Kokoda

By Alan EHooper

The Ten Epic War Treks cover the period between the fall of Rabaul on the 23rd of January 1942, the Japanese invasion at Basabua on the 21st of July 1942, and the end of hostilities in Papua on the 4th of April 1943. No comprehensive account exists about what happened on the Kokoda track during the seven months prior to the battle of Isurava, the major early battle on the Kokoda track.

This book collates extracts of published books, diaries and reminiscences with further research on four others whom the author knew intimately. Those who are drawn to walk the track today, because of its wartime association with the defence of Australia, will gain some idea of who those wartime trekkers were and the human cost of victory in the Papuan jungle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Feb 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781742842080

Book preview

KOKODA

Ten Epic War Treks Retold and Papua Revisited

ALAN HOOPER

Kokoda

Copyright © 2012 Alan Hooper

Smashword Editions

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 9781742842080

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my wife, Lyle, with admiration and gratefulness beyond measure for reigniting my interest in Papua New Guinea and specifically for her exacting proof readings of several drafts of this collation and its predecessor, Love War & Letters – PNG 1940-45. Lyle’s secretarial career in PNG between 1946 and 1974, prior to our marriage, amply qualified her for what became labours of love.

Foreword

by

Dr Richard Reid

I first went to Papua New Guinea in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, on a Russian cruise ship, the Mikhail Sholokov. On board were a group of men and women I will never forget. Among them was Lindsay ‘Teddy’ Bear who, in August 1942, fought the Japanese at a place called Isurava in the Owen Stanley Range; Bruce ‘Buster’ Brown who flew a Kittyhawk fighter plane called ‘Polly’ during the Battle of Milne Bay in September 1942; Ron Moss who fought in the jungle between Wau and Salamaua in 1943; Reverend Roy Wotoon who buried the dead of Kokoda; and John ‘Jack’ Harris who before going to fight in New Guinea in 1943 had been a ‘Rat of Tobruk’. This was no ordinary cruise but a ‘pilgrimage’ of 117 war veterans who had served and fought in Papua New Guinea in World War Two. They were an extraordinary group of Australians the likes of which we will never see brought together again for they represented virtually every aspect of not only Australian experience in PNG during those terrible years between 1941 and 1945, but of Australia’s war in general in the Pacific, the Middle East and Europe. Now, in this book – Ten Epic War Treks Retold and Papua Revisited – one of those ‘pilgrims’, Alan Hooper, has brought us his own account of those months of 1942 and 1943 when the fighting against the Japanese was at its most desperate.

What do most Australians know about the war in Papua New Guinea? I suspect little beyond something of the story of that much written about, filmed and walked over jungle track between Ower’s Corner near Port Moresby and a little village on the northern side of the Owen Stanley Range called Kokoda. Alan certainly takes us into that terrible struggle but with personal reminiscences and accounts of those whose contribution to victory has been largely eclipsed by the contemporary focus on the young militiamen and soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force who fought at places like Kokoda, Isurava, Efogi, Ioribaiwa, Buna and Gona. Here are men such as Clen Searle who carried out surveillance in the rear of the Japanese; Bert Keinzle who put together and supervised that essential force of native carriers which made war possible in the jungles and highlands of PNG; Tom Grahamslaw who supervised the making of stretchers on Kokoda and led arduous reconnaissance patrols; and Douglas Joycey who took a party of carriers to support an isolated RAAF spy post. Joycey’s story is an amazing one for as a Canadian soldier in World War I he had fought at what many regard as the defining battle of Canada’s war – Vimy in April 1917 – and then found himself in Papua at the start of another war.

For me the undoubted character of Alan’s crew of Papuan ‘backwoodsmen’ is Geoffrey ‘Doc’ Vernon. In 1942 Vernon was 60 and, in Alan’s words, ‘looked so frail that it belied his ability to reach the first stages of the Kokoda track let alone cross the Owen Stanley Range three times’. But cross the ranges he did in charge of and tending the sick, wounded and maimed among the hundreds of native carriers and creating that unique force of stretcher bearers who have been immortalised in Australia as the ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’. Vernon’s words, quoted by Alan, are a better summary of what Kokoda stands for than any I have read elsewhere in modern accounts:

Anyone who has toiled over the Owen Stanleys in wartime knows it will never be the same sweet-smelling jungle track where man and his indecencies were almost unknown. It is a trail of ‘blood and iron’ now and in the memory of this generation will ever remain so.

