CLASSROOM QUIZ - Answers

The war started on September 1, 1939, when the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolph Hitler, intent on conquering and ruling Europe, ordered his troops to invade neighbouring Poland.

Neville Chamberlain. He declared war on Germany on behalf of Britain and France after repeated peace talks failed.

Robert Menzies who made an immediate call to arms for Australian volunteers to help Britain and France fight Nazi Germany.

In the first months of the war 10,000 young men joined the Second AIF expeditionary force to fight German and Italian forces in Europe and the Middle East. Another 10,000 joined later. Italy had sided with Germany in the war.

The recruits went in a series of convoys, which included the world’s largest ship, the RMS Queen Mary. The luxury liner had been converted into a troop carrier. The men who were later assigned to the 2/33rd Infantry Battalion travelled on the Queen Mary, which left Sydney on May 4, 1940, arriving in Gourock, Scotland, six weeks later on June 17, 1940.

The men were originally destined to go to the Middle East but about 1,500 hundred of them were selected to form three emergency battalions to help defend England against a possible German invasion. One of the battalions was the 2/33rd . It wasbased at Tidworth, in southern England and later Colchester, near London.

Eleven officers and 453 Other Ranks, meaning non-commissioned soldiers. This was under strength because of a manpower shortage. Battalions normally have more then 500 men.

The patch is circular with brown over red colours, which is why the 2/33rd Battalion was called the “Mud & Blood”.

Its Ack-Ack gunners fired at a German bomber flying low over Tidworth camp on August 13, 1940. One soldier was wounded during the bombing raid, the battalion’s first battle casualty of the war.

The battalion was in England for six months, leaving for Egypt in January, 1941, after the German air force, The Lutwaffe, had lost the Battle of Britain and fears of an invasion abated.

The Battalion went by ship to Egypt to join allied forces fighting the Germans in the Middle East. Instead, their first action was against the Vichy French when the Australian 7 th Division, which the 2/33rd Battalion was part of, invaded Syria.

The Vichy French was a breakaway separatist group who fought on the side of Nazi Germany against Britain and its allies, who included the Free French, the Australians and troops from other Commonwealth countries.

It was a short, but fierce battle lasting six weeks. It ended when the Vichy French sought and signed an armistice to cease hostilities.

The Vichy French cavalry was called the Spahi, also known as the “brown horse” battalion because all of their horses wereidentical brown with a large white blaze on the forehead.

The Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, and the Australian Government ordered the Australians to return home after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbour started the War in the Pacific, bringing with it the threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia.

The first Japanese attack on Australian soil was Darwin on February 19, 1942, when 230 people were killed and more than300 wounded in two raids on the first day.

The ship bringing home the battalion from the Middle East was still at sea. It arrived in Adelaide on March 9, 1942, where the Battalion disembarked and began intensive training at Woodside in the Adelaide Hills. The battalion then moved to Casino, in northern NSW, and later Caboolture, near Brisbane, where they arrived on May 27, 1942

The Brisbane Line involved a bold plan to build a defensive line right across Australia from Brisbane to Perth. Had there been a Japanese invasion, which never occurred, the plan was to abandon northern Australia and have people retreat to the Brisbane line, leaving behind only burnt out towns for the Japanese.

The men were given their first real training in jungle warfare, which was vastly different from the desert training they had been given in preparation for the invasion of Syria.

The Battalion was called in to help stop the advance of Japanese forces, which had landed at Gona and Buna on July 21, 1942, on the east coast of Papua, with the intention of crossing the Owen Stanley Ranges by the remote and famous Kokoda Trail to capture Port Moresby. The battalion was shipped from Brisbane for Port Moresby and went into action on the Kokoda Trail six days after arriving in Port Moresby on September 9, 1942.

Before starting out on the Kokoda Trail the men were instructed to strip so their khaki uniforms could be dyed green to match the surrounding jungle.

The first was Imita Ridge and the second Ioribaiwa Ridge.

The Kokoda Trail was steep and treacherous with thick, oozing mud that made traversing it extremely exhausting, especially with the men carrying equipment, including ammunition and heavy guns. To reach the top of Imita Ridge they had to climb the notorious Golden Staircase that had 2,000 wooden steps cut into the side of mountain. Without the steps it would have been impossible to climb that part of the Trail in the constant wet weather.

