Corporal Geoffrey Holmes served in numerous areas of New Guinea including Milne Bay, Goodenough Island, Buna, Gona and Sanananda from where he was eventually evacuated due to malaria and dysentery.
Geoffrey’s first battle encounter with the Japanese was near the airstrips at Gili Gili. He crossed the airstrip following behind the advance of the 12th Battalion. He was met with the vision of dead Japanese strewn across the ground and concentrated around a mountain gun. It appears that, more than the death and destruction before him, Geoffrey was struck by the features of the dead Japanese. He had not expected the Japanese to be so tall and he assumed that the anchor tattoos that marked their arms indicated they were marines. Most of all though, he was amazed by the prevalence of stainless steel teeth among the Japanese, which also seemed to create a sense of eeriness amongst the dead.
The withdrawal from Gili Gili to K.B. Mission exposed Corporal Holmes to his first personal encounter with Japanese atrocity. Near the edge of the mission grounds was a coconut tree, around the base of which were tied five or six militia troops. They had been tied up with sig wire with their hands bound behind them, and bayoneted to death. Despite the brutality and murderous nature of such an execution, Holmes appears to have been reluctant or perhaps unable to reflect outwardly on this experience any further than offering a factual and un-emotive account of the scene.
Holmes had various different tasks throughout his time of duty. From K.B. Mission he provided armed protection for stretcher- bearers against enemy attack. Near Buna he was assigned the task of guarding the tank in one of the actions. This task changed during its actual exercise from him providing protection for the tank to the tank providing him with machine gun cover while he ran up to the Japanese bunkers and dropped grenades, with tins of ammonal tied to them, down the vents. In the push on Buna he was a Bren Gunner. The fighting there was so intense and prolonged, as the Japanese were firmly entrenched and determined to maintain their resistance, that his Bren gun got so hot from over use that he could not hold it.
A key aspect of Geoffrey Holmes’ experience of the war is the endurance of his hatred toward the Japanese, even decades after the war ended. Coupled with this animosity is the self-confessed ignorance of the politics involved in the war and the committed and widespread belief that fighting the Japanese was different to fighting other soldiers. The basis for this belief was a strong hatred of the Japanese as individuals, ‘not their doctrine or anything else, hatred against the troops I was up against... you had to kill them to beat them.’ This appears to be an element that was nowhere near as prevalent in Australians when fighting European enemies.
Milne Bay–Rabi:
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