by Stephen Vagg
Australia produced frustratingly few feature films during World War Two, but did come up with some first-rate documentaries. The best known was the Oscar-winning Kokoda Frontline! but there was also Jungle Patrol, written and directed by Tom Gurr.
Gurr had written the 1943 featurette South West Pacific which had been so criticised in some sectors that the Prime Minister ordered its distribution cancelled and a new film made which emphasised real people and men on the front line. Jungle Patrol was the result.
It’s the story of a patrol from some real-life soldiers along Shaggy Ridge in the Finisterre Range, a not particularly well remembered battlefield in Australia today, but then not many places in PNG are, outside of Kokoda, Port Moresby and Milne Bay. The soldiers fly into the jungle, travel to their old base, do a patrol, see some action. The circumstances of the making of the film are dealt with very thoroughly by Paul Byrnes in his article here, although it doesn’t mention the South West Pacific fracas.
The best thing about Jungle Patrol is, not surprisingly, the visuals – soldiers playing harmonica in a plane, having to play cards with hand signs because the engine is too loud, native guides helping get gear off the plane, soldiers helping each other across a creek and having a swim, traipsing the long grass, the little details of patrolling (shaving, adding tablets to water, putting powder on feet), going into battle. The soldiers are never really given a chance to establish much personality but then the movie only runs for 18 minutes (this was still twice as long as a typical Australian war documentary).
The battle scenes likely included moments artificially recreated for the camera. This wasn’t uncommon – for instance, when making Men of Timor, the Aussie commandos held off burning down a target in Timor until Damien Parer and his film crew could get there.
Peter Finch does the narration for Jungle Patrol, and very well too. Like a lot of Aussie actors of the time – Chips Rafferty, Grant Taylor – Finch saw real service during the war, with rifles and danger and the whole lot, something that should be more celebrated and known. Unfortunately, Gurr’s script gives him a few racist lines to spout.
It is a shame that they didn’t turn Jungle Patrol into a dramatic feature film. They could have used all this amazing footage, and cast it with actors who’d done war service… it would’ve been incredible. There’s a number of “patrol story” Australian novels that were adapted for radio such as Jon Cleary’s Climate of Courage and TAG Hungerford’s The Ridge and the River, as well as radio plays like Seven Section… our film and television industries have traditionally been resistant to them, though (with a few exceptions like 2006’s Kokoda).
Nonetheless, Jungle Patrol is a remarkable achievement and should be better known.
You can see the whole film here.
The author would like to thank Graham Shirley for his assistance to this piece. Unless otherwise specified, all opinions are the authors.
