NIGHT RESCUE FROM AMBUSH

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 19, 18 October 1943, Page 6

NIGHT RESCUE FROM AMBUSH

New Zealand Party

SURROUNDED ijOUR DAYS (Official War Correspondent. N.Z.E.F.) VELLA LAVELDA, October 3.

There was little to suggest as Hie barge scraped its shallow .bottom or. the coral 300 yards from the shore tlv.it in that jungle mass rising from the water’s edge Japanese eyes.were watching every move and Japanese rifles were trained upon the target. Only a few green-coated figures of New Zealand soldiers waited on the beach f.ir the signal to wade across the reef. Then more would come and another small iparty and another. For in that bush lay 50 New Zealanders who, for six days, had been invested by superior enemy forces. They had had little to eat and 'drink and to them at last rescue was in sight. They had fought day in, day out, from the time the Japanese had ambushed them, losing few men but taking heavy toll of the enemy. They had been surrounded and attacked from four sides •while guarding a vital point on the trail leading to the bills beyond the battlefront, had had to abandon their gear, lose contact with their ration supply party, and hold grimly to the task of selfdefence. For four days they had stayed near this trail on the hills, rain-soaked and hungry, and sleepless. Shouting Japanese had yelled : ‘ We’ll have your blood. Hell Tojo! Heil Hitler!” "Fit, big and well-armed” was how our men described the enemy. In those four days at least six organized attacks had been launched _ on the New Zealand post. Snipers had sought ■to pick off our men one, by one. Ths 'firing had died away only at night. At ■ the end of the third day one officer and j two men had set off for help, but on the ’fourth the remainder moved cautiously ■downhill to a beach-head, where they held their grim perimeter and were in sight of any passing barge. Only friendly barges sailed in these waters. The seas beyond were no safe place for Japan; ese shipping. Ami on the afternoon of ' the fourth day_ a barge did pass nnd liin-pointed the New Zealanders’ position. The rescue would be hazardous, for here was the focal point of the Japanese Jlines, so central in fact that when an. ■enemy aircraft dropped rations during ’Friday evening a parachute fell in the centre of the New Zealanders, who enjoyed their first meal in five days from the fish cakes, plums and oatmeal of the .'Japanese emergency food packets. On. Saturday, the sixth day, the barge returned. It grated on that coral offshore, and the first of the beach party crawled and swam toward it.

Flashes of fire came from the screening bushes as two New Zealanders slowly crossed those 300 yards. One man reached the barge, and an officer climbed over the side to help him on. He was shot from the shore as he lent toward the water. A transport driver who volunteered to go with the original patrol a week before and had been the life and soul of the besieged party, clambered on board and manned a machinegun. He '.was killed while his first bursts were, peppering the bush. The barge could wait no longer. Solo Survivor in One Attempt.

Back in our own lines another party was organized. Five men, including two ofjficers, planned to swim ashore behind 'protective life jackets and haul in a rope by which the wounded at least could be evacuated. The barge moved in again and the five men, vividly recollecting the fate of the first attempt, set out on that perilous coral' crossing. One stopped for a moment ort the way to free ■the rope from the shelf of rock. He was the sole survivor. None ahead of him who came directly into the Japanese fire reached the shore,

bury who only two days before had gallantly led a platoon from a dangerous pocket under heavy fire, scrambled to within a few yards of his goal before he fell. The third and successful venture was postponed till nightfall, when selected swimmers from a host of volunteers dragged a rubber dinghy and canoe to the shore. Two barges lay off at the edge of the reef, and though the procession of men took three hours to move from the beach to the barges, every man was safelv evacuated before midnight. The seventh, day—a Sabbath—was a day. .■o£_re->t,...