Salamaua Campaign
At the front
The fighting was somewhere near the Summit ... that's covered in the book. The 2/7th wasn't the only Battalion, there were two other Battalions which were also in the Salamaua stoush - let's be clear about that. When we were stationed in Wau, the 5th were back in Bulolo when I arrived, and the 6th was up fighting the Japs on the front...
There wasn't a front-line. It was a peculiar war. (For example, we virtually never got to know anybody out of your own section. You might know some of the others in your platoon - I knew them all, of course.)
But there was no such thing as a front because the action was so mobile, and the jungle was so thick. There's a story in the book about one Sergeant (or Corporal) Smith, who went missing - this was later on - and he turned up some 20 days later about 5 miles from where he went missing in the jungle. It had to be seen to be believed. He was a bit deaf in one ear and he was on the end of a line advancing into the jungle and lost contact with the man nearest to his deaf side.
Anyhow, we went forward, had a bit of a front line experience, nothing startling. It was down by the Saddle in May of 1943. We were at the front only about ten days, and didn't do a great deal of fighting. We knew that the Japanese were out there somewhere but you never saw them.
While we were at the Saddle we had some air support for the purpose of stopping the Japs from reinforcing their front. This was carried out by the No. 22 ("City of Sydney") Squadron, RAAF, flying A20 Douglas Boston low level bombers. They did a wonderful job flying at ground level in a most hilly area. A couple of their officers came up to observe, and were amazed at the conditions in which we were fighting. We had two enemies, the Japs and the country.
That was when we did the night movement (on 14 May according to The Fiery Phoenix). Nobody ever moved at night because, in the jungle, you couldn't see. It was dark in the daytime and at night it was impossible to move. So they decided to move us one night. We started off at about midnight. I was carrying a Bren gun at the time which was no light weight. We were going one after the other in single file and I was about in the middle of the line. When the front stopped all you could do was bump into the next bloke. There was nowhere to stop. The poor bastard behind me was running into the Bren gun every time we stopped. He hit parts of his body on the bloody great big Bren gun.
Going along at night was the most frustrating thing that I had ever been in. There was no night vision at all. It was just black. Completely lightless. Like in Vietnam, the rooms they used to keep the prisoners in - completely lightless. We were walking along and I tripped arse over head over a tree trunk. It was about 40 cm above the ground. So I picked myself up, staggered over it, walked about three paces and fell head over heels over another one. Picked myself up and the third time I did it I just landed on the bloody ground and just cried. It's the only time I ever remember crying in the army. It was frustration more than anything, absolute frustration.
Anyhow, to cut a long story short , dawn finally broke and we still had about half an hour to march. Coming back about 5 or 6 days later, we travelled the whole track in about an hour and a quarter. So it took us five hours to travel half an hour. In The Fiery Phoenix, the author describes this night march as "an experience members never forgot". He is so right.
You will notice that we did not measure in miles between places but in the time it took you to travel the distance. You will also note that there is a huge time difference in going up a hill and coming down.
This was when we relieved C Company. It was too wet for sleeping, it was raining all the time. Fortunately it rained because nobody supplied us any water. We had to collect our water and you were expected to shave every day in the Australian Army ...
