We would’ve been wiped out that morning or the next evening or the next morning if we’d stayed there. And I was going to stay there because the reinforcement was promised and I was just hoping like hell it was coming because if it hadn’t come, we’d have been done. I couldn’t implement a plan of withdrawal in the face of an incoming reinforcement. We had to stay. They had to get to us. I think the 39th were pretty happy that they were just holding on by the skin of their teeth at that moment.
The hardened AIF veterans took their places alongside their ‘chocko’ brothers and they seamlessly fought as one – AIF and the Militia side by side. The Militia troops were buoyed by the professionalism and the courage under fire displayed by the 2/14th Diggers. They were also impressed by their demeanour and their presence as, being generally four or five years older than the 39th troops, they were bigger and stronger. One of Ralph Honner’s youngsters later told him: ‘I thought they were gods!’
But the ‘chockos’ showed they too were made of stern stuff. A group of 30 sick and wounded men from the 39th Battalion, who had been sent to the rear by Ralph Honner, showed their courage and their devotion to their mates when they heard the battalion was in trouble. On hearing the news, 27 of them immediately turned around and headed back into the maelstrom at Isurava. Of the three who couldn’t return, one had lost his foot, one had lost his forearm and the other had a bullet in the throat. Like their fathers before them and their fellow Diggers in the AIF alongside them, the ‘chockos’ of the 39th Battalion showed the mateship, courage, endurance and selfless sacrifice so often exhibited by the Digger. Even their enemy recognised the courage of the Aussies at Isurava. One of the Japanese 144th Regiment, Shigenori Doi, recalled:
During the battle we had advanced about 200 metres and I remember that an Australian soldier, wearing just a pair of shorts, came running towards us throwing hand grenades. I remember thinking at the time this was something that would be very hard for a Japanese soldier to do. Even now, when I think about it, I’m affected by the memory of this, this warrior. I suppose the Australians had a different motivation for fighting, but this soldier, this warrior, was far braver than any in Japan. When I think about it now, it still affects me.
The late Alan Avery, a 2/14th veteran, who had already been wounded and won a Military Medal in Syria, recalled Isurava as the fiercest fighting in which his battalion had ever engaged:
Everyone should have got a gong [a medal] up there you know. They really should have. There were so many acts of bravery there. A fellow there – a Jap, he jumped into a foxhole and he bit a big lump out of a bloke’s jaw. The combat was that close you see.
These actions don’t last forever. They last for a very short space of time but if you’re there you’re thinking it’s a long, long time. You couldn’t see anything and you went by the noise. They rattled tins and things to try to upset you. And we knew they were getting closer and closer. I think that in their previous warfare, this noise factor could have upset a lot of people but we held our ground and waited until we saw the whites of their eyes and it was on.
Avery was involved in one of the critical actions at the height of the battle. The Japanese had broken through the Australians’ defence on the northeastern perimeter and directly threatened battalion headquarters. Avery and his lifelong mate, Bruce Kingsbury, volunteered to join a counterattack to try to block the hole in their defensive shell. Sergeant Bob Thompson led the group, and it included Corporal Lindsay ‘Teddy’ Bear, who had been wounded in earlier fighting. Teddy Bear wielded a Bren machine gun in the initial stages and fired until its barrel glowed red. But gradually the loss of blood from his wounds took its toll and he was forced to hand the gun to Bruce Kingsbury. The fire was so intense it pulverised the soft jungle foliage they were using as cover and exposed both sides. The Japanese were massing in preparation for a final death thrust to the Australian HQ when Kingsbury saw his chance. In an inspired act of selfless courage, he charged directly at the Japanese, firing the Bren gun from the hip and cutting a swathe through the attackers. Alan Avery was at his shoulder:
He came forward with this Bren and he just mowed them down. He was an inspiration to everyone else around him. There were clumps of Japs here and there and he just mowed them down. He just went straight into them as if bullets didn’t mean anything. And we all got a bit of the action you see. When you see a thing like that you sort of follow the leader, don’t you?
