US ARMY OPERATIONS ORDER
TO: CG US XV CORPS
FROM: CG USAFFE
DATE: NOVEMBER 14, 1941
RE: OPERATION MOSES
You are ordered to form Task Force Grant – consisting of the 3rd US Infantry Division, the 97th Armored Regimental Combat Team plus supporting elements.
You will draw up preliminary plans for seizing the islands of Florida, Guadalcanal, and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. Both Air Force and Naval Liaison officers have been assigned to you and will be reporting to you to assist in the preliminary planning. You will forward a preliminary plan to SACSWP in twenty-one (21) days. Commanding General 3rd US ID is the TF Commander.
EXCERPT OF CONVERSATION BETWEEN FIELD MARSHAL BLAMEY AND
GENERAL FREYBERG
NOVEMBER 14, 1941
Blamey: General how sure are you that you can build a road over the trail and get armored vehicles over it?
Freyberg: Sir, my Chief Engineer has assured me that it will take a lot of effort on our part. He is planning on using at least one Engineer Brigade plus about 1,000 native laborers. He feels that we can be over the Owen Stanelys within 90 days sir.
Blamey: What does the I Corps CRE say?
Freyberg: He believes that we can do this with another Engineer Brigade sir, but it can be done.
Blamey: Jericho is a go General. I expect to see prelimiary plans in three weeks.
EXCERPT FROM
CHAPTER II – THE KOKODA TRAIL
HELL ON THE TRAIL:
AN AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER REMEMBERS
By Brigadier Liam Kelly, MC, DSO & Bar
Darwin Press
1980
The bastards never asked me about the trail. I had only spent 25 years in and around Port Moresby. I had walked over the Owen Stanelys more times than I could remember. I was the Commander of the 9th Battalion, Victorian Scottish Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division.
I began hearing rumors about an offensive being planned up the Kokoda Trail to clear the enemy out. On November 15th, 1941 I was summoned to Brigade HQ and told to report to Division HQ. The Division Commander, Major General Edmund Drake-Brockman wanted to have a word with me. I was uneasy, had my lads done something wrong to come to his attention?
As it turned out he had been asking around the division about officers and men who were familiar with the Owen Stanley Mountains and the Kokoda Trail in particular. There were eight of us – three enlisted men and five officers. After swearing us to secrecy, the General began asking us about the trail and how hard it would be to get a road built capable of carrying tanks. The General was not amused when we all laughed. At first we thought he was joking, but we shut when we saw his glare. He had had a talk with I Corps' CRE who assured him it was possible.
We spent the rest of the day going over what the General could expect on the Trail and he became unhappier with every sentence. About 1600, he called an end to our meeting, he thanked us and called the Corps Commander and asked for a meeting.
TRUE STORIES
OF THE RESISTANCE
By JB Hunicutt
Province Books 1985
THE CHILDREN
They called themselves the 1st Company, Ypres British Battalion. At first, they were the children of the workers of the British War Graves Commission in Ypres charged with taking care of the graves. Most of the adults had been arrested by the Germans and taken away. The only adults who had been left were three men and two women. The men, veterans of the Great War, were missing limbs and not considered a threat, the two women were married to two of the men and were charged with keeping the 39 children under control. Their numbers increased a few months after the end of the German Western campaign as other children from other War Graves Commission sites were brought to Ypres.
By the middle of 1941, there were 110 children, 5 women and 7 men. The children were to tend the graves and get an education. The adults were to supervise the children. By order of the Germans, when the children turned 17, they were to report to the same prison where their parents were being held.
The former soldiers had picked the best and brightest of the children to conduct sabotage. Of the five men – 1 was a former artillery sergeant (and in “command”), 2 were former Royal Engineers and two were former infantrymen. Thirty children (boys and girls) were picked to carry out sabotage missions, forty of the younger children (aged 11 on up) were used to keep an eye out for the Germans (as well as tending the graves.)
Their best success was when they managed to smuggle a fertilizer bomb aboard a German troop train, the bomb exploded two hours after they put it on the train. 450 German soldiers were killed or wounded.
The mission on the night of November 15/16 was a simple one. The 10 children (3 girls, 7 boys) would leave just after 11pm, walk two miles where their bikes had been hidden, ride another 6 miles to a well traveled road. Once there, they were to spread nails, broken glass and few trip wires attached to explosives. They were to then return home without firing a shot (they had hunting rifles)
The plan began to fall apart when half way to their target, they encountered a drunken German Sergeant walking along the path they were on. They attempted to go around him, but he pulled 15 year old Sally Hudson off her bike.. Before he could hurt her, 14 year old Timothy Reardon jumped on the Sergeant stabbing him repeatedly in the back.1 After hiding the body, the group continued onward the rest of the way to the road. As a percaution, one girl rode down the road a mile to keep a lookout. Another girl rode up the road a mile.
Less than 15 minutes after leaving, the lookout from down the road came pedaling back. She informed Pierre Tindon, the group's leader (His mother was Belgian, father English) that a large group of people were coming their way. They would be there in about 20 minutes. Tindon ordered everyone to get under cover, they would set up the explosives (they also had 6 German hand grenades), attack these soldiers and get away in the confusion.
Twenty-five minutes later, two bored looking Germans appeared on horseback, followed by a large number of people carrying each other or a few with their belongings. The children watched as a few hundred people shuffled passed them. Confusion turned to horror when they saw an older woman stumble and fall only to be shot. Tindon realized that this was way over his head, and signaled for the others to fall back.
Reardon saw the signal and considered heading back, but he wanted to kill more Germans. He felt excited when he killed that German earlier. Pulling out his two German hand grenades, he quickly unscrewed the caps, pulled the cords and threw them. His first grenade landed in the lap of a very surprised SS Corporal. The grenade exploded killing him, his horse and three SS privates and their horses who were bringing up the rear. A few seconds later, Reardon's other grenade exploded among the civilian prisoners. No one knows how many prisoners were killed or wounded by Reardon's grenade, as soon as the grenades went off, the SS guards, not used to combat situations, opened fire on their prisoners. The other young resistance fighters threw their grenades and other explosives and essentially ran away. They did help approximately 30 people escape. Within three hours, the Germans declared a curfew around the area, rounded up every Jewish escapee they could find and killed them. The bodies were burned in the fields beside the road.
When the children straggled into Ypres several hours later, they were scared and tired. They had six wounded and one dead – Sally Hudson had been killed by an SS trooper as he fired wildly into the night.
Aside from helping Allied air crews escape and the occasional reconnaissance mission; the children stayed close to home for the next month.