Back at Kanga Force headquarters, Brigadier Moten faced a crisis on the afternoon of 28 January. The loss of Wau was imminent. Major Muir's report confirmed that there was a major enemy force at Wandumi, and with further alarming reports coming in of enemy infiltration towards Wau, Moten knew he had to get reinforcements into Wau that night if he was to hold it. At 1605 he directed Lieutenant-Colonel Danny Starr, the 2/5th Battalion commander, to ‘move two platoons with Bennett as far as possible to Wandumi tonight’. Starr and the B Company commander, Captain Cam Bennett, had been further forward when the first reports came in from Wandumi and, in anticipation of a move back to defend Wau, they had raced back to Ballam's.

The first report of Japanese penetration into Wau was received at 1900 on 28 January, when a transport driver reported seeing a group of enemy troops marching on the road about one kilometre east of Big Wau Creek. Transport personnel were immediately organised into a scratch platoon to defend along the banks of Big Wau Creek. At Kanga Force HQ, documents were packed in trunks and boxes and hidden in a deep gully in the nearby jungle.

Some of the men who had managed to get off Wandumi Ridge and make their way back into Wau also came across Japanese troops on the Crystal Creek road that night.