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Hell's Battlefield
Hell's Battlefield is the first book that tells the whole story of the Australians against the Japanese in New Guinea during World War II, from invasion in 1942 to the brutal end game in 1945. Besides giving new perspectives on the Kokoda campaign, the book covers the battles that preceded and those that followed, most of which have previously received scant attention.
Phillip Bradley has conducted extensive research on the official and private records from Australia, the US and Japan, and as well as these perspectives, shows those of the Papua New Guineans. He has also conducted wide-ranging interviews with veterans, and made extensive use of Japanese prisoner interrogation records.
The text is further illuminated by the author's deep familiarity with the New Guinea battlefields, and is well illustrated with photographs, many previously unpublished, and maps. Hundreds of thousands of Australians, Phillip's father among them, fought in New Guinea. Many never returned. Hell's Battlefield tells their story, and those of the battles that raged on land, in the air and at sea.
About the Author:
A chemical research manager by profession, Phillip has had a lifetime interest in military history. Two years working in Papua New Guinea gave him the opportunity to travel to the battlefields there, particularly where his father had fought around Shaggy Ridge. This led to his first book, which was on that battle. This was followed by books on other long forgotten New Guinea battles at Wau and Salamaua. He also writes for After the Battle and Wartime magazines. All Phillip's books are characterised by an intimate knowledge gained from his many trips to the battlefields, complemented by his research skills and by his many unique interviews with New Guinea battlefield veterans, over 300 and counting. Phillip now writes full time and also does work for Kokoda Treks and Tours. Hell's Battlefield is his fifth book.
436 pages narrative, 506 pages in total
Phillip Bradley has conducted extensive research on the official and private records from Australia, the US and Japan, and as well as these perspectives, shows those of the Papua New Guineans. He has also conducted wide-ranging interviews with veterans, and made extensive use of Japanese prisoner interrogation records.
The text is further illuminated by the author's deep familiarity with the New Guinea battlefields, and is well illustrated with photographs, many previously unpublished, and maps. Hundreds of thousands of Australians, Phillip's father among them, fought in New Guinea. Many never returned. Hell's Battlefield tells their story, and those of the battles that raged on land, in the air and at sea.
About the Author:
A chemical research manager by profession, Phillip has had a lifetime interest in military history. Two years working in Papua New Guinea gave him the opportunity to travel to the battlefields there, particularly where his father had fought around Shaggy Ridge. This led to his first book, which was on that battle. This was followed by books on other long forgotten New Guinea battles at Wau and Salamaua. He also writes for After the Battle and Wartime magazines. All Phillip's books are characterised by an intimate knowledge gained from his many trips to the battlefields, complemented by his research skills and by his many unique interviews with New Guinea battlefield veterans, over 300 and counting. Phillip now writes full time and also does work for Kokoda Treks and Tours. Hell's Battlefield is his fifth book.
436 pages narrative, 506 pages in total
436 pages, Hardcover
First published August 22, 2012
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September 10, 2012
Phillip Bradley’s Hell's Battlefield attempts to tell the complete story of the Australian campaign against the Japanese in New Guinea during World War II. The book starts with the invasion in 1942 to the end of the war in 1945. The author covers all the major and minor actions on land, air & sea including those prior to Kokoda and the more terrible battles afterwards when the Australians slowly pushed the Japanese back to the coast.
The first chapter; 'See you in hell, fellers' starts off with; Billy Cook was waiting to die. Bayoneted eleven times through his back, neck and head, the nuggetty young medical orderly saw no other way out of his agony. Then he heard the flies, droning as they descended on the corpses of his comrades scattered all around him in the coconut plantation. No, he thought, I don't want to die this way.
The book is full of these first-hand accounts taken from both sides, the author has conducted extensive research and interviewed a number of veterans to complete this book and has used material taken from official and private records from Australia, the US and Japan.
