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Papua New Guinea’s Kokoda Trail, stretching from Port Moresby in the south to the village of Kokoda in the north, draws World War II history buffs and adventurous trekkers alike. The 96-kilometre (60-mile) track, first cut by goldminers in the 1890s, became the site of a desperate Australian battle with Japanese forces advancing from the northern coast. According to the National Museum of Australia, the Kokoda campaign marked a “crucial point in stopping the Japanese advance across the Pacific and towards Australia.” Yet about 50 kilometres southeast lies the far longer and harsher Ghost Mountain Trail in Papua New Guinea (PNG)—also known as the Kapa Kapa Track—an equally dramatic but largely forgotten wartime route.
The Ghost Mountain Trail cuts across the Owen Stanley Range from Gabagaba Village on PNG’s southern coast to Jaure in Oro Province. Dubbed “Kapa Kapa” by US soldiers—after mispronouncing Gabagaba—the 209-kilometre (130-mile) track rises to 2,700 metres (8,900 feet) through dense rainforest before descending onto the open grasslands of the Managalas Plateau.
In October 1942, more than 900 US troops of the 32nd Division set out to cross the mountains in an attempt to outflank Japanese forces on the Kokoda Track. What followed was one of the most punishing treks of the Pacific War. Military researcher and historian Samuel Milner later described the track as a succession of “razorbacks” so steep that soldiers had to climb on hands and knees, cutting footholds into the slopes with machetes and axes. Milner wrote in his 1957 book ‘Victory in Papua’:
“Immense ridges, or “razorbacks,” followed each other in succession like the teeth of a saw. 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 axe and machete. To rest, the men leaned forward, holding on to vines and roots in order to keep themselves from slipping down the mountainside.”
The 42-day trek was extremely hard on the men’s bodies. The march left the soldiers ravaged by malaria, dengue fever, bush typhus, dysentery and infected skin sores. To better camouflage in the jungle, their khaki uniforms were dyed green—but the dye sealed the fabric, trapping heat and moisture and causing painful sores and infections. Boots rotted, medicines dissolved in the constant rain and canvas packs never dried.
US troops drive a jeep across a makeshift log bridge on the Kapa Kapa (Ghost Mountain) Trail, September 1942. Photo by United States Department of Defence.
“They went through waist-deep streams and along trails that were waist-deep channels of mud. Half the time, they could not see the sky—only matted leaves and vines. It would take five or six hours to go a mile, edging along cliff walls, hanging on to vines…There wasn’t any way of evacuating to the rear. The fear of being left behind drove everyone on… One group lost its footing and slid 2,000 feet (610 metres) downhill in 40 minutes; it took them eight hours to climb back to where they began.” – Major General Herbert W. Blakeley
When the men finally staggered onto the flatter, more open terrain of Jaure in the Managalas Plateau—now a massive new conservation area—on the northern side of the mountains, only a quarter were to fight. “They were absolutely shot after that walk,” said Australian adventurer and trekker Peter Gamgee. “It’s estimated that only 25% of them were actually fit to fight; they were in a very bad way. They had not been trained for jungle warfare—or to walk through jungle at all; their initial training was for the battlefields of Europe and they got precious little of that anyway. So they were very unprepared. Their boots had rotted out by the time they got to Jaure.”
Worse still, the march was a failure. No Japanese came near the trail and because of the terrain, the troops were unable to support the Australians on the Kokoda Track. After a few days’ rest at Jaure, the men continued to the frontlines on the northern coast, where many died of their illnesses or were killed in battle.
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