Sometimes you see it said in a fiction review that the geographical setting is as much of a character in the novel as, well, the characters. It seems this observation can be extended to nonfiction, as well, for in James Campbell’s superb “The Ghost Mountain Boys,” the island of New Guinea is one of the most fearsome characters you will ever want to come across, in fiction or real life.
The Ghost Mountain Boys were the men of 2nd Battalion, 32nd Infantry Division, who made an appallingly grueling trek in late 1942 from near Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea, across the Owen Stanley Mountains, to do battle with the Japanese solidly entrenched at Buna on the north coast. Campbell, author of “The Final Frontiersman,” ably explains how they did it — they did it with excruciating difficulty. Why they ever were made to do it is another question entirely.
The 32nd was a National Guard division made up largely of men from Michigan and Wisconsin. Not only was it not ready for jungle fighting, but also it had not yet been adequately trained for any kind of combat.
Most certainly it was not ready to face the nightmare terrain, incapacitating climate and exotic flora and fauna of New Guinea, replete with crocodiles and disease-bearing mosquitoes — not to mention the various tribesmen, who, while mostly friendly, occasionally indulged in headhunting and cannibalism.
The 32nd’s men had no jungle equipment or clothing. The dye in their hastily dyed fatigues ran in the extreme humidity, causing horrible skin ulcers. They had no machetes to cut the razor-sharp kunai grass or the 7-foot-high elephant grass.
They did not even have insect repellent or waterproof containers for matches and salt and other tablets. They did not have sufficient medicines for New Guinea, “the perfect incubator for a host of debilitating tropical diseases.”
What they did have, unfortunately for them, was Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied commander in the Southwest Pacific. The self-serving megalomania, overweening arrogance and sense of personal destiny that David Halberstam in “The Coldest Winter” ascribed to MacArthur during the Korean War seem to have been well in place eight years earlier in the Pacific.
Maj. Gen. Forrest Harding, the 32nd’s commander, warned MacArthur that the division was not ready for New Guinea. But MacArthur did not want to hear that, and what MacArthur did not want to hear he simply did not hear.
Nor did he want to know that his grand plan for an overland assault was impracticable, as well as unnecessary, for there were better ways, which were used later, of getting the soldiers to the fight. Nor did he try to find out for himself; as he would do in Korea, he commanded from afar, almost never visiting the troops or seeing how conditions were on the ground.
Somehow the 2nd Battalion did it, enduring 42 days in the tropical sauna of the lowlands and the icy winds of the mountains to arrive at Buna. E.J. Kahn, a member of Harding’s staff and a former New Yorker writer, said, “The men at the front in New Guinea were perhaps the most wretched-looking soldiers ever to wear the American uniform.”
At Buna their troubles only began. Linking up with Australian and other American units, they launched what would be a two-month assault against the Japanese.
That wasn’t fast enough to suit MacArthur. He fired Harding and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Robert Eichelberger. An Australian officer was shocked to hear MacArthur say of Eichelberger, “I want him to die if he doesn’t get Buna.”
“The Ghost Mountain Boys” is carefully organized and researched and written with great sensitivity and understanding. In particular, the author’s interspersing of backbreaking jungle slogs and horrific fighting with the tender thoughts that soldiers and their loved ones exchanged through the mail makes the story all the more affecting.
The campaign to drive the Japanese out of Buna officially ended Jan. 22, 1943. Coming 2 ½ weeks before fighting ended on Guadalcanal, it was the first Allied defeat of the Japanese in a land operation. By that point, the Ghost Mountain Battalion was down to 126 enlisted men and six officers, out of an original 900.
Roger K. Miller is a freelance writer and author of the novel “Invisible Hero.”
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Nonfiction
The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea — the Forgotten War of the South Pacific, by James Campbell., $25.95
