Gona’s Gone

The Battle for the Beachhead New Guinea 1942

By David Cameron

Published by Big Sky Publishing; Dist. by Simon & Schuster
RRP $32.99 in paperback | ISBN 9781922896629

Readers interested in Australia’s New Guinea campaign will be familiar with David Cameron’s earlier books.

With this latest book, Cameron takes up the story of the battle to defeat Japanese forces in New Guinea as the Australian troops have pushed the Japanese back along the Kokoda Track to the north coast of Papua New Guinea. The time had now come to face the entrenched Japanese at their beachheads at Gona, Sanananda and Buna. The Japanese were determined to fight to the last man in the defence of these critical positions.

The first beach to be captured by the Australians was Gona, which fell on 9 December after bitter fighting. This, however, was not the end of the fighting around this beachhead as just west of Gona, on the opposite side of Gona Creek a larger Japanese Force had been landed which was intent on not only reinforcing Gona, but also Sanananda and Buna, both located east of Gona.

The fighting west of Gona Creek would be just a brutal and deadly as the fighting to take the Gona Beachhead.

Even so, after this fighting, Australian and American troops, operating together for the first time in the Pacific War, were still bogged down in the battles to take Sanananda and Buna, the fighting at these beachheads would continue into January 1943.

Recreating the detail of campaigns is Cameron’s stock-in-trade and this is no exception. He uses direct quotes from first hand accounts very effectively. He acknowledges his debt to the primary sources that bring this narrative to life.

In the end, the final act is the recovering of the Australian dead. Victory came but at a cost.