only one starCritique by military historian and former army officer James Kenneth Bowen
MY RATING FOR THIS BOOK: only one star
LEFT: The book “The Kokoda Campaign 1942 - Myth and reality” is a published doctoral thesis containing appalling historical howlers; RIGHT: Author of the book Dr Peter Williams.
This is typical Peter Williams fantasy of the kind that produced the four previous appalling Williams howlers. So again, it becomes necessary for me to tell what really happened at Kokoda from 8 to 10 August 1942.
Between Between First Kokoda and Isurava, two further actions took place, and those actions involved the full strength of the Japanese Tsukamoto Battalion and less than the full strength of the 39th Battalion. During the first week of August, three companies of the 39th Battalion had reached Deniki bringing the strength of the 39th Battalion to 31 officers and 433 men (McCarthy at page 132). Cameron’s force at Deniki also included 43 officers, NCOs, and native soldiers of the Papuan Infantry Battalion (PIB), a handful of ANGAU civilians, and 14 armed native police. The new acting commander of the militia battalion, Major Allan Cameron, decided to launch a very risky and poorly planned Australian counter-attack on 8 August 1942 to recapture Kokoda. He ignored warnings from his company commanders that they had no current intelligence regarding the number of Japanese at and in the vicinity of Kokoda. Cameron decided to employ only three of his companies, with the support of the PIB and native police, in his foolhardy attempt to recapture Kokoda. He was holding E Company in reserve at Isurava, and he had foolishly punished B Company for failing to defeat a full Japanese battalion at Oivi and First Kokoda by sending it up the Kokoda Track to Eora Creek. McCarthy provides the true account of what happened in this successful but very brief recapture of Kokoda (at pages 132-137). As I will demonstrate, the account of the recapture and abandonment of Kokoda by Williams at pages 55-58 of this book can be dismissed as fantasy.
Cameron initiated his attempt to recapture Kokoda with a very basic military blunder of splitting his attacking force into three separate companies each numbering only about 100 (and not four companies as Williams claims). The Japanese were waiting in ambush on the Kokoda Track between Deniki and Kokoda and inflicted heavy casualties on C Company which withdrew without ever reaching Kokoda. The route taken by D Company was by another eastern track that joined Deniki to the Kokoda Track between Oivi and Kokoda. D Company was supposed to ambush any Japanese reaching Kokoda from Oivi , but was outnumbered and overwhelmed by Japanese and pursued back to Deniki.
Only Captain Symington’s A Company reached and captured Kokoda by following a little-used native track. The recapture at noon on 8 August succeeded because there was only a very small number of Japanese at Kokoda, but the bold Australian recapture stirred up a Japanese hornet’s nest. Symington’s first night at Kokoda was undisturbed by the Japanese (McCarthy at page 135) because Tsukamoto was busy consolidating his full strength to attack Kokoda on 9 August. Tsukamoto deployed his full battalion strength at 7.45 am on 9 August supported by heavy machine-guns, mortars, and artillery to drive the Australian A Company out of Kokoda. Under relentless attack with massive firepower from the full Tsukamoto Battalion on both 9 and 10 August, and running out of food and ammunition, the men of A Company were forced to withdraw from Kokoda on at night on 10 August under cover of heavy rain.
Pursuing his ridiculous claim that the Australians were “rarely outnumbered” by the Japanese on the Kokoda Track (at pages 1 and 2), Williams produces his fantasy version of Second Kokoda which totally contradicts the account provided by McCarthy and which lacks any credible support. The Williams fantasy account has Tsukamoto sending only a small force on the night of 8 August to oust the Australians from Kokoda, and the uncoordinated attack fails because of the dark night and heavy rain. Williams then produces the fantastic claim that Captain Symington’s company “unmolested by the Japanese, evacuated Kokoda…on the “following day, 9 August” (at page 57). As we can now expect, this fantasy account of Second Kokoda, which has an Australian company briefly attacked only on the night of 8 August by a small Japanese force, is not supported by Williams with any evidence, credible or otherwise.
