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Mountain Boys Rise Up To Defeat Japanese

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By ROGER K. MILLER

Published: January 20, 2008

"The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea - the Forgotten War of the South Pacific," by James Campbell (Crown, $25.95)

Sometimes you see it said in a fiction review that the geographical setting is as much of a character in the novel as, well, the characters.

It seems this observation can be extended to nonfiction as well, for in James Campbell's superb "The Ghost Mountain Boys," the island of New Guinea is one of the most fearsome characters you will ever want to come across, in fiction or real life.

The Ghost Mountain Boys were the men of the 2nd Battalion, 32nd Infantry Division, who made an appallingly grueling trek in late 1942 from near Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea, across the Owen Stanley Mountains, to do battle with the Japanese solidly entrenched at Buna on the north coast.

Campbell, author of "The Final Frontiersman," ably explains how they did it: They did it with excruciating difficulty. Why they ever were made to do it is another question entirely.

The 32nd was a National Guard division made up largely of men from Michigan and Wisconsin. Not only were they not ready for jungle fighting, but they also had not yet been adequately trained for any kind of combat.

Most certainly the men were not ready to face the nightmare terrain, incapacitating climate and exotic flora and fauna of New Guinea. They had no jungle equipment or clothing, nor even sufficient medicines for the disease-ridden climate.

What they did have, unfortunately for them, was Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied commander in the Southwest Pacific, a self-serving megalomaniac with an overweening arrogance and sense of personal destiny.

Maj. Gen. Forrest Harding, the 32nd's commander, warned MacArthur that the division was not ready for New Guinea. But MacArthur did not want to hear that.

Nor did he want to hear that his grand plan for an overland assault was impracticable as well as unnecessary, for there were better ways - which were used later - of getting the soldiers to the fight.

Somehow the 2nd Battalion did it, enduring 42 days in the tropical sauna of the lowlands and the icy winds of the mountains to arrive at Buna, where its troubles only began. Linking up with Australian and other American units, the soldiers launched what would be a two-month assault against the Japanese.

"The Ghost Mountain Boys" is carefully organized and researched and written with great sensitivity and understanding. In particular, the author's interspersing of backbreaking jungle slogs and horrific fighting with the tender thoughts that soldiers and their loved ones exchanged through the mail makes the story all the more affecting.

The campaign to drive the Japanese out of Buna officially ended Jan. 22, 1943. Coming 2 1/2 weeks before fighting ended on Guadalcanal, it was the first Allied defeat of the Japanese in a land operation. By that point, the Ghost Mountain Battalion was down to 126 enlisted men and six officers, out of an original 900.

Roger K. Miller is a freelance writer and author of the novel "Invisible Hero."

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