Kingsbury accounted for at least 30 of the enemy and his mates carried on the attack, putting the attackers to flight and securing their position once again. Sadly, at the height of his glory, Bruce Kingsbury was struck down by a sniper, firing from the top of a nearby rock. Immediately after he fired, the Japanese melted into the jungle and everything fell quiet. Alan Avery followed the sniper with a burst of furious Tommy-gun fire but it was too late. Bruce Kingsbury was later posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his superb gallantry – the first won on Australian territory and the first in the southwest Pacific.
In war, one man’s actions can have repercussions far in excess of their obvious immediate impact. Kingsbury’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Phil Rhoden, always maintained that Kingsbury’s action was far more than a remarkable act of bravery; he saw it as the turning point of the Kokoda campaign.
Nobody knew its importance until later. But it gave us time to consider action, gave us options. If he hadn’t stopped them it would have been like water pouring through a hole in the dam wall. They would have come through and it would have been a domino effect. You can argue his action saved Australia because, at the time, the 25th Brigade was on the water and the 16th Brigade was still in Australia. Without Kingsbury, the Japanese could have been waiting for them in Moresby when they arrived.
Early in 2002, Ivan Nitua and the villagers from Isurava located Kingsbury’s rock and cleared away six decades of jungle growth to expose it. Today the rock stands as a permanent memorial to Bruce Kingsbury’s sacrifice and that of his fellow Diggers, who put their lives on the line at Isurava to save their country. The rock is just metres from the four impressive black granite pillars which now form the Isurava Memorial, jointly dedicated in August 2002 by the prime ministers of Papua New Guinea and Australia. The pillars are set in a clearing on the hallowed ground at Isurava, looking down the rugged Eora Valley to the Kokoda plateau. Carved into each pillar is an attribute of the Diggers of Isurava which, when combined, allowed them to prevail against all odds: ‘Courage’, ‘Endurance’, ‘Mateship’, ‘Sacrifice’. They are attributes all Diggers aspire to attain, and those who fought at Isurava have set the standard just as their fathers did before them at Gallipoli.
Visit the Isurava battlefield and you will feel the same timelessness you feel at Gallipoli, or at Fromelles, or the Somme. You will experience that same sense of sad frustration at the young lives cut short. In the stillness of the morning, wander around the positions. Move from one foxhole to another and imagine them occupied by frightened but grimly determined young men, brimming with potential. Here they risked all to safeguard their families and loved ones in Australia. Here they fought with desperate courage to hold off an equally determined and brave enemy intent on their destruction. And here they shed their blood in the mud and slush as they refused to give ground.
In so many ways, Isurava represents the spirit of the Digger. It was where the 2/14th’s intelligence officer, Captain Stan Bisset, lost his beloved elder brother Butch. Stan Bisset turned 30 during the battle. Lieutenant Harold ‘Butch’ Bisset, aged 32, was commander of 10 Platoon of the 2/14th, which at Isurava took over ‘the position of honour’ from Ralph Honner’s B Company, 39th Battalion. Butch and his 29 men withstood the most furious assaults launched on the position. In one 24-hour period, they repelled between 30 and 40 charges by waves of between 100 and 200 enemy troops all through the day and into the night. Stan was about to head off to reconnoitre a fallback position when he got word that Butch had been hit, caught by a burst of machine-gun
fire across his abdomen as he distributed ammunition to his men. This was a death sentence on the Track. If you couldn’t walk out or survive being carried out – an excruciatingly painful journey of between 10 and 15 days on a stretcher carried by up to eight local natives (the famous ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’) – you died. One of the medical officers on the Track, Major Rupert Magarey, summed it up:
If you got an abdominal wound on the Kokoda Trail you might as well have given up. You never told the troops that, but you knew bloody well that that was what would happen. To deal with an abdominal wound you have to have an operating theatre, an anaesthetist, a surgeon, possibly an assistant surgeon and a good deal of gear. So you gave them a shot of morphine …
When Butch Bisset was hit he insisted that his men leave him to die. He even pulled his revolver on them and demanded they give him some grenades so he could take some of the enemy with him. His men ignored his orders. They made a makeshift stretcher from saplings and a groundsheet and began carrying Butch back for treatment, with the enemy close on their tails. As they carried the stretcher with one hand, Butch’s men fired at their pursuers with the other until they got him safely to their medical officer, Captain Don Duffy, one of Stan and Butch’s old friends. Duffy later wrote in his diary:
His condition was pretty bad and he was in pain so I gave him a morphia injection to relieve it. He would not have been able to stand any attempt to move him further and was already in shock and likely to die soon. We just sat by him as the minutes passed, Stan deeply moved and not trusting himself to speak while I brooded, as one does at these times, on the terrible wastage of good young lives of one’s friends. He died about two thirty in the morning.