Returning to the true story of Second Kokoda on the night of 10 August, Symington’s company found the area between Kokoda and Deniki was swarming with Japanese, and the exhausted and heavily depleted A Company had to make a wide detour of the Kokoda Track to the safety of the village of Naro and from there, summon help to move their wounded to Deniki. Captain Symington advised Major Cameron that he assessed the Japanese strength in the vicinity of Kokoda as being at least 1,000 (McCarthy at page 137).
Peter Williams would naturally hold a different opinion to Captain Symington with regard to the number of Japanese based on his unsupported claim that Lieutenant Colonel Tsukamoto landed in Papua with only a half strength battalion of 586 men to carry out a top priority strategic operation; but when assessing numbers in a military context, I would prefer the expert opinion of a military officer to the opinion of an armchair academic like Williams, and especially, an armchair academic who has produced the four appalling howlers that precede this one.
This action is sometimes called Second Kokoda, and clearly one 39th Battalion company at Kokoda was heavily outnumbered by a full Japanese battalion numbering in the order of one thousand combat troops. So Peter Williams has well and truly earned his fifth howler.
Cameron sent the exhausted and depleted A Company down the Kokoda Track to Efogi. He brought forward to Deniki his fresh E Company, but kept B Company at Isurava. The 39th Battalion E Company was understrength, because it had been converted from a Lewis machine-gun to rifle company to cross the Owen Stanley Range, and faced the Japanese at Deniki on 13 August 1942 having only 78 men. Cameron now had only three understrength 39th Battalion companies to defend Deniki, and C and D Companies were exhausted and heavily depleted. The defence of Deniki would involve at most about 250 Australian 39th Battalion soldiers, supported by perhaps 50-55 native PIB soldiers and armed native police, against 1,000 Japanese combat soldiers possessing heavier weapons and massive firepower. The true account of the defence of Deniki against the Japanese Tsukamoto Battalion is provided by McCarthy at pages 137-138.
At 5.30 am on 13 August the Japanese storm broke over the small Australian force at Deniki. The Japanese attacked in repeated human waves and were beaten back by the Australians with machine-guns and hand grenades until a brief lull in the fighting took place about noon. Heavy fighting recommenced after the short noon break with both sides suffering very heavy losses, and the fighting continued throughout the afternoon and into the night until about 1.00 am. The Japanese attacked the Australian positions again at dawn on 14 August and heavy fighting continued throughout the morning with heavy losses again on both sides. The Japanese were attacking in overwhelming numbers and could carry heavy losses, but the Australians were too few in number to bear heavy losses. During another lull in the fighting, Cameron decided that the Japanese numbers were overwhelming and he decided to abandon Deniki and withdraw his small force up the Kokoda Track to Isurava. The Australians were forced to abandon a large amount of supplies and even some platoons were temporally left behind at Deniki.
Weighed down with 65-pound packs, rifles, light machine-guns, and other equipment, the Australians faced an arduous 6-hour climb over very rugged terrain to a cleared area close to the village of Isurava where they dug in and prepared to block any further advance by the Japanese towards Port Moresby.
A fantasy account of the two-day battle against the Japanese at Deniki is provided by Peter Williams at pages 58-60. Doggedly pursuing his ridiculous claim that the Australians were “rarely outnumbered” by the Japanese on the Kokoda Track (at pages 1 and 2), Williams increases the Australian force at Deniki from a total of only about 300 (including native PIB soldiers and armed native police) to a totally unsupportable number of 470 (at page 58), and reduces Tsukamoto’s force from about one thousand to a ludicrous number of “around 450 men”. This nonsensical playing with troop numbers by Williams is not supported by any credible evidence because such evidence does not exist.
I have explained earlier the historical reasons why it is highly unlikely that Emperor Hirohito would have permitted a massively understrength Tsukamoto Battalion to land in Papua to carry out the high priority strategic operation of capturing Port Moresby, and my historical argument is supported by Captain Symington of 39th Battalion’s A Company who estimated the Japanese strength in the Kokoda area as being not less than 1,000 (McCarthy at page 137).
Not content with distorting Australian and Japanese troop numbers in an attempt to support his absurd claim that the Australians were “rarely outnumbered”, Williams changes Deniki from two days of heavy fighting with heavy losses on both sides to little more than a skirmish on day one and no military action on day two. Again, Williams offers no credible evidence to support his appalling and insulting fantasy version of Deniki that is roundly contradicted by McCarthy.