Two US soldiers attend to the wounds of an Australian solider in New Guinea, taken during the actual advance during the early weeks of the Battle of Buna-Gona, 28 December 1942.
Following the Allied victory at Milne Bay across August and September, the Japanese advance across New Guinea had been brought to a virtual stand-still. As the historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote a few years after the end of the war, in 1950:
'...the enemy had shot his bolt; he never showed up again in these waters. The Battle for Milne Bay was a small one as World War II engagements went, but very important. Except for the initial assault on Wake Island, this was the first time that a Japanese amphibious operation had been thrown for a loss ...
Furthermore, the Milne Bay affair demonstrated once again that an amphibious assault without air protection, and with an assault force inferior to that of the defenders, could not succeed.'
US General Douglas MacArthur now turned his attention to liberate New Guinea, as an initial step towards the Allied push northwards to reclaim the Phillipines, beginning with the Battle of Buna-Gona, on New Guinea's north-east coast (16 November 1942 – 22 January 1943).
The experience of the US 32nd Infantry Division - just out of training camp and utterly unschooled in jungle warfare - was nearly disastrous however. Young officers, with no field experience, were completely out of their depths in the most challenging of conditions and circumstances.
MacArthur relieved the division commander and on 30 November instructed Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger, commander of the US I Corps, to go to the front personally with the charge "to remove all officers who won't fight ... if necessary, put sergeants in charge of battalions ... I want you to take Buna, or not come back alive."
The Australian 7th Division under the command of Major General George Alan Vasey, along with the revitalised US 32nd Division, restarted the Allied offensive. Gona fell to the Australians on 9 December 1942, Buna to the US 32nd on 2 January 1943, and Sanananda, located between the two larger villages, fell to the Australians on 22 January.
New Zealand-born George Silk (1916-2004) was Australia's second official war photographer, joining photographer Damien Parer in the Middle East in May 1940.
It was, however, in the Pacific theatre that Silk made his preeminent reputation. Profound problems with Department of Information’s refusal to pass for publication photographs Silk had taken at great risk of Australians in action against Japanese troops around Buna, around New Year’s day of 1943 led the photographer to resign his position with the department, both in protest and because he was in a state of complete exhaustion. Silk then worked for the American Life magazine, for whom he photographed action in the Pacific and in Europe.
Photographer: George Silk
