is another story. The Kokoda Trail had taken a heavy toll of the men on both sides who were engaged in the fighting. More than 600 Australian lives had been lost, and over a thousand sustained wounds in battle; perhaps as many as three times the number of combat casualties had fallen ill during the campaign. Losses among the Japanese had been equally severe, with somewhere around 75 per cent of the 6,000 troops engaged being accounted for as sick, wounded or killed. By the time the last enemy bastions at the end of the overland route fell on 22 January 1943, the lives of more than 12,500 Japanese would be lost. Professor David Horner, one of Australia's leading historians of this campaign, has observed that: It is ironic that many of the reasons for this tragedy are similar to those that caused suffering and death to the Australians (although not on the same scale). Neither side appreciated the debilitating effect of terrain, vegetation, heat, humidity, cold (at higher altitudes) and disease while operating in the Owen Stanley Range. As we reflect back after an interval of 60 years, it would be easy to overlook both the dimension and importance of these events. It is especially deserving of note that the brunt of the initial fighting fell, on the Australian side, to ill-equipped and poorly-trained young soldiers ? many of them 18-year-olds who had never fired a rifle in anger ? who were often outnumbered perhaps five-to-one; moreover, their Japanese