Qualla: Battle of Mount Tambu

Battle of Mount Tambu: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The photograph is famous now, though Gordon Short, the man who took it in July 1943, could not have known how famous it would become. In the frame, an Australian soldier carries a wounded American down the blasted jungle slope of Mount Tambu. His name was Leslie "Bull" Allen, a stretcher bearer with the 2/5th Infantry Battalion, and on 30 July he went back twelve times into fire that had just broken an American company-level assault, picking up twelve wounded US soldiers and carrying them out alive. The United States awarded him the Silver Star. Mount Tambu itself was a series of razorback jungle ridges, the highest feature between Mubo and Salamaua, and for five weeks in the southern winter of 1943, it chewed up every frontal attack the Allies could throw at it.

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Battle of Mount Tambu: The Mountain in the Way

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By mid-July 1943, the Allies had been grinding northeast from Wau for six months. The Japanese attack on Wau had been stopped in late January, and the Australian 17th Brigade under Brigadier Murray Moten had followed the retreating enemy forward through Mubo and Lababia Ridge. Mo...

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Battle of Mount Tambu: The First Night on the Slope

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 2/5th Infantry Battalion began the assault on 16 July 1943, pushing onto the southern slopes of Mount Tambu and holding part of them by nightfall. The Japanese response came at once. Eight separate counter-attacks rolled in through the darkness before dawn. The Australians he...

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Battle of Mount Tambu: The Americans Try, and Leslie Allen Goes To Work

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 28 July, about 400 men from the 1st Battalion, 162nd Infantry Regiment, US troops who had landed at Nassau Bay earlier in the month, reached Mount Tambu and relieved some of the Australian forward positions. Australian mortar crews and stretcher bearers stayed in the line to s...

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Battle of Mount Tambu: The Indirect Approach

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Brigadier Moten had seen enough frontal assaults. He changed his approach. The Japanese on Mount Tambu were supplied along the Komiatum Track from the north; if he could cut that track, the mountain would be surrounded rather than stormed. On 16 August 1943, the 2/6th Infantry Ba...

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Battle of Mount Tambu: Salamaua, and the Price

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The fighting did not end at Tambu. The Allied advance on Salamaua continued through late August, with the crossing of the Francisco River and the taking of Charlie Hill in the first week of September. Then the whole strategic shape of the campaign clicked into place. Allied force...

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