Forgotten heroes (of World War II)

AS thousands of old Diggers march today, hundreds of thousands of Australians too young to remember the Vietnam War will read of the bravery of our troops in the two world wars, 1914-18 and 1939-45. But one group of brave allies from World War II will be nearly ignored again.

The unexpected box-office success of the Australian movie Kokoda, which started screening across the country on Anzac Day last year, highlighted the unexpected resolve and fighting skills of the so-called "chocolate soldiers" of the home-based Citizen Military Force and their role in stopping the Japanese advance on the Kokoda Track across the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea during the uncertain days of World War II.

What Kokoda and most of the books on that campaign published during the past 30 years all but ignore is the exceptional role played by the indigenous PNG soldiers in that bloody fight. The sacrifices of the 55,000 local porters - the so-called fuzzy wuzzy angels - who toiled up the Kokoda Track with vitally needed supplies and ammunition, then back down with wounded men, has been well documented. But few Australians are aware that hundreds of regular soldiers from PNG - from the Papuan Infantry Battalion and three New Guinea Infantry Battalions - fought alongside the Australians in New Guinea during the conflict.

Indeed, the first shots fired at the Japanese when they landed in what is now PNG came from local soldiers. Naked from the waist up, barefoot and dressed only in a wraparound lap-lap or rami, held up by a regulation army web belt, the native soldiers may well have been the most unlikely looking group to serve the British Empire.

The article is about others besides the Fuzzy-Wuzzy Angels, but I can't resist posting the poem in tribute to them as well.

Many a mother in Australia
When the busy day is done
Sends a Prayer to the Almighty
For the keeping of her Son

Asking that an Angel guide him
And bring him safely back
Now we see those prayers are
Answered on the Owen Stanley track

Tho' they haven't any halos
Only holes slashed through the ear
Their faces marked with tattoo's
And scratch pins in their hair

Bringing back the badly wounded
Just as steady as a hearse
Using leaves to keep the rain off
And as gentle as a Nurse

Slow and careful in bad places
On that awful mountain track
And the look upon their faces
Made us think that Christ was black

Not a move to hurt the carried
As they treat him like a Saint
It's a picture worth recording
That an Artist's yet to paint

Many a lad will see his mother
and the husbands, weans and wives
Just because the Fuzzy Wuzzies
Carried them to save their lives

From Mortar or Machine gun fire
Or a chance surprise attack
To safety and the care of Doctors
At the bottom of the track

May the Mothers of Australia
When they offer up a prayer
Mention these impromptu Angels
With the "Fuzzy Wuzzy " hair.

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