A Hiker Stumbled Upon A WWII Base Deep In The Jungle, And The Soldiers Were Still There

If you dared to follow in Freeman’s footsteps, you may have seen them, too. But then Freeman’s better cut out for the trek than most. He’s an ex-military man who served two decades with the Australian special forces. That meant he may have known the horrors that were awaiting him.

First, Freeman and his guides had to tackle the Kokoda Track, which meanders through 60 miles of thick jungle. The path runs through the mountains of the Owen Stanley Range and is trekked by many Australians each year. But they’re attracted by more than just the majestic beauty of the rugged landscapes and the challenge the track offers. They, too, know the area’s grim history.

You see, the track runs through land bitterly fought over by Japanese and Australian troops during WWII. Over 600 Australians lost their lives in this remote jungle, and their compatriots come to pay their respects and learn more about the sacrifices their countrymen made. Safe to say, though, that none of them saw what Freeman witnessed.

And when the Japanese and Australian forces fought each other for dominance of this remote jungle territory, battle conditions were tough. As well as facing off against enemy attacks, the Australians had to suffer extreme heat during the day — sometimes torrential rainstorms, too.

Then there was the terrain — which was unforgiving, to put it mildly. Plunging slopes led down to valleys dense with tropical foliage. And the heavy rains meant the ground was often transformed into a mass of thick, clinging mud. Freeman could have only imagined the horrific conditions the men fought through there.

But there was a big prize on offer: Port Moresby. During WWII, this was vital to capture if you wanted to conquer New Guinea, as it was known at the time. And the Japanese were determined to control this jungle route — whatever the potential cost.

The Japanese had initially planned to seize Port Moresby with a direct seaborne attack on the capital. But the Battle of the Coral Sea against Australian and American forces had scuttled that scheme. Though the battle was fought at sea, the actual combat was in the air, with planes launched from carriers and land bases.

At the time, many Australians felt this battle had kept their nation safe from Japanese invasion. Later historians feel this may be an over-dramatic claim. But it’s certainly true that the attack on Port Moresby was thwarted by the disruption caused. The soldiers Freeman found may have recognized this fact.

And it was clear to the Japanese high command that they needed an alternative plan if they were to take Port Moresby. That’s where the Kokoda Track came in. The terrain was hard, but it was the only obvious way over land to finally capture the capital.

So, the Japanese began to land soldiers at a place called Gona on the east coast of New Guinea. Their original mission was simply to scout out the Kokoda Track to see if it offered a viable route toward Port Moresby. But this initial trip soon turned into a full-scale advance toward the capital. And very soon, the Japanese ran into resistance.

Just a couple of days after their landing at Gona, the Japanese met the Australians. The Australians then retreated along the Kokoda Track towards Port Moresby, fighting rearguard actions, and finally halted the enemy at Imita Ridge. That was just five miles from the road that connected the end of the Kokoda Track to Port Moresby.

The Japanese now seized Kokoda itself. More importantly, they controlled its airfield — the only one between Gona and Port Moresby. But the Japanese supply lines had become over-stretched. And this allowed the Australian forces to make a stand at Imita Ridge. The Japanese advance was stopped in its tracks.

Now the pendulum swung the way of the Australian defenders. Though they’d been pushed back after bitter fighting with the Japanese, their new position was much nearer to Port Moresby. That meant they were closer to the supplies and reinforcements in the capital city. The artillery stationed there was also in range to target the Japanese.

And the whole story was thrown into reverse. Now, it was the Australians who began to advance back along the track towards Kokoda. Now, it was the Japanese who had to fight desperate rearguard actions as they retreated towards where they’d first landed at Gona.

Then, on November 2, 1942, the Australians re-took Kokoda — although that victory came at a high cost. Around 625 Australians were killed, while another 1,600 were wounded. The Japanese suffered an estimated 5,000 casualties — around 2,000 in combat and the rest from disease. But it wasn’t just the foreign fighters who died. Approximately 150 local people lost their lives working as porters and laborers during the fighting.

