The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [156]
Gailey adds, “the most vexing of all was the relations between off-duty American and Australian servicemen in the cities. Contrary to the myths that developed in the years after the war, they did not like one another.”
Gailey goes on to tell the story of a brawl that erupted in Brisbane between U.S. military police and Australian soldiers. One Australian soldier was killed and nine were wounded.
Messages between Colonel Quinn and and Captain Boice are in the National Archives.
Chapter 10. To Swallow One’s Tears
The details and quotes were taken from Japanese diaries translated by ATIS. At first, Allied translators were shocked by revelations of cannibalism that appeared in Japanese diaries, and asked for confirmation of their translations. It was indeed ironic that on an island legendary for its cannibals, it was the Japanese who were eating human flesh. In Papua, in the years before the war, the Australian colonial government had imposed on the people a western economic structure and the British system of law (Pax Australiana), and doled out harsh punishment for anyone suspected of cannibalism.
Ham writes that when the Australians searched the Japanese camp at Templeton’s Crossing, they found “the flesh of Australian soldiers still cooking over the smoking embers of a campfire. More carved corpses,” Ham writes, “lay on the track nearby.”
By the end of the war, human flesh had become a staple of the Japanese diet. Ham quotes one Australian soldier who said that when they entered the village of Sanananda, they saw “little billy tins of human flesh.”
Of Allen’s firing, Horner writes, “Clearly Blamey felt he had to relieve Allen to placate MacArthur. Had Blamey stood up to MacArthur, he would have won the respect of the Australian army. As it was, he did MacArthur’s bidding and won the opprobrium of the troops.”
Ham paints a wonderful portrait of General “Bloody George” Vasey: “His quick wit and independent character had happily survived his promotion up the ranks. He seemed free of…pomposity and self-importance.” He was a man of “rigid self-discipline and unyielding spirit,” and “swaggering indifference to danger,” but he had a “genuine concern for, and mingled with, his men.” Quoting Raymond Paull, Ham writes, “He never lost the common touch.”
In War History of the Force which was Sent to the South Seas, Nakahashi presents another scenario for Horii’s death. Lida Mayo suggests that he drowned in the Kumusi.
Smith includes a description of Natunga (alternately spelled Natanga on some maps).
Professor Bill McKellin, who lived among the people of Central Papua, provided descriptions of what the people of Natunga probably looked like.
I discovered the messages between Quinn and Smith and Quinn and Boice in the National Archives. The description of the crash is from soldiers, native interviews, and Smith. Boice comments on Quinn’s death in his diary.
Hawkins, Harding’s G-2, wrote of Quinn’s death, “It’s always the people who put out, who go out of their way to do more than their share—that seem to get their necks out. I only hope they don’t foist off one of these homeless colonels on us…floating around in superfluous base jobs.”
In his diary Odell also writes of the crash scene and of the minute or two where men were more concerned with scrounging food than the colonel and crew’s death.
Harding, of course, had the unenviable task of informing Quinn’s widow. To his wife Eleanor, he wrote, “It will be a tough job. I wish I didn’t have to do it.”
The details of the Memorial Service are from the National Archives file on the 126th.
Chapter 11. Fever Ridge
Descriptions of MacArthur’s Port Moresby Headquarters are found in a variety of different books including Manchester, Groom, and Willoughby.
Conditions at Pongani are found in Lawrence Thayer’s “My War” and other diaries of 128th soldiers, and in collections of newspaper articles housed in the Wisconsin