The bold tactical move was to stop the Japanese advancing any further towards Port Moresby. It proved to be a masterstroke. Having reached Ioribaiwa the Japanese were having trouble maintaining their supply lines, and decided to withdraw back down the Kokoda Trail to Gona, where they had started their attack two months earlier.

The battalion battled the Japanese for 98 days with little rest before being withdrawn from action five days before the fall of Gona to Australian and American forces.

No ground was harder won than Myola Ridge where the 2/33rd gained a victory over an enemy force of battalion strength dug in along the razorback Ridge. The battle, which cost the Battalion 21 killed and 48 wounded, was fought in incessant fog and extreme cold at 2,300 metres. The Battalion won a number of Military decorations as a result of the action.

The victory was extremely important because it secured the large Myola dry lakes, which were urgently needed for the air-drop of supplies and establishing medical bases for the wounded.

As well as Myola Ridge, the battalion won significant battles at Templeton’s Crossing and Gorari.

The 2/33rd started the Kokoda campaign with 625 men. By Gona only 136 were left, all so exhausted they could hardly stand, but they were still fighting. Forty-seven had been killed, 122 wounded and more than 260 evacuated with deadly diseases such as scrub typhus and malaria.

The 136 men left in the battalion marched five miles (8.5 kms) to Soputa then another 10 miles (16 kms) to Poppondetta from where they were flown back to Port Moresby for much needed rest.

Along with other 7th Division troops, the 2/33rd Battalion went into camp at Ravenshoe on the Atherton Tablelands, initially for rest and rebuilding, then rigorous training to prepare them for their next campaign.

After seven months at Ravenshoe the battalion’s next battle was to help recapture Lae from the Japanese. Three ships transported the battalion back to Port Moresby in late July, 1943.

To recapture Lae the plan was to airlift troops over the Owen Stanley Ranges from Port Moresby to an airfield at Tsili Tsili and then Nadzab, where the attack on Lae was to be launched down the Markham River Valley. It was the first airlift of British Empire troops during World War II.

In a daring prelude to the attack on Lae U S paratroopers and Australian artillerymen parachuted on Nadzab to capture the airfield and secure it for the airborne troops to follow. Many of the artillerymen had never made a parachute jump before.

On the eve of battle the 2/33rd Battalion lost 60 dead and 90 injured when a US Army Air Force Liberator bomber crashed into a convoy of 18 trucks carrying the men waiting at the end of the Jackson’s Port Moresby, airfield runway.

The US Army Air Force Liberator bomber was attempting to take off from Jackson’s airfield at 4.30 am on September 7, 1943, when a wing hit a tree causing the plane to crash into a convoy of 18 trucks parked at the end of the runway and carrying soldiers of the Battalion waiting to be airlifted to Nadzab.

On impact two 500-pound bombs and 2,000 gallons (13,000 litres) of fuel exploded in a huge ball of fire. Worst hit were five trucks carrying men of D Company. All five trucks were destroyed. Sixty men were killed or mortally injured. The 11 crew of the Liberator and two truck drivers were also killed.

Ninety soldiers were injured, many suffering severe burns. In the minutes after the crash there were heroic rescues as men ran from the inferno with their clothes on fire. Some were blown up by their own exploding ammunition. Survivors did all they could to save injured mates. The memories haunted survivors or the rest of their lives.

The commanding officer of the 2/33rd Battalion, who initially thought the convoy had come under a Japanese air attack, ordered that A Company, which hadn’t lost any men, be flown straight away to Tsili Tsili and Nadzab, followed later that day by C Company, some of whose men had been killed or injured. The few surviving members of D Company accompanied.

The cause is still a mystery. A US Army Air Force inquiry blamed pilot error. An Australian inquiry found the crash was caused by factors unknown. The details of the crash were kept secret until after the war. It was feared that news of a US bomber killing and injuring so many Australian soldiers might damage the morale of other Australian and American troops.

Showing extraordinary devotion to duty the surviving members of the 2/33rd went into action against the Japanese just two days after the crash, despite having lost nearly two-thirds of their force.

