The Chocolate Soldiers Who Saved Australia: The Kakoda Track Campaign

By [Author Name]

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea — July 1942. The radio crackled to life in the humid air of Port Moresby, delivering news that would change the fate of Australia. Japanese forces had landed at Gona and Buna on the northern coast. Their numbers were staggering—10,000, maybe more—marching south through the jungle, aiming for a narrow mountain village called Kakoda and the rugged jungle track that bore its name.

Between the Japanese and Port Moresby stood exactly 77 Australian troops. Not hardened veterans. Not experienced fighters. Just militia boys—weekend warriors, part-time soldiers who drilled on Saturdays and worked regular jobs during the week. The oldest was barely 30. The youngest had lied about his age to enlist, not yet 18.

In his headquarters, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific, studied the map of New Guinea with growing concern. Months earlier, he had retreated from the Philippines, forced to abandon thousands of American troops to Japanese prison camps. He had promised to return, but first he needed to hold Australia. And right now, Australia looked terribly vulnerable.

MacArthur’s eyes traced the thin line on the map representing the Kakoda Track—a 96-kilometer jungle trail connecting the northern and southern coasts of Papua. If the Japanese controlled that track, they could take Port Moresby. If they took Port Moresby, they could launch bombers against Australian cities. They could invade the mainland.

MacArthur had seen Japanese soldiers fight. He knew what they could do. He looked at intelligence reports about the Australian militia defending Kakoda and shook his head. These weren’t real soldiers. They were clerks, farmers, and shopkeepers playing at war. The Japanese would cut through them like a hot knife through butter.

The men MacArthur dismissed so easily were members of the 39th Battalion, and they knew exactly what everyone thought of them. Other soldiers called them “choccos,” short for chocolate soldiers, because they would melt the first time things got hot. Regular army troops looked down on militia with barely hidden contempt. Even their own newspapers questioned whether part-time volunteers could stand up to Japan’s battle-hardened veterans.

The Japanese soldiers marching toward them were survivors of campaigns in China, Malaya, and Singapore. They had conquered Singapore in just 70 days, forcing the surrender of 80,000 British and Commonwealth troops. They had pushed experienced American forces out of the Philippines. They had never lost a major land battle. Now, 13,000 of these elite warriors were advancing on Kakoda, and standing in their way were 77 boys who had never seen real combat.

Lieutenant Colonel William Owen commanded the small Australian force at Kakoda. He understood the mathematics of the situation perfectly. Even if every one of his men was a crack shot, even if every bullet found its mark, they couldn’t stop an army. The Japanese could lose 100 men and barely notice. Owen could lose 10 and his force would collapse. He had no artillery, no air support, no tanks. His men carried rifles that jammed in the humidity, wore boots that rotted in the constant rain, and survived on half rations because supply planes couldn’t always make it through the weather.

The track itself was their biggest enemy. It climbed from sea level to over 2,000 meters, then plunged back down again. The slopes were so steep that men had to pull themselves up using vines and roots. Rain fell every single day, turning the track into a river of mud that sucked at boots and made every step a battle. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes swarmed in clouds. Leeches dropped from trees onto anyone who brushed against the foliage. Men could march all day and cover barely 10 kilometers.

Back in Australia, military planners drafted reports explaining why Kakoda couldn’t be held. The terrain was impossible. The supply lines were too long. The Japanese were too strong. One general suggested abandoning the track entirely and focusing on defending Port Moresby from the sea. Another recommended sending only regular army troops, arguing that militia weren’t worth the transport costs. The consensus was clear: This was a losing battle, and there was no point wasting resources on it. Better to conserve strength for battles that could actually be won.

MacArthur read these reports and nodded in agreement. The situation was hopeless. The Australians would fight for a few days, maybe a week if they got lucky, and then they would break and run. That’s what untrained soldiers always did when faced with overwhelming odds.

But Owen saw something the generals in their comfortable offices couldn’t see. He saw his men digging foxholes in the red mud. He saw them checking their weapons again and again, making sure every mechanism worked. He saw them sharing cigarettes and jokes, trying to keep their spirits up, even though they all knew what was coming. These weren’t professional killers, but they were Australians defending their homeland. The Japanese were 1,500 kilometers from Tokyo. Owen’s men were fighting for their families, their cities, their country. Every hour they delayed the Japanese advance was another hour for Port Moresby to prepare. Every Japanese soldier they killed was one less soldier who could bomb Sydney or invade Brisbane.

Owen didn’t need his men to win. He just needed them to fight. And as he looked at their young, determined faces, he realized something that contradicted everything the experts believed. These amateur soldiers, these chocolate soldiers everyone dismissed—they weren’t going to melt. They were going to make the Japanese pay for every single meter of jungle.

