to hold a great affection for his men, knowing a good deal of them by name. It is to be hoped that he had also instilled them with courage: they were about to meet an invigorated Japanese force, and they would need it.
In anticipation of exactly the sort of breakthrough the Japanese had now spectacularly accomplished, Miles had earlier spread his men out along a 3-mile stretch of the Government Track leading east from No. 3 Strip. Closest to the Japanese was A Company, under Captain Basil Ryan, who stood with his raw men to meet the advancing enemy at the village of Rabi. Filing past him in the dark, however, were the retreating remnants of the 2/10th. In vain, Ryan implored the men to stand and fight with him, but these hard men of the AIF had had enough.
After the war, Ryan remembered:
As the 2/10th men straggled through, I made repeated requests for them to stay but the only answers I could get were, ‘Not on your bloody life,’ or words to that effect … the effect that the flight of the battle-trained veteran AIF battalion had on our unbaptised troops can well be imagined.
Ryan was about to learn that the reluctance of the men to continue the fight was not unfounded. Following hard on the heels of the 2/10th were the Japanese, moving up from the Gama River ford. They were now laughing and chatting as they swaggered up the Government Track, and no longer making any attempt to conceal themselves. While still uncertain of the location of the Australian airstrip, they nevertheless sensed that both it and complete victory were near.
Ryan spread his company through the bush on the inland side of the track, intending to ambush the enemy as they moved past, and push them across the track and into the sea. Such was the speed of the Japanese advance, however, that the Australians were still huddled and receiving their instructions when the Japanese arrived. Everyone could see instantly that their small and inexperienced force would be no match for what seemed an endless line of passing enemy troops, particularly as they would be attempting a difficult attack manoeuvre they had never rehearsed, and in the dark.
In an interview with author Peter Brune, Private Jim Hilton recalled that, as the Japanese passed by, ‘I could have touched them, they were from me to you … they seemed to be going past us for bloody hours … they were making that much of a bloody racket they felt they owned the place!’
It only took a brief skirmish to scatter Ryan’s force, which had no choice but to head north into the hills of the Stirling Range, where they joined men from the 2/10th who were making their way west to No. 3 Strip and Gili Gili.
Earlier that evening, the 25th’s Regimental Sergeant Major, Warrant Officer Ken Barnett, had driven a three-ton truck laden with ammunition forward to KB Mission, but soon became hopelessly bogged in the mud on an impassable section of the track between Rabi and Kilarbo. Making a virtue out of a necessity, he decided instead to disable the vehicle entirely and use it as a roadblock against the advancing tanks.
At around 3 a.m. the Japanese arrived, but once again made short work of the scene. A Company’s 9 Platoon put up a fight, but the Japanese quickly surrounded the position, and in the short but intense firefight the Australians were forced still further back along the track. Inspecting the abandoned truck, the Japanese were grateful for the stores of rations and ammunition they found inside, including a case of sticky bombs, which they would later return to the Australians in the heat of battle.
It was another intensely confusing situation, with the soldiers barely able to distinguish friend from foe. Lance Corporal Errol Jorgensen remembered: ‘It was that bloody well confused … there were Japanese coming back, and 2/10th fellas behind them, and Japanese behind them. And we didn’t know who we were shooting at. Didn’t have a clue …’
The 25th Battalion was not the only unit to be rushed in to plug the gap punched by the Japanese at KB Mission. A short time after midnight on 29 August, Lieutenant Keith Acreman of the 101st Anti-Tank Regiment was at his post guarding a section of No. 3 Strip, listening to the increasing sounds of battle from the east. Suddenly, an urgent message – ‘The tanks are coming’ – was received, and Acreman was ordered to move some of his guns forward to the nearby village of Kilarbo, a little over a mile along the track. He set off quickly with two 2-pounder antitank pieces, one loaded onto a flatbed vehicle, the other towed by an American truck. For his protection, a section from the 25th Battalion were sent along with him, although exactly what protection a force of just ten men or so could offer was unclear.