Nearby, Corporal Charlie McCallum, from B Company of the 2/14th Battalion, a gentle but powerfully built farmer from Gippsland, rose to superhuman heights. McCallum had already been wounded three times when his platoon was ordered to withdraw just as the Japanese were about to swamp their position on the high ground at Isurava. Despite his wounds, he held off the charging enemy, allowing his mates to pull back to another position down the Track. McCallum held and fired his Bren gun with his right hand and carried a Thompson submachine gun that he had grabbed from a wounded comrade in the other hand. When the magazine ran out on his Bren, he swung up the Tommy gun with his left hand and continued to cut down the surging Japanese as he changed magazines on the Bren. When the Tommy gun was empty, he used the Bren again, and continued his one-man assault until all his comrades were clear. At least 25 Japanese lay around him. One got so close he actually ripped a utility pouch from McCallum’s belt before falling dead at his feet. When he knew his mates were safe, McCallum fired a final burst and calmly moved off back down the Track. He was recommended for a Victoria Cross – a recommendation endorsed by brigade and division – but this was inexplicably downgraded to the second-highest award for gallantry, the Distinguished Service Medal. His citation read, in part:
At all times in action, McCallum was admirably calm and steady. On this occasion his utter disregard for his own safety and his example of devotion to duty and magnificent courage was an inspiration to all our troops in the area. His gallant stand and the number of casualties he alone inflicted checked the enemy’s advance and allowed the withdrawal to proceed unhindered and without loss.
Sadly, Charlie McCallum would die only a week or so later in the next major battle down the Track at Brigade Hill.
The magnificent performances by the 39th Battalion, the 2/14th Battalion and, shortly afterwards, its sister unit, the 2/16th Battalion, at Isurava and in subsequent actions nearby, was sadly in contrast to that of the 53rd Battalion, which never recovered from the loss of its leaders and the early setbacks. The unit’s brigade commander, Selwyn Porter, wrote later:
As a whole they [the 53rd] had received more collective training than the 39th Battalion and, although leadership was lamentably weak, in some cases, it is felt that the conditions surrounding their initial tactical use resulted in the creation of a state of bewilderment which was understandable. After the death of their CO, there was no one to undertake a deliberate policy of marshalling and repairing their impaired morale. Some AIF units have suffered similarly; but there has always been someone sufficiently interested to smother the stigma attached to such until time and effort repaired the unit concerned. The 53rd Bn’s execution was completed when it arrived back in Moresby.
The 53rd Battalion disappeared as an entity, combined into the 55th/53rd Battalion. Many of its veterans believe the 53rd was made a scapegoat. No unit wants the ‘unreliable’ tag that has often been given to the 53rd. In army terms this means it lacked ‘fighting spirit’ and could not be committed to combat because of the unacceptable risks that would flow to other units fighting alongside it. There is strong debate as to whether the tag was justified in the case of the 53rd. But the bottom line is clear: the system let down the men of the 53rd Battalion.
