Anzac Day 2014 – Bomana War Cemetery – Lest We Forget

[Boss Meri]

Anzac Day 2014 – Bomana War Cemetery – Lest We Forget – Historical Background

There are three great war cemeteries in Papua New Guinea – at Port Moresby, Lae and Rabaul. Beneath their well-tended grounds, or commemorated on memorials to the missing, are more than 8000 Australian war dead. Those interred died in the campaigns fought between January 1942 and August 1945 to evict the Japanese from Papua New Guinea.

For most Australians the word Kokoda evokes all of the horror, stoicism and bravery displayed by troops on both sides but in three years of war men fought and died across this rugged country, from the coastal swamps of Milne Bay over the highlands and valleys that divide the country and up to the north coast.

After the Japanese landed at Lae and Salamaua in March 1942, the coastal town of Port Moresby became their chief objective. They decided to attack by sea, and assembled an amphibious expedition for the purpose but they were intercepted and defeated by American air and naval forces in what became known as the Battle of the Coral Sea.

After this defeat they resolved to advance on Port Moresby overland, across the forbidding Owen-Stanley ranges via the Kokoda Track. Their advance began at Buna and Gona in September 1942. Optimistic after having defeated almost every land force they had so far encountered, few Japanese could have imagined how bitter their experience on the Track would be.

Months of fighting followed, initially against inexperienced Australian and Papuan troops, who retreated before the onslaught stopping only to fight desperate rear-guard actions. As reinforcements bolstered both forces, the fighting intensified, but when the Japanese were almost in sight of their objection they in turn were ordered to retreat.

They had been exhausted by months of combat, by disease and by the very terrain over which they had fought. They had outrun their supply lines and could expect neither reinforcements nor provisions.

Now the Australians went on the offensive, retaking Kokoda in November and driving their wretched foe back to the point from which their advance had been launched just months before.

Kokoda may be the defining battle of the New Guinea campaign, but equally vicious encounters followed, at places such as Wau and Salamau, in the Markham Valley, at Sattleberg and at Shaggy Ridge and on the Huon Peninsula to name just some.

Across the sea on Bougainvlle, the largest and most northerly of the Solomon islands group, the Japanese had established a base in 1942. Fighting for this island continued until 1945.

By then the war had moved on, and American and Allied forces were engaged in bloody battles just a few hundred kilometres from Japan's home islands. But still men continued to fight and die here in New Guinea and on Bougainville.

Those who lost their lives fighting in New Guinea and Bougainville are buried here at Bomana War Cemetery, their bodies brought in by the Australian Army Graves Service from burial grounds in the areas where the battles had been fought.

Men from every branch of the Australian armed services lost their lives in these battles. But the greatest burden of this jungle war was borne by the infantry. Those who fought the ground war suffered three quarters of all Australian deaths. During the fighting in Papua in 1942 and 1943 ground troops suffered almost one-hundred per cent of all battle casualties.

The hostile nature Papua New Guinea's terrain contributed in large measure to these terrible infantry casualties. Advancing along a narrow front, sometimes literally as wide as a foot track, progress was measured by the speed at which a man could walk. Only through vicious, close-quarter fighting were the Japanese dislodge from their well-sited and bravely defended foxholes or bunkers.

Lest We Forget
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