A number of the stories of the battles and what happened to the soldiers involved really dragged me into the story. The book is not an in-depth tactical study of the military campaign to recover New Guinea from the Japanese but more of an overview of the whole campaign covering many little-known actions like this one with the fighting around Northern Knoll:
Two American medics, Byron Hurley and Samuel Sather, were killed trying to bring in some of the fifty-three wounded Americans. The Australian stretcher bearer Bull Allen again stepped forward, responding to plaintive cries of ‘Bull, Bull, Bull.’ Clyde Paton watched as ‘Allen came ploughing hurriedly upwards through the slippery mud. He brushed past me and then was lost to view … Shortly, back came Bull Allen with a soldier draped over his shoulders. Under the weight he staggered a little and then lowered the body to the ground right before me.’ Paton watched Allen go out, again facing the prospect of being shot like the men he rescued. However, ‘Providence watched over him.’
Twelve times Allen went forward and brought back wounded Americans. Watching him carry in the last man, Lance Copland thought that Allen was at the end of his tether. Ron Beaver observed: ‘He had about seven touches altogether [from enemy rounds] but he had holes in his hat, he had holes in his sleeve, he had holes in his pants, he had holes under his shirt …. Jesus Christ …. And each time he went out, the Yankee O Pip blokes [forward observers], they were having bets … Do you think he’ll make it this time?’ Allen survived and would be awarded the American Silver Star to wear beside the Military Medal he already held for similar work during the Battle for Wau. Astonishingly, his own country did not decorate him.
The book also covers many of the well-known stories of the campaign. Even so, reading about this terrible aviation accident at Jackson’s Strip at Port Moresby where a fully bombed up B-24 crashed on take-off and hitting five trucks full of Australian soldiers still saddened me:
Captain Doug Cullen, the commander of C Company, ordered his men up the hill away from the fires. Braving the edge of the inferno himself, he found an unconscious Frank McTaggart, slung him across his back, and carried him to safety. Another man, naked and terribly burned, emerged from the fire and quietly asked, ‘Sir, where shall I go?’ He was one of the plane’s crew; minutes later, he was dead. Elsewhere, Jack Reinke, the company sergeant major, appeared. ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ he asked. Handed one, he took a drag on it and died.
From the blackened gullies at the end of Jackson’s Strip, the firefighters recovered the pitiful remains if the dead: fifteen Australians and eleven American airmen. That was only the beginning of the grim toll. Another forty-five would die from their burns. Ninety-two others were injured, many of them horrifically maimed. Two of the dead Australians, Drivers Vic Kearines and Joe Taranto, were from the 158th General Transport Company. The rest were 2/33rd men. ‘So many mates gone,’ MacDougal reflected. In New Guinea it was just another way to die.
As the Japanese steadily retreated from the Australian offensive in New Guinea and US forces cut off all supply from Japan, the Japanese started to starve:
Further west, at Gali 1, the Japanese Army was dying. As the soldiers grew weaker, the death toll steadily rose. On 17 January, Tetsuo Watanabe informed his commander that his unit was starving to death. Two days later, more troops arrived from Sio, further stretching the meagre supplies. On the morning of 23 January, Watanabe went to the field hospital, where the helpless patients looked to him for succour; he could only offer death. As the adjutant issued new blankets, a weeping Watanabe carried out his commander’s orders, placing a grenade beside each man’s pillow.
Another account of the retreating and starving Japanese forces in New Guinea:
At Wandiluk, Farmer and Captain Robert Escott saw more signs of cannibalism. On one body, ‘all the flesh had been removed and all that remained was the framework of bones.’ In one hut a pile of flesh had been prepared over a fire. Elsewhere, Escott found a fresh corpse with deep cuts down the backs of the legs. ‘The look of horror on [the dead man’s] face was so terrible that I am convinced they started to carve him up before he was dead,’ he said. Farmer had all his men witness these scenes before burning the village to the ground. For the young Australian soldiers, the ghoulish scenes they had witnessed could not be so easily erased.
