LOST AND FOUND

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 62, 6 April 1943, Page 2

LOST AND FOUND

ONLY TEMPORARILY MISLAID FIRST U.S. TROOPS IN ACTION When the. Japanese advance reached loribawa Ridge in Papua, and looked like going a lot further, some negro engineers, in Port Moresby volunteered to take up an antitank gun, smaller and lighter than the 25-pounders the. Australians were using and able to go further into the mountains. Five of them set out in charge of an Australian bombardier and the gun reached the ridge in pieces and on poles carried by 80 natiAes. But. the war had gone, so the A us* tralian and a dusky .son ol South Ca'lina, Roy Hicks, set out to look for it. When they caught up with it, it was well on the way back to Kokoda and both wanted to be in on it. The Australian found his unit. Hicks got himself a green uniform, a rifle and a hand grenade and joined up with an Australian unit. In a brush -with the foe. Hicks joyfully claimed that he wounded one with his grenade. Avhieh made him the first. United States, ground soldier to be in real action in New Gu nea. Meanwhile, the other four negroes waited for further orders. To their C.O. in Moresby they Avere at the front and to Hicks and the Australian bombard <Vr they were at the. back —too far" at the back /to go ba.k for.. Weeks later someone told their O.C. where they Avere. They had not been forgotten, he said, only temporarily mislaid.