Acreman had surveyed the area in the days before, and decided to situate his weapons on a part of the track which passed close to the beach and also crossed a bridge over a small creek. Before reaching the bridge, however, he was told by an alarmed infantry officer that the Japanese were perilously close. Without time even to dismount his weapons, he reversed the trucks a small way into the scrub and swung the barrels around towards the track.
Hardly were he and his bombardiers in position than soldiers began to appear from the jungle, heading west. Luckily for Acreman, they were Australians. Among them was Sergeant Winen, who informed Acreman that the track east was chaotic, with the advancing Japanese virtually running into the backs of the retreating Australians – and in the dark, nobody knew who was who. He warned that Japanese forward scouts were virtually on his tail and would soon arrive, and suggested the best thing Acreman could do was throw away the breech blocks of the guns and make a run for it. Acreman declined the suggestion.
Soon after Winen’s departure, the night sky crackled overhead and a brilliant white phosphorous flare illuminated his position like daylight. Gunfire erupted as Japanese infantry poured around a bend and opened up with rifle fire, which pinged noisily off the anti-tank guns’ protective shields.
The escorting section opened up in response as Acreman kept his eye on his gunsight for any sign of the tanks, occasionally joining in himself with his rifle. Years later, Acreman recalled: ‘The Japs hit us … we heard them but didn’t see them except their gunfire.’ Returning it to them with small arms, he noticed the sound of the .303s of his escorting soldiers gradually fading. Then, during a brief lull, a gunner remarked in the dark: ‘That’s funny, not much firing going on.’ Looking around, Acreman realised that his escort had withdrawn and they were alone.
At the next gun, a ricocheting bullet killed Bombardier Raymond Vize as he sat in the loader’s seat, and Acreman began to run out of ammunition. Suddenly, in the dark, he heard Japanese voices ahead of him – and, even more alarmingly, behind. With the tanks having failed to materialise, Acreman decided to pull out his remaining men, and they slipped away into the dark. As Acreman attempted to retrieve the guns, one truck became hopelessly bogged, forcing him to abandon it. Then, still under fire, he reconsidered Sergeant Winen’s earlier idea, and raced around to remove both weapons’ firing mechanisms, rendering them useless to the Japanese.
In the terrible confusion of the withdrawal, Acreman was aware that appearing unexpectedly in front of his men could draw a quick response in gunfire from his own side, so he ordered a 25th Battalion signaller to tap into the telephone line to warn of their approach. As to why the expected Japanese tanks had failed to appear, he had no idea.
•
In fact, Acreman had not been abandoned. One of the senior NCOs in the section protecting him was Sergeant Stan Steele, a 24-year-old labourer from Stanthorpe, Queensland. Over the previous few days he had organised the construction of a small clearing on the bottom edge of No. 3 Strip,
a few hundred yards from the runway itself, to be used as a dispersal area for the aircraft when they arrived. It was to this stronger position that Steele had withdrawn. In the chaos of battle, however, the message he’d sent to Acreman had failed to reach him.
It would be here, in a small area near the Government Track, the beach and the airstrip, that the defenders of Milne Bay would make another stand. With sixteen men from his own 25th Battalion, bolstered by a few stragglers from others, Steele set up an ambush with Bren guns and rifles. As the terrible night began to finally wane in the eastern sky, they sat under cover and waited.
The first men to appear were more of his own, whom Steele gladly co-opted to his force. To discourage them from continuing to the safety of the airstrip, the imposing figure of the 25th’s Regimental Sergeant Major, Warrant Officer Ken Barnett, stood in their path, brandishing not one but two service revolvers he had somehow acquired. ‘I’ll shoot the next fella that bloody well takes another step,’ he growled menacingly. The encouragement proved sufficient, and Steele’s small band was further bolstered. Instructing them to lie in lines before the guns, one behind the other, Barnett’s instructions were simple: ‘When one fella gets killed, the next moves up.’