The Japanese never did take Port Moresby — nor did they get control of New Guinea. And the ferocious battles that took place during the Kokoda Track Campaign are what Australians remember and honor to this day. Freeman may have even made his own personal tribute as he walked the track. But there was something about the history of the fighting in the area that puzzled him.

Some of the most bitter fighting along the Kokoda Track had taken place at a location called Eora Creek. The track actually crosses the creek at two places — one known as Templeton’s Crossing, and the other near the village of Eora Creek.

And as a keen and knowledgeable historian, Freeman knew there’d been a major battle at Eora Creek in October 1942. That was when the Australians were advancing along the Kokoda Track, pushing the Japanese back from the territory they’d initially gained. However, Freeman believed that the actual location of the fiercest fighting had been wrongly remembered.

After intensive research, Freeman believed the Japanese had established a formidable defensive position near the creek. This had been the scene of heavy warfare and led to lots of Australian and Japanese casualties. Yet no one knew the actual site of this battle — no one except the Alola.

Yes, the local Alola people knew the exact location of the Eora battle. They’d concealed their knowledge from outsiders for decades, as they believed that it was wrong to disturb the spirits of the men who’d fought and died at the site.

But Freeman had struck up a close relationship with the Alola people after years of working with them. They’d come to trust him and his motives. And now, that patiently built relationship was about to bear fruit with an extraordinary revelation.

In 2010 the Alola agreed to guide Freeman to the site of the battlefield. The explorer was well aware of the privilege he’d been given. And what he found there was truly astounding. It’d be an experience that he’d never forget.

Guided by his Alola friends, Freeman struggled along jungle paths for hours until they came to a clearing. And the first evidence that Freeman saw of the battle that’d raged there stopped him in his tracks. Leaning against a tree in a seated position was the corpse of a long-dead Japanese soldier — still helmeted.

Scattered around the deceased man was a chilling selection of war detritus. There were boots, grenades, heaps of ammunition, rifles, and munitions strewn along the ground. Thanks to the Alola, no outsider had cast eyes on this scene for nearly 70 years.

And at last, the site of the battle had been discovered. Speaking to The Times in 2010, Freeman recalled, “I thought we might just a find a couple of old weapons. But there were guns, mines, helmets, water bottles.”

“It was incredibly emotional knowing that you were looking at items that had been dropped as those Japanese and Australian soldiers lost their lives,” Freeman continued. “And the dead lay just where they had fallen or were laid by their comrades. It was as if the battle had just happened.” As the Times report pointed out, the site was “the only known battlefield in the world where weapons and war dead lie in situ exactly as they fell.”

Freeman then described what he had noticed when he arrived at the site. And it’d clearly been a highly emotional — even horrifying — experience for him. “The very first thing I saw was a Japanese soldier who still had his helmet on,” he revealed. “We went on to find the bones of another three Japanese soldiers.”

“I had never expected to find war dead,” Freeman admitted. “It’s one thing going into a place like that and finding weapons or artifacts; it’s quite another finding soldiers who died as they fought. I was a soldier for 20 years, and I was shocked at the sight.”

Freeman also revealed how he’d come to suspect that the battlefield location had been misidentified. “I used to stand at the site where we thought the battle was fought and brief the trekkers about it — but things didn’t add up,” he recalled. “It was too small. It wasn’t in a good defensive position.”

“I mentioned this to a villager one day, and he pointed up the hill and said, ‘That’s our village secret up there,’” Freeman added. It’d been his first confirmation that he was right about the battle site’s location. Even more than that, it was the first time he learned that the Alola knew the true location of the site.

So what had actually happened there back in 1942? The site that Freeman had finally found was at the top of a high summit overlooking Eora Creek. That gave it a significant tactical advantage over the Australian force, who had been marching along the creek below.

