General George Alan Vasey and Brigadier Clive Steele, approached Army Minister Frank Forde with a proposal that all officers over the age of 50 be immediately retired and Major General Horace Robertson appointed Commander in Chief. The 'revolt of the generals' collapsed with the announcement that General Blamey was returning from the Middle East to become Commander in Chief, but seems to have done the participants no harm. In Blamey's reorganisation of the Army in April 1942, Herring was given command of Northern Territory Force. At this time Darwin was being subjected to Japanese air raids. As supply by sea or air was impractical, Herring developed a land line of communications running across the outback from Alice Springs. On 14 August 1942, Herring was ordered to Esk, Queensland, to assume command of II Corps with the temporary rank of lieutenant general. As such, he was responsible for the defence of Brisbane. At this time he was criticised in Federal Parliament by Arthur Calwell for allegedly issuing a verbal order while commander of the 6th Division that no officer was to be commissioned unless they had at least attained an Intermediate Certificate. There was no evidence that such an order was ever issued, but the allegation reflected a suspicion that Herring was an elitist. Papuan campaign In the wake of the dismissal of Lieutenant General Sydney Rowell for insubordination, Blamey ordered Herring to join him in Port Moresby as the new commander of I Corps. Before departing, Herring met with General Douglas MacArthur, who emphasised that the first duty of a soldier was obedience to his superiors. As at Darwin, Herring's primary difficulty was logistics. The troops on the Kokoda Track had to be supplied from Port Moresby either by air or by Papuan native carriers who lugged stores over the track on their backs. MacArthur created the Combined Operation Service Command (COSC), an unusual combined Australian-American logistical organisation, under U.S. Brigadier General Dwight Johns, who in turn was answerable to Herring. Herring backed a plan to take American engineers off working on the airstrips to develop the port by building a causeway to Tatana Island, the successful completion of which doubled the port's capacity and was the logistical turning point of the campaign. More controversial was Herring's relief of Brigadier Arnold Potts and Blamey's of Major General Arthur Samuel Allen at Herring's urging. Herring acknowledged that the two men had