Kapa Kapa Trail
They endured an extraordinarily difficult march, and the majority of the men became ill with malaria, dengue fever, bush typhus, and tropical dysentery.
After only a week of recuperation, the Battalion was immediately put on the front line against Japanese troops in hundreds of extremely well-concealed bunkers and machine gun emplacements developed in depth.
[5] Other Japanese units were routed to seize Samarai, an island south of Milne Bay, from which they would launch a seaborne invasion of Port Moresby.
Harding told MacArthur that the 126th Infantry Regiment commanded by Col. Lawrence A. Quinn was the best-trained and best-led, and it was selected for the task.
He assigned the Southwest Pacific Area chief of the Construction Section, Colonel Leif Sverdrup, to survey the route from Abau on the coast of southern New Guinea.
After eight days on the trail, scaling heights of 5,000 feet (1,500 m), Sverdrup concluded that it would not be practical for troops to traverse the route and turned back, reaching Abau on 3 October.
The untamed jungle terrain was extremely steep, cut by razor-sharp hogback ridges and required the men to cross a 9,100-foot-tall (2,800 m) mountain divide.
[5] Boice nonetheless reported back that the route was feasible, and the 2nd Battalion, 126th Infantry Regiment was committed to the trail.
At Kalamazoo, Major Baetcke was in charge of completing a forward supply base at Arapara, inland another 30 miles (48 km) by trail.
Most of the 2nd Battalion, 126th Infantry, was moved to Nepeana, and on 6 October 250 men from the Antitank and Cannon companies along with 100 porters left under the command of Captain Alfred Mendendorp.
The trail was a slow, exhausting march through the thick jungles and up to the cold, dense forests on the shoulder of Ghost Mountain, known locally as Suwemalla' or more officially as 'Mt.
Mendendorp arrived at the mountain top village of Larum on 13 October and established an air supply point.
and the 107th Quartermaster Company, commanded by Lt. Col. Henry A. Geerds, left Kalamazoo over several days on foot, assisted by several hundred native porters and guides.
So rough was the journey ahead that they became the only Americans to trek over 9,100 feet (2,800 m) divide over the extremely rugged Owen Stanley Mountains on foot.
The total distance over the mountains to the Japanese positions was over 130 miles (210 km), and most of the trail was barely a goat path.
[7]: 108 They had leather toilet seats[12] but no machetes, insect repellent, waterproof containers for medicine or personal effects, and it rained heavily every day.
[14] It was grueling march on a line paralleling the Kokoda Trail, and the men who made it will remember it forever as a living, wide-awake nightmare.
For forty-two days they climbed, scrambled, clawed and suffered—many times cutting their own trail through some of the most awesome territory in the world.
Burlingame led his men through eerie ghost forests where phosphorus lighted the trees and they sank to their knees in mud.
As a rule, the only way the troops could get up these ridges, which were steeper than along the Kokoda Trail, was either on hands and knees, or by cutting steps into them with ax and machete.
To rest, the men simply leaned forward, holding on to vines and roots in order to keep themselves from slipping down the mountainside.
[9]One group lost its footing and slid 2,000 feet (610 m) downhill in 40 minutes; it took them eight hours to climb back to where they began.
To avoid becoming illegal combatants in the League of Nations mandate trust territory of New Guinea, the remaining Australian Papuan native porters would not cross the border at the top of the range.
[19] There, they spent more than a week drawing rations, helmets, boots, and other equipment before pushing on to Gora and Bofu, which they reached on 12 November.
[9] On 20 November 1942, after almost 42 days trekking across exceedingly difficult terrain, including hogback ridges, jungle, and mountainous high-altitude passes, E Company of the 126th was the first to reach Soputa near the front.
[20] Midway through their march, Cecil Abel, a local missionary arrived in Port Moresby with information that usable airfield sites were available on the far side of the Owen Stanley Range at Fasari in the Musa River valley and at Pongani.
[13]: 325 In a first for World War II, the rest of the 128th Infantry was flown from Australia to New Guinea, the greatest distance the Army Air Force had airlifted men up to that time.
Meanwhile, on 14–18 October, the U.S. 128th Infantry Regiment had been flown from Port Moresby to Wanigela, where they began to hike north the short-distance overland towards Buna.
The U.S. 1st Battalion, 126th Infantry Regiment were flown on 8 November to Fasari, where an airfield had been located, and they began moving towards the coast and Pongani.
Despite the extremely poor condition of the 2/126th, General MacArthur was desperate for men to put on the line, and after only a week of recuperation, he ordered them to the Buna-Gona to face battle-hardened Japanese troops on 20 November.