The First Clash

The Japanese hit Kakoda village on July 29, 1942, with a force that outnumbered the Australians 15 to 1. Owen had pulled most of his men back from the village itself, positioning them in the jungle along the track where the thick vegetation would hide their small numbers.

The Japanese came expecting an easy fight. Their officers were confident they would be in Port Moresby within a week. What they got instead was something they hadn’t experienced before.

The Australians let the first wave of Japanese soldiers pass their hidden positions, then opened fire from behind. When the confused Japanese turned to face this new threat, more Australians fired from the flanks. The crack of rifles echoed through the jungle. Japanese soldiers fell. Their commanders shouted orders, trying to organize a response, but the Australians had already melted back into the forest.

By the time Japanese reinforcements arrived, Owen’s men were a kilometer down the track, preparing the next ambush. The Japanese had taken Kakoda village, but it had cost them three hours and 40 men. Owen had lost six.

The track itself became the Australians’ greatest weapon. Where the Japanese saw a simple jungle path, Owen’s men saw a hundred opportunities. The track climbed steep ridges where a single machine gun could hold off a company. It crossed ravines where bridges could be destroyed, forcing the Japanese to waste days building new ones. It wound through sections of jungle so dense that 10 men could hide within meters of the track and never be seen.

Owen positioned his troops at every natural choke point, every hairpin turn, every place where the track narrowed between cliffs or rivers. The Japanese would advance until they hit Australian fire, deploy for battle, and discover their enemy had already withdrawn to the next position. It was maddening. It was exhausting. And it was working.

By August 5, the Japanese had advanced only 15 kilometers in seven days. At this rate, reaching Port Moresby would take months, not weeks.

The Pressure Mounts

But MacArthur didn’t see strategy. He saw retreat. From his headquarters in Brisbane, 1,600 kilometers away from the actual fighting, he fired off angry messages demanding that the Australians stand and fight. Hold every position to the last man, he ordered. No more withdrawals. No more falling back.

MacArthur had never walked the Kakoda track. He had never felt the mud that could be waist-deep in places. Never climbed slopes so steep that ropes were needed to haul supplies up them. Never spent a night in jungle where the darkness was so complete you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. He looked at maps and saw a simple line connecting two points. He couldn’t understand why professional soldiers, even militia, couldn’t hold a simple jungle track.

His messages grew more hostile. “The Australian commanders were cowards.” He said they were letting the Japanese walk into Port Moresby without a real fight. “If they wouldn’t hold the line, he would find officers who would.”

Australian Commander General Thomas Blamey read MacArthur’s demands and then read the reports from Kakoda. He saw what MacArthur couldn’t see. Every day the Japanese were delayed meant more time to build defenses around Port Moresby. Every ambush that killed 10 or 20 Japanese soldiers weakened their invasion force. Owen’s fighting retreat wasn’t cowardice. It was the only tactic that made sense against an enemy that outnumbered his forces 20 to 1.

Blamey sent a message back to MacArthur defending Owen’s strategy, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough. MacArthur wanted a conventional battle, a clear front line, territory held at all costs. He wanted World War I tactics in a World War II jungle.

Blamey authorized Owen to continue the fighting retreat, but he knew the political pressure was building. If the strategy didn’t show results soon, MacArthur would replace everyone involved.

Jungle Warfare Redefined

The results showed in ways that headquarters couldn’t measure on maps. By mid-August, the Japanese advance had slowed to a crawl. Their soldiers were getting sick. Malaria hit first, then dysentery, then tropical ulcers that turned small cuts into infected wounds. Japanese supply lines stretched back over 60 kilometers of the worst terrain on Earth. Every bullet, every grain of rice, every bandage had to be carried by hand over mountains and through swamps. Men who were strong at the coast arrived at the front exhausted and half-starved.

The Japanese had brought enough supplies for a quick campaign, not a grinding battle of attrition. Australian ambushes targeted supply columns, destroying precious food and ammunition. One Australian patrol destroyed 50 tons of Japanese supplies in a single raid, setting back their advance by a full week.

The Japanese soldiers who reached the front line were hungry, sick, and demoralized. The Australians they faced were just as hungry and just as sick, but they were falling back on their own supply lines, while the Japanese were extending theirs.

Owen’s men learned to fight in ways their training had never covered. They booby-trapped abandoned positions with grenades. They poisoned water sources the Japanese would use. They made false camps with fires burning to draw Japanese attacks, then ambushed the attackers.

