PATRON: Major General B. W. (Hori) Howard AO MC ESM (Ret’d.)

ANZAC DAY INFORMATION

(From Secretary/Treasurer Kev Horton)
Kev has supplied us with detailed information regarding ANZAC Day in various locations. You would have received this information but a summary of this is included below.
BRISBANE MARCH
The March officially starts at 10 am but this time Kev would like all members marching to be in place by 10.15 am. Our number is 55 in the Army section. Look for our banner which is sky blue and we will probably be forming up in the usual place in Charlotte Street. Phone Kev ( 0418 750 189) if you strike trouble finding our group.
Partners are very welcome to watch the March from the Sugar and Spice coffee shop in Adelaide Street and everyone will lunch at 12.30 at the Phat Elephant restaurant across the road.

SYDNEY MARCH
The NSW PIR Members will meet at the corner of Bligh and Hunter Streets, City at 9.00 am for the march. A reunion will be held at City Tatts at 11.00 am. Contact Peter Porteous ( pporteous@optusnet.com.au ) for more information.

TOWNSVILLE MARCH
The parade will begin at 9.00 am and members will march with the National Servicemen’s Association. A sausage sizzle will be held afterwards at the Holy Family Church. Townsville members who march at the Thuringowa parade will have a new route this year. Contact Graham Carnes (0417 070 242) for more information.

OTHER ASSOCIATION NEWS

PAVERS AT ROTARY KOKODA MEMORIAL WALL AT BROADBEACH
The pavers ordered to honour 7 highly-decorated PNG Servicemen from Second World War have arrived and are ready to be laid at the Memorial. It is intended that a small section of the Broadbeach Service on August 8, Kokoda Day, will be dedicated to honouring these men. Our thanks to former Patron, LTCOL Maurie Pears MC, for sponsoring these individual Pavers.
BRIDGE NAMING
We are waiting on further information from the Qld Dept of Main Roads as to the timetable for the naming of the Caboolture bridge in honour of the late Sgt Frank Wust(PIB & NGIB), our founding President. Kev Horton will email all members when this information becomes available.

ADFA’s first PNG officer graduate Mark Rakatani

Source: The Australian (article by Ian McPhedran, 14 Dec 2017)
In December 2017, Mark Rakatani became the first PNG officer graduate of the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra. His father, Colonel John Rakatani of the PNG Defence Force watched on at the graduation ceremony.
Mark is a keen sportsman and dedicated Melbourne Storm and Queensland Reds fan. He played rugby league and rugby union for the Academy. He said the thing he missed most about home was the food, especially his favourite dish, “mumu”, pig cooked on hot stones under the ground.
He will stay on at Royal Military College at Duntroon to study infantry warfare. “We are the best jungle war fighters, but we need to be more integrated into modern-day warfare,” Mark said.
Mark has been inspired by his great grandfather, Sergeant Major Katue MM, whose heroic efforts are memorialised by a portrait by war artist William Dargie, which is held in the Australian War Memorial. As a member of the then Australian Army’s Papuan Infantry Battalion (PIB), Katue was already in action against the Japanese before the Australian 39th Battalion ¬arrived at the front.

Officer Cadet Mark Rakatani with a portrait of his great grandfather Sergeant Major Katue MM at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. (Photo: by Gary Ramage)

BOOK REVIEW

(Courtesy of Una Voce, Journal of PNGAA)

Front cover:

