Remembering the war in New Guinea
Wau, 1943 (Photographs)
Module name: Campaign history (All groups perspective)
This page was contributed by Mr Damien Fenton (Australian War Memorial)

AWM 014368 (Australian War Memorial) Aerial view of the airfield at Wau, March 1943. This airfield was the key to the area’s defence. The bold attempt by the Okabe Detachment to outflank and surprise Kanga Force almost succeeded in taking it.
AWM 014372 (Australian War Memorial) Australian infantry of the 2/5th Battalion disembarking from a C-47 transport at Wau. The fortuitous break in the weather that allowed 800 men of the 2/5th and 2/7th battalions to reinforce the hard-pressed Australian defenders on 29 January was the decisive turning point in the the battle.
AWM 014369 (Australian War Memorial) The arrival of the Australian 2/1st Field Regiment’s 25-pounder guns on 30 January was a further blow to the fast dwindling hopes of the Japanese. The very next day the Okabe Detachment had to break off its assault and begin to retreat.
AWM 128154 (Australian War Memorial) A shattered Wirraway from No. 4 (Army Cooperation) Squadron, RAAF, aflame after being hit during a raid on Wau by nine Japanese bombers and twenty fighters on 6 February. Three of the attacking Japanese bombers and 15 of the fighters were shot down by Allied fighters and anti-aircraft guns.
AWM 14377/21 (Australian War Memorial) A hurriedly put together ‘ambulance’ converted from a salvaged motor van and operated by the Australian 2/2nd Field Ambulance at Wau. This makeshift vehicle was used to ferry patients from the unit’s Advanced Dressing Station to the airfield for evacuation to Port Moresby. At the height of the fighting, between 27 January and 9 February, the 2/2nd Field Ambulance treated 335 sick and 207 battle casualties.
AWM 014412 (Australian War Memorial) American Douglas C-47 Dakotas of No. 374 Troop Carrier Group, USAAF, flying across the mountains towards Wau, April 1943. It was the ability to airlift men and material in large numbers in a short space of time that gave the Allies a decisive edge in the battle for Wau. Nevertheless, while the number of transports had increased markedly since the struggle for Kokoda, the effort at Wau stretched Allied air transport units to the limit.
AWM 014547 (Australian War Memorial) The cab of a 3-ton American truck being loaded aboard a C-47 for shipment to Wau. Trucks and 25-pounder field guns were dismantled for the flight and then quickly reassembled on the ground at Wau and put into action. For the first time in the New Guinea Campaign, growing Allied industrial and technical might began to make itself felt upon the battlefield. For the Japanese it was an ominous sign of things to come.
AWM 014612 (Australian War Memorial) A New Guinean carrier with his load, in this instance a case of dehydrated potatoes, destined for Australian troops at Wau, April 1943. Despite the increase in Allied air transport and other logistical units, carrier lines remained an integral part of Allied supply operations through out the battle for the Wau-Mubo area.
AWM 014413 (Australian War Memorial) A jeep and trailer bringing up supplies is manhandled across a muddy creek near Wau, March 1943. As the extreme conditions of the Owen Stanley Range were left behind the use of vehicles such as the jeep became a feasible, if at times still dificult, proposition. The tough little jeep was best-suited to the task – It could be delivered by C-47 without the need for disassembly and its cross-country performance allowed for the quick construction of crude ‘jeep tracks’, unfit for other vehicles, to link forward areas with supply depots.
AWM 056517 (Australian War Memorial) An excavator of the Royal Australian Engineers at work on a stretch of the ‘Reinhold Highway’, September 1943. As part of the development of Wau as an Australian base the construction of a road linking Wau to Bulldog on the other side of the Owen Stanleys was begun in February 1943. The road, nicknamed the ‘Reinhold Highway’ after the officer in charge of the project, Lieutenant Colonel William J. Reinhold, represented a major feat of engineering and was completed in 1944.
AWM ART22557 (Australian War Memorial) Ivor Hele, Stretcher case awaiting bearers, Old Vickers Position, 1944, oil on canvas, 76.7 x 91.6 cm, Australian War Memorial, ART22557.
AWM ART22509 (Australian War Memorial) Ivor Hele, Dead Japanese, Old Vickers Position, 1943, Charcoal, 37.3 x 47.9 cm, Australian War Memorial, ART22509.
AWM ART22548 (Australian War Memorial) Ivor Hele, Head of a digger(Signaller Geoffrey Helstroom), 1943, oil on canvas on hardboard, 58 x 48.1 cm, Australian War Memorial, ART22548.