One Australian private, Bruce Kingsbury, became famous among the troops for charging a Japanese position single-handedly with a machine gun, killing dozens before he was shot down. His suicidal courage bought time for his company to withdraw safely. Stories like his spread through the Australian ranks. These weren’t chocolate soldiers melting under pressure. They were fighting harder and smarter than anyone had expected, including themselves.

Every small victory built their confidence. Every successful ambush proved they could hurt the Japanese despite impossible odds.

The Battle of Attrition

By the end of August, 31 days after the Japanese landed, they had advanced less than half the distance to Port Moresby. They had expected to cover the entire track in seven to ten days. Japanese commanders sent increasingly desperate messages back to headquarters requesting reinforcements, supplies, and air support. Their casualty reports showed hundreds dead and thousands sick.

The Australians had lost heavily too, with entire companies reduced to platoon strength. But they were still fighting. They were still slowing the advance. They were still making the Japanese pay for every meter of jungle.

The track was littered with Japanese corpses that no one had time to bury. The smell of death mixed with the smell of rotting vegetation and constant rain. Men on both sides fought through conditions that would have seemed impossible just weeks before, pushing their bodies and minds beyond what they thought they could endure.

And still the Australians fell back. And still the Japanese advanced—but at a cost that was bleeding Japan’s invasion force white.

By September 1942, the numbers told a story that shocked both sides. The Japanese had predicted they would reach Port Moresby in seven days. It had been six weeks, and they were still 50 kilometers away from their goal. They had started with 13,000 elite troops. Now fewer than 6,000 were healthy enough to fight. Disease had done what Australian bullets couldn’t do, cutting the invasion force nearly in half.

Malaria infected almost every Japanese soldier on the track. Men who could barely stand were ordered to keep marching. Dysentery left soldiers too weak to carry their own weapons. Tropical ulcers ate through flesh down to the bone. Japanese medical units were overwhelmed, running out of quinine and bandages and medicine. The sick outnumbered the healthy. The dead outnumbered the buried. And still they pushed forward because their orders demanded it and their culture forbade surrender.

The Australians weren’t in much better shape. They had started with 77 men and received reinforcements throughout August, but disease and combat had taken a terrible toll. Men fought with fevers of 40°C, shaking with chills even in the tropical heat. They carried wounded comrades on stretchers for days through jungle where no vehicle could travel, taking turns because four men could barely manage the weight on the steep slopes. One stretcher case required 16 men working in rotation to carry him from the front line to a field hospital, a journey that took five days. The wounded man survived, but three of his stretcher-bearers collapsed from exhaustion and had to be carried themselves.

Soldiers wrapped their rotting boots with cloth because there were no replacements. They ate half rations, then quarter rations, then whatever they could scavenge from abandoned supply dumps. The mud was so thick in some places that it pulled boots right off men’s feet, and they had to dig down into the muck to retrieve them. Rain fell every afternoon like clockwork, turning the track into a brown river that flowed downhill in torrents.

The Turning Point

Then on September 16, something changed. The Japanese stopped advancing. They had reached a village called Ioribaiwa, just 50 kilometers from Port Moresby, close enough that they could see the lights of the town at night, but they could go no farther. Their supply line had collapsed completely. Soldiers at the front were getting one rice ball per day. Some were eating grass and tree bark.

Japanese commanders reported that their men were too weak to attack. They needed time to rest, to recover, to rebuild their strength. But time was the one thing they didn’t have. Fresh Australian reinforcements were arriving at Port Moresby by ship and plane. The original militia boys of the 39th Battalion were being joined by hardened veterans from the Middle East—soldiers who had fought Rommel’s Afrika Korps and won. The balance of power was shifting.

MacArthur saw his opportunity. For weeks, he had criticized the Australian retreat, calling it cowardly and unnecessary. Now he ordered an immediate counterattack. The Australians would push the Japanese back along the entire Kakoda track. They would retake every village, every ridge, every meter of ground that had been lost. It was the same kind of order he had been giving all along—attack, hold, never retreat.

But this time, the circumstances were different. This time, the Japanese were starving and sick and demoralized. This time, the Australians had reinforcements and supplies. This time, MacArthur’s aggressive tactics actually made sense.

Australian commander Blamey organized the counteroffensive and on September 26, Australian forces attacked. The Japanese who had spent six weeks advancing through hell now had to retreat back through the same hell, with Australian soldiers chasing them.

The Counterattack

The fighting on the return journey was even more brutal than the advance. Japanese soldiers trained never to surrender fought to the death at every position. They set up defensive positions at the same ridges and river crossings where the Australians had ambushed them weeks before. Now the Australians had to attack these positions, climbing steep slopes under fire, crossing rivers while machine guns targeted them, clearing bunkers and foxholes one by one.