But the key person in this book, although he would be too modest to ever say so, is Alan Hooper himself. In 1942 Alan was a 24 year old Queenslander commissioned into a unit barely remembered today – the Papuan Infantry Battalion. Indeed, soldiers of this battalion were the first to fire on the Japanese invaders of Papua advancing in July 1942. After that elements of the battalion melted away into the jungle where, between August 1942 and the early months of 1943 they patrolled a huge swath of north coastal Papua and its hinterland harassing the enemy whenever possible. Alan was one of those Australian officers and NCOs who led those indigenous volunteer soldiers as they helped downed allied airmen, supported ‘spotting’ stations, patrolled and relayed information to New Guinea Force Headquarters. All of this Alan brings alive in his extended account of those grim days and what is striking are the sheer powers of physical and mental endurance he needed to survive at all in the face of recurring fever and the indifference of New Guinea Force Headquarters to his plight, let alone that of his Papuan charges. One description says it all:

A flash flood inundated the camp almost at once and while I spent the night in a lookout platform in a tall tree, my patrol stood in a single file below flicking carpets of mosquitoes from their bodies and the backs of others. As the toe ulcer had developed into a painful abscess on my groin, I abandoned the site after 48 sleepless hours.

The achievement of this book is to remind us again of the huge challenge Australia faced in Papua in 1942 and early 1943. By writing Ten Epic War Treks Retold Alan Hooper has reminded us of the human cost of victory in the Papua jungle and ensured that his own experiences, and those of men like Vernon, Grahamslaw et al will not be forgotten.

Dr Richard Reid, Canberra, December 2011

Acknowledgement

I especially acknowledge the contribution of three very special people:

Emeritus Professor Dr Hank Nelson of the Australian National University, Canberra, foremost historian and prolific author of WW2 topics, for his mentorship and encouragement and his laborious editing of my first flawed draft. (Dr Nelson wrote the Foreword to my book Love War & Letters PNG 1940-45.)

Lynne Hooper sat many hours beside me cheerfully proof reading, editing, designing and formatting the final print ready draft.

Peter Searle whose initial assistance in editing Chapter 1 (Clen Searle) and providing further information on his father’s early life as a radio operator and on his parents’ lives in New Guinea.

To the undermentioned people who, knowingly or otherwise, contributed documents, photographs or information to bring this book to fruition, I am especially indebted.

I also acknowledge the many people have provided snippets of information to me at annual 39th, 2/14th and 49th Battalion reunions for which I am most grateful.

Acronyms & Abbreviations

Introduction

The ten epic treks narrated in this book cover the period between the fall of Rabaul on 23rd January, 1942, the Japanese invasion at Basabua on 21st July 1942, and the end of hostilities in Papua on 4th April, 1943. As no comprehensive account exists of happenings on the Kokoda track and beyond during the seven months prior to the battle of Isurava, the major early battle on the Kokoda track, I have collated extracts of published books, diaries or reminiscences with further research on four others whom I knew intimately. In this way I hope that those who are drawn to walk the track today, because of its wartime association with the defence of Australia, will gain some idea of who those wartime trekkers were and why they were there – by revealing human faces of the wartime track - so that troop movements and encounters were not just events and statistics, but were experiences of known individual participants.

Those who trekked the trail in the broad east-west Oro Province often had to move off or criss-cross the trail to fulfil their duties. Most were Australian military personnel, some Australian missionaries, one a Japanese airman prisoner and another of his race; the only survivor of his platoon. Some of the Australian military personnel were newly so, having been civilian plantation managers or government officers up until the threat of war in PNG became imminent. Several of those whose stories are retold here were often working clandestinely, away from the main concentrations of the Australian forces on the Kokoda Trail, gathering intelligence and subverting Japanese efforts to take the country. Thus in telling these stories, I hope that a broader picture will be built in the reader’s mind of what was happening, not only on, but also around the track in that period.

As one of the ten trekkers I realise that I cannot tell their stories for them with the same accuracy and aptness of expression that they could have, but as much as possible I have tried to do their stories justice by accessing written records where possible, and in recalling my own personal memories from knowing them on the track in wartime and afterwards. Sometimes even written stories conflict in some detail, but such can be true of multiple witnesses of the same event. For this reason, this is not intended to be a military treatise; much of it is more personal to the storyteller than such a treatise might require. Nevertheless, I hope these stories will go some way towards satisfying questions of those who walk the track today.

The final chapter, Papua Revisited, deals with the period between 1983 and 2007 when pilgrimages introduced me to many Kokoda Trail veterans and their Unit associations. Each visit also re-connected me with declining members of my Papuan Infantry Battalion and their declining law-and-order and political incorrectness environment.

Note: Love War & Letters – PNG 1940-45 published in 1994, goes into greater detail on many episodes.

