Qualla: Battle of Lababia Ridge

Battle of Lababia Ridge: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The bugles were meant to terrify. That was the theory. When Japanese infantry charged up the slopes of Lababia Ridge on 21 June 1943, their bugle calls were supposed to break Australian nerve. Instead, the calls carried across the jungle and gave the defenders something precise to listen for. Captain Walter Dexter's roughly eighty men of D Company, 2/6th Infantry Battalion, heard each attack coming and killed the men leading it. Over three days in the wet Morobe highlands, fewer than a hundred Australians, eventually reinforced by another seventy, held a 3,000-foot ridge against two Japanese battalions totaling about 1,500 men. The bugles kept sounding. The charges kept failing.

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Battle of Lababia Ridge: The Ground That Mattered

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Lababia Ridge was not an obvious place to die for, but in the brutal geography of the Salamaua-Lae campaign it mattered enormously. Sitting about 20 kilometers south of Salamaua near the village of Mubo, the 3,000-foot ridge commanded views in every direction that counted. Histor...

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Battle of Lababia Ridge: Tatterson's Company and the Relief

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The fighting here did not begin in June. In early May, Captain Leslie Tatterson's 65 men had been driven off a feature called the Pimple during the broader fight around Mubo, and had fallen back onto the western end of Lababia Ridge. On 9 May, the Japanese came for them. The atta...

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Battle of Lababia Ridge: Piano Wire, Grenades, and Silent Sappers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Australians had been on the ridge long enough to improvise a defense. They had strung piano wire through the approaches and rigged hand grenades to it, designed to fire when a tripwire was snagged. When the Japanese probes started on 20 June, it became clear the enemy had pre...

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Battle of Lababia Ridge: Three Attacks, All Repulsed

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Japanese assault came in around 14:00 from the north and north-east, supported by mortars. Dexter's men drove it back. A second attack followed in the early afternoon, including a bayonet charge. That one failed too. Over the course of the afternoon three separate assaults ca...

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Battle of Lababia Ridge: Beaufighters Through Smoke

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What held Lababia was not only Australian infantry. On the second and third days, Bristol Beaufighters of the Royal Australian Air Force worked over the Japanese infantry, strafing them after the Australians on the ridge marked their own positions with smoke. It was tight, danger...

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Battle of Lababia Ridge: What Dexter Took

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Left largely to his own judgment during the fighting, Captain Walter Dexter was afterward awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Lieutenants Edward Exton and Laurence Roach received Military Crosses. Sergeant John Hedderman received the Military Medal. Brigadier Moten, who had ...

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