Pause at Kokoda

From new beachheads at Buna and Gona Mission, Japanese foot soldiers slithered through the dark jungles of New Guinea like drops of mercury spilled on a door mat. They were far down below their landing points before the last of their force had set foot aground. But this time they ran into opposition that was more jungle-wise than they.

For the first 55 of the 120 miles to Port Moresby, the enemy had fairly easy going. There was a rudimentary road to guide him to the last Allied stronghold in the Indies, and he moved swiftly, while to his rear other soldiers prepared the grasslands of the Gona Mission country for airdrome operations.

Where the trail reaches up to cross a 7,000-foot pass in the lofty Owen Stanley Range, the Jap advance parties fired their first shots. Allied scouts had worked their way across the mountains and were waiting. Most of them were not professional soldiers: they were prospectors, trappers and foresters, and their lives had long depended on living off the country, hiding in it from New Guinea's cannibal natives.

They met the Jap near Kokoda (where there is a usable airdrome) and stopped him. The enemy seemed confused at the kind of opposition he got. He came in force upon one small Allied patrol, saw it melt into the jungle before he could fire a shot. The little infantrymen fanned out and sprayed the underbrush with tommy-gun fire. They shouted: "You come, you come." But the patrol did not come. It pulled out without losing a man.

No military man in Port Moresby was foolish enough to think that this was a victory. There would be more Japs. They had Kokoda and they would probably try to force the pass. The threat to Port Moresby would be serious. If the enemy made his objective, he would have pushed the Allies a good 350 miles farther away from Japanese bases on New Guinea and New Britain. So Douglas MacArthur's ground soldiers were out to stop him short of the pass, while his airmen, with what strength they had, pecked at his new position on the northern coast.

The enemy, too, stepped up his aerial activity. He struck his hardest blow at Port Darwin on Australia's northern coast. In his first big night raid he sent over 27 bombers escorted by 22 Zeroes. Allied fighters met them, knocked down nine planes, lost only one. Again, Australia's defenders sent up no shouts of victory. Pared down to a minimum of equipment, they feared the implications of the big raid. It must mean that Japanese air strength in the South Pacific was on the rise. And on the future they looked with a strange, foreboding pleasure: there was going to be a fight on MacArthur's front, after all.

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