The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [46]
Since inheriting Papua from the British in 1906, the Australians had explored portions of the Papuan Peninsula, imposing a kind of Pax Australiana over the territory. According to its twenty-five-year-old colonial patrol report, the terrain over which MacArthur proposed to send a battalion, and possibly an entire regiment, though only thirty miles east of the Kokoda track, traversed much rougher country. The trail was too rugged, they said, the rivers too fast, and the mountain passes too high.
If anyone had the guts to scout a trail across the Papuan Peninsula, it was Jim Boice.
Boice did not look the part of a pioneer. He was a nearly bald, plain-looking man, and at thirty-eight, he was hardly young. He was also one of General Harding’s favorites: intelligent, confident but unpretentious, undersized but tough, as Harding himself was. In fact, Boice was so small that he had been afraid that the army would reject him. One week before his physical he stuffed himself with food and water to make the Army’s minimum weight requirement.
Boice liked the look of Jaure. With its large meadow, he knew it would be ideal for airdrops. The jungle had been a dense mesh of trees, leaves, vines, and fronds, but here, for the first time in weeks, the forest opened up and he could see in every direction. Flocks of white parrots, mountain pigeons, and green lorikeets flashed across the sky. Hawks and swiftlets cruised on updrafts.
Two days earlier, after sending a runner with his trail notes back toward Gabagaba, Boice radioed the divisional command post. The route across the mountains, roughly eighty miles from the coast, as the crow flies, was “taxing,” he said, “but practicable.”
Although Jim Boice may have been a reflective man, neither his message nor his diary offers many clues about how tough the trek really was. The reality was that by the time his small patrol reached the Owen Stanleys, the trail lost six hundred feet for every thousand feet it gained, climbing steeply up mountainsides, then plunging at sixty-degree angles into surrounding valleys. Some days, hiking from dawn till dusk, Boice and his men covered no more than two miles, though progress was difficult to measure because Boice’s map included only approximate distances. It was so cold in the mountains that they would have to worry about hypothermia. The airdrops that they depended on were days late and inaccurate, and much food that the crews pushed out of the planes was lost to the jungle.
By the time they reached Jaure, Boice’s feet were swollen and sore, and it was impossible for him to get his boots off. For two and a half weeks he had hiked in them, crossed rivers in them, and slept in them. Now the leather seemed glued to his feet. If he yanked at the heel, his skin felt as if it would tear. Finally, out of frustration, he may have taken his knife and cut slits in the leather to relieve the pressure. It did not matter; the boots were worthless anyway. They were rotting off his feet. Until the next airdrop, he was better off going barefoot like the carriers.
On the evening of October 6, a cold mountain fog settled in, and the rain came down in icy, gray sheets. Boice huddled under his shelter half. He had been lucky. He had made it to Jaure through tangled rain forest and clouds of mosquitoes and sweat bees, across gushing rivers, and over the Owen Stanley spine, without a serious mishap. Considering that he knew nothing of the route before he set out, it was an amazing accomplishment. Now the mountains lay behind him surrounded by clouds.
As was his habit, Boice removed two photos from a tin rations box. One of the photos was of Billy sitting in a Scout Flyer wagon. The other was of Zelma, Billy, and the family dog standing in the front yard of their Swayzee home. Boice held the photos in his hands until his fingers grew cold, then put them back in the rations box and took his diary out of his pack. Boice stored the diary in a large