The rain had been falling for three days straight. Not the polite Canberra drizzle, but a tropical deluge that turned every track into a creek and every creek into a river. Beneath the triple‑canopy jungle of northern Papua New Guinea, the light never arrived, it simply became a slightly lighter shade of green‑black. Corporal Anaru crouched in a knee‑deep scrape behind a buttressed fig, his nine‑man section spread in two fire teams thirty metres apart. They were 2 Section, 1 Platoon, Alpha Company officially, but right now they were just eight ghosts in the wet, detached and operating alone.
Nothing here felt new, not the mud that sucked at their boots like the Kokoda Track in ’42, not the small‑team packets moving silently through the green. Not the violent, intimate work of clearing a position with grenades and rifle fire at arm’s length. Not the way disease and infection waited patiently for any lapse in hygiene or resupply. Not the sudden silence when comms dropped and supporting fires could no longer reach them. It could have been the Aitape to Wewak campaign, where Lieutenant Albert Chowne had led small patrols at night, constantly harassing the enemy.
The Eastern Front in Ukraine had simply reminded everyone, brutally, of rules the Australian Army had known since the jungles of New Guinea and Borneo. The lessons had never changed. They had only been forgotten.
In the open steppes of Donbas, drones and loitering munitions had compressed those old truths into something faster and more unforgiving. Here in PNG, the jungle still offered the same dense sanctuary it had given the diggers in 1942–45. You stayed hidden in the green until the exact moment you chose to rise above the detection threshold, strike hard, then melt back into the forest before the enemy could mass fires or drones against you. The windows of opportunity were shorter now, the consequences of being caught in the open more sudden and final. A single loitering munition drifting through a canopy gap could ruin an entire section’s day in seconds. But the core equation remained identical: small teams, violent action, disciplined concealment, and ruthless initiative when the moment came.
“Ammo check,” Anaru hand‑signalled to his team to confirm readiness. Each man carried a deep personal buffer of ammunition, up to twelve magazines, grenades in every pouch, water‑purification tabs, and antibiotics sealed like treasure. “Issued” had stopped meaning reliable the moment the first enemy strike cut the main supply route. Drones delivered what they could, but most nights the section fought with whatever had survived the flight. The same supply‑chain fragility that had haunted every jungle campaign since 1942, only now accelerated by eyes in the sky.
Private Ramirez raised a closed fist to gain the attention of his team. The micro‑UAV feed flickered, humidity fogging the lens again. Still, it caught three heat signatures moving slowly under thermal blankets, 180 metres upslope.
“Infiltrators,” he breathed. “Multicam, M4‑pattern. No unit markers.”
Anaru’s mind ran through the PID drill they had rehearsed until it was muscle memory. Tape was useless; the enemy carried every colour the Australians did. The wet of the jungle turned every uniform almost black. Thermals turned everyone into the same silhouette. PID was cognitive: challenge words, timings, patterns of life. He would have to verbally challenge them, allowing them to get incredibly close. If they can’t name 1 Platoon’s last checkpoint, we engage.
The three men walked into the kill zone exactly as careless infiltrators had done in every war. They failed the challenge. Anaru’s fire team rose as if the jungle itself had spat them out two quick bursts, grenades following. Bodies hit the mud with the wet slap every veteran from Buna to Balikpapan would have recognised. No celebration. Just the old rhythm: strip useful kit, leave nothing that could be booby‑trapped, and melt back into the green.
The rain eased for twenty minutes. In past jungle wars this fleeting window of no rain would have been enjoyed; now it meant drone saturation and increased sensor activity. You needed to own this window, find the enemy before he found you. The platoon UAV spotted an enemy drone‑operator node assembling behind a mangrove line near the ruined village of Lopo Dara, four hundred metres east.
“Four‑man packet,” Anaru ordered. “Fire Team Alpha with me. Bravo stays concealed, drone overwatch. We strike, we disappear. No lingering.”
They moved in the tight four‑man groups the Eastern Front had proven necessary. In Ukraine those packets survived drone‑saturated airspace. Here, the jungle density made the same tactic even more effective. They stayed beneath the canopy until the last thirty metres, then rose above the detection threshold in a single coordinated rush.
The loitering munition coughed from Ramirez’s tube. It climbed through a gap, spiral‑loitered, then dived. The explosion rolled like distant thunder. Anaru’s team was already inside the treeline on the far side. The strike window lasted forty‑seven seconds.
