CONTACT KEPT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1942, Page 3

CONTACT KEPT

WITH THE JAPANESE IN NEW GUINEA ADVANCING AUSTRALIANS. 4 REPORTED 12 MILES SOUTH OF KOKODA. LONDON, October 12. Contact is being maintained with the Japanese in New Guinea. The Australians were last reported to be 12 miles south of Kokoda. HEAVILY DAMAGED ENEMY SEAPLANE TENDER. BETWEEN NEW BRITAIN & NEW IRELAND. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 12. Australian Hudson medium bombers have heavily damaged a 10,000-ton Japanese seaplane tender, leaving it motionless. Two direct hits were scored on the ship as it steamed with a destroyer escort south of St. George’s Channel, between New Britain and New Ireland. Twelve Zero fighters were packed wing-tip to wing-tip on the upper deck of the tender. The vessel was first sighted by a lone Hudson on reconnaissance, but other planes of the unit were quickly called to the scene. After the bombing, a destroyer was observed slowly circling the tender, which appeared to have been severely hit and unable to move under its own power. MANY EFFECTIVE RAIDS. Havocs and Airacobras on Sunday morning machine-gunned barges on the beach at Buna. It is not known whether these barges were loading or unloading. Strafing planes also raided two unnamed native villages near Buna, both likely places for the enemy to dump stores. The markedly evident and so far unchallenged Allied air superiority in the South-West Pacific is causing general satisfaction. The value of sustained raids on Rabaul cannot' be too highly stressed. Its horseshoe harbour shelters most of the enemy shipping moving south from the main Japanese bases in the Caroline and Marshal Islands, and its temporary immobilisation must be of immense help to the American forces in the Solomons as well as to the Allied forces in New Guinea. Rabaul’s airfields and harbour would inevitably figure in any Japanese plans for a new offensive in this theatre. But three heavy raids within a week, when 112 tons of bombs have been dropped, must have considerably depreciated its value. The latest successful air attack on an enemy seaplane tender, which was almost certainly based at Rabaul, illustrates the force of today’s “Sydney Herald’s” editorial comment that “Japanese shipping is being harried at points so far from any adequate repair bases that the enemy must have growing difficulty in serving his fronts as distant as Kiska and Guadalcanar, while maintaining essential transport throughout the vast area he has overrun. The air resources of the Allies are beginning to tip the scales against the enemy, whose production capacity and technical equipment are considerably inferior to ours.”

CANVAS HOSTELRY AT END OF JUNGLE TRAIL. COFFEE SERVED TO GENERAL MACARTHUR. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 12. “Gestapo Gus” has become famous in Australia as the man who served coffee to General MacArthur at the head of the New Guinea jungle trail. Gus is mine host at the “Cafe de Kerbstone,” where exhausted soldiers refresh themselves after the stiff climb from Überi, at the end of the road into the ranges from Port Moresby. At this canvas hostelry, General MacArthur and several officers examined Gestapo Gus’s menu which was headed: “Fine foods from every country.” Details were: “Soup, dish water. Joint, bully beef. Dessert, prunes and rice.” The price list read: “Generals, 9s lid; Colonel, 7s 6d; Majors, ss; Captains, 3s 6d; “Loots,” 2s; SergeantMajors, Is 6d; N.C.O’s., Is Id. White Boongs (privates), buckshee.” The distinguished visitors drank cof-

fee from enamel cups, and Gus asked General MacArthur for his autograph in lieu of the normal charges. “Good luck, Gus. I enjoyed the coffee. — Douglas MacArthur,” wrote the SouthWest Pacific supreme commander.