The Japanese defenders were able to use their height advantage to pummel the Australians below as they tried to cross the creek. And the Australians were forced to endure days of constant Japanese fire before finally managing to advance under cover of night.

But crossing the creek still left plenty of hard fighting ahead for the Australians. They tried direct assaults on the Japanese, but the enemy was so well dug in that charging up the steep incline under heavy fire would be a no-go. The attackers had to come up with a different tactic.

One of the Australian battalions was ordered to try to find a way to outflank the Japanese stronghold. So, they advanced to the west of the enemy position and tried to dislodge the defenders by attacking them from higher ground. The Japanese then fled into the jungle, leaving behind many dead. The Australians lost 99 soldiers, with a further 192 wounded.

And now that the location of the Eora Creek battle has been found, there are hopes that the remains of dead fighters may be identified through DNA tests. But, of course, the discovery of this grim site does raise an intriguing question: just how many more WWII battlefields remain to be unearthed?

Even away from the jungle, there are plenty of long-lost WWII relics still to be found. In the town of Chartres, a group of French council workers were digging up a section of road not too far from Paris. What they didn’t know, however, is that there was something unexpected hiding beneath the earth. And as they cleared away more than 60 years of debris, something huge emerged: a very special relic that dated back all the way to the time of war.

The workers soon called in the experts once they realized how important their find was. In fact, they needed a mechanical digger to expose the full size and significance of the relic. This particular discovery was going to stand out even among the many artifacts from the war scattered across France.

You might come across buried guns and ammunition from WWII when you’re metal detecting in France. And it’s not uncommon to unearth the occasional German helmet, either. Sometimes, you don’t even need any detecting apparatus at all. The discoveries simply lie loose on the ground.

There are plenty of countries around the world that host wartime artifacts at the bottom of their oceans or buried under fields. WWII was the largest and most violent conflict in world history, and as we know, France was a center of the fighting during that period. As a result, it’s prone to these kinds of historical finds. That doesn’t mean they’re all on this scale, though.

World War II officially began after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, but the first few months were fairly quiet elsewhere in Europe. Yet that all changed the following year when the Germans turned their attention to Scandinavia – first invading Norway and then Denmark. In May Germany then attacked and conquered both Belgium and Holland. Their lightning conquest of Europe was in full swing, and France was now next in line.

June 1940 marked the official fall of France and the division of the country into two parts. The southern section became a puppet government known as the Vichy regime, while the northern half – which included Paris – was directly under German control. And the French capital in particular now faced a brutal four-year period of food shortages, curtailed freedom, and persecution.

Every day Paris’ central street of the Champs Elysée saw a parade of German soldiers marching and showing their dominance. And each evening the Parisians had to return home by 9:00 p.m. to obey a curfew. The Germans could drive proudly round the city in their cars, but Parisians were confined to public transport only.

Thanks to German restrictions, Parisians apparently ended up using bicycles as well as the metro and bus. Some would even take to horse riding as an alternate mode of travel. Residents also had to be prepared for long queues when they were shopping, because most stores had limited opening hours.

On top of this, there was strict rationing limiting what food the Parisians could buy. The majority of French produce was being diverted to support the German war effort, which meant huge shortages across the country. And to give you just one shocking example, each French adult was restricted to a mere 2.5 ounces of boneless meat every week, according to the website My Private Paris.

As you might imagine, the Parisians had to get creative to find enough food. Shortages meant that some resorted to eating cats, dogs, and even rats, My Private Paris claims. And some basements became home to rabbits or even pigs that were raised to be slaughtered for their meat.

Yes, Parisians were second-class citizens in their own city. German soldiers took priority in every store and restaurant and even Paris’ legendary galleries and museums were under their thumb. Some art had been successfully smuggled out of the city before the occupation, but other valuable pieces would be confiscated.

Some Parisians became collaborators and helped the Germans, whether because they sympathized with the regime or they were just trying to protect themselves. Others allied themselves with Charles de Gaulle, who became the exiled leader of the Free French. And the latter group did everything from collecting intelligence to actively sabotaging German installations.