An Australian soldier named Ralph Honner later wrote, “We advanced through a charnel house. The track was lined with Japanese corpses. Some had been dead for weeks, rotting in the heat. Others were fresh. We couldn’t tell if they had died from our bullets, from disease, or from starvation. Many looked like skeletons even before they died. The smell was so overpowering that men vomited even as they fought. Flies swarmed in black clouds. The rain continued, washing down slopes that were slippery with mud and blood.”

But the Australians kept pushing forward. Every kilometer they advanced was a kilometer the Japanese had fought six weeks to gain. The momentum had completely reversed. Villages that had taken the Japanese days to capture fell to Australian attacks in hours. The Japanese were falling back on supply lines that had already been stripped bare. They had no food reserves, no medical supplies, no reinforcements coming. They abandoned equipment they were too weak to carry. They left their wounded behind because they couldn’t evacuate them.

An Australian patrol found a Japanese field hospital where 206 soldiers had been left to die because their comrades were too weak to move them. The doctors had committed suicide rather than face capture. The patients were too far gone to even call for help. Most were already dead. The ones still alive died within hours.

On November 2, 1942, Australian forces recaptured Kakoda village. The place where this entire campaign had started, where 77 militia boys had faced an army and decided to fight anyway, was back in Australian hands. The Japanese were in full retreat toward the northern coast, abandoning the Kakoda track entirely. In four months of fighting, they had advanced to within sight of Port Moresby, then driven all the way back to where they started.

It was the first major Allied land victory against Japan in the entire war. The Japanese had won every land battle from Pearl Harbor to the Philippines to Singapore to Burma. They had seemed unstoppable. And then they had run into Australian soldiers on a jungle track in New Guinea. And for the first time, they had been stopped and thrown back.

The Aftermath

When MacArthur heard the news that Kakoda had been retaken, he made a statement that shocked everyone who knew him. Douglas MacArthur was not a humble man. He rarely praised anyone except himself. He had spent months criticizing the Australian retreat, questioning their courage, doubting their ability. He had called them amateurs and part-timers, suggested they couldn’t fight like real soldiers.

Now, standing before reporters in Brisbane, MacArthur made a statement that would be remembered forever. “The Australians are the best soldiers in the world.” He went on to praise their fighting spirit, their determination, their refusal to give up despite impossible odds.

It was a complete reversal from everything he had said before. The chocolate soldiers who were supposed to melt had instead fought one of the most important defensive campaigns of the Pacific War. They had held when no one expected them to hold. They had fought when everyone said they couldn’t fight. And they had won when victory seemed impossible.

The Kakoda campaign didn’t end when the Australians recaptured the village. Fighting continued along the northern coast of Papua through December and into January 1943. The Japanese dug in at Gona and Buna, where they had first landed, building bunkers from coconut logs that could withstand artillery shells. Australian and American forces attacked these positions in some of the bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War. The same Australian militia soldiers who had fought the retreat and then the advance kept fighting in coastal swamps where the water was waist-deep and crocodiles were as dangerous as enemy bullets. They fought until the last Japanese strong point fell on January 22, 1943.

The campaign that started with 77 militia boys facing impossible odds ended with Japan suffering its first complete defeat on land. Of the 13,000 Japanese soldiers who landed in July, fewer than 1,000 escaped back to their bases. The rest died from combat, disease, or starvation. Australian casualties were heavy too, with over 600 killed and 1,000 wounded, but they had saved Port Moresby and protected Australia from invasion.

A Nation Transformed

The victory transformed how Australians saw themselves and how the world saw them. Before Kakoda, Australia had always relied on Britain for defense. Australian soldiers had fought bravely in World War I and in North Africa, but always as part of British forces under British command. Kakoda was different. This was Australian soldiers fighting on Australian territory under Australian command to protect their own homeland.

The militia boys, who everyone called chocolate soldiers, had proved they were as tough as any force in the world. The 39th Battalion became legendary. Songs were written about them. Newspapers published their stories. Parents named their babies after officers who had died on the track. The contempt that regular soldiers had shown toward militia evaporated. Everyone who fought on Kakoda, whether they were militia or regulars, whether they were there for the retreat or the counterattack, became part of a shared story of impossible courage.

The phrase “Kakoda spirit” entered the Australian language, meaning the refusal to give up no matter how bad things looked.

