The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [152]
Leslie Anders portrays Harding as the consummate renaissance man, a writer of prose and poetry, a voracious reader, and an avid and accomplished student of history.
Details on Roger Keast are from interviews with his son Harry, interviews of men who served with Keast, and a variety of newspaper articles.
It is occasionally dificult to track the patrol’s journeys, since no detailed maps of the area existed and often Medendorp did not use place names. Much of the country, including the rivers and the countless peaks, did not have names. Although some of the most prominent features had native names, many did not.
Descriptions of the jungle are based in part on my own trek on the Kapa Kapa and my observations.
American and Australian soldiers greatly feared the Japanese soldier. They viewed him as cunning, stealthy, and deadly, despite Allied commanders’ continual attempts to dispel the myth of the Japanese warrior’s superiority.
Boyd Swem is one of the soldiers about whom Medendorp writes very fondly. Medendorp wrote, “Nothing dismayed Swem.” Swem was a member of Service Company when Mendedorp invited him to join the Wairopi Patrol.
Captain Buckler’s group was just as stunned to discover the Americans. According to Raymond Paull in his book Retreat from Kokoda, the Americans were “an image of wishful thinking to a man who had endured a month of strain and vicissitude.” Lewis Sebring, a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune who saw Buckler’s group when they reached the coast, described them much as Medendorp did: “Sunken eyes looked at us from bearded faces…” Mayo writes that it was Boice who encountered Buckler’s group, but Medendorp’s group surely encountered them, too, for Medendorp writes, “They were dirty, hungry, bearded, and many were nursing old wounds…” In additon to feeding them, Medendorp wrote that they were welcome to “all the food that they could carry, and with our blessing.”
Details on the Japanese invasion of Rabaul are from Ham and Paull.
That evening a runner from Boice’s Pathfinder Patrol also stumbled into Arapara. According to Medendorp, he had “malaria and was partly delirious.”
I witnessed the natives’ lack of concern about rats and cockroaches; they consider our sqeamishness laughable.
Details on the beliefs of carriers are derived from numerous interviews with people in Papua New Guinea, Powell’s book, and conversations and e-mails with Bill McKellin, a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
The quote is from Lieutenant William D. Hawkins, Harding’s G-2 (from Anders’ Gentle Knight).
The old village of Laruni was situated on a hill overlooking the Mimani River, a one-hour climb from the present-day village of Laruni (or Larun), which lies on the western bank of the river.
Medendorp was a cigar man, but almost everyone in the army learned to smoke cigarettes.
All that Medendorp and Keast had to work with was a hand-drawn map listing the villages along the trail. The map did not even include mountain peaks and rivers. Medendorp and Keast would draw their own map, called Map C: Operations of the Wairopi Patrol, which would show villages and drainages along the Kumusi River from Jaure down to Wairopi on the Kokoda track. This map can be found at the National Archives.
North of Laruni, the terrain becomes extremely steep, as we would discover on our trek. Natives, especially those recruited in Gabagaba and other coastal villages, would have been unfamiliar with the mountains and frightened by them. They believed that the mountains were populated with evil spirits. To this day, natives of seaside villages are reluctant to venture into the