NEW GUINEA JUNGLE

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 217, 9 June 1943, Page 5

NEW GUINEA JUNGLE

Good Work Of N.Z. Scouts (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.)

(Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 7! New Zealanders who enlisted in the --A.I.F. have done splendid work as scouts in the New Guinea jungle warfare. One of them, Cor.noral Albert Edward Pauley, has made many daring excursions into enemy-occupied territory. On one occasion he watched Japanese troops cremate the body Of one of their officers.

Before the war Pauley was manager of a gold mine at Sandy Creek, near Wau. lie says the deer stalking experience gained in his youth in. New Zealand has helped him in the New Guinea jungle. "When I saw thin wreaths of smoke rising above the trees I crawled through the undergrowth to investigate,” Pauley told a war correspondent.' “I saw the body of a Japanese officer, covered with a sheet, lying op logs. Soldiers were keeping the fire going by throwing benzine on to the logs. Officers with drawn swords stood at each end of the pyre. The ceremony lasted about two hours.” On another patrol into the enemy lines, Pauley watched the Rising Sun ceremony which is religiously carried out every morning. The Rising Sun flag was hoisted, and at a given command (lie assembled troops bowed so low toward the sun that their heads almost touched the ground. Another New Zealander, Sergeant William Rupert Hanrahan, disguised himself as a native to escape from Salainnua when the Japanese landed there in Marell. 1942. He walked past scores, of Japanese who were too busy landing stores to worry about natives. Hanrahan says lie has seen enemy troops throw away their rifles and dive panic-stricken into the jungle when they were attacked by Allied planes. Still another New Zealander who has done much good work as a scout is Sergeant Anthony O’Connell, Palmerston South, who was part owner of an alluvial gold mine in the Bulolo River Valley.