Millions of Parisians fled their city in 1940, while others subsequently stayed and would fight the occupation. It wasn’t until four years later that Allied troops landed on the northern shores of France and began the liberation of the country. In August 1944 they finally won the six-day battle to retake the capital. Paris had been finally liberated, but the war had left its mark.

All you need to discover some WWII history in places like northern France is to take a stroll through the fields and walk the paths once traveled by soldiers. Little things like guns and ammunition can still be found next to larger objects like vehicles and bunkers. And some items still lie with the bones of the soldiers who once owned them.

The scars of war aren’t so obvious in Paris itself, which was mostly spared the kind of bombing that devastated other European cities. It’s the beaches of the D-Day Landings that tend to attract the most attention from the historically minded when they journey through France.

The legacy of WWII was again reignited in 2019 when Eurostar travelers had their trip disrupted by an unexploded bomb from the era. Again this discovery was made by engineers during construction work, but this time it was near Paris’ Gare du Nord train station. The process of deactivating the bomb proved trickier than expected and at least five trains were canceled. Local press also reported that nearly 2,000 people nearby were evacuated before a controlled explosion could be carried out.

Yet it’s not just bombs that have been left behind from World War II in France. A German bomber was discovered in the French Pyrenees in 2013. This plane was likely stationed in the city of Toulouse and used to conduct bombing raids on Allied forces at sea. According to the BBC, locals were so afraid of a German retaliation after the bomber crashed that they threw the wreckage into a cave and maintained their silence for decades.

And did you know that there’s another Paris train station – Gare de l’Est – which has an entire WWII concrete bunker hidden beneath it? Apparently, a luggage storage room was commandeered by the Germans in case they were bombed and needed somewhere safe to direct trains back to the Reich. Up to 70 people could have fitted in the 1,300-square-foot, airtight space, where they would have been protected from gas and bombs. Though the Times of Israel newspaper notes that the bunker probably wasn’t ever used.

Naturally, the number of WWII relics increases if we expand our view not just to French land but also the country’s sea. Take the sinking of the Lancastria, which was believed to be the worst maritime disaster in British history. The wreck still lies off the Loire-Atlantique coast. Apparently, it had been carrying U.K. troops and French civilians who were being evacuated before it was bombed by German aircraft.

But boats and planes weren’t the only military vehicles that crashed in France during the war. A German Tiger II was abandoned in the face of Allied attacks in 1944 and fell into a shell hole – with its crew bailing on foot. It was discovered in around 2001 near Paris, but it wasn’t until 17 years later that the regional governor finally gave permission to recover the tank.

That brings us back to the road at Chartres and those routine repairs. You see, that Tiger II wasn’t the only tank to be rediscovered decades after its burial. The council workers had found another one, but this was even more special. It was an Allied tank that had been used in the liberation of France in 1944.

The history of tanks in warfare really dates back to WWI, although models for armored vehicles had been floating around for centuries beforehand. Even Leonardo da Vinci had tried the idea back in 1484. Yet the recent invention of cars and traction engines meant that the early 20th century had just the right technology for tanks to emerge.

The first motor vehicle to carry weapons was a so-called quadricycle developed in England in 1899. An armored version was then produced just a few years later. When WWI kicked off in 1914 the new priority was finding vehicles that could travel over the muddy, broken ground of the trenches. A year later British designers then added tracks instead of standard wheels to these armored vehicles for the first time.

Little Willie – as the first tank was named – was soon followed by its cousin Big Willie. And it wasn’t long before the British were seeing new levels of success on the battlefield thanks to their latest invention. Other countries quickly followed, with France, the United States, Italy, and Germany all developing their own models.

Between World War I and WWII many countries tried to improve their tanks to make them more powerful and mobile. But which power had the largest fleet? Interestingly, this accolade went to the Soviet Union, which, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, had more tanks than the rest of the world combined. Though it was the Germans who had the most success in terms of tank strategy.

