NOT SO FAR AWAY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3264, 17 May 1943, Page 3

NOT SO FAR AWAY

JAPANESE IN PACIFIC LULL IN THE FIGHTING BOTH SIDES PREPARING [This is the first of a series of personal glimpses behind the recent lull in the South Pacific war, by Robin Miller].

There are two ways of getting up to the war in the Pacific. If you have to be on Guadalcanar to-morrow night you may board a plane in New Zealand this morning and do it in two easy eight-hour hops, with a good night’s rest in New Caledonia.

That makes the war and the Japanese seem a lot closer than most people realise. It would not be impossible for a big bomber with bloodred markings on its wings and extra fuel tanks in its belly to fly down from the Solomons non-stop - and still with enough high explosives to shake Auckland considerably.

Of course, it. would be unable to fiv back again, and therefore both plane and crew would have to be classified as “ expendable. ” But he could easily do that if he wanted to show us that our immunity from air attack has been hanging on a pretty slender thread. On the other hand, it might do us more k good than harm —cause more damage to complacency than to cities. Flight to Solomons In the meantime, our side is doing all the flying between New Zealand and the Solomons, and that is the way to get there quickly. Once you have obtained what the Americans call a priority—and; it is much easier to get a‘new tyre for your car —you may soon find yourself reclining high above the Pacific in the sound-proof luxury of a flying boat, or more likely jammed in among sharp-cornered packing cases in a draughty Douglas transport, or sprawled on mail bags in a New Zealand Lockheed-Hudson going back after overhaul.

It will all be over very quickly, but you will never have known such concentrated boredom. Everything is boring, from ithe drone of the motors after you have stopped imagining mis-, fires, coughs and seizures, to the utter emptiness of ithe sea that seems to pass so slowly beneath you.