Gona, Gone!

Background to Those Ragged Bloody Heroes Campaign Game*

by Paul Haseler and Mark McGilchrist

For those who haven’t heard of Gona (and this would include most Australians in 1999), it is a village on the coast of Papua (the north-eastern part of the island of New Guinea). The primitive track from Kokoda led north to the sea at Gona, and it also linked there with the east-west coastal track. The main ‘Kokoda Trail’ is (still) just a jungle path that leads south from Kokoda village, across the peaks and valleys of the extremely rugged Owen Stanley mountain range towards Port Moresby.

The original idea for a Gona ASL campaign game came from ASL grognard, Steve Swann, who contacted us back in 1994 to check for local source materials about the Australian and Japanese units at Gona. Steve had identified Gona as a battle whose terrain and numbers could translate into an ASL campaign. Part of our research involved reading Those Ragged Bloody Heroes, by Peter Brune, and being deeply moved by the remarkable story of the 39^th Battalion. The Mud and Blood CG grew from there, until it had a map, a campaign and scenarios, plus lots of background information about the terrain and the units. The M&B draft sat with Critical Hit! for some time, without being published. The historical M&B campaign looked too static for the Japanese side (and ASL is a game where it isn’t fun unless both players have decent options).

In late 1997, Ray Tapio asked us to revisit the Gona idea, to develop a Platoon Leader 2 PTO campaign, and the result is the TRBH package. While intended to be challenging to play, it can also function as an introduction to PTO. The campaign has lots of jungle and kunai, but no vehicles, no caves, (and almost no landing craft). The scenarios are mostly infantry and fortifications, with a little OBA. Since it is in the PTO, concepts like Stealth, Banzai, H-t-H CC, and extra HIP are also important. Of course, we have bolted on some extra ‘chrome’. The new toys in TRBH are Cleared Fire Zones and Command Posts:

Cleared Fire Zones are based on the fact that (given some time and effort) serious jungle defenders could clear or trim the tropical plant growth at different heights along firelanes in front of their positions, making anyone moving through these killing zones visible and vulnerable to aimed fire. The tropical vegetation could also be allowed to grow over bunkers and fortifications, and this meant that attacking troops were often unable to spot the source of deadly enemy fire. Enemy units moving/advancing into a CFZ cannot do so concealed and are subject to defensive first fire as though they were in the open.

Command Post counters are our solution to the lack of ‘strategic terrain’ types in the PTO and the problem of defining perimeters; in a campaign when the landscape is jungle, kunai and swamp, one side may not be able to see a building, let alone control any. A battalion CP acts as a strategic location in the game for scenario set-up and unit re-deployment. Once placed, a headquarters position is static and vulnerable (so it is instantly eliminated if it becomes enemy controlled).

The TRBH PL2 campaign gives an incentive to the Japanese side to counterattack and disrupt the inevitable Australian build-up. A swift counterstroke may even gain enough CVP and/or TVP for a ‘sudden-death’ campaign victory. The historical campaign happens to fit within the on-map terrain at the standard 40 metres per hex scale, with the only significant alterations being a shift of the Small Creek huts and a realignment of the upper reaches of Gona Creek to give scope for the Aussie entry and starting areas. The edges of the kunai and jungle have also been abstracted for readability.

The performance of the Japanese is worth some close attention. In September 1942, when the South Seas Force began to retreat back towards Gona, their construction unit had to cease its task of improving the track from Gona to Kokoda. They turned round and swiftly began to fortify the Mission area with numerous coconut log bunkers, connected by a trench system. Well-hidden firing pits, with solid overhead cover, were dug in along the shore east of Gona, and among the huts near Small Creek.

As the campaign history shows, the Aussie troops and commanders had no inkling of the tenacity of the Japanese troops when no retreat was possible. They also had no idea they were outnumbered by the defenders. The Japanese were amazingly stoic but also static in their positions, putting up with astonishing hardship and fighting to the death. Once the siege had begun, the IJA frontline troops endured critical shortages of food, ammunition and medical supplies. This was despite the quantities stacked unused near the beach, which the Japanese command never managed to distribute (marked by Debris locations on the TRBH map). The campaign requirement to purchase food supplies for the Japanese (or risk losing units) is based on this, and the ammunition supply requirement is similar.