At 5 a.m., as Steele’s men waited, the Japanese emerged along the track and, as one soldier later put it, ‘swung right into us’. The trap was sprung. Thompson submachine guns, the heavier Brens and hand grenades cut the Japanese to pieces as they attempted to storm the clearing. Japanese snipers attempted to climb the trees and fire on the Australians but were blown down with hand grenades hurled into the treetops, their fuses set to four- and five-second delays.
At one stage, an artillery barrage from the 25-pounders of the 2/5th Field Regiment – sighted to come down on the clearing in the face of the advancing Japanese – was called off when the gunfire was heard and an urgent message of ‘Hold fire!’ was relayed to the gunners by field telephone just as they were poised to open up. A ‘friendly fire’ catastrophe was avoided by seconds.
Around 7.30 a.m. the small battle of what became known as Steele’s Clearing petered out, and the Japanese, following their established pattern, retreated to the shelter of the jungle for the daylight hours. Some would even be withdrawn to the rear. Not one had succeeded in breaking through to the far side, and for the loss of not a single Australian life, an estimated 40 to 50 of the enemy had been killed. For his quick thinking and leadership, Sergeant Steele was awarded the Military Medal.
The enemy had been stopped, but no Australian was under the delusion that the halt was anything but temporary. The Japanese would soon regroup and resume their advance, and now, for the first time in the campaign, they were within sight of their goal of the airstrip. Even better for the Japanese, that afternoon a cruiser and eight destroyers were spotted heading south to Normanby Island. Reinforcements were on the way.
CHAPTER 26
THE KITTYHAWKS DEPART
In four days of battle, the Kittyhawks of 75 and 76 Squadrons had expended nearly 200,000 rounds of half-inch ammunition, every one of which was powerful enough to punch a hole through a brick wall. At sunrise each morning, the pilots climbed into the air and sprayed it into the jungles and along the beaches of Milne Bay, seeking out anything that may have arrived during the night. The wrecked barges were fired on again and again, in case repairs had been carried out overnight. So much ammunition was being expended, in fact, that a fully laden B-17 was flown in from Port Moresby to replenish the garrison’s dwindling stocks.
The fighters were now working in tandem with the three Hudsons of 6 Squadron, which likewise used every minute of daylight to patrol, reconnoitre and bomb. Not a moment’s rest was to be afforded the Japanese. Try as they might to seek shelter and rest in the daylight, the Kittyhawk pilots would do their best to find them and blast them.
Visible Japanese soldiers were always targeted, and the results were brutal, as 76 Squadron pilot Sergeant Ian Loudon stated in one of his combat reports after he had caught a party of Japanese on the beach: ‘personnel reeling – staggering – groping – crawling and generally left in a chaotic condition’. Flight Lieutenant Nat Gould of 75 Squadron one morning spotted 30 or 40 newly embarked Japanese soldiers waving at his aircraft, believing it to be one of their own. ‘They were initially told the only aircraft they would see would be those of the Japanese Navy,’ he later recounted. ‘We quickly corrected their assumption by turning around and strafing them. I think we killed the lot of them.’
Later in the battle, he came across a platoon-sized group of Japanese soldiers crossing a stream in the open. Approaching from behind, he opened fire at low level without the slightest hesitation, unleashing a decapitating storm of lead. The massacre left Nat completely untroubled. ‘It was terribly brutal, but then so were the Japanese. I felt nothing, not then and not since,’ he told the author.
Usually, however, the Japanese were highly adept at concealing themselves under the foliage of the jungle, and the pilots often had to pass several times along the same stretch of coast or track before they could locate anything to shoot at. Sometimes it was pure instinct that told them what might be lurking under a particular clump or canopy, but the flare system the army employed worked well. Another method of marking targets – which was unofficial but more accurate – also evolved: the soldiers would fire smoke rounds on either side of a target. These were spotted easily by the pilot, who would strafe between the two rising columns.