The book also has many accounts of men sacrificing themselves to save the lives of others, like this account of a Fijian unit in battle during WW2:
One of the highest forms of courage is to save the lives of others at the risk of one’s own. What Corporal Sefanaia Sukanaivalu did on Bougainville went beyond courage. Suka, as he was known, had arrived at Torokina with the 3rd Fijian Infantry Battalion, which was then used to make amphibious raids along the coast, harassing the enemy lines if supply. On 23 June 1944, the Fijians made one such raid on the Japanese roadhead of Mawaraka, but they ran into more opposition than expected and were forced to withdraw. During the move back to the barges, Suka, who was helping the wounded, was himself hit in the thigh and groin. Unable to move, he cried out to his comrades not to come for him, but he knew they would never leave him to the Japanese. So he raised himself on his hands, drawing a deadly machine-gun burst that killed him but undoubtedly saved other men’s lives. The selfless Suka was awarded the British Commonwealth’s highest honour, the Victorian Cross, the first of three awarded for valour on Bougainville.
Overall a great book covering the terrible fighting in New Guinea that many Australians would not have heard about or be aware of after Kokoda. There are a number of maps to assist in following the long campaign to push the Japanese out of New Guinea and a number of B&W and colour photographs.
As mentioned earlier, do not expect an in-depth military history, but be prepared to read about how Australian soldiers, fought, lived and died fighting in New Guinea. The book has many sad accounts of these brave men giving their lives to save others and should be read by all who have an interest in this campaign.
The first chapter; 'See you in hell, fellers' starts off with; Billy Cook was waiting to die. Bayoneted eleven times through his back, neck and head, the nuggetty young medical orderly saw no other way out of his agony. Then he heard the flies, droning as they descended on the corpses of his comrades scattered all around him in the coconut plantation. No, he thought, I don't want to die this way.
The book is full of these first-hand accounts taken from both sides, the author has conducted extensive research and interviewed a number of veterans to complete this book and has used material taken from official and private records from Australia, the US and Japan.
A number of the stories of the battles and what happened to the soldiers involved really dragged me into the story. The book is not an in-depth tactical study of the military campaign to recover New Guinea from the Japanese but more of an overview of the whole campaign covering many little-known actions like this one with the fighting around Northern Knoll:
Two American medics, Byron Hurley and Samuel Sather, were killed trying to bring in some of the fifty-three wounded Americans. The Australian stretcher bearer Bull Allen again stepped forward, responding to plaintive cries of ‘Bull, Bull, Bull.’ Clyde Paton watched as ‘Allen came ploughing hurriedly upwards through the slippery mud. He brushed past me and then was lost to view … Shortly, back came Bull Allen with a soldier draped over his shoulders. Under the weight he staggered a little and then lowered the body to the ground right before me.’ Paton watched Allen go out, again facing the prospect of being shot like the men he rescued. However, ‘Providence watched over him.’
Twelve times Allen went forward and brought back wounded Americans. Watching him carry in the last man, Lance Copland thought that Allen was at the end of his tether. Ron Beaver observed: ‘He had about seven touches altogether [from enemy rounds] but he had holes in his hat, he had holes in his sleeve, he had holes in his pants, he had holes under his shirt …. Jesus Christ …. And each time he went out, the Yankee O Pip blokes [forward observers], they were having bets … Do you think he’ll make it this time?’ Allen survived and would be awarded the American Silver Star to wear beside the Military Medal he already held for similar work during the Battle for Wau. Astonishingly, his own country did not decorate him.
The book also covers many of the well-known stories of the campaign. Even so, reading about this terrible aviation accident at Jackson’s Strip at Port Moresby where a fully bombed up B-24 crashed on take-off and hitting five trucks full of Australian soldiers still saddened me:
Captain Doug Cullen, the commander of C Company, ordered his men up the hill away from the fires. Braving the edge of the inferno himself, he found an unconscious Frank McTaggart, slung him across his back, and carried him to safety. Another man, naked and terribly burned, emerged from the fire and quietly asked, ‘Sir, where shall I go?’ He was one of the plane’s crew; minutes later, he was dead. Elsewhere, Jack Reinke, the company sergeant major, appeared. ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ he asked. Handed one, he took a drag on it and died.