Inside the ruined hut the work was close and brutal, the same intimate violence Australians had met in Japanese bunkers eighty‑five years earlier: pre‑fired corners, grenades thrown in sequence, top‑cover cleared at the same time, defenders holding fire until the last heartbeat. Private Nguyen took a round high in the shoulder but kept fighting. Trust earned in contact, not assumed. No one froze. They had rehearsed until blast, dust, and overpressure felt familiar.
“Node clear,” Anaru reported over secure chat. “One friendly WIA. Exfil now.”
They dragged Nguyen back into the green wall before enemy FPVs could converge. The jungle swallowed them again. Thirty seconds later the canopy closed and they were invisible once more. The Redback IFVs waiting two kilometres back under cam nets never had to move, but they were always there ready to support if needed, ready to exploit if opportunity arose. But the paucity of them meant they were generally used only to exploit significant advantage.
In the scrape an hour later, the medic worked on Nguyen under a poncho. Evacuation? Three days minimum, maybe six weeks if the weather closed the routes. Infection waited like it always had the second enemy that had killed more diggers in New Guinea than Japanese bullets. Anaru pushed forward the antibiotics they guarded like gold. Blood would come by drone if roads stayed cut. The golden hour had never really existed in jungle war; Ukraine had simply made the truth impossible to ignore again.
As night fell, the rain returned. Drones grounded. Sensors half‑blind. The enemy would probe again small teams slipping through 500‑metre gaps exactly as the Russians had done on the Donetsk front, and the Japanese had done in the Owen Stanleys. But 2 Section was ready. They seeded remote mines tied to seismic sensors, plotted infiltration routes, and passed unusual activity up the net: new digging pattern, odd silence on the eastern spur. Reporting was not administration; it was protection for the next team the same lesson passed hand‑to‑hand from one jungle campaign to the next.
Anaru did a final walk of the perimeter, stepping over roots thick as his thigh, relying on hootchie cord and a track plan in order not to get lost. His section was wet, tired, low on resupply, carrying a wounded mate who would need weeks of field care. Yet they owned the ground. The jungle had let them remain undetected until they chose to strike, then hidden them again. Technology, micro‑UAVs, loitering munitions, FPVs, was their extended arm, not their replacement. Infantry remained the constant.
Nothing was really new. The same rules that had carried Australian infantry through the mud and green hell of 1942–45 still held: small teams, violent and well‑timed action, discipline against disease and supply failure, difficulty in comms and fires when the weather or the enemy intervened. Technology had only made the windows of concealment shorter and the penalties for breaking them more sudden. A loitering munition drifting through a canopy gap could ruin a day in seconds. But the fundamental truths had not changed.
What had changed was that the lessons had been lost in decades of wars without a near‑peer, lost to institutional hubris, lost to an over‑reliance on technology and the seductive promises of air theorists who, in peacetime, always sold a cleaner war without mud or mass casualties. Forgotten was that almost every war Australia had ever fought that truly mattered had ultimately been decided by the Army, by soldiers willing to live and fight in the dirt.
In the morning the rain would still fall, the sensors would blink out, and the enemy would try another probe. But so long as 2 Section stood there, wet, tired, stubborn, and armed with the old lessons remembered in time, the line would hold. The era of infantry with better tools had arrived. But the infantry, and the ancient, unforgiving rules of the close fight, remained exactly the same.
About the author
Brigadier David McCammon has commanded at every rank across a career defined by operational service and combat‑focused leadership. He has led Rifle and Recon Platoons on operations in East Timor and Kosovo; as a Major he commanded Australia’s first Operational Mentor and Liaison Team in Afghanistan; and as Commanding Officer of 7 RAR he led the Training Task Unit in Iraq. Most recently, he commanded Army’s largest combat brigade, the 3rd Brigade, during which he deployed as Commander Joint Task Force 1118 for the ADF’s evacuation operations in Lebanon. His experience spans more than two decades of operational service, including East Timor, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon.
He has extensive training and capability development experience, including command of the Combined Arms Training Centre where he led all of Army’s combat schools. He currently serves as Head of Corps Infantry, having recently relocated the Duke of Gloucester Cup to Tully, cementing it as the Army’s most demanding combat competition. Brigadier McCammon also serves as Commander of the Australian Army Cadets, a nation‑building enterprise of 22,000 cadets and volunteers dedicated to developing resilient young leaders for Australia.