Qualla: Battle of Mission Ridge-Brigade Hill

Battle of Mission Ridge-Brigade Hill: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anotherclown, CC BY-SA 3.0. Brigadier Arnold Potts had been ordered to stop retreating. Above Efogi village, on a feature shaped like a boomerang that arched southwest from Mission Ridge to Brigade Hill, he thought he had found his ground - a long spine of high earth with commanding views north up the Kokoda Track and cleared zones where Allied aircraft could strike attacking Japanese formations. His three battalions, around 1,400 men of the 2/14th, 2/16th, and 2/27th, dug in during the first days of September 1942. What Potts could not know was that the Japanese would not come at him the way he expected. They would come through the ground west of his position that he had thought impassable, led by a Papuan guide who knew the country the Australians were still learning.

Image: Anotherclown | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Mission Ridge-Brigade Hill: The Ground and the Orders

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anotherclown, CC BY-SA 3.0. Mission Ridge ran north from Brigade Hill along the main track, and Brigade Hill itself anchored the southern end of the feature. To the east, steep ground protected the Australian flank. To the west, the land fell away toward the Fagume River - broken country, thick with rainfor...

Image: Anotherclown | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Mission Ridge-Brigade Hill: The Flank That Wasn't

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anotherclown, CC BY-SA 3.0. The frontal assault was held. The 2/27th absorbed the artillery barrage and refused to break. Then, under cover of darkness, the II Battalion of the 144th slipped off the track to the west and disappeared into the country Potts had thought unusable. They did not stumble through t...

Image: Anotherclown | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Mission Ridge-Brigade Hill: A Costly Counter-Attack

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anotherclown, CC BY-SA 3.0. Potts launched counter-attacks to reopen the track. They failed. Each assault up the steep slopes into Japanese positions cost lives that the thinned battalions could not afford - men of the 2/14th and 2/16th fighting through scrub and up rising ground to try to reach their briga...

Image: Anotherclown | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Mission Ridge-Brigade Hill: The Men on Both Sides

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anotherclown, CC BY-SA 3.0. Australian command called it a disaster. The South Seas Detachment's soldiers - men of the 144th Infantry Regiment from Kochi Prefecture in Japan - had pulled off a textbook pin-and-flank maneuver in country every manual described as impossible. They had also, by this point, been...

Image: Anotherclown | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Mission Ridge-Brigade Hill: The Ridge Today

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anotherclown, CC BY-SA 3.0. Brigade Hill today is a memorial site, about a day's walk north of Menari on the modern Kokoda Track. Trekkers pause at the top where the Australian headquarters stood, looking north up the ridge where the 2/27th held their ground and west into the broken country through which th...

Image: Anotherclown | CC BY-SA 3.0