Kokoda Trail History
The Kokoda Commanders
July 1942

Part 1 of 4

The Australian Army's campaign in the Owen Stanley Range in Papua between July and November 1942 was won by the skill, determination and endurance of the ordinary soldiers. An important ingredient was leadership at all levels: commanders of sections, platoons, companies and battalions led by example in desperate situations. But the brigade and divisional commanders should not be overlooked. It was they who decided which troops should be deployed and where the battles should take place.

They were also responsible for employing the supporting artillery, engineering and air resources, and for providing the food, ammunition and medical support. And of crucial importance, they were the link between the Commander of New Guinea Force in Port Moresby and the units fighting along the Kokoda Trail. Simple orders prepared in the tented comfort of Port Moresby looked much different to the senior commanders in the mountains who could see the problems faced by their men. It was their task to interpret and execute these orders.

The senior commanders on the Kokoda Trail laboured under particular difficulties. The Allied commander-in-chief, General Douglas MacArthur, and the commander of the Allied land forces, General Sir Thomas Blamey, in Brisbane, did not understand the terrain in the Owen Stanley Range, and they underestimated the strength of the Japanese and their determination to push over the range to Port Moresby. As a result, logistic support was lacking. The deployment of additional troops depended on adequate logistic support, which was provided by native porters and could not be increased quickly.

Furthermore, communications between the senior commanders on the Kokoda Trail and Port Moresby were difficult. Radio communications were haphazard, and the alternative was the telephone via an uncertain cable that wound its way precariously along the sides of mountains and across turbulent streams. With no airstrips in the mountains (until very late in the campaign) successive commanders of New Guinea Force could not visit their forward operational commanders unless they committed themselves to many days of marching. None of them ever did so, and thus never fully appreciated the problems of operating in the mountains.

There were six senior commanders on the Kokoda Trail - Major Generals Allen and Vasey, and Brigadiers Porter, Potts, Eather and Lloyd - and their achievements are worth considering. Brigadier Selwyn Porter was the first senior commander deployed into the mountains. A militia officer (in civilian life a bank official), Porter had commanded the 2/6th Battalion in the Libyan campaign and the 2/31st Battalion in the Syrian campaign. When he arrived, aged 37, in Port Moresby in April 1942 to command the 30th Brigade he was disturbed by the poor standard of the brigade's militia battalions and immediately sought officers and NCO's from Australian Imperial Force (AIF) units that had fought in the middle East.

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