Reviewer comments:
Dr Tristan Moss has undertaken an impressive and detailed research into the engagement by the Australian Army in the development of a unique defence capability in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG). The force structure accorded with the Army’s northern defence postures during the post-World War II, Vietnam War and pre-Independence eras of Australia’s relationship with the Territory from 1951 to 1975. It has been a missing chapter in our military history.
Moss acknowledges that there were other Australian Navy, Army and Air Force deployments in TPNG during this period, which in turn contributed to PNG’s defence capability prior to 1975. He contends that it was the Pacific Islands Regiment (PIR), which more clearly reflected the Army’s mission to develop a land defence capability that met both the priorities for Australia’s national interests and the anticipated national interests of the emergent Papua New Guinean nation.
Guarding the Periphery records that the soldiers of the PIR and other Australian Army units in PNG were employed by the Australian Army, initially under Northern Command (Queensland and TPNG), until the formation of a specific PNG Command in 1966. They represented ten percent of the Australian Regular Army by 1972, at a time when Vietnam had been a priority for frontline troops.
Moss has, through his access to Army records and files, been able to virtually put the reader in the room with the decision makers of the time. This adds to the understanding of how decisions were made about the development of the PIR force structure and the importance of improving the calibre of Australian Army officers and NCOs posted to the PIR’s 1st and 2nd Battalions.
Through personal interviews with many former national service teachers/instructors, Moss has recorded their significant contribution to the education of the PIR soldier. There were some forty Chalkies deployed annually across the major bases in Port Moresby (Taurama, Goldie River, Murray Barracks), Lae and Wewak from 1966 to 1973. By generating an enthusiasm for education, the Army was able to activate advanced training and promotion within the PIR, which in turn, paid dividends in preparing the force structure for localisation.
Of particular note is the author’s devotion of an entire chapter to the “Black Handers”. The true origin of this term, formerly known as “blackhanders”, was that if you served in PNG (and could therefore speak fluent Tok Pisin), you were figuratively “marked with the black hand”, which meant your personal file was so endorsed as a likely candidate for a second posting to PNG. The term fell out of use by postings officers as the numbers of candidates diminished over time. Some thought the term to be politically incorrect but such terms of self-identification and distinctiveness are replete in military history and should never be obscured.
The Black Watch is a term used to identify the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The Black Hats was a term used to identify the Union Army’s Iron Brigade in the American Civil War, due to their wearing of the distinctive black hardee hat. The Patrons of the PNGAA and the PIB-PIR Association are both Black Handers and the term stimulates fond and humourous memories of Army service in PNG.
With the publication of Guarding the Periphery, Tristan Moss has accomplished the essential military context for the Australian Army’s involvement in Papua New Guinea in the lead up to Independence in 1975. The remainder of the pre-Independence and post-Independence military history is not widely known so this book adds significantly to the history knowledge of military staff in both Australia and Papua New Guinea.

(Major) Russell Wade
Committee Member, PIB-NGIB-HQ-PIR Association
Ex 1st Battalion, Pacific Islands Regiment 1971-73 and HQ PNGDF 1983-84.

PNG OFFICER CONTACT

We have been very pleased to receive the email below, from retired LTCOL Dr. Jethro Usurup who is leading the process of establishing a PNG RSL. We wish Dr Usurup every success in this project and look forward to further contacts.

To Ian Ogston, editor of ARMI Nius
By way of investigating previously serving Australian military personnel in PNG, I happen to come across your contact on the Internet under your Association’s Newsletter and thought this would be a good round- about way of establishing contact.
I am a retired Medical Corp officer having had strong associations with many Australian officers and their families as a soldier doctor in the 70s and 80s here in Port Moresby, having served for 20 years. I see Major General Howard is your Patron an honoured acquaintance in 1986 in Portsea during the Director General of Army Health Exercise Corp Dinner where he got me and my fellow officer to sing PIR songs he knew well.
It would be good to publicise to your members that we have, on 15 September 2017, formed the PNGRSL exactly 42 years after Independence and I have been elected as Interim President. We are progressing registration as an association and on achieving, will endeavour to establish linkages with the Australian RSL through the Port Moresby Sub Branch and will further endeavour to establish linkages with your Association and the PNGVR Association. We value the camaraderie that existed between our Australian counterparts and us and we look forward to the time we get to be reunited through ANZAC and Remembrance Day reunions in the near future.
Regards
Jethro
Dr Jethro Usurup | former PNG Senior Medical Office

Editors:
Ian Ogston   ozoggies2@gmail.com
Greg Ivey    iveygj@gmail.com