{"id":31472,"date":"2012-11-26T17:52:59","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T23:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=31472"},"modified":"2012-11-26T17:52:59","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T23:52:59","slug":"the-battle-of-brisbane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=31472","title":{"rendered":"The Battle of Brisbane"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 738th American MP Battalion was surrounded.\u00a0 Unaccustomed to being in the midst of fighting, the scattered remnants of the unit grabbed any weapon they could in a vain attempt to defend a Red Cross Service Station and PX against hundreds of enemy troops. \u00a0A handful of shotguns were distributed to go with the MP’s standard issue Smith & Wesson Victory Revolver.\u00a0 They knew reinforcements weren’t coming – thousands of American & Allied troops were engaged in street-by-street fighting.\u00a0 The 738th left their defensive positions in the Red Cross building and meant the enemy head on in hand-to-hand fighting on November 26th, 1942.<\/p>\n

The battlefield wasn’t in the sands of North Africa, nor the jungles of New Guinea, but the streets of Brisbane, Australia.\u00a0 And for two nights, the opponents weren’t the Axis powers.\u00a0 For two nights in 1942, America and Australia went to war.<\/p>\n

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The Aussie & The Yank<\/p><\/div>\n

The phrase\u00a0“they’re overpaid, oversexed, and over here” has usually been attributed to British attitudes about the influx of American servicemen in World War II.\u00a0 Yet the same was said by many an Australian as the Yanks came marching in by the thousands.<\/p>\n

Over one million American soldiers would pass through Australia from 1942 until the end of the Pacific War, increasing the overall population of the country by 10%.\u00a0 Nearly overnight, Australian cities on the populous eastern coast found themselves overrun with American servicemen.\u00a0 Brisbane was among the worst affected.\u00a0 By the end of 1942, the city of 300,000 now had to provide food and utilities for a population of over 600,000 – the difference all made up in U.S. GI’s.\u00a0 The sewers and electrical grid\u00a0couldn’t possibly adapt quickly enough.\u00a0 For many Aussies, the Yanks brought brownouts,\u00a0garbage in the streets, and\u00a0increased crime and prostitution – not protection from the Japanese.<\/p>\n

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The View From Down Under: Americans saw the Aussies as quaint and the Australian front as a relaxing sideshow<\/p><\/div>\n

Much like in England, the GIs also brought a considerably higher paycheck than their Allied counterparts, a fact that chaffed relations largely because American servicemen could afford to woo the locals with chocolates and\u00a0silk stockings – luxuries in wartime.\u00a0 Over 12,000 Australians married American GIs during the course of the war, but it wasn’t a lifetime of companionship that Australian troops were searching for when they grumbled that the ladies of Brisbane preferred the handsome foreigners who could buy otherwise limited goods at American PXs.\u00a0 Compounding the Aussie’s frustrations were that the Yanks hadn’t just taken all the girls, but all the booze.\u00a0 Alcohol shortages were so common that hotels became limited to two one-hour long servings each day – leading to binge drinking among civilians and servicemen of both countries.<\/p>\n

Actions on the frontlines hardened attitudes as well.\u00a0 The brutal Buna-Gona campaign in New Guinea was being waged at the same time with Allied forces counter-attacking well-fortified Japanese defense in the thick New Guinea jungle.\u00a0 The\u00a0percentage of casualties at Buna exceeded the better known\u00a0Battle of Guadalcanal<\/a>\u00a03-to-1 and the brunt of the fighting was being borne by Australian troops.\u00a0 That fact mattered little to General Douglas MacArthur, who reported on “U.S. victories” at Buna-Gona while setbacks were attributed to the Australians.\u00a0 Aussies who had fought and bled in hard-won\u00a0victories\u00a0returned to Brisbane unable to get a date or a drink while\u00a0reading\u00a0that nearly non-existent American forces had\u00a0won the day.<\/p>\n

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The American Invasion: Members of the US Navy march in Brisbane<\/p><\/div>\n

By the end of November, 20 brawls a night between Aussies and Yanks were being broken up, mostly by American MPs.\u00a0 Not only would the MPs usually believe their fellow Americans, getting them out of trouble, but the MPs quickly developed a reputation as violent and arrogant.\u00a0 More and more Australians took to mob justice when they felt wronged.\u00a0 20 Australian civilians jumped a group of American submariners just nights before November 26th, beating them mercilessly.<\/p>\n

With this backdrop, it was\u00a0somewhat surprising that what touched off two nights of intense rioting started with Australian\u00a0servicemen trying to defend an American from an American MP.<\/p>\n

Private James Stein of the U.S. 404th Signal Company had been abusing the limited alcohol policies of Brisbane, and like many soldiers was trying to get to a new bar that would\u00a0soon\u00a0be open for one-hour only.\u00a0 Clearly drunk, Stein\u00a0found himself in front of an MP demanding to see a leave pass.\u00a0 The MP’s verbal abuse caused several Australian\u00a0soldiers that Stein had been talking with to engage the MP,\u00a0trying to get\u00a0him to lay off a drunk but not AWOL Stein.\u00a0 The MP’s response\u00a0was to lift his baton as if to strike one of the Aussies. \u00a0One of the Aussies struck first instead. \u00a0A melee\u00a0ensued as more MPs, Australian and American soldiers ran to the fight outside the American PX.\u00a0 News of the initial fight spread, starting new brawls.\u00a0 By 8pm – just an hour after the first fists were thrown – over 5,000 people, civilian and military, were engaged in a series of battles across Brisbane.<\/p>\n

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Japanese Propaganda: Much like the Nazis in Europe, the Japanese played upon fears of lustful American troops<\/p><\/div>\n

The fights quickly became more than drunken brawls.\u00a0 Guns and grenades were passed about on both sides.\u00a0 Shots were fired by MPs and Aussies.\u00a0 One correspondent called Brisbane “the most furious battle I ever saw during the war.”\u00a0 By night’s end, at least\u00a0one Australian soldier was confirmed dead – shot by an\u00a0American MP – and\u00a0dozens\u00a0more were seriously\u00a0injured\u00a0by gunshot, stabbing or clubbing.<\/p>\n

The passage of a day did little to calm matters.\u00a0 500-600 Australian troops surrounded the PX the next night, eager to get revenge.\u00a0 The MPs were better prepared, armed with machine guns and rifles.\u00a0 What started as a mob turned into a battle line as both sides took up defensive positions and prepared to assault the other.\u00a0 Australian MPs sent to break up the crowd took off their armbands and joined instead.\u00a0 With neither side willing to make a move, elements of the Australian mob moved elsewhere, assaulting Americans around the city.\u00a0 Unconfirmed reports suggested that several Americans were killed that night, either shot or beaten to death by the Australian mob.<\/p>\n

The fighting was almost entirely ignored by the wartime press.\u00a0 Other than a brief bulletin mentioning an incident that left one dead and six wounded, media both in Australia and the U.S. were censored to prevent news of the incident from spreading.\u00a0 If the censorship was designed to cool\u00a0tensions,\u00a0it backfired.\u00a0\u00a0Brisbane sources spread rumors of absurd levels of violence, including a suggestion that 15 Australian servicemen had been shot by Americans with machine guns – their bodies stacked like cordwood outside a Post Office. \u00a0Although that report is\u00a0almost certainly\u00a0false, the true number of dead or wounded has never been released.<\/p>\n

Few were punished for the fighting.\u00a0 Units on both sides involved were transferred out of the city.\u00a0 The MP responsible for killing an Australian was acquitted.\u00a0 And despite five convictions on the Australian side, only one served any jail time – for a total of six months.\u00a0 The incident was pushed down the memory hole and forgotten.<\/p>\n

Other “battles” would occur in Australia and New Zealand.\u00a0 A similar fight, named the Battle of Manners Street in Wellington, New Zealand had over 1,000 participants in 1943.\u00a0 And much like the Battle of Brisbane, the fight was blacked out by the media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 738th American MP Battalion was surrounded.\u00a0 Unaccustomed to being in the midst of fighting, the scattered remnants of the unit grabbed any weapon they could in a vain attempt to defend a Red Cross Service Station and PX against hundreds of enemy troops. \u00a0A handful of shotguns were distributed to go with the MP’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-ww2-fact-and-myth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31472"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32073,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31472\/revisions\/32073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}