03/11/2025
This month marks the 83rd anniversary of the Battle of Buna-Gona, 01 Nov 1942 - 02 Jan 1943. Local men, including our Rats of Tobruk, were amongst the Australian and American troops who fought this battle in the worst terrain of any battle anywhere during WWII. They were ill-equipped, many even without boots, fighting against a well-entrenched Japanese army.
It is important to note that if it were not for the local indigenous people, known fondly as the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, a great many of our troops would never have made it home. Much credit should go to them as well. - Marjorie Earl.
Most Australians have never heard of Buna. They should!
Buna. The Battle We Fought, The Glory They Claimed. (The Yanks)
(Yesterday, 01 Nov 2025) marks the anniversary of the Battle of Buna, one of the hardest and most brutal fights ever waged by Australian soldiers in the Second World War.
The Kokoda Campaign/track, if you could even call it a track.
When the Japanese landed on the north coast of Papua in 1942, they weren’t just invading the jungle, they were at Australia’s doorstep.
They pushed across the Owen Stanley Ranges toward Port Moresby, and it was Australians, not Americans, who stopped them on the Kokoda Track, and in the worst and harshest terrain of the entire Second World War.
The weather was brutal, hot and muggy at the low altitudes, yet cold and snowing high in the mountains. They had no winter clothes, no proper gear, and most were lucky to even have boots.
Starving, sick, and barefoot, our blokes still threw them back down those mountains.
By the time we drove the enemy to Buna, Gona, and Sanananda, our diggers had already paid in blood.
Then along came General Douglas MacArthur, the self-styled saviour of the Pacific, with a plan to make Buna his grand redemption story. Fresh from evacuating the Philippines while tens of thousands of his own men and Filipino allies were left to the Bataan Death March and the prison camps, he wanted a clean, glorious comeback and he wanted it fast.
He sent in his fresh troops first, convinced the Japanese were finished.
They weren’t.
The Americans were cut to pieces in the swamps and bunkers, mown down by machine guns they never saw coming.
MacArthur did not own the disaster, he just changed the script.
He ordered Australian forces to stand back while his men “took the honour.”
But the reality was brutal, they were inexperienced, too cocky( not like the seps at all) nd they were pinned, dying where they stood.
So once again it fell to us, the Australians to finish the fight.
Through waist-deep mud and disease, through the stench of death, our soldiers went back in.
Bunker by bunker, bayonet by bayonet, they cleared Buna and ended the Japanese advance for good.
When it was finally over, MacArthur called it “a magnificent victory of American arms.”
But it wasn’t. It was an Australian victory, fought by men defending their own home while others chased headlines.
Australians were the first to make the N***s retreat, beating Rommel’s Afrika Korps at Tobruk, before that the first to defeat Italian forces capturing 40,000 of them at Bardia
and the first to force the Japanese into a full retreat at Buna. The same troops did all of this. All three battles.
Two empires, two fronts, and one small nation that stood its ground when the world was burning.
Buna was hell. But it was our hell.
Every inch of it was paid for in blood and mud. The least we can do is remember who really won it.
- Shared from Gabe Clarke, Author, and Australian Country Memes page.
Lest we forget 🏵️
