Free The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific by James Campbell Page A

infiltrations of the perimeter, and night assaults when the division was lacking in basic field skills and conditioning?
    Although the 32nd had earned high marks in the Louisiana Maneuvers, since then it had been on the move—Louisiana to Fort Devens to San Francisco to South Australia and now Camp Tamborine. In twenty months it had participated in only a few night training exercises. The men knew little of stream, swamp, or river crossings. They understood nothing about living and fighting in the jungle, or the effects of extreme humidity on the maintenance of weapons. And they had almost no practice with live fire. Nevertheless, many of the soldiers were under the illusion that they were “tough as nails” and ready to do battle with the Japanese.
    In contrast, the Japanese trained for war in what military historian Geoffrey Perret calls “tropical dystopias.” During the 1930s, the Japanese Imperial army sent recruits to the rugged island of Formosa. The training there was intense, rigorous, and designed to inure soldiers to suffering. In the process, the Japanese army learned some very basic lessons: Do not overburden soldiers; provide them with light weapons and light loads; give every soldier a headband to absorb sweat that would otherwise pour into his eyes; do not confine troops’ movements to trails; and use the jungle and the element of surprise to outwit and outmaneuver the enemy.
    The Imperial army also simulated island landings. Crammed into the holds of ships, soldiers were deprived of water and forced to endure unbearable heat. Then they were dumped onto beaches under combat conditions. Meanwhile, Japanese engineers developed barges with innovative bow ramps that could carry and quickly discharge men and even light tanks. By late in the war, the barges were already obsolete; but early on, the innovation afforded the Japanese forces a technological advantage over the U.S. Army.

    The thirty men whom Templeton had sent back to investigate the Japanese landing first sighted Tsukamoto’s scouts a few miles from Awala, well inland from where the Japanese had disembarked—they were clearly moving fast. The bayonet blades of their long-barreled .25 caliber Arisaka rifles and Type 38 bolt-action rifles gleamed brightly in the glare of the tropical sun.
    Templeton’s platoon fell back to the village of Wairopi on the Kumusi River. At 9:00 a.m. the following morning, the platoon received a message from Templeton instructing it to retreat to Oivi. Ten of the men remained at Wairopi. They cut the cables of the wire-rope bridge that spanned the river, sending it tumbling into the current. Then they lay in wait for Tsukamoto’s scouts.
    The Kumusi roared through a deep gorge en route to the coast, but Tsukamoto’s scouts were superbly conditioned men. Upon encountering the sixty-foot-wide river and the remnants of the bridge, they plunged into the current and fell into the Australian ambush. Templeton’s men killed fifteen Japanese. The scouts kept coming, though, and eventually the small Australian force fled.
    Back in Port Moresby, General Morris, despite his earlier insouciance, was scrambling to get enough troops to Kokoda to stop the Japanese short of the village and its airstrip. Four of his companies, however, were still south of the mountains. Even if they had been able to walk round the clock, it would have taken them days to make Kokoda. Aware that he could not get the battalion there in time, Morris chose instead to fly in the battalion’s capable commander, Lieutenant Colonel William T. Owen. Owen assessed the situation and made a rash decision: He would torch Kokoda, leaving little for the Japanese.
    The following day, Owen recognized his mistake: He was handing Kokoda and its vital airfield to the Japanese without a fight. Owen returned to Kokoda with a scanty force and waited among the burned remnants of what had once been a flourishing village. Smoke rose from the charred buildings, creating a