Heroes
On the night of July 28, 1942, as the Japanese prepared to assault the village of Kokoda, “Doc” Vernon slept on the lounge at the old Kokoda police house. It served as a Regimental Aid Post for the first major battle in the Kokoda campaign.
As the bullets whizzed around him and the sound of Japanese mortars became increasingly rapid, Vernon remembered: “It was warm and comfortable on the lounge, I slept secure in the knowledge that I would be called when wanted.”
Dr Geoffrey Hampden Vernon was the enigma of the Kokoda campaign. He was a courageous, complex eccentric who wandered the length of the Kokoda Track many times over, tending to the soldiers and the carriers.
Then 59, he was an old hand in war and the New Guinea culture. He had won a Military Cross for bravery under fire in World War I and he was deaf as a post as a result of that service. This may have been the reason for his sound sleep.
He was woken that night to be told that the first casualty was the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel William Owen. Vernon took stretcher bearers down to the front line to find Owen, lying in a narrow firing trench with a gun shot wound to the head. The C.O. was struggling violently but Vernon and Warrant Officer John Wilkinson managed to get him back to the hut. They attended to the wound and kept him comfortable, which was about all that they could do for the man.
“As Doc Vernon was operating, the building was under fire from machine guns and the bullets were whizzing through the roof,” according to Wilkinson, in One Man Law, by Clarrie James. “As Vernon was deaf and unable to hear me, I pointed upwards instead of speaking. Doc said rather loudly, ‘Yes, it is raining heavily isn’t it’ ”.
That first battle for Kokoda became the start of the Owen Stanleys campaign, which was to end on the beaches of Buna and Gona in January, six months later. As he did on that first night, “Doc” made himself indispensable throughout the campaign.
Vernon was the son of Walter Liberty Vernon, the NSW Government Architect. Vernon was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School followed by the University of Sydney.
He enlisted as regimental medical officer with the 11th Light Horse regiment in WWI. E.W. Hammond’s History of the 11th Light Horse Regiment described him as working “tirelessly throughout the engagement under the most trying conditions and frequently under fire. He was short of medical supplies, water and transport for the wounded. On the last night of the engagement, he penetrated far beyond our lines alone and at great personal risk bandaged a wounded man and brought him back to safety.”
Vernon went to the Pacific after World War I to work as government medical officer on Thursday Island before moving to Papua, where he bought a plantation.
It was there that Vernon’s reputation as a legend began to take root. He was known for helping everyone who came across his path. He was a committed smoker and when cigarette papers were short, he rolled his tobacco in anything from toilet paper to newspaper. A cousin and namesake, Geoffrey Vernon Dobbin, tells a family story of a visit to the island by the famous writer, Somerset Maugham. Vernon invited him for dinner and when he could not find napkins, he cut off the bottoms of his pyjama legs to substitute. Vernon was also known as an “intellectual giant” who loved to talk about the classics and history. He wrote short stories and enjoyed painting.
When war came to the Pacific, Vernon tried to enlist. Although 59, he swore to the recruiting officers that he was 52. The officers laughed and turned him away. As a long time resident of the Pacific, Vernon had suffered from frequent bouts of malarial fevers and, by all accounts, looked quite a bit older. His army records describe his appearance as “fair complexion, hazel eyes and grey hair”. More telling is the description of his colleague Dr Bruce Robinson, who wrote in his book Record of Service: “I believed he was nearly seventy, though he looked more like a very active man of eighty”.
After several more attempts, Vernon eventually persuaded the army to take him into the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) as a medical officer to the carriers. His knowledge of the local customs was extremely valuable and he had a very humane approach to the “natives” at a time when they were regarded as little more than slave labour by most in the white colonial population.
His opinions of the campaign, the carriers and his movement along the Track are detailed in a diary in which he frequently laments the physical state of the carriers and the burdens they had to endure.
“Overwork, overloading (principally by soldiers who dumped their packs and even rifles on top of the carriers’ own burdens), exposure, cold and underfeeding were the common lot.
“Such things happen in war time and the difficulty of supplying only the front line men was great enough, but the inequality in the scale of rations was too marked to escape notice.”
He noted that the Owen Stanley hills were “heartbreaking” and “appalling” but those who knew him said he coped remarkably well, often better than much younger men, partly as he had been a committed walker before the war. Vernon insisted that cars made him nervous.
Once he discovered the Japanese had landed, Vernon walked forward to the small number of Australian troops gathered at Deniki near Kokoda to offer his services. Vernon writes of this in a very off-hand way. John Wilkinson was more impressed.
Wilkinson described Vernon’s arrival at Deniki on the Kokoda Track in Peter Brune’s book, “Those Ragged Bloody Heroes”.
“Captain Vernon arrived out of the fog. Very pleased to see him. He had some instruments and dressings in two triangular bandages. He nearly got shot when first seen owing to his unregimental dress. Captain Vernon had shorts, which were really strides rolled up; a blue pullover with the arms tied around his neck and hanging down his back; a felt army hat, worn as no hat every should have been worn, and a long newspaper cigarette in his mouth. A small dillybag and some army biscuits and tobacco in it. He saw me and spoke, ‘Jack, I heard there was some action up here and thought you may need some assistance. Where do I start?’ What a man!”
Throughout the Kokoda campaign, he suffered badly from debilitating fevers. When the Australians retook Kokoda in November 1942, the carriers found an old Japanese bike and wheeled him into the village so he didn’t have to walk the last distance.
After the war, Vernon returned to his rubber plantation in Eastern Papua. He never married, nor had any children. On April 9, 1946, he wrote to a friend: “I am completely out of this world here … a dull vegetative existence, seemingly, but satisfying to me. I would not exchange it for a daily copy of the SMH and all the dismal news of the world, and the delights of Sydney.”
The letter became the lead to his obituary in the Pacific Islands Monthy. Vernon finally succumbed to the malaria that dogged him throughout the war on May 20, 1946, aged 63. He has a memorial at a native hospital in Maipani in a remote part of Papua New Guinea and a plaque in the Kokoda Hospital, funded by the Australian Government.