The one night attack made at Gona by the Japanese was insignificant; so apart from the rumble of barge engines, the nights were relatively quiet until the final attempts of the garrison to escape. Only limited counterattacks were attempted (the Japanese commander apparently refused his officers freedom of action), and night patrolling was almost non-existent. No such restrictions are imposed in TRBH.

At night, the resourceful Japanese barge units were still able to move troops and supplies along the coast, including dropping off reinforcements and removing wounded. The tightening of the perimeter in early December made regular access to the beach at Gona impracticable for even those hardy types. The garrison’s morale must have been shaken, as their diary entries recorded their growing awareness that no more reinforcements were coming (and that senior officers were being evacuated).

Disease affected both sides, with the troops still functioning despite suffering from malaria and scrub typhus, the latter proving fatal in many cases. Penned inside their fortifications, the Japanese also suffered crippling dysentery (eating rotting food, surrounded by corpses and filth). The Australians had better access to food and water, but physical exertion (especially for malaria sufferers) was exhausting in the tropical humidity and high temperatures. To be evacuated out of the front-line to recuperate, a Digger had to have a consistent fever of 103^oF or more (since everyone else was enduring at 100-102^oF). The limited number of Firefights in the TRBH CG is a reflection of the physical resources of both sides.

From 19^th November until 9^th December 1942 when the Mission finally fell to the Australians, the garrison of 800-900 Japanese troops held off two depleted AIF Brigades (one at a time). 682 Japanese bodies were buried at Gona, and nearby so were the several hundred Australian dead. A number of Japanese senior personnel and wounded were taken off by barge, while at the end others broke out into the swamps. Hundreds of Australians were evacuated with wounds and serious disease. Only a couple of (incapacitated) Japanese prisoners were taken. During the same period, similar scenarios were being played out along the Papuan coast at places called Sanananda and Buna.

The leading regiment of the Japanese Nankai Shitai (South Seas Force) had set out from Gona in late July expecting to march across the mountains to Port Moresby in just 10 days, and carrying enough food supplies for that time. That major miscalculation was matched by the directive from General MacArthur’s HQ in Australia that ‘the pass’ (there was none) through the Owen Stanley mountains be sealed by demolition with explosives, so it could then be guarded by a small force. Unrealistic expectations from Allied HQ (and poor Australian planning) resulted in an untrained militia battalion being sent up the track, one company at a time (the most that could be supplied by native carriers), into combat against an unknown enemy force. During August 1942, the boys of the 39^th Battalion found themselves being trained on the ‘two-way rifle range’, at places like Kokoda, Deniki and Isurava.

Fighting while isolated for weeks on the jungle track, the young ‘Chocos’ of the 39^th faced fully trained IJA troops with remarkable fortitude. The enemy’s numerical superiority relentlessly pushed them back, but the 39^th held each position as long as practicable, and even counterattacked at Kokoda (not knowing how badly they were outnumbered), and successfully withdrew a second time. A small number of troops ‘went bush’ but the majority found enough courage to stick together (even to the point of a party of wounded men crawling back into the front-line at Isurava when they heard how desperate things were for their mates). They were malnourished, their permanently wet boots and uniforms rotted on their gaunt frames, but they still managed to prevent the breakthrough that the Japanese were striving for.

Lt-Colonel Ralph Honner led the 39^th Battalion (of approximately 400 men) back into combat at Gona in early December, taking over from the 21^st Brigade (whose three battalions by then totalled only 400). In a symbolic closure, the raw unit that had been bounced out of Kokoda and Deniki in August by the Nankai Shitai, returned in December to successfully clear the Japanese from the Gona Mission area. The ragged heroes had become veterans (or dare we say, elite) and were able to finish the bloody task.

After this, the 39^th Battalion’s gruelling campaign continued through the coastal swamps to the west. When finally withdrawn from combat in late January, the 39^th was flown out of Papua with a current strength of just 7 officers and 25 men, all riddled with tropical illness. A few months later, while its troops recuperated, this outstanding unit was inexplicably disbanded (along with some other militia units) and the officers and men were distributed among other battalions.

* Those Ragged Bloody Heroes (or TRBH) is the Platoon Leader 2 tactical Campaign Game published in 1998 by Critical Hit! Inc., and there is also Peter Brune’s very good book of that same name about Kokoda and Gona, published by Allen & Unwin in 1993.

Information about the TRBH game package is available from : info@criticalhit.com

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