As many of you know, tanks had originally been designed to support infantry and cavalry units. Yet Germany’s tactics were different. It would concentrate armor and use it in mass formations, which turned out to be very successful on the battlefield. Britain and America were still using their tanks to punch holes in enemy lines, but then letting their infantry take the lead. German infantry, on the other hand, would clean up after tanks had already swept the field.

There was, of course, a lot of technological innovation in WWII – from advances in aerial combat to the development of nuclear weapons. As the conflict progressed the tanks got bigger overall, and so did the guns mounted on top. There were also efforts to come up with anti-tank weapons and vehicles. This also meant tactics needed to be adapted as well.

Most tanks in WWII could be divided into three tiers – with light, medium, and heavy vehicles serving different purposes. Of course, you couldn’t use a single man on horseback as a scout anymore. So instead you needed light tanks that could move fast and had the armor to protect them.

Light armored vehicles also had their uses in amphibious landings that would have made heavier versions struggle. But what about heavy tanks? Well, they came with two designs for the thick of battle. So-called “snipers” had the highest velocity guns so they could assault the enemy from a distance, while still being heavily defended. “Brawlers,” meanwhile, were the densely armored tanks that took the enemy head-on.

It was the brawler tanks that had the toughest armor to withstand multiple direct hits. This meant they could help infantry push past enemy lines as well as maintain strong defensive positions. Then, between light and heavy tanks were the medium versions that combined the best of both worlds.

Medium tanks made appearances in nearly every major battle in WWII because they had that great combination of heavy strength and light maneuverability. They could react quickly when a line was being attacked or move forward to take advantage of enemy weaknesses. The Soviet T-34 was one of the most notable medium tanks, but the American M4 Sherman is also a standout example.

Most iconic on the German side was the Tiger I, which was a heavy tank that admittedly saw more than a few mechanical failures. But this was more than made up for thanks to its formidable armor and massive gun. Yet what about the armored vehicle found close to Paris? What kind of tank was it?

Well, the remains were from an M5 that had last been seen in 1944 when it was part of the American 31st Tank Battalion, according to the Daily Mail. It had probably been on a reconnaissance mission as part of the march towards liberating Paris. Witnesses who remembered its arrival weren’t sure whether it slipped out of its tracks or ran out of fuel, but either way it had been abandoned.

Whatever the reason, this M5 was left behind as the rest of the battalion moved on. And no one came back for it when the fighting was finally done. When the war was over the local residents buried the tank and it remained forgotten for nearly 60 years. But now that it’s been found and bomb disposal experts have declared it safe, its significance can finally be recognized.

The M5 was developed to resolve some of the issues experienced by earlier American light tanks such as the M2 and M3. While the latter had enjoyed some success in the Pacific theatre against the Japanese, its armor and guns were much too weak to face the German panzers. They also had some problems with engine design that the car company Cadillac was ready to tackle.

You may be wondering why the replacement for the M3 wasn’t an M4. In reality, there was already an M4 Sherman being used in combat and U.S. planners didn’t want to confuse the two. In February 1942 the M5 was born out of two experiments with the M3. The first made it quieter, easier to maintain, and more spacious, while the second strengthened the hull.

The eventual M5 had a rotatable hatch with a periscope for the driver and another for the gunner. At the back were a hammer, shovel, pickaxe, crowbar, and various other tools, according to The Online Tank Museum. The machine gun for the assistant driver was .30 cal and there was a 37mm for the gunner. If the tank was hit, then the lower octane fuel made it a lot safer for the four-person crew.

There were more than 2000 original M5s produced, the website added, while modified and improved versions were trialed throughout the war. The long-lost M5 is a reminder of just how important tanks could be. And it serves as a crucial reminder of a vehicle that helped bring an end to the world’s most devastating conflict.