The Kokoda Campaign
World War 2 History of the Kokoda Trail
Fighting Withdrawal from Isurava

Part 3 of 8

FIGHTING WITHDRAWAL

There now commenced what has become the best known period of the Battle of the Kokoda Track - the Australian fighting withdrawal between 30 August and 20 September to Imita Ridge. It was marked by a number of features: Intense rearguard actions designed to slow the Japanese; the fortitude of the wounded; the vital contribution of the Papua New Guinean stretcher bearers and supply carriers under the control of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU); and the desperate stories of large parties cut off along the track.

It was in the evacuation of the wounded from Isurava that the work of the local stretcher-bearers came to the fore. With bare feet and a surer grip on water-covered rocks and inclines than Australians, the Papua New Guineans, eight men to a bearer party, toiled back down the track with their seriously injured charges. Captain Henry 'Blue' Steward, the Regimental Medical Officer of the 2/16th Battalion wrote:

... They never forgot their patients, carrying them as gently as they could, avoiding the jolts and jars of the many ups and downs. The last stretcher was carried out by the RAP [Regimental Aid Post] boys, two volunteers, Padre Fred and myself. Till then we never knew the effort needed, nor fully appreciated the work the carriers were doing. Their bare, splayed feet gave them a better grip than our cleated boots could claim on the slippery rocks and mud.

Some of the bearers disliked the tight, flat canvas surfaces of the regulation army stretchers, off which a man might slide or be tipped. They felt safer with the deeper beds of their own bush made stretchers - two blankets doubled round two long poles cut from the jungle. Each time we watched them hoist the stretchers from the ground to their shoulders for another stint, we saw their strong leg, arm and back muscles rippling under their glossy black skins. Manly and dignified, they felt proud of their responsibility to the wounded, and rarely faltered. When they laid their charges down for the night they sought level ground on which to build a rough shelter of light poles and leaves. With four men each side of a stretcher, they took it in turns to sleep and to watch, giving each wounded man whatever food, drink or comfort there might be.

In a report on the medical aspects of this period of the Kokoda campaign, Colonel Kingsley Norris, Assistant Director Medical Services, 7th Division, praised the work of all the Australian Army Medical Corps units. No living casualty, claimed Norris, was abandoned to the enemy and overall 750 wounded and sick were shepherded down the track to safety. Norris was also full of praise for the 'walking wounded'. They had, in Norris' words, to be treated with 'absolute ruthlessness' and not provided with stretchers:

Those alone who were quite unable to struggle or stagger along were carried. There was practically never a complaint nor any resentment ... One casualty with a two inch gap in a fractured patella, splinted by a banana leaf, walked for six days ...

Others who suffered greatly during this phase of the campaign were the various groups cut off by the Japanese advance. Forced to take to the jungle, they had little food and were often burdened by wounded. At one point a whole battalion, the 2/27th, became completely cut off and spent virtually two weeks trekking through often trackless country until they emerged at Jawarere, well to the east of Ilolo where the Kokoda Track began. Two men who distinguished themselves during this ordeal were Privates J H Burns and A F Zanker. As Lieutenant Colonel G D T Cooper, commanding officer of the 2/27th, pressed on to get help, Burns and Zanker looked after the wounded in a jungle clearing. Burns described one of their worst days, 23 September:

The sun was fiercer than ever and it took a lot out of the lads. Corporal Williams [one of the badly wounded] spent a terrible night and when Zanker and I washed the lads we decided to put him on a new stretcher and put the fresh dressings on his wounds. It was a terrific job but we succeeded in the end. Both Zanker and I had a couple of blackouts during it. We had now used two of our last three dressings ... Diarrhoea broke out during the day and we were lifting the poor lads for the next twenty-four hours without respite.

Corporal Leonard Williams died on 24 September. On 2 October the little party was found by patrols and they reached hospital in Port Moresby on 7 October, almost a month after they had gone into the jungle.

As the 21st Brigade withdrew through Eora Creek, Templeton's Crossing and Myola, the Japanese followed hard after them. Between 30 August and 6 September, the 2/14th and the 2/16th fell back as far as Efogi where they encountered the advance parties of the 2/27th Battalion.

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