The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [157]
Robert J. Doyle, the staff war correspondent for the Milwaukee Journal who was assigned to accompany the 128th, wrote a series of excellent pieces on it, including a story about the 128th becoming mired in the extensive swamps of the Musa River delta, and the slow, tedious process of moving troops north by small boat.
On a boat trip from Oro Bay to Tufi, I saw the vast delta of the Musa River.
Lawrence Thayer relates an interesting side story. Once the 128th made it to Pongani, he was asked by a lieutenant heading up the I&R (intelligence and reconnaissance) platoon to take a squad through the swamps and into the inland hill country in an attempt to find the Kokoda track. Thayer writes that he “didn’t even have a map because the only one available described the interior as unexplored.” It was his job to fill in the map. He continues, “At first I wrote down an azimuth reading of our direction and an estimate of distance for each leg, but soon it became apparent that this was not going to work. There were too many short legs and steep climbs interspersed with stretches of soggy swamp. About all I could do was to keep track of the general direction and time involved.”
Thayer continues: “That afternoon we came upon a river…. We held our packs and rifles about our heads and started moving slowly across…. At one point I was submerged up to my neck…. It wasonly by a miracle that we weren’t pulled downstream. If the river had been an inch deeper or faster we couldn’t have made it. On our second night we slept on a huge pile of driftwood in the middle of a wide shallow river. It was very uncomfortable, but the current was strong enough to provide sufficient air to keep us from being devoured by the king-sized mosquitoes.
“As we continued toward the mountains the next day, the trail became quite steep in spots and very tiring. During one of our rest stops, to catch my breath I lay flat on my back staring into the branches of a small tree above me. To my horror I realized the leaves were covered with a squirming mass of leeches…. Some of the trees were nearly 10 feet in diameter and reached high in the sky…”
Eventually, Thayer and his team turned back and returned to Pongani because one of the soldiers developed a “nasty jungle infection.”
Milner’s book and Doyle’s articles provide great information on the 128th at Pongani. I also collected lots of information in interviews with soldiers of the 128th.
Before he committed large numbers of troops to the coast, MacArthur wanted to make sure there was an escape route and wanted assurances that he could supply his troops. Regarding supply, MacArthur was dealing with a very difficult situation. The line of communication and supply from the United States to the scene of operations was one of the longest in military history. According to G-2 reports: “The entire route was by water at a time when the Japanese Navy was undefeated and roaming the Pacific almost at will.” And once supplies reached Australia, the problems had just begun. It was fifteen hundred miles from South Australia to New Guinea. There was a shortage of ships and the quirky Australian system of transportation—all the railroad track gauges were different—made the transportation of supplies troublesome. MacArthur understood that Allied success in New Guinea would be determined, in part, by the dependability of its supply line. Aware of the fact that most of America’s resources would go to Europe, MacArthur wisely initiated a supply source using Australian producers and resources. It was a stroke of genius, almost certainly colored by the tragedy of Bataan.
By this time, Harding realized that it would be impossible to move troops overland to the north coast.
After the naval battle of Guadalcanal (November 12-15), the Japanese stopped trying to reinforce their Guadalcanal garrison. In other words, the marines reinforced by army troops were tightening the noose on the Japanese at Guadalcanal just as MacArthur was beginning his advance on Buna.
Most historians refer incorrectly to Buna Mission instead