2/4th Australian Battalion - Final Campaigns New Guinea 1945

Presenting the 2025 Annual Patron's Lecture by The Hon Paul Brereton AM RFD SC.

On 17 May, the former Pheasants Nest Hume Motorway signage of Edward Kenna VC will be presented to the Edward Kenna VC Other Ranks Mess in the Edward Kenna VC courtyard at the headquarters of the 4th/3rd Battalion of the Royal New South Wales Regiment at Sutherland. This will mark the eightieth anniversary, almost to the day, of Kenna’s heroics on 14 May 1945 in the capture by the 2nd/4th Australian Infantry Battalion of Wirui Mission near Wewak, for which he would receive the Victoria Cross.

Following the capture of Salamaua, Lae and Finschhafen, the 6th Australian Division was deployed to New Guinea in early 1945 to relieve the Americans, who General MacArthur preferred to utilise elsewhere. Its brigades – the 16th, 17th and 19th – included, in the 16th, three battalions of New South Wales origin – the 2/1st, 2/2nd and 2/3rd; and in the 19th, another – the 2/4th. 

Between late April and early July 1945, the 6th Australian Division advanced from the Hawain River eastwards along the New Guinea Coast to Wewak – the last sea-based fortress of the Japanese in Papua New Guinea, with long prepared extensive defences, on terrain which dictated that the attack had to be entrusted to a single battalion. This would be the 2/4th.

Drawing on the work of former society patron Major General Gordon Maitland, and the 2nd/4th Battalion’s history White over Green, this lecture describes the feats of a New South Wales infantry battalion, which had already distinguished itself in 1941 in North Africa, Greece and Crete, in these concluding battles of the campaign, in which it earned the battle honours ‘Wewak’, ‘Wirui Mission’, and ‘Mount Shiburango-Mount Tazaki’, and the theatre honour ‘Liberation of Australian New Guinea’. 

Of the heritage and battle honours of the 2/4th Battalion, today’s 4th/3rd Battalion of the Royal New South Wales Regiment is the custodian.