To Salamaua

TO SALAMAUA

Phillip Bradley

Cambridge University Press, 2010, 372pp, $59.95

Many Australians will be familiar with Damien Parer’s film sequence showing a wounded digger being helped across a creek near Salamaua.  However, because Australian television stations often use that sequence, or photos taken from it, to illustrate stories about the Kokoda campaign, they might not be aware where and when the event occurred.  Phillip Bradley has followed his book on the 1942-43 Battle for Wau with this account of the 1943 Salamaua campaign, covering the correct context for that film sequence.

The humanity of Major-General Stan Savige, commanding the forces advancing on Salamaua, stands out in the book, exemplified by his threat to ‘snarler’ one unit commander if he ‘waste[d] one man’s life unnecessarily’.  His chief staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel John Wilton, ably supported Savige. The heroism of Corporal Leslie Allen, who rescued many wounded men under fire, and the persistence of the American Lieutenant Wendell Messec, whose platoon followed a Japanese raiding party for five days before catching and ambushing it, exemplify the courage and perseverance of the soldiers involved in the campaign.

There has been recent discussion in Australian military historiography of an ‘Australians as natural soldiers’ mythology. This book records the emphasis military leaders of the time placed on training, suggesting that they were not taken in by such ‘pub yarn’ mythology.  Where training was inadequate and experienced leaders were few, as initially in the 58th/59th Battalion, poor results were almost inevitable.  However Bradley highlights that even well trained units, such as the 2/3rd Independent Company in its first action at Wau, could have a difficult introduction to jungle warfare.

As he did in his earlier book, Bradley describes the important support provided to the Army by other services, particularly the native carriers and the air forces with supply dropping, without which the campaign could not have succeeded.

Savige’s efforts were hampered by Lieutenant-General Edmund Herring’s concealment from him until well into the campaign that the intention was to draw Japanese forces away from Lae, not to capture Salamaua quickly.  If Herring did not feel that he could trust Savige with this information, he should have selected another commander, who could be fully informed of the constraints on his actions.  Even late in the campaign, Herring left ambiguities in his instructions.  Other difficulties were caused by the confusing command arrangements established with the US forces landed at Nassau Bay later in the campaign.  These matters were also covered in Gavin Keating’s recent biography of Savige, The Right Man For the Right Job.

Savige and Wilton were replaced just as Salamaua was about to fall, in an echo of Major General ‘Tubby’ Allen’s replacement the previous year, just as Kokoda was about to fall.

Bradley has written a fine tribute to the men who fought in what must surely have been the longest diversionary campaign in Australia’s military history.  It is, however, unfortunate that the publication quality falls below standard in places.  The printing on some maps is faint almost to the point of unreadability, and some places mentioned in the text are not marked on the relevant map. Some of the recent photos (presumably from colour originals) lost much of their contrast in the printing process, obscuring the detail.

With John Coates’ book on operations between Finschhafen and Sio (Bravery Above Blunder) and Bradley’s earlier works on Wau and the Ramu Valley campaign (On Shaggy Ridge), a modern account of the Australian Army’s part in the 1943 New Guinea campaign is almost complete. Only the capture of Lae remains to be covered.  Perhaps Bradley will write this next?

JOHN DONOVAN