U.S. AIR SOLDIER IN AUSTRALIA

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 117, 20 May 1942, Page 6

U.S. AIR SOLDIER IN AUSTRALIA

SYDNEY, May 14. A few months ago three men met among the crags of Chungking by the swift flowing Yangtse. They were General Sir Archibald Wave.U, Lieu-tenant-General George H. BrenJ-and the Chinese Generalissimo himself, Chiang Kai-shek. They met as the representatives of three great nations, Britain, the United States and China, to discuss military policy in the entire East Asiatic theatre and to outline joint plans. It was while there that General Brett received orders to proceed to Australia and to assume command of the U.S. Forces here.

His arrival early'this year, like tnat of the forces he commanded, was secret. The changing fortunes of war took him to the Indies as deputy supreme commander to Wavell. Then, with the fall of Java and the transfer of Wavell to India, General Brett returned to Australia, assuming, as as the world now knows the Deupty-Supreme Commander, South-West Pacific, to General Douglas IVlacArthur, and chief of the Allied Air Force.

Thus George H. Brett was charged witb a great responsibility, a responsibility which this greying, buoyant 56-year old soldier of the air was preeminently fitted to bear. I'or General Brett is a soldier who long ago took to aviation; and the air corps has been "his babv" for 27 years. He is the right man in the i ight job for he is neither too much ot a soldier to neglect the air nor too much an airman to forget that the enemy uses his forces, sea, land and air, with clockwork precision and minutely planned interlocking Calm, controlled, firm, a disciplinarian, a man of great vigour and capacity for hard work, General Brett has a Quiet confidence in his airmen as not only the equals but the superiors of the Japanese pilots . Give me a hundred fighters and give the Japanese two hundred, and we 11 lick them any time," he said.

And, as "Australia knows with the greatest satisfaction, the Americans, in close co-operation and friendship with our own men, have set about licking the Japanese with a will. General Brett is no stranger to war. In the 1914-18 conflict he served as Chief of Supply, Air Services, A.E.P., France, for more than a year.

Since then he has held various posts of great responsibility. Last year a job of unusual interest and importance fell to him.

President Roosevelt wanted to know for himself that was to be known about the use, usefulness and upkeep of American warplanes.

For five months General Brett became a "trouble shooter" throughout the Allied countries in the Middle East and in Britain, ordered by the President to obtain full and accurate information on the condition of American equipment in the hands of the Allied forces.

In Egypt he established a large maintenance and repair depot and he likewise investigated the whole problem in England.

It was in this Middle Eastern tour that he met and got to know Australian airmen in the Western Desert.

"I formed a high opinion of them there and I haven't lost it," he says. "I became a kind of godfather to the Australians, and I've since been lucky to have some of them working for me."

The high opinion and liking are mutual,

From his trouble shooting tour General Brett went to China and then to Australia. The "godfather" of Australian pilots in the Western Desert now commands all air forces in the South-west Pacific.

No one underestimates the importance or the magnitude of his command. His is a vital part in the supreme strategy of General MacArthur, the strategy designed not only to defend Australia, but to drive back and smash the Japanese. It is a big job and a big man has been found to fill it.