From the blackened gullies at the end of Jackson’s Strip, the firefighters recovered the pitiful remains if the dead: fifteen Australians and eleven American airmen. That was only the beginning of the grim toll. Another forty-five would die from their burns. Ninety-two others were injured, many of them horrifically maimed. Two of the dead Australians, Drivers Vic Kearines and Joe Taranto, were from the 158th General Transport Company. The rest were 2/33rd men. ‘So many mates gone,’ MacDougal reflected. In New Guinea it was just another way to die.
As the Japanese steadily retreated from the Australian offensive in New Guinea and US forces cut off all supply from Japan, the Japanese started to starve:
Further west, at Gali 1, the Japanese Army was dying. As the soldiers grew weaker, the death toll steadily rose. On 17 January, Tetsuo Watanabe informed his commander that his unit was starving to death. Two days later, more troops arrived from Sio, further stretching the meagre supplies. On the morning of 23 January, Watanabe went to the field hospital, where the helpless patients looked to him for succour; he could only offer death. As the adjutant issued new blankets, a weeping Watanabe carried out his commander’s orders, placing a grenade beside each man’s pillow.
Another account of the retreating and starving Japanese forces in New Guinea:
At Wandiluk, Farmer and Captain Robert Escott saw more signs of cannibalism. On one body, ‘all the flesh had been removed and all that remained was the framework of bones.’ In one hut a pile of flesh had been prepared over a fire. Elsewhere, Escott found a fresh corpse with deep cuts down the backs of the legs. ‘The look of horror on [the dead man’s] face was so terrible that I am convinced they started to carve him up before he was dead,’ he said. Farmer had all his men witness these scenes before burning the village to the ground. For the young Australian soldiers, the ghoulish scenes they had witnessed could not be so easily erased.
The book also has many accounts of men sacrificing themselves to save the lives of others, like this account of a Fijian unit in battle during WW2:
One of the highest forms of courage is to save the lives of others at the risk of one’s own. What Corporal Sefanaia Sukanaivalu did on Bougainville went beyond courage. Suka, as he was known, had arrived at Torokina with the 3rd Fijian Infantry Battalion, which was then used to make amphibious raids along the coast, harassing the enemy lines if supply. On 23 June 1944, the Fijians made one such raid on the Japanese roadhead of Mawaraka, but they ran into more opposition than expected and were forced to withdraw. During the move back to the barges, Suka, who was helping the wounded, was himself hit in the thigh and groin. Unable to move, he cried out to his comrades not to come for him, but he knew they would never leave him to the Japanese. So he raised himself on his hands, drawing a deadly machine-gun burst that killed him but undoubtedly saved other men’s lives. The selfless Suka was awarded the British Commonwealth’s highest honour, the Victorian Cross, the first of three awarded for valour on Bougainville.
Overall a great book covering the terrible fighting in New Guinea that many Australians would not have heard about or be aware of after Kokoda. There are a number of maps to assist in following the long campaign to push the Japanese out of New Guinea and a number of B&W and colour photographs.
As mentioned earlier, do not expect an in-depth military history, but be prepared to read about how Australian soldiers, fought, lived and died fighting in New Guinea. The book has many sad accounts of these brave men giving their lives to save others and should be read by all who have an interest in this campaign.
April 22, 2025
The author traces the history of Australian fighting in PNG, humanising his account with lots of personal stories, which balance the author's comprehensive research detail. In that sense the book is engaging and well-written - and we need to know this history. The problem is that the content is so horrendous that it makes this book very hard to read. I am not criticising the author - I can't imagine a better treatment BUT it is still a very hard book to read. So many young lives wasted; so much careless incompetence at senior levels. War is an awful thing.
February 20, 2021
The Boer War had seen the conquest of Jerusalem and shortly before World War One, Satan’s Throne (according to Revelation) had been moved to Berlin. The Great War, The First World War, had seen a race to control the economic power of empire. It was a world war because Europe contained several world powers through colonialism, but the two great powers were England and Germany. England moreso. In the time after that war, Einstein, a Jew, and several Universities in Germany, were developing maths in response to the first days of creation, as recorded in Scripture. It became apparent that a lot more power existed in the world..