Undoubtedly the 53rd’s fate would have been different without the chaotic pressures of war, but the treatment meted out to the young men at the time has left lasting scars. Their feelings of frustration have been magnified by the fact that many of the survivors of the 53rd’s initial setbacks went on to perform admirably in other units. This was especially so at Buna, Gona and Sanananda, where so many Kokoda veterans were thrown needlessly against the entrenched beachhead positions of the remnants of the Japanese South Seas Force, who were determined to fight to the death and take as many of their enemy as possible with them.
Isurava proved a turning point in the Japanese advance on Port Moresby. The casualties suffered by the Japanese there and the psychological impact of the mauling on their confidence, meant they were forced to reconsider their tactics and the timetable for their advance. Their overconfident commander, Major General Tomitaro Horii, had allowed only ten days for his force to travel down the Track and take Moresby. More importantly, he had issued them with only sufficient rations to achieve their goal within that time. He had expected little resistance and had planned to replenish his supplies from stores captured from their enemy, just as previous Japanese advances had done during their virtually unchecked surge through Asia and the Pacific. Isurava not only fatally damaged Horii’s timetable, it (along with the concurrent Australian victory at Milne Bay) shattered the air of invincibility that had hitherto accompanied the Japanese war effort. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, the US Fleet and the RAN closed off the Japanese option of a naval landing at Port Moresby. The Japanese leadership had gambled instead on the land approach across the Track. Now that was in jeopardy.
After withdrawing successfully from Isurava, the Australians fought a courageous hit-and-run guerrilla campaign down the Track. At Brigade Hill and Mission Ridge, the 2/14th and 2/16th Battalions were joined by the 2/27th Battalion and they made another stand. Here General Horii threw the full force at his disposal against the Australian defences, who were outnumbered again by about ten to one. Afterwards, the Diggers renamed it Butcher’s Hill. Gallant Charlie McCallum, one of the heroes of Isurava, died in the furious fighting as the Diggers lost almost half their numbers before once again withdrawing, all the while aggressively harrying the Japanese and maintaining a force between them and Moresby.
One of the most remarkable feats of endurance and courage on the Track came in the aftermath of Isurava. During the withdrawal, a group of 51 men of the 2/14th troops was separated from the main force during a Japanese ambush. Captain Sydney Hamilton ‘Ben’ Buckler took command of the three officers and 47 other ranks as they took to the jungle and tried to circle around the enemy to return to their own lines. It was the beginning of a six-week odyssey. The party was slowed down by eight wounded members – four stretcher cases, three walking wounded and Corporal John Metson. He’d been shot in both ankles but he refused to let his mates carry him. He knew how much energy was needed to carry stretchers through the thick jungle, a task made even more onerous because Buckler’s party had to avoid the Track and travel through the jungle f
or fear of running into the enemy. So Metson wrapped a torn blanket around his knees and hands with foliage and he crawled.
For almost three weeks, he cheerfully crawled through the jungle, ignoring the growing pain in his shattered ankles and the damage to his hands, knees and legs as he kept up with his mates through the cloying mud and the torrential rain. He was a constant inspiration to the others in the party as they lived off the land and avoided Japanese patrols before reaching a friendly village called Sangai on 20 September 1942.
By this stage the party was exhausted and extremely weak from lack of food. The stretcher bearers’ hands were so badly lacerated from their work they could barely hold onto their charges. The wounded men were in constant pain from the movement and their maggot-ridden wounds, for which the party had no medicine. Ben Buckler decided their best chance of survival was to leave the wounded in the care of the villagers at Sangai, then try to make it back to Australian lines and send help for the wounded. Before leaving, Buckler ordered his party to ‘present arms’ in a salute to their wounded comrades. He then led the others back to safety after another three weeks trekking down a parallel track to the Kokoda Track and, finally, by raft down the Kemp-Welsh River.
The Spirit of the Digger Page 19