Harold's War - Part 2


			Salamaua Campaign On Patrol Patrol - Black Cat Mine I know where we went while on patrol, but I don't know the dates or the exact order in which events occurred. The first thing we did, though, before we went out through Ballams, was to mount a patrol up in what was known as the Black Cat Mine area. Our platoon went up there and two sections stayed on the top of the hill. The third section went down the hill of the Black Cat Mine - I never actually went to the Black Cat Mine.

	One of our blokes, a Chinese-Australian, Johnny "Something", got some very nice pieces of gold from the Black Cat Mine, large pieces. He probably had about a half of an ounce, or an ounce, in one or two pieces. There was a lovely big native hut up there at the Black Cat, a grass thatched roof, raw timber hut with no sides, of course. The patrols we did every second day, so we walked one day, patrolled for half a day and the rest of the time you sat on your big fat you-know-what, and the next day you had off. We patrolled the track and the dead Japs were still there. This was 7,000 feet up and de-composition was very slow, so there were about half a dozen dead Japs which you had to dodge. If you went off the track, you would trip your own booby traps - the tracks were still mined. It took us about four hours to get up the hill carrying our gear.

Message and Swap

One day the lieutenant wanted a message carried down to Wau. He asked who would volunteer to go. So I volunteered. I didn't make a condition of it but I asked him if, instead of carrying a rifle, I could use his pistol, which he let me do. He gave me his pistol and on the way down I picked up as a souvenir, a Japanese aluminium water bottle that had a bullet hole in it. It took me, to go down the hill, about three-quarters of an hour, and about four hours to come up. I had to cross the Bulolo River. You didn't take your boots off, you just walked through the water and they got wet and they dried out. Going down I ran across a camp of Australian commandos. One bloke asked what I had there. I said a water bottle and he said, "Will you sell it?" I said, "For what? How much?" He said, "What do you want? Do you want anything?" I saw that they had a beautiful padded sleeping bag. So I traded the holey water bottle for the sleeping bag which I kept right up to the time I got wounded.

I tell this story mainly to demonstrate problems with the hills. It was just a mud-slide coming down and mud-slide coming up. And going back up, not even carrying a rifle or a pack, it still took me about 3 and a half hours to schlepp up the hill again.

Shooting Practice

We stayed up there for about a fortnight and every afternoon at 3 o'clock, right on the dot, we would have shooting practice. There was a big biscuit tin, and when I say big it was about 2 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot. It was full of ammunition, .303 ammunition which was all marked down as "unserviceable" because it had been left out in the rain. Sometimes it wouldn't fire which is no good in action. So we used that ammunition for rifle practice and Bren gun practice every afternoon.

We went back down to Wau after two or three weeks, played silly buggers all over the countryside, marching up and down, running up hills with live ammunition - all that sort of thing.


	Road Making One episode I recall involves the road to Mount Kaindi, where I later ended up convalescing. There had been a very heavy rainfall one night and part of the road to Kaindi got washed away. We were in fatigues - we'd just come back from fighting the Japs. We were given picks and shovels to go and clean the bloody road up. There was a big tree which had fallen right across the road so we dug out a lot of the mud and the engineers (who were supervising the work) said they would blow the tree up. The lieutenant - you would have thought he was buying the gelly out of his own pocket - put in one stick of gelly, and it went "pop"! No effect. He said, "I don't think one stick was enough". So he put in two sticks. That made a bigger "pop", but still no effect. So he said, "We'll dig a hole and I'll put in three sticks". While he wasn't looking, one of our blokes grabbed about six sticks of gelly from the pile and stuffed them in the hole and the officer took his three sticks and put them in too. There was an almighty bang and the tree disappeared down the hill and he said, "That did it". After some weeks, we went forward and we marched for some time down this muddy track. ("Marched" is not a good word, as we went in one line, as the track was only as wide as two people, and we all went at our own pace, even though we tried to stay together.) We went on patrol through Ballams and up through the Summit. The road actually went to the Summit but not very successfully because of the continual rain. That was all up-hill work and from there on we went mostly downhill. Just to give you a geographical idea - from Wau to Salamaua is about 45 or 50 miles.

					up to Contents

Specific comments about Harold's memoirs can be sent to Harold Herman.

Harold's War was written and is maintained by Jack R. Herman as a part of the history section of his website.

Published by
Jack R Herman
Sydney, February 2002

Last updated: 31 March 2002

Salamaua Campaign

On Patrol