The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [150]
When General Kenney got news from Port Moresby that Lutjens and his men had arrived safely, he, in his own words, “rushed upstairs to General MacArthur’s office to give him the good news” and asked him if he could “haul the rest of the regiment.” Kenney continues, “He congratulated me most enthusiastically but told me that he had already ordered the rest of the regiment shipped by boat and that the loading had already begun. I said, ‘All right, give me the next regiment to go, the 128th, and I’ll have them in Port Moresby ahead of this gang that goes by boat.’”
Shortly after the 32nd landed in New Guinea, Harding’s staff threw him a birthday party in Australia. Harding made a speech, urging listeners to remember three important values: “time, equipment, and lives.” His preference was “to save human lives and take just a little longer to accomplish our mission.” As Anders notes, Harding wrote his wife: “I must admit,” he said, “that I rather like the idea that the men, that I’ve grown to think so much of, should think the ‘Old Man’ is all right. I hope that I never give them any reason to think otherwise during the tough times that we are destined to see together.”
Descriptions of the village of Gabagaba and its people are based on my 2005 and 2006 interviews with a number of village elders there, Lieutenant James Hunt’s recollections, and Art Edson’s letters home. The natives, according to Edson, “run around with nothing on.” Edson adds, “There is times when we feel like doing the same thing, and a lot of times too.” Edson also writes about how much weight the natives are able to carry. He says, “I saw one yesterday that carried a heavy pole about forty feet long on his shoulder.”
Native villages were decimated by ANGAU recruitment practices. In The Third Force, Alan Powell includes two native songs that reflect their sense of dislocation and sadness:
“All the women were standing by the river bank for their husbands.
All the children were standing by the riverbank for their fathers.
On the riverbank all were standing.
On the canoe bank all were standing.
When the husbands looked back they saw their wives and children were waving to them.”
“We have left our homes and beaches
To labour for the war in different places,
In far flung places. In these hard times
We wander aimlessly from home.
…In our little homes before the war
Partings from dear ones were unknown.
…We now wonder by our campfires
Of our homes, our dear ones, and our wives.
Longing, hoping, praying deeply.
To return to home once more.”
The first European to make contact with the simple, seafaring Motu people south of Port Moresby was Captain John Moresby. He spent days trading with them and asked in his diary, “What have these people to gain from civilization?”
During the early days of colonial occupation, a simplified Motu language, called “Police Motu,” was spread throughout the territory by native constables. In the nothern half of the island the German planters faced the same language barriers the British and Australians did in the south. The Germans’ solution was Pisin, a local word that became known as Pidgin. Pidgin has taken many words from various languages, including German and English. Be careful, for instance, is “Lukautim gut!”
A few of Gabagaba’s village elders remember how fascinated villagers were by America’s black engineers.
Chapter 7. The Bloody Track
Scenes of jubilation are taken from Seizo Okada’s Lost Troops. Captain Nakahashi’s quote is taken from Paul Ham’s Kokoda.
The Battle of Bloody Ridge was perhaps Guadalcanal’s most famous battle. In it, U.S. Marines repulsed an attack by the Japanese 35th Infantry Brigade. The Marines were defending Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, which they had captured