Extracts from
Laurie Cheeseman's Memoirs

Page 8

3. New Guinea

The troops at Brisbane spent their brief time there training and being kitted out with new equipment and uniforms suitable for jungle warfare. Laurie recalls that during this time the 2/2nd Field Ambulance was reinforced by many new recruits, mainly from NSW and Queensland, and he moved out of B Company to take up the position of unit carpenter in HQ Company. 'I saw it as an opportunity of dodging parades as well as paying an extra three and six a day . . . I was probably in line for stripes but I reckoned I would never get past Lance Corporal anyway, so I became a carpenter group two'. The unit and its equipment sailed from Brisbane on the hospital ship Manunda 'which turned out to be an unforgettable trip. Sheer pleasure after our other trips - plenty of room, good meals, no black-outs and port holes open and all lights on at night . . . we were treated to concerts, deck games and even dances as there was a full complement of Australian and American nurses on board'. After a brief stopover at Port Moresby, the Manunda sailed on to Milne Bay where it would act as a floating hospital for the allied troops stationed there. These included the 2/2nd Field Ambulance whose soldiers had 'walked of the spotless decks of the Manunda straight into the Milne Bay mud where the tracks of many vehicles had churned it into a quagmire'.

In January 1943 a Japanese convoy carrying the 102nd Infantry Regiment and supporting forces left Rabaul for Lae on the northern coast of New Guinea. The ground forces being carried by the convoy were to deploy inland from Lae towards the strategic airstrip at Wau. The capture of Wau would not only provide forward defence for the existing Japanese forces at Lae and Salamaua, it would also provide an important launching point for any subsequent assault against Port Moresby. Located at one end of the Wau-Bulolo Valley in the central province of Morobe, the township of Wau and its airstrip were developed during the gold rushes that took place there in the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed during this time, a cousin of Laurie's grandmother, Herbert Ainsworth Bodger, who had served in the 42nd Battalion of the First AIF, had worked for the New Guinea Goldfields Corporation at both Wau and nearby Edie Creek. Allied codebreakers had foreshadowed the Japanese move to their commanders who ordered air attacks against the convoy and, in the event these were not successful, the despatch of the 17th Brigade from Milne Bay to Port Moresby from where their fighting and support units would be sent to help defend Wau. The 2/6th Battalion was despatched to Port Moresby on 9 January and began being airlifted to Wau ten days later. The rest of the brigade followed on the transport ships Taroona and Duntroon. On reaching Port Moresby, the 2/2nd Field Ambulance was sent to Pom-Pom Valley near the nine mile aerodrome where Laurie and his colleagues set about erecting and staffing 'a rest camp for the troops returning from the Owen Stanley track. We erected tents and bunks and fed them and distributed ACF and Red Cross parcels. They were pretty well worn out and kept the medical teams busy, the malaria fever was taking it toll too, not to mention dengue and typhoid . . . and the jungle was full of crawling things and leeches as thick as your finger. We were kept awake at night by the waves of super-fortresses going out on their bombing missions and sometimes when the Japanese fighters met them, and the ack-ack guns started operating, the place would be showered with shrapnel and spent bullets'.

US Douglas Dakota aircraft flying above the Bulolo Valley near Wau in New Guinea in 1943 (AWM 014377/27). Wau township and airstrip
in 1942 before most of the buildings were destroyed in anticipation of a Japanese attack (AWM 127579).

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Typical country in the Wau-Mubo area (WM 015154) and native carriers on the Wau-Mubo track (AWM 015140).

Having halted the Japanese advance at Wau, the 17th Brigade began advancing towards Guadagasai and Mubo. The bulk of the fighting was done by the 2/7th and 2/6th Battalions with the 2/2nd Field Ambulance and other units maintaining crucial support services close to the moving battle front. The 2/7th did much of the early fighting around Mubo and its surrounding ridges while the 2/6th secured a beachhead at Nassau Bay to enable an amphibious landing by the US 162nd Regimental Combat Team before returning to the battle around Mubo. The 2/5th Battalion, meanwhile, was involved with the 15th Australian (Militia) Brigade in its assault on Mount Tambu. Under intense pressure the Japanese withdrew from Mount Tambu to Salamaua which was eventually captured by the US and Australian troops (the latter from 2/7th Battalion as well as the 29th Brigade of the 9th Division which had replaced the remainder of the 17th Brigade).

While working near Observation Hill, Laurie and his Field Ambulance mates were recalled to Goodview to pack up camp and 'trek over mountains, through jungle and kunai grass and swamps' to Nassua Bay where they were picked up by an American landing craft. This took them around the top of New Guinea to Milne Bay from where they sailed on a US liberty ship to Cairns in northern Queensland. From Cairns they travelled by train to Decla near Herberton on the Atherton Tablelands. 'A fleet of trucks with kangaroo-boomerang emblems met us and we knew we were back in the Sixth Division. When we arrived at the base all our long-lost parcels were delivered to us - mostly ruined and full of mildew - cakes that people had gone to trouble and expense to send. I sent a hurried telegram to Elsie to make arrangements for our wedding for Monday the 25th, and after a couple of days we were put on a troop train bound for Melbourne and leave (the right direction at last!)'.

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