Lieutenant Colonel William Owen didn’t live to see the final victory. He was killed in action on November 11, 1942, just nine days after Kakoda village was retaken. A Japanese sniper’s bullet found him while he was organizing an attack on an enemy position. He was 34 years old. He never received the recognition he deserved during his lifetime. MacArthur never mentioned him by name in dispatches. Australian newspapers focused on the later battles after reinforcements arrived, not the desperate fighting retreat that Owen had commanded.

But the men who served under him never forgot. They knew that Owen’s tactics had saved Port Moresby. His refusal to fight the kind of battle MacArthur demanded, his insistence on fighting the battle that the terrain and numbers required, had made victory possible. Without Owen’s fighting retreat, the Japanese would have reached Port Moresby in August when its defenses were weak. They would have taken the town and established airfields and prepared for the invasion of mainland Australia.

Owen bought time with the lives of his men, spending those lives carefully, making every death count for something. It was brutal mathematics, but it worked.

The Legacy

MacArthur’s relationship with Australian commanders remained complicated for the rest of the war. He praised Australian soldiers in public speeches and press conferences, calling them the finest troops he had ever commanded. But in private, he continued to clash with Australian generals over strategy and tactics. He wanted aggressive attacks and clear victories. Australian commanders, remembering Kakoda, preferred careful planning and protecting their soldiers’ lives. MacArthur got his way most of the time because he was supreme commander. But the Australians never fully trusted him again.

They had learned on the Kakoda track that generals sitting in comfortable headquarters didn’t always understand what was happening in the jungle. They had learned to trust their own judgment over distant orders. This independent streak shaped Australian military culture for generations. Australian forces in every war since Kakoda have maintained a reputation for being tough, resourceful, and willing to question authority when orders don’t match reality.

The lessons of Kakoda spread far beyond Australia. Militaries around the world studied the campaign as an example of how smaller forces could defeat larger ones through superior tactics and knowledge of terrain. The fighting retreat became a textbook example of trading space for time, wearing down an enemy while preserving your own strength. Special forces units studied how the Australians used ambushes and mobility to compensate for lack of numbers. The campaign proved that jungle warfare required completely different tactics than conventional battles. You couldn’t just throw soldiers at the enemy and expect numbers to win. You had to understand the environment, use it to your advantage, and be willing to fight in unconventional ways.

These lessons proved crucial in later conflicts in Vietnam, Malaysia, and other jungle environments. The Kakoda campaign showed that Western forces could beat Asian forces in jungle combat, something many military planners had doubted before 1942.

Kakoda Today

Today, the Kakoda track is one of Australia’s most sacred places. Thousands of Australians hike it every year, retracing the steps their grandfathers and great-grandfathers took. The trek takes about five to seven days for fit hikers, the same time it took soldiers carrying weapons and equipment while fighting battles. Modern trekkers struggle with the same steep slopes, the same mud, the same rain that falls every afternoon. They visit the villages where battles were fought, see memorials marking where men died, and gain some small understanding of what the campaign was like.

Veterans groups maintain the track and the memorials. Papua New Guinea villagers serve as guides, many of them descendants of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels who carried wounded Australian soldiers to safety during the fighting. The track has become a pilgrimage, a way for Australians to connect with their history and honor the sacrifice of men who saved their country.

More Than a Battle

The deeper lesson of Kakoda extends beyond military tactics and national pride. It’s a story about what happens when people refuse to accept what everyone tells them is inevitable. Every expert said the militia couldn’t stop the Japanese. Every analysis predicted a quick Japanese victory. The numbers, the experience levels, the equipment—everything favored Japan.

But numbers don’t fight battles. People do. And people with enough determination and enough reason to fight can accomplish things that look impossible on paper.

The chocolate soldiers weren’t supposed to hold. They held anyway. They weren’t supposed to slow down an elite Japanese force. They slowed them to a crawl. They weren’t supposed to win. They won anyway. Their victory came from refusing to believe they had already lost. From fighting when fighting seemed pointless. From trusting their own ability to adapt and survive and hurt the enemy despite impossible odds.

That lesson matters today as much as it did in 1942. We live in a world that loves to declare things impossible, to explain why the underdog can’t win, to list all the reasons why trying is pointless. Kakoda teaches us to be skeptical of those declarations. The greatest victories often come not from the side expected to win, but from the side that refuses to accept it should lose.

Sometimes determination matters more than numbers. Sometimes local knowledge beats professional training. Sometimes the amateurs surprise everyone—including themselves.

The chocolate soldiers who melted in the heat of battle weren’t the Australians. They were the assumptions, the predictions, the confident analyses that said this battle was already over before it began. On a jungle track in New Guinea, 77 boys who weren’t supposed to be able to fight proved that courage, stubbornness, and refusal to quit can change history.

That’s a lesson worth remembering.