District Officer (DO) replaced the term Resident Magistrate (RM) early in 1942 and Oro Province was known as the Northern District until 1975 when PNG became an Independent nation.

Table of Contents

TIME LINE

KOKODA TRACK PIONEERS

CHAPTER 1 Clendyn Edwy Searle

CHAPTER 2 Tsutomo Ito

CHAPTER 3 Herbert (Bert) Kienzle

CHAPTER 4 Geoffrey Hampden Vernon

CHAPTER 5 Tom Grahamslaw

CHAPTER 6 William Frederick Wort

CHAPTER 7 William (Bill) Thornton Watson

CHAPTER 8 James Benson – Priest of Gona

CHAPTER 9 Douglas C. Joycey

CHAPTER 10 Alan Edwin Hooper

PAPUA REVISITED

Clen Searle

Bert Kienzle

Geoffrey Vernon

Tom Grahamslaw

William (Bill) Wort

Father James Benson

Douglas Joycey

Alan Hooper

PHOTOGRAPHS

NOTES & REFERENCES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Time Line

Kokoda Track Pioneers

Rev James Chalmers joined Port Moresby’s first resident, Rev Dr William Lawes of the London Missionary Society, in or before 1877. In 1879 he went on a ten week expedition further inland beyond the Laloki River than any previous white man. A year earlier, prospectors had crossed the Brown River, named in memory of one of their number who had drowned there, but whether they reached the Owen Stanley Range is uncertain – we are unsure how far they got and where we define the beginning of the Owen Stanleys. Chalmers created goodwill with gifts of steel axes, cloth and trinkets to enable the word of God to be spread amongst the Grass Koiari who live immediately inland from the Motu and Koitapu on the coast, and the Mountain Koiari who live along what has become known as the Kokoda trail. In his bookWork and Adventures in New Guinea, published in 1885, he described the people he hoped to convert in these words:

The state of fear of one another is truly pitiful; to him every stranger seeks his life…. Their weapons are the club, spear, shield – and sorcery. Their villages are sited on knife-edged ridges with functional and picturesque tree-houses at both ends of the settlement with retractable ladders serving as lookouts and refuges for women and the old men.

Postscript:

Chalmer’s zealous efforts ended tragically in 1901. A punitive party led by Administrator Robinson sailed to the Fly River estuary to recover his skull from a Goaribari head-hunter’s bizarrely stylized collection. A fleet of spearmen who attempted to bar their way were decimated. Australian Government’s displeasure at Robinson’s loss of control led him to blow his brains out under his flagpole at Konedobu. 

The first soldiers to cross the Owen Stanley Range were fifty recruits who had been sworn in at Kokoda as members of the newly formed Papuan Infantry Battalion (PIB). They arrived at Konedobu, Port Moresby, on 1st July, 1940 with Major L. Logan, an ex WW1 Provost and ex patrol officer fluent in Motuan but reputedly short on courage. Conversely, his Orokaivan recruits were offspring of ‘Papua’s most stubbornly courageous fighters’ and much was expected of them. The next group to cross the Range consisted of 62 Mission-educated youths, of various tribal backgrounds, who had been sworn in at Buna early in 1941. Inter-tribal distrust emerged from time to time as did their competitive spirit during training, dancing and on the killing fields of 1942-45. Their oldest kinfolk, who had known tribal fighting and payback justice as a way of life, still attributed sickness, death and misfortune to malign sorcerers. Village storytellers, cum entertainers, would have exaggerated and embellished tribal conflicts to them such as swashbuckling Resident Magistrate (RM), Captain C.A.W. Monckton described in his book Some Experiences of a New Guinea Resident Magistrate, Chapter XXIV, a précis of which follows.

A law and order case of the late 1800s arose from a complaint made to Resident Magistrate Monckton by the notorious Notu tribe at Oro Bay. They told of an attack by their more numerous Dobudura neighbours who believed that the only explanation for the prolonged inland drought was Notu sorcery. They also voiced fears of being captured and hung up by their sinews to be carved up daily to provide fresh meat. In response, the RM assembled a fighting force of armed Papuan police, 150 Notu warriors and, after days of skilful manoeuvring on both sides and the arrival of 100 Mambare reinforcements, the Dobudura chief was slain and his 300 spearmen and clubmen put to flight.

This blow to their pride found barbarous outlets following the Japanese invasion in 1942: as will be told later.

