DEVOTED SERVICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1942, Page 3

DEVOTED SERVICE

OF NEW GUINEA NATIVES IN CARRYING AUSTRALIAN WOUNDED. HEROISM THAT SHOULD BE RECOGNISED. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 9. But for the devotion 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 us 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 if I were a baby. They seemed 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 heads. They should all have got medals.”

ALLIED COMMANDERS

VISITS TO NEW GUINEA FRONT. I (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 11. General MacArthur as well as General Blarney, Commander-in-Chief of the Australian land forces, was . recently at the front in New Guinea. General MacArthur travelled some distance up the Owen Stanley trail from Port Moresby. Addressing Australian troops, General MacArthur said: “I hope you will be as good soldiers as your Anzac fathers. Looking at you, I am sure you are.’’

LIVELY TRADE IN SOLOMONS SOUVENIRS. NEW YORK, October 10. A lively trade in captured Japanese equipment has developed in army and navy circles in the South Pacific as articles taken in the Solomons fighting filter ‘back to Allied bases. According to the corresnondent of the “New York Times” in the South Pacific, soldiers and sailors unable to participate, in the fighting are- ardently bidding for Japanese guns, swords, knives, grenades and flags. One marine sergeant, recovering from wounds in a base hospital, refused 200 dollars for the sword of a Japanese officer he killed on Guadalcanal