About The Author Of The Diary - PTE Leo Allen Cowan - Australians March Along Dead Man's Track

·         Discovery of an unpublished poem from a World War 2 (WW II) Australian Diggers hand written diary POST
·         Aussie Digger's Diary based on Huon Peninsular Campaign not Kokoda Campaign POST

Every week gets more exciting about my Aussie Digger's diary as I have since discovered his identity thanks to the National Archives of Australia (NAA).   I was able to find him by quoting his service number. His full details are currently not available to the public at the moment in accordance with their website and that can be due to all sorts of reason.  I am at this stage happy to tell you a little bit about him and had also shared this latest find with his step grandson Tony.  I had already informed the researchers and certain people at Australian War Memorial (AWM) that Leo's family will be reserving all copyrights of his unpublished diary and poem.  At the moment I am in the process of putting in a national wide hunt with certain organisations to find out if they have heard of a poem called "Up The Trail." The last thing we need is someone to dispute copyright privileges, etc.  However my gut feeling tells me this that is the real deal and what makes it unique   is that it is not another poem about the Kokoda track.

Now I am assuming that when Tony and whoever read the word’s Track and Trail, they had automatically assumed that Leo was talking about the Kokoda Track.  It is only since the diary came into my possession that I realised he was not talking about the Kokoda Track at all.  He was talking about the trail between Sio Mission and Saidor that Australian troops used to advance along.  It was the trail that the Australian troops would nickname DEAD MAN'S TRACK.

It is quite ironic that I am from New Guinea and 68 years later it ends up in my hand for me to share with the rest of the world.  I was able to identify some parts of my country like Lae where I was born, Huon Peninsular (lived near the Huon Gulf in Lae) and he mentioned north New Guinea.  Different region from Kokoda and Papua.

Leo had written on the front of his diary PTE A. Cowan (I am assuming that he never used to use his first name but his second.  I am only guessing though.)  He was born in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW) and enlisted in Gympie, Queensland (QLD).  I will need to look at these details again to confirm that when I saw his birth date that I worked out he was 22 years of age when he joined up as a Citizens Military Forces soldier.  The CMF were the original Army Reservists (well the second lot after the first AIF so as you can all see Australia had volunteers who were not full time service personnel fight for their country too and did a damn good job of it too.  I am assuming his service in this campaign was only very short but he left his mark on this important part of Australian and PNG WW II history.  He shared some of it in his diary.

I will display his mementos later on but for now the exact replicas of his badge and medals are shown here:

His medals and badge:

Returned From Active Service Badge

War Medal 1939 - 1945

Australian Service Medal 1939 - 1945

He was a brilliant writer and unfortunately cannot share the scanned copy version of his diary as it is currently not disclosed to the public at large at the moment.

Lest We Forget


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This material is copyright © Wendy J. Seymour 2011 - Exempt the hyperlinks they are from the World Wide Web (WWW)