COMMANDOS PRAISED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 54, 1 September 1943, Page 6

COMMANDOS PRAISED

GRIM WAR IN NEW GUINEA

SYDNEY, August 24.

O.C. SYDNEY, August 24. v.; Damien Parer, famous Australian newsreel photographer; is back in Australia from New Guinea with another front-line film, which is claimed to excel his epic "Kokoda\ Trail." Parer spent seven weeks under fire in the jungle with Australian Commandos to shoot 3000 ft of film. -;: - '■

"I cannot express in words the morale 1 of1 these commandos," said parer. "They: worship their leader, one. of \the most offensive-minded soldiers I've met. .. He is a legendary figur.e in the eyes of his men. Once in the jungle a Jap sniper fired at him and missed. He stepped rout in the open and shouted to the Jap, 'Gome on, have. another go!' The Jap fired again and again missed, but revealed his position in the.... tree top. The Australian then drew his .45 pistol and shot the?: Jap ."dead."." On another occasion, when this officer and his men were out of food, they came on three Japs .cooking a meal. They waited until the Japs had finished the cooking, then shot them dead and ate the. food the Japs had prepared." Parer said the A.I.F. at Salamaua are kept going by their caustic, grim sense of humour, their mateship, and their training, which has welded them into incomparable combat units.

"Some of. the A.I.F. soldiers now fighting between Mubo and Mt. Tambu have been in action in that area since last February," he said. "They 'fought in Libya, Greece, Crete, and Syria. They have frontally assaulted Jap positions and held them against tough, fierce counter-attacks.

"The Japs they have been killing are human steam shovels, and more like rabbits than men. They dig and dig, and link their weapon pits by an astounding maze of tunnels no honest white man would live in. I cannot understand them. They have no initiative. I don't think they have great-courage, but, when told to hang on, they .hang on desperately. I was with a party of A.I.F. commandos when they attacked a Japanese earthworks on Timbered Knoll, near Bobdubi. After the commandos had grenaded the foxholes and apparently cleaned them out, five Japs were discovered asleep among their dead in the tunnels. .Only two .of them escaped."