The 2/33rd and other 7th Division battalions faced stiff resistance from Japanese in heavily entrenched positions in six
former coffee plantations along the road down the Markham Valley between Nadzab and Lae, a distance of 20 miles (32 kms). The Battalion started suffering casualties soon after starting the attack. It took seven days to defeat the Japanese and reach Lae.

The battle plan was for a pincer movement with 9th Division troops making a sea landing on one side of Lae and 7th Division troops moving down The Markham Valley on the other. It became a race between the two divisions to see who would reach Lae first. The 7th Division won. Of its troops the 2/33rd Battalion was one of the first into Lae.

After Lae was captured the battalion was ordered back to Nadzab to undertake mopping up patrols in the Ramu Valley and culminating in the battle for Shaggy Ridge.

Crossing treacherous, fast-flowing rivers and the vast areas of tall kunai grass, the breeding ground for the deadly scrub typhus.

Shaggy Ridge was a four mile (6.1 kms) long razorback mountain spur with several rocky outcrops that were heavily defended by more than 3,000 Japanese in underground bunkers impervious to air attacks. The only way to reach them was up steep tracks; wide enough for one man at a time with sheer drops of hundreds of metres either side.

After nearly a month of artillery barrages, air bombings and fierce ground fighting around the base of Shaggy Ridge it was decided the only way to defeat the Japanese was a single file frontal attack on the main outcrop, Green Sniper’s Pimple, which took place in January 1944 by the 2/27th Battalion. Their men made a near suicidal advance climbing their way to the top under a hail of mortar and gunfire and with grenades raining down on them.

The Knoll was a strategically important, treeless hill held by a small force of Japanese. D Company 16 platoon of the 2/33rd Battalion made a disastrous attempt to take it on October 13, 1943, attacking up the steep side of The Knoll with little or no cover from the shower of grenades thrown by the Japanese. Only eight of the 38 who began the assault escaped being wounded. Two were killed. There were seven other casualties from C and B companies. The 37 battle casualties were the worst suffered in a single day for the entire war.

The loss of men through disease had a serious impact on the fighting strength of all battalions serving in Papua and New Guinea. In all, 2,208 men were taken out of battle with malaria and deadly scrub typhus. More than 200 were evacuated during the Ramu Valley campaign. The 2/33rd Battalion was hard hit, losing 187 men to disease in the space of 10 weeks. Scrub typhus, often fatal, was caused by a tiny parasite that was especially virile in the kunai grass that covered large areas of the Ramu Valley.

The 2/33rd Battalion was in action for four months. The campaign began on September 9 with the launch of the attack to recapture Lae and ended on January 1 at Dumpu where they were airlifted back to Port Moresby and then brought back to Brisbane by ship. The Lae-Ramu Valley campaign cost the battalion 12 killed. Nine more died of wounds and 74 were wounded. At the end of the campaign the Battalion returned to the Atherton Tablelands, in far north Queensland, for re-building and further training.

The reason was mainly political. By this time US forces had assumed the primary responsibilities for fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific, raising significant uncertainty about the Australian Army’s next involvement.

The final action was taking part in the 7th Division invasion of Balikpapan, Borneo, a massive exercise involving 100 allied ships and 30,000 personnel. It took place just six weeks before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II.

The 25th Brigade, of which the 2/33rd was part, was used as a floating reserve to carry the fight to the Japanese who had retreated into the hills after being pushed back from the beaches in the first assault. Despite being a reserve battalion, the 2/33rd did more fighting than any other battalion during the 22 days of the campaign, and suffered more casualties, 25 killed or mortally wounded, and 57 wounded. There was fierce fighting on Balikpapan and along the Milford Highway with many hand-to-hand combats. The Japanese fought to the death in the last battle of the war.

Long-serving members of the battalion were sent home immediately after the war ended. Others remained to help guard Japanese prisoners-of-war and be present for the orderly changeover from Military to civilian control. The last major contingent, 102 men, returned to Brisbane by ship in February, 1946.

The unit and its men passed into history when the battalion was disbanded in Brisbane on March 12, 1946.