Both 75 and 76 Squadrons worked with an attached army liaison officer, who sat on one end of a field telephone and relayed the daily targets the men in the jungle had requested. Another officer in the operations tent at Gurney Field pencilled down the information and conveyed it to the pilots. In the absence of detailed maps, coordinates were of little use, so the pilots’ familiarity with the features and landmarks was of utmost importance. The possibility of firing on their own men was constant, and one or two instances of this did occur in the battle, although no casualties were recorded.
The gratitude the soldiers felt for their aerial weaponry was immeasurable. Gone were the prejudices against the air force, the sulking resentment of the men on the ground having to slog the hard yards while the ‘Brylcreem boys’ – as the soldiers once dubbed the pilots – returned each day to clean sheets and a drink in their comfortable mess. There was not much Brylcreem to be found at Milne Bay, and certainly no clean sheets.
Indeed, with the niceties and regulations of Melbourne – even of Port Moresby – now seeming another world away, all vestiges of RAAF uniform protocol were discarded. Beards were grown, hair was left uncut, footwear and helmets apparently became optional. One soldier marching back towards Gili Gili on the Government Track one morning was waved at by a passing pilot from his open canopy as he flew towards the Japanese line. The soldier waved back, noting the pilot’s distinctive red beard, bare head and apparent lack of anything resembling a shirt.
Flying Officer John Piper resorted to flying his trips in bare feet and pyjama shorts, reasoning that as he had to be up out of bed at dawn, and would grab a nap when he could during the day, he may as well stay in them.
‘But what about your boots?’ asked a concerned ground staffer, as Piper strapped himself into his cockpit one day. ‘If you come down you’ll need your bloody boots!’
‘I don’t care,’ was the weary and fatalistic reply.
Disease, particularly malaria, continued to exact a terrible toll from all at Gurney Field. Bill Deane-Butcher would treat a full third of 75 Squadron’s personnel, and the levels of infection in 76 Squadron were roughly the same. Many men, though sick, would continue to work, and even fly. Flight Lieutenant Nat Gould simultaneously suffered both malaria and dysentery, but kept to his flying roster nonetheless. ‘I suffered diarrhea and vomiting at the same time,’ he recalled. ‘I would be airborne, and pull my oxygen mask away from my face to vomit while filling my trousers and my boots. Horrible, just horrible …’
As the battle wore on,
the airstrip’s metal mesh was continuously pounded into the slush underneath, until it resembled ‘a horrid ribbon of mud’. Ground staff, exhausted and filthy, did their best to scrape the slime off the aircraft, often using their bare hands. They cleared it from ailerons, gunports and undercarriage legs, and took particular care with the ammunition ejection slots, which, if fouled, could cause the spent shells to jam up behind the guns and stop them dead. On wing surfaces, rippling layers of caked mud could alter the flying characteristics of the aircraft. Some pilots reported decreased manoeuvrability and drops in speed of up to 20 miles per hour. Keeping them clean was a continuing nightmare.
The two squadrons took turns – one would be up and fighting while the other was on the runway refuelling and rearming – but the aircraft themselves were being hammered. Gun barrels were wearing out, with pilots reporting that the tracer rounds placed at the end of each belt to warn that ammunition was nearly expended were observed to be firing off in wide spirals rather than directly ahead.
Nat Gould remembers his armourer giving him a quick demonstration between sorties. Removing a well-used barrel from its position in the Kittyhawk’s wing, he held it up in front of Nat and dropped a new half-inch shell into one end. Both watched as it slid clean out the other end onto the ground, the rifling having been worn to a smooth bore.
The CO of 75 Squadron, Les Jackson, came up with a novel way of protecting the gun barrels and breech blocks from the mud: condoms stretched over them before each flight. The idea caught on quickly. Prophylactics were standard issue but the men had no use for them at Milne Bay, so they were pooled into general service. But with so many flights a day, hundreds were needed and even these began to run out. A most unusual request was therefore sent to RAAF HQ, and soon a tea chest full of rubber prophylactics was flown in from Townsville, after every civilian outlet in the town was hurriedly relieved of them.
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