The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [45]
Seizo Okada witnessed the disintegration of the mighty Japanese fighting spirit. “They fled for dear life,” reported Seizo Okada. “None of them had ever thought that a Japanese soldier would turn his back on the enemy…. As soon as they realized the truth, they were seized with an instinctive desire to live…. Discipline was completely forgotten. Each tried for his life to flee faster than his comrades.”
The wounded and the sick, who had clung to life despite being deprived of food and medical attention, were carried out on stretchers by soldiers determined to save them. Soon, though, it became apparent to the company commanders that it was an impossible task. Then the order was given. They shot the wounded lying in their stretchers.
Still General Horii hoped. At some point, he knew that he would halt the retreat and dig in. Then even his sickest soldiers would fight till the end. If they could hold off the Australians long enough, buying time for Japanese forces to retake Guadalcanal, Rabaul would divert troops to New Guinea. A portion of them would seize Milne Bay and then Rabaul would resurrect the original two-pronged invasion plan: A large collection of troops would attack Port Moresby by sea, while the rest would join Horii’s army, resuming the overland assault on the city.
Back up the trail, the Australians made plans for their counterattack. Three battalions began the advance on September 26. They came down off Imita Ridge, forded the Goldie River, and took up positions near Ioribaiwa Ridge, holding tightly to its plunging slopes. The following night, September 27, they shelled the Japanese position.
Early the next morning, the Australians started their advance. An air of uncertainty hung over the army. Company commanders were mystified by the absence of Japanese resistance. As they moved forward, the men felt a combination of excitement and dread. What kind of trap had the Japanese army laid?
A few hours later, unsure of what awaited them, two Australian companies scrambled up Ioribaiwa Ridge. The Japanese were gone. Tomitaro Horii’s army was in full retreat, bound for the Buna-Sanananda beachhead. Fleeing soldiers struggled to reach the scanty food reserves farther back along the supply line. In blinding downpours, they stumbled along, tripping and falling over Australian corpses. Strafed throughout the day by Allied planes, they made no pretense of fighting back.
The Australian counteroffensive began in earnest on October 3 with a visit from General MacArthur. With war correspondents close by, MacArthur sat in his jeep above the Goldie River Valley, looking proud and undaunted. As the men of the 16th Brigade marched by, he took the brigade’s commander aside:
“Lloyd,” he said, calling the officer by his first name, “by some act of God your brigade has been chosen for this job. The eyes of the Western world are upon you. I have every confidence in you and your men. Good luck and don’t stop.” Then MacArthur’s driver turned the jeep around. The following day, MacArthur was on his way back to Brisbane. His first visit to New Guinea had lasted hardly more than a day, his first visit to the troops barely an hour.
Chapter 8
MARCHING INTO THE CLOUDS
OCTOBER 6, 1942. As Captain Jim Boice was lying low in the mountain village of Jaure on the north side of the Owen Stanley divide, he scribbled a note in his diary: “Lonesome for back home. Rain and rest.”
If Boice was enjoying a rare moment of self-congratulation, the situation warranted it. He had just led a reconnaissance team for seventeen days across the mountains via an obscure trail that the Americans came to call the Kapa Kapa, which no one other than native hunters and a 1917 government patrol had ever walked.
The Australians had counseled MacArthur against using Boice’s route, and the Australians knew what they were talking about. They had been locked in a death grip with the Japanese on the Kokoda since late July, a campaign made fiercer by the terrain. But the Kokoda was what the Australians called a “track.” A difficult, but established