Chapter 1

Clendyn Edwy Searle (1906-1988)

Clendyn Edwy Searle wartime

Within twelve months of the outbreak of war with Japan Clendyn Searle of Awala rubber plantation crossed the Owen Stanley Range six times in the line of duty. He transmitted nightly to Cairns in Morse Code. His range of skills included radio and Morse transmission, familiarity with the mountain environment and its people and proficiency in the Motu lingua franca: he was also undaunted by hostile threats.

At his suggestion Awala became the centre of signal traffic and administration in Oro Province when fears of invasion were rife. During his penultimate trekking odyssey from Moresby to a hideout at the mouth of the Gira River, he wore the hat of a clandestine Z Force operator.

Born in Armadale, Victoria, in 1906, Clen underwent training in the Marconi School in Melbourne. In 1926 he was one of three radio operators on the first ship (SS Jervis Bay) credited with maintaining short wave radio contact both ways all the way between Sydney and Tilbury Docks, London. Their photograph appeared in the London Illustrated Times. After another voyage to London on the ship he continued to operate out of Sydney mainly in the Asia-Pacific area until between 1929 and 1933 he was given a shore posting at the AWA radio station in Fiji. Following his return from Fiji he married English-born Jessie Lillian (Pat) Stokes.

In February, 1934 Clen and Pat went to the multifunctional AWA radio station 4PM in Port Moresby, Papua where he was in communication with government outstations and exploratory patrols for administrative purposes, with shipping and air transport for arrival and departure schedules, and with other islands and Australia for telegraphic services. There were also other programs for the public from the same station which Pat assisted with. Clen became OIC of the station in 1938. The children, Rhonwen (1934) and Peter (1938), were both born in Port Moresby.

In March, 1940 Pat and the children moved to a 1,000 acre (405 hectares) property named Saga where she established a rubber plantation alongside the airstrip at Kokoda. Clen continued to work at the radio station to raise funds. After leaving AWA in 1941 Clen moved to Saga, later the same year taking up 40.5 hectares closer to the coast, at Awala. There he began buying latex from village small rubber holdings to enable him to generate cash flow while his own rubber plantings matured.

While Searle was busy at Awala establishing a house and factory buildings, clearing land to plant his own rubber and processing latex from local villages, Pat returned to Australia with the children to visit her people. Their homecoming, which coincided with the dramatic events of 8th December, 1941 Pat described in her autobiography some 40 years later:

Searle family at Kokoda 1939

Jack Mason drove us from Sanananda wharf to Sangara - the end of the road - in his rubber plantation truck… Clen on the running board was continually lashed by branches overhanging the narrow winding track... Orokaiva porters helped carry luggage and young children Rhonwen and Peter the next 10 miles [16 kilometres] to Awala where we found Assistant Resident Magistrate Claude Champion in a nearby Rest House. I was quite enthralled by our new home and to be reunited with Clen and our family cook Simi. After dining with Claude, Clen turned on the radio. Like a bombshell came news of the attack on Pearl Harbour... Eight days later porters carried our children in a sedan-chair slung below a long pole to Kokoda where Claude's wife, Pin, welcomed us... The long journey back to Adelaide from there began in a Junker aircraft overcrowded with refugees and with two children on my lap airsick from extreme turbulence... In Port Moresby where I had assisted Clen to operate AWA's 4PM radio for some years I joined hundreds of refugees whose personal baggage limit was ten pounds (4.5 kg).

Following the introduction of compulsory army service, Searle was called to Port Moresby to enlist and attend a conference on communications. He walked due to the suspension of air and sea travel following the fall of Rabaul on 23rd January, 1942. He had proved his stamina earlier when in 1935 he had delivered and installed transceiver equipment at the Goilala (Tapini) patrol post – a 210 km journey inland that took him over ranges soaring to 2,400 metres. On 23rd February, 1942 he enlisted as P355, with the rank of lieutenant, after which he walked back to Awala to take up pro tem magisterial powers in Oro Province, as well as taking control of seven spotting teams north of the Owen Stanley Range. Their radio warnings were to give ships, bombers and troops in Port Moresby 20 minutes grace to disperse and time for fighter aircraft to gain a height advantage. To cope with the extra work, Paul Mason, a local rubber planter and skilled radio technician, moved in to Awala as OIC signals.

Before Clen received his army transceiver and official call sign, he continued to use his own. Eric Foster at Boga Boga station, midway to Milne Bay, recalled ‘working to’ Searle in February in these words:

He had no [official] call sign; we just called Awala (Code named CLEN) and he passed traffic on to Townsville by Morse of a night. Koitaki did not start operating until later.

Upon the arrival of District Officer Tom Grahamslaw (DO) on 12th March, Searle walked 50 km to Buna to meet him. As Awala lay at the intersection