The bugles were meant to terrify. That was the theory. When Japanese infantry charged up the slopes of Lababia Ridge on 21 June 1943, their bugle calls were supposed to break Australian nerve. Instead, the calls carried across the jungle and gave the defenders something precise to listen for. Captain Walter Dexter's roughly eighty men of D Company, 2/6th Infantry Battalion, heard each attack coming and killed the men leading it. Over three days in the wet Morobe highlands, fewer than a hundred Australians, eventually reinforced by another seventy, held a 3,000-foot ridge against two Japanese battalions totaling about 1,500 men. The bugles kept sounding. The charges kept failing.
Lababia Ridge was not an obvious place to die for, but in the brutal geography of the Salamaua-Lae campaign it mattered enormously. Sitting about 20 kilometers south of Salamaua near the village of Mubo, the 3,000-foot ridge commanded views in every direction that counted. Historian John Miller later wrote that it allowed clear observation of Nassau Bay to the southeast, Bitoi Ridge to the north, and the Komiatum Track, the vital supply road that fed Japanese troops facing the Australians. Hold the ridge and you watched everything. Lose it and the Japanese would have line-of-sight into the Australian rear. The Australians had arrived first, pushing forward from Wau in March 1943 after the Japanese attack there had been stopped. The 2/7th Infantry Battalion dug in and waited.
The fighting here did not begin in June. In early May, Captain Leslie Tatterson's 65 men had been driven off a feature called the Pimple during the broader fight around Mubo, and had fallen back onto the western end of Lababia Ridge. On 9 May, the Japanese came for them. The attack lasted days. Tatterson's men held. By late May, brigade command had decided to rotate battalions, and Brigadier Murray Moten issued orders for Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Wood's 2/6th Infantry Battalion to relieve the exhausted 2/7th. The advance parties stepped off on 27 May along the narrow Buisaval Track, slowed by the terrain, and reached Lababia on 11 June. Dexter's D Company took up a position a little higher up the slope than Tatterson's had held, and the 2/7th withdrew to Wau and Bulolo as divisional reserve.
The Australians had been on the ridge long enough to improvise a defense. They had strung piano wire through the approaches and rigged hand grenades to it, designed to fire when a tripwire was snagged. When the Japanese probes started on 20 June, it became clear the enemy had prepared carefully. Japanese sappers worked forward methodically and defused the traps, but something odd happened: unfamiliar with the mechanisms of the Australian grenades, they pulled them from the wire without using them against the defenders. The traps were neutralized but not turned. The first day passed with sporadic firing and no major push. Then, at about 07:30 on 21 June, the telephone line to the forward observation post was cut. Minutes later, men approaching the main Australian position began snagging the booby traps set up as early-warning devices. The ridge erupted.
The Japanese assault came in around 14:00 from the north and north-east, supported by mortars. Dexter's men drove it back. A second attack followed in the early afternoon, including a bayonet charge. That one failed too. Over the course of the afternoon three separate assaults came in, each announced by those bugle calls. Each was broken on the Australian position. That night, amid heavy rain, 13 Platoon of C Company under Corporal Keith Mew reached the ridge with about 70 men and thickened the defense. A patrol sent out to make contact with the forward observation post returned with the news that everyone there had been wiped out in the initial attack. Meanwhile, Colonel Katsutoshi Araki's 66th Infantry Regiment regrouped below, recovered wounded, and worked to clear the remaining booby traps. Over 22 and 23 June, his 1,500 men kept coming.
What held Lababia was not only Australian infantry. On the second and third days, Bristol Beaufighters of the Royal Australian Air Force worked over the Japanese infantry, strafing them after the Australians on the ridge marked their own positions with smoke. It was tight, dangerous work. The Beaufighters needed to distinguish defender from attacker on a jungle slope where neither wore distinct uniforms, and the smoke drift decided whether the guns hit friend or foe. The system held. On 22 June the Japanese hauled a mountain gun into range, but it proved inaccurate; only two rounds landed within the Australian position. Probing attacks on the flanks were broken up by Australian mortars. On the morning of 23 June, heavy machine-gun and mortar fire hid the Japanese withdrawal. By early afternoon, the fight was over. The 66th Regiment had lost 41 or 42 dead and 131 wounded. The Australians counted 11 dead and 12 wounded.
Left largely to his own judgment during the fighting, Captain Walter Dexter was afterward awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Lieutenants Edward Exton and Laurence Roach received Military Crosses. Sergeant John Hedderman received the Military Medal. Brigadier Moten, who had lost sleep for three days wondering if his outnumbered men could hold, later said Dexter had taken "every trick." A fellow officer, Jo Gullett, was blunter: Dexter was "too exacting to be popular," but he was also "a thorough soldier, a good trainer of men and a painstaking tactician." Dexter went on to command the 61st Infantry Battalion. The Salamaua advance continued. Mount Tambu, Nassau Bay, Roosevelt Ridge, and Bobdubi still lay ahead. Salamaua itself fell on 11 September 1943, Lae shortly after. The drawing-off of Japanese reinforcements from Lae, which Lababia Ridge helped accomplish, was exactly what Allied planners had needed.
Located at 7.22 degrees South, 147.02 degrees East, a 3,000-foot ridge in the rugged country about 20 kilometers south of Salamaua and near the village of Mubo. The ridge provides broad views of Nassau Bay to the southeast, Bitoi Ridge to the north, and the Komiatum Track. Nearest airfield is Lae Nadzab (AYNZ), about 45 nautical miles northwest. The terrain is steep, jungle-covered, and cut by the Bitoi and Buyawim Rivers; approaches from the Huon Gulf side cross a sharp coastal escarpment. Afternoon convective weather is typical of the Morobe highlands; mornings offer the best visibility. From altitude, look for the distinct ridgeline running roughly parallel to the coast, its summit cleared in places where the wartime positions once stood.