To amateurs, it seems like madness that a Second World War could have happened so soon after a First. But there was an arms race for the bomb that Einstein’s maths implied. It would have the capacity to destroy a Capital City. Again, The United States was unsure as to which side to be on. But this war would end with that country, dropping that bomb, onto Japan. So the Pacific Theatre of War was Hell’s Battlefield.
Our men in Papua were Christians. But they were doing something that their God told them not to do. Committing murder. Their enemies were doing the same. Feminists will compare war with domestic violence, and they should. But when death is not considered to be the end the lines between life and life begin to blur. They had the bodies of the dead around them, and they had been doing something that God had told them not to do.
The sounds of gunshot and mortar could be close, or distant and wet. A sound very necessary to listen to. But so necessary, that the sound of death approaching could become something that might only be happening inside your head. They were in unfamiliar and dark territory, away from everything that was familiar, and love. The voices of prayers began to be heard, some in foreign languages. The only way to remain Christian was to pray to that God yourself, but you didn’t want to give away your position.
These experiences made our soldiers gentlemen.
I would like to congratulate Phillip on an excellent book that brought home to me how much our veterans fought and suffered. The cover photo is real: an Australian soldier carrying a dead US serviceman. I came to the belief that Jesus may have had a hood placed over his head before his cross went up.
After Kokoda there was a race between Capitalism and Communism towards the Moon. Since then, of course, it’s been about having the gospel on the Internet.
To amateurs, it seems like madness that a Second World War could have happened so soon after a First. But there was an arms race for the bomb that Einstein’s maths implied. It would have the capacity to destroy a Capital City. Again, The United States was unsure as to which side to be on. But this war would end with that country, dropping that bomb, onto Japan. So the Pacific Theatre of War was Hell’s Battlefield.
Our men in Papua were Christians. But they were doing something that their God told them not to do. Committing murder. Their enemies were doing the same. Feminists will compare war with domestic violence, and they should. But when death is not considered to be the end the lines between life and life begin to blur. They had the bodies of the dead around them, and they had been doing something that God had told them not to do.
The sounds of gunshot and mortar could be close, or distant and wet. A sound very necessary to listen to. But so necessary, that the sound of death approaching could become something that might only be happening inside your head. They were in unfamiliar and dark territory, away from everything that was familiar, and love. The voices of prayers began to be heard, some in foreign languages. The only way to remain Christian was to pray to that God yourself, but you didn’t want to give away your position.
These experiences made our soldiers gentlemen.
I would like to congratulate Phillip on an excellent book that brought home to me how much our veterans fought and suffered. The cover photo is real: an Australian soldier carrying a dead US serviceman. I came to the belief that Jesus may have had a hood placed over his head before his cross went up.
After Kokoda there was a race between Capitalism and Communism towards the Moon. Since then, of course, it’s been about having the gospel on the Internet.
April 24, 2016
Very interesting descriptions of Australia's fighting involvement in New Guinea during WWII. I read it mainly for the chapter which describes the actions of my father-in-law's unit, the 2/3rd Commandos. As an overall picture of events it was compelling. I suspect others who have read books by individual units will find, like me, than the descriptions in this book are a little sparse by comparison but to be otherwise, would have required several volumes. Very readable, even if the material is sometimes hard to palate.
December 22, 2020
I had no real comprehension of what the fighting was really like in New Guinea, Solomon’s and Bougainville. Kokoda was one thing but this was a level up in every way imaginable! The Australian soldier adapted and fought with supreme ability and guts.
They were also wasted by the likes of McArthur who sacrificed them on the alter of war with complete abandon. McArthur and his cronies should have tried it for a while they would have failed.
Thank you Australia for the sacrifice of your men and women in all theatres of war - your courage is profound!
They were also wasted by the likes of McArthur who sacrificed them on the alter of war with complete abandon. McArthur and his cronies should have tried it for a while they would have failed.
Thank you Australia for the sacrifice of your men and women in all theatres of war - your courage is profound!
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