The Battle for Wau

THE BATTLE FOR WAU: New Guinea’s Frontline 1942-1943

Phillip Bradley

Cambridge University Press, 2008, 285pp, $75.00

Phillip Bradley invokes the memory of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans in his dedication ‘Go Tell the Australians’.  This is appropriate, as few of today’s Australians are likely to have ever heard of Wau and the battle that raged for it in 1942 and 1943.  While Captain Sherlock, George Warfe and Damien Parer were once household names, now the ‘quality’ media in Australia misuse Parer’s film clip of Sergeant Ayre helping Private Johnson across a creek near Salamaua (some months after the battle for Wau) when they need a ‘bite’ on the Kokoda Trail, the only battle of Australia’s war in PNG that still resonates.

For this reason, this book, and others sponsored by the Army History Unit, are important, to tell new generations about the deeds of their forebears.  Bradley covers the events comprehensively, including the early actions of the PNGVR and the 2/5th, and later the 2/7th, Independent Companies around Salamaua and Mubo, the Japanese advance on Wau, Sherlock’s defence of Wandumi, and the tense days as the 17th Brigade was flown into Wau, to hold, then repel the Japanese.

Bradley does not neglect the USAAF aircrew who flew into the hair-raising Wau airstrip, often under fire.  Without their efforts, Wau must surely have fallen, and the New Guinea offensives would have progressed differently, and probably more bloodily.

Phillip Bradley has written a fitting tribute to the defenders of Wau.

JOHN DONOVAN