FOOT BY FOOT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 December 1942, Page 3

FOOT BY FOOT

HOW JAPANESE RESISTANCE WAS CRUSHED ENEMY LOSSES CONSIDERABLE. ALLIES WIN DEVOTION ./ OF NATIVES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 9.15 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. “Young greenclad Australian soldiers have advanced foot by foot, through grasping vines and clinging mud, often against withering fire from