Milne Bay

The heat and the wet is what you remember with dread When Australian Servicemen and American engineers stopped them dead The first defeat of the Japanese in New Guinea in their empire race It was Milne Bay in August and September 1942 such a god forsaken place There were the 25th, 55th and 61st militia with antiaircraft battery men And the 2/10 with the 2/12 AIF brought back from the Middle East then With the Kittyhawks of the 75th and 76th squadron RAAF flying hard Who with some Americans of 46th Engineers fought for every yard It was the mud that stopped the Japanese marines When their 2 tanks were bogged and destroyed when they were seen Then the Japanese were reinforced with more troops from the Rabaul base As they made their way to the Number 3 air strip in their war race The Japanese were harassed by the RAAF Kittyhawk fighter planes To the point where they only moved during the dark hiding from them was the game They waited until daylight to attack the Milne Bay strips And were cut down by the Allies without another thought for it So all that was left was snipers in the palm trees Shooting at Allied soldiers and harassing as they pleased Then one time fighter pilot with malaria and dysentery Was warned by the ground crews about the snipers in the trees So he said to the ground crews “Point my fighter at the trees” And he climbed into his cockpit readying his guns and the triggers he squeezed He ripped the palms all apart Making sure the snipers would be gone in his Maxim gun art These stories showed how it was for the Allied troops At Milne Bay in the muddy tropical soup When they stopped the Japanese dead And Australia was on the edge worried about invasion dread. © Paul Warren Poetry