IT was just before Easter
1945 and in the jungle of Bougainville. Eighty-three Australian soldiers
from the
25th Battalion
were fighting for their lives. Cut off and
surrounded by an estimated 1,600 Japanese troops, the Australians
valiantly withstood the onslaught.
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For Cecil Townsley, a veteran of Milne
Bay and the Numa Numa Trail, it was the longest 36 hours of his life.
His bravery under fire earned him the Military Medal. The action began
when the Australian soldiers pushed on from Slater's Knoll and took the
Japanese position at Tokonoitu.
Mr. Townsley said the Australians dug
in with a sense of foreboding. "You could feel something in the
air," he said. The first enemy wave hit the next day. The battle
then raged on for hour after hour.
Using his Vickers machine gun, Lance
Sergeant Townsley was credited with a large proportion of the enemy
dead. "I was firing 250 rounds a minute. It's like shooting ducks
really." But being a machine-gunner made Mr. Townsley an instant
target.
During the battle, he was wounded by a mortar shell which
riddled his arm with shrapnel. He continued to hold his position until
the Australians were liberated by three tanks sent through from
headquarters. |
For Mr. Townsley, it was another
senseless battle in the unnecessary Bougainville campaign. The Americans
had simply held their positions on the island, but when the Australian
troops landed to relieve them in 1944, they were ordered to attack. Mr.
Townsley said the Australian forces, dominated by Queenslanders, were
heavily outnumbered.
He said if they had kept fighting
towards the Japanese stronghold of Buin, they would have lost. "We
wouldn't have survived that. No way in the world," he said.
During the Australian Bougainville
campaign, 8,500 Japanese were killed in action and 9,000 died from
disease, while 516 Australians were killed and another 1,572 wounded. In
September 1945, the remaining 23,000 Japanese soldiers on Bougainville
surrendered to the Australians.
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