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 B

ghostly impression in the misty morning light.
    At 2:00 a.m. on July 29, with wispy clouds veiling a fat moon, four hundred of Tsukamoto’s men plunged into the jungle void. Screaming like wild animals, they scaled a nearly vertical hill and stormed the Australian stronghold.
    In the chaos of the battle, Owen was shot. The battalion medical officer and a number of stretcher bearers rushed to his side, but a bullet had lodged in Owen’s head and brain tissue oozed out of the wound. Owen had survived the bloody January 1942 Japanese invasion of the island of Rabaul only to fall dead to a sniper’s bullet in the first large-scale battle on the New Guinea mainland.
    When the generals at GHQ in Brisbane learned of the loss of the Kokoda airfield, they insisted that the airstrip be recaptured. On August 8, Australian forces attacked, catching Tsukamoto’s surprised troops off guard. By afternoon, Kokoda was back in Australian hands.
    For two and a half days, Tsukamoto’s men threw themselves at the Australians. Second Lieutenant Hirano, a platoon leader in Tsukamoto’s battalion, was unnerved by the fierceness of the Australian defense. “Every day I am losing men,” he lamented. “I could not repress tears of bitterness.”
    On the evening of August 10, as a heavy fog fell over the yawning Mambare River, Tsukamoto’s forces sprang out of their trenches and rushed the Australians. “The stirring and dauntless charge,” wrote Hirano in his diary, “is the tradition of our Army and no enemy can withstand such an attack.” He was right: The Japanese soldiers overwhelmed the Australians.
    The following day, what should have been a celebration turned into a dour ritual. Though the Japanese were again in possession of Kokoda, they were forced to gather up their dead. Lieutenant Hirano found time to make an entry in his diary. “The bloody fighting in the rain during the last few days seems like a nightmare,” he wrote. Then regaining his defiance, he added, “I swore to the souls of the warriors who died that I would carry on their aspirations.” The next morning, he wrote in a more sentimental vein, “The day was beautiful, and the birds sang gaily. It was like spring.”
    Six days later, on August 18, 1942, with Colonel Tsukamoto in possession of Kokoda, the main body of Japan’s famous Nankai Shitai (South Seas Detachment), including its commander, Major General Tomitaro Horii, landed at Basabua, right under the nose of unsuspecting Allied air units.

Chapter 4
    S ONS OF H EAVEN
    M AJOR G ENERAL T OMITARO H ORII was a tiny, bold man with a flair for the dramatic—he liked to ride into battle on a white steed with a sword hanging from his side. But his instructions in New Guinea were straightforward: to march on Port Moresby as swiftly as possible, employing battle-tested Japanese field tactics of surprise, encirclement, and night attacks. Horii had already proved himself during the invasion of Rabaul, which he had commanded. Though he had misgivings about the mission on New Guinea’s mainland, as a Japanese officer he was prepared to obey his orders absolutely.
    Although the Japanese succeeded in landing the main body of the Nankai Shitai, two battalions of the 144th Infantry, two artillery companies, crack naval landing troops, and a huge support force, they were not yet finished sending troops to New Guinea. A day after Horii’s men arrived at Basabua, another regiment left Rabaul bound for the Buna coast. Like the Nankai Shitai, the 15th Independent Engineers and the Tsukamoto Battalion that preceded it, the Yazawa Detachment, under the command of Colonel Kiyomi Yazawa, was a veteran fighting force.
    Again, the Japanese navy’s luck held. The convoy that carried the Yazawa Detachment reached Basabua under cloud cover on August 21, bringing Japan’s troop count to a total of eight thousand army troops, three thousand naval construction troops, and 450 troops from the Sasebo 5th Special Naval Landing