DEVOTION OF NATIVES

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 14, 12 October 1942, Page 5

DEVOTION OF NATIVES

Carrying Of Wounded

(By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 0.

But for the devption and almost superhuman exertion of Papuan natives, many Australians wounded in the Owen Stanley fighting would never have survived. This is the opinion of soldiers from New Guinea now in hospital in Australia. They suggest some better recognition of the natives’ heroism should be made than the few tins of ‘bully beef or the few shillings that the soldiers could give them. “No white man could have carried ns over that country," said one wounded officer. "Up in the mountains the natives carried us over places where it was next to impossible to walk at all, and down Überi way they carried us through -mud up to their knees.” “Our stretcher-bearers could never have stood up to it,” declared another wounded soldier, "but the natives were wonderful. They looked after me as it 1 were a baby. They eeeined terrified that they might drop me. In some parts of those mountains they actually crawled flat along the ground and held the stretchers above their heirds. They should all have got medals.”