Quote:
Originally Posted by alnich
I was up in the Ramu Valley with my father in early December 2005. He was 7th division 2nd/25th infantry battalion and had fought up in the Markim and Ramu valleys. He showed mum and myself where he had fought – main battle/skirmish being at the site of Kesawai village. We also went to Kiapit and a distant look at Shaggy Ridge.
While up in that area we stayed at the Ramu Sugar complex. We got talking to the local expatts, which wasn’t hard as they were impressed that someone of Dad’s age(82) had come to visit and pay his respects.
Anyhow it was mentioned that they had in the process of developing a new cane field came across a couple of buried little dozers that where used to develop the military airfields in WW2. Apparently a lot of equipment was buried after the Japs where driven out of Papua New Guinea. The theory being that while the war was going the allies way, they may have ended up back in PNG still having to fight. So if that was the case they would need some gear, so they buried catches of equipment just in case. That is what I was told by the expatts anyway! I don’t know as to the condition of these dozers or what happened to them. I assume that it is true due to the amount of ex-military equipment being dug up or that was left lying around and can still be seen today.
Apparently they have a hell of a time digging up Marsden matting when they develop new cane/oil palm fields. Here’s a link for those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Matting
Just to the North West of this town is the Ramu Sugar township / complex for those who are interested.
"Kaigulan" lat=-5.979949, lon=145.905197 Copy and Paste into Google earth.
I thought this might be of interest to the discussuion.
Regards
Alan Nicholas |
Matting is always of interest to any discussion, well, if you're an Engineer anyway!
I'll be posting a story soon of Canada's role in developing expedient runway coverings.
Interesting story you have told of buried equipment in PNG and one that is so oft repeated around the world that there must be much truth to it. In British Columbia stories abound of equipment found along the Alaska Highway and in the Chilcotin training area. When you consider how remote much of Papua New Guinea is, and how quickly the jungle retakes cleared land, I imagine there is much to be found yet. No surprise that they're spending a lot of time digging up Marsden matting (PSP) as there was 2,000,000 tons of the stuff made during WW II. Derek.