The knoll got its name because Lieutenant Bob Johns was the man holding it. That is how these things worked in the 2/27th Infantry Battalion in October 1943: you took a feature, the mapmakers wrote your name on it, and if you survived the fighting afterwards, the name stuck. John's Knoll and Trevor's Ridge were two small rises east of Shaggy Ridge in the Finisterre foothills of northern New Guinea. On 12 October 1943, they became the focal point of a two-day battle in which seven Australians died and two hundred Japanese soldiers died trying to take ground that, on any other map, would not have had a name at all.
Major General George Vasey had concentrated his Australian 7th Division in early October 1943, after the capture of Lae, and pushed his men up the Ramu Valley to Dumpu. From there, he ordered what the army called offensive patrolling: probing actions designed to find the Japanese, fix them, and hurt them without committing to a general engagement. The 21st Brigade under Brigadier Ivan Dougherty drew the task of working northwest along the Faria River toward the Kankiryo Saddle. The South Australians of the 2/27th Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel John Bishop, led the way. They had just been pulled off road-construction duty around Kaigulin. By mid-October they were climbing ridge lines, securing ground as they went, and naming features after the officers who took them.
The Japanese 78th Infantry Regiment, part of Major General Masutaro Nakai's detachment, held Shaggy Ridge and the Kankiryo Saddle. When the 2/27th seized John's Knoll, they cut one of the supply lines running forward from the Japanese main position along the Surinam River. Captain Shoichi Kagawa, commanding the II/78th Battalion, received orders to retake it. The Australians had labeled the feature John's Knoll; to the Japanese it was Key Point 3. Kagawa pulled three companies, roughly equivalent to 300 men, out of the Kankiryo positions and sent them east to hit the knoll from the flank. Supporting them were four heavy machine guns placed to fire on the knoll from three directions, and artillery sited beyond the Faria River at a range of 5,800 yards that could shoot straight down the length of Trevor's Ridge onto the Australian position.
The Australians knew something was coming. They had heard movement through the night. In the grey light of early morning, Bishop sent out a patrol. It clashed briefly with the Japanese assault force in the haze. Then the machine guns and artillery opened up. Two companies, about two hundred men, made the first wave under cover of mortar fire. The main blow fell on an understrength platoon commanded by Lieutenant Bob Johns, dug in on the knoll that would carry his name. The Australians had clear fields of fire. The position itself was defensible. Those two facts, along with the discipline of a platoon that had been trained for exactly this sort of fight, were what let the defenders hold the first assault, and the next, and the one after that. The attacks came in repeatedly throughout the day.
At the height of the fighting, Brigadier Dougherty gave permission for a withdrawal. Johns's platoon was understrength, ammunition was running low, and the weight of Japanese attack showed no sign of lifting. Lieutenant Colonel Bishop, on the ground and closer to the fight, read the situation differently. He thought a counter-attack might restore the balance. In heavy rain, two Australian platoons swung wide and hit the Japanese flanks. The pressure on the knoll eased. Reinforcements moved up into Johns's position through the early evening. Ammunition was dangerously low by then, and the resupply that came the following morning arrived on the backs of local carriers moving across the Faria River, men whose knowledge of the country and willingness to carry loads up ridge lines made the Australian campaign in these mountains possible. At the end of the fighting, the Australians had lost seven killed and twenty-eight wounded. Japanese dead numbered two hundred.
Historian Philip Bradley later called John's Knoll a key defensive action of the campaign. It was a defensive victory with strategic consequences. The Japanese, having failed to reopen their supply route, had to shift from offence to defence. They pulled back toward their main positions around the Kankiryo Saddle, and the 21st Brigade followed. The road to Shaggy Ridge itself now lay open, though it would take two more months of patrolling, of the 25th Brigade spearheading the advance past the Mene and Eapia rivers, before the Australians were ready to assault the Pimple in mid-December. The full chain of engagements eventually took them across the Kankiryo Saddle, over Crater Hill, and down the northern slopes toward Bogadjim and Madang, which fell in April 1944. John's Knoll does not appear on most maps today. The feature is a small rise in thickly forested hill country that tourists rarely visit. But it is one of the battle honours the Australian Army awards to the units that fought there, and the memory of what those platoons did on 12 October 1943 is preserved in the war diaries of the 2/27th Battalion.
John's Knoll and Trevor's Ridge sit in the Finisterre foothills near 6.00°S, 147.00°E, east of Shaggy Ridge in Morobe Province. Nearest modern airports: Nadzab/Lae (AYNZ) about 100 km south across the Markham Valley, and Madang (AYMD) on the coast to the north. The area can be overflown on flights between Lae and Madang. The terrain is dense jungle ridges and river valleys, best viewed from 6,000-8,000 feet in morning light before cloud builds over the ranges. The Faria River drainage is visible as a break in the otherwise continuous forest canopy.