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ABC News reports on United States politics, crime, education, legal stories, celebrities, weather, the economy and more. Subaru’s Legacy is unique in the midsize sedan segment, not just because it is the only entry with standard all-wheel drive, but also because it also. The Kokoda Campaign - History. The Kokoda Campaign. The Kokoda Track is a narrow, jungle- enclosed pathway across the Owen Stanley Range over the roof of Papua. It climbs from the hills north of Port Moresby through small settlements such as Uberi, Kagi, Efogi and Isurava to a height of over 2,2. Towering over the range west of Isurava is Mount Victoria, 4,0. Beyond Isurava, the track falls away through Deniki down the northern slopes of the range to the little village of Kokoda, and then on through gentler foothills to the banks of the swift- flowing Kumusi River. Before World War ll, few people used the track. Europeans wanting to cross the damp, rain soaked mountains did so by plane and the only travellers along this isolated footway were government patrol officers and local villagers. Distances on the track were measured not in kilometres, but in the days it took to travel through the rugged terrain from place to place, up and down one precipitous slope after another. For the Australian soldiers sent to serve in the Owen Stanleys in 1. Lieutenant Don Simonson, 3. Battalion, from the temperate climate of Victoria, recalled his first encounter with the Kokoda Track: Well we moved into a country that we had never dreamt of before. It changed so much depending on the height of the mountain range through which we were travelling as to what we came up against - at the highest peaks there was moss forest and leeches by the millions and although we were wearing leggings . Within a short distance you would find a mass of blood around the bottom of your legs and these would be full of leeches, dropping off and lying on your socks. But in these moss forests, where you couldn't see the sun, the roots of the trees are all covered in moss and the track was only root from root. Further along, where it was not quite so high, you would spend three hours climbing up a small pad through the jungle where if you were first in the morning you were lucky it was reasonably solid. If you were the last in the evening, and it had been raining for two hours, you were dead unlucky. The mud was a foot deep all the way along. During the night of 2. July, a Japanese invasion force from Rabaul, New Britain, began landing at Gona Mission on the north Papuan coast. This was Major General Horii's 'South Seas Force', whose instructions were to take Port Moresby, if feasible, by a thrust across the mountains. Another Japanese force would land later at Milne Bay at the eastern tip of Papua to secure aircraft landing grounds and to prepare for an assault on Port Moresby from along the south Papuan coast. As the Japanese pressed inland from Gona, they were opposed by soldiers of the Papuan Infantry Battalion and a company of militiamen of the 3. Battalion. Indeed, for the first month after the Gona landings the young Victorians of the 3. Australian force resisting the enemy drive towards the Owen Stanleys. During this period the Australians moved back to Kokoda village, which fell after a sharp engagement on 2. July. Lieutenant Colonel William Owen, the commanding officer of the 3. Battalion, was killed. Lieutenant AG Garland recalled Owen's leadership: He was a fine man. He formed us up around the perimeter of Kokoda because that was where the Japanese would attack .. And I said 'Sir, I think you are taking an unnecessary risk walking around among the troops like that'. By now the Japanese had landed their main force and were preparing for a full- scale assault towards Port Moresby. The 3. 9th withdrew into the mountains to Isurava where they went into fresh defensive positions. It was at Isurava that the battalion met its new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner. Honner, an experienced soldier, quickly summed up their condition after a month of jungle warfare: Physically the pathetically young warriors of the 3. Worn out by strenuous fighting and exhausting movement, and weakened by lack of food and sleep and shelter, many had literally come to a standstill. Practically every day torrential rain fell all through the afternoon and night, cascading into their cheerless weapons pits and soaking the clothes they wore - the only ones they had. In these they shivered through the long chill vigil of the lonely nights when they were required to stand awake and alert but still and silent. At that point, any determined enemy assault would probably have overrun Honner's weary battalion. A second battalion, the 5. Port Moresby and Honner sent it towards Abuari to protect a side- track over which the Japanese could also advance. Coming up the Kokoda Track in the second half of August were reinforcements in the shape of the 2. Brigade, Australian Imperial Force. Forward elements of the brigade's lead battalion - the 2/1. Isurava on 2. 6 August. As these hardened soldiers, veterans of the fighting in the Middle East, made their way through the mountains they had begun to understand just how much the 3. Of their first day's march, an officer wrote: Gradually men dropped out utterly exhausted - just couldn't go on. You'd come to a group of men and say 'Come on! We must go on.' But it was physically impossible to move - many were lying down and had been sick .. We began to see some of the tremendous effort the troops were going to make to help the lesser ones in. Found many of the battalion . Some tried to eat but couldn't. The brunt of the opening attack fell on E Company of the 3. Through the widening breach poured another flood of the attackers to swirl around the remainder of the right platoon from the rear. They were met with Bren gun and Tommy gun, with bayonet and grenade; but still they came, to close with the buffet of fist and boot and rifle- butt, the steel of clashing helmets and of straining, strangling fingers. At Isurava, and throughout the Kokoda Track battle, the Australians were up against a brave and determined enemy to whom Dudley Mc. Carthy, the official historian, paid this tribute: They were brave and strong of purpose. They were trained and experienced in this type of warfare. They were hard and enduring. Japanese attacks resumed at Isurava on 2. August but they failed to break the 2/1. Battalion. On the next day, persistent enemy thrusts were met with dogged resistance requiring counter- attack after counter- attack. About midday, it looked as if a breakthrough might occur. Continuing to sweep enemy positions with his fire and inflicting an extremely high number of casualties on them, Private Kingsbury was then seen to fall to the ground shot dead by a bullet from a sniper. By the evening of 2. August, however, the 2/1. At night, covered by the 2/1. Battalion, the 2/1. Battalions moved back about two kilometres to Isurava Rest House. Throughout 2. 9 August, the 2/1. Battalion had held off a Japanese advance along the Abuari side- track to the right of the Isurava position. Had the enemy broken through here, the 2/1. Intense enemy pressure on 3. August forced a further withdrawal towards Eora Creek. As the Australians fell back, over 1. Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Key. There now commenced what has become the best known period of the Battle of the Kokoda Track - the Australian fighting withdrawal between 3. August and 2. 0 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 2/1. Battalion wrote: .. The last stretcher was carried out by the RAP . 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. No living casualty, claimed Norris, was abandoned to the enemy and overall 7. 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 .. Forced to take to the jungle, they had little food and were often burdened by wounded. At one point a whole battalion, the 2/2. 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 2/2. Burns and Zanker looked after the wounded in a jungle clearing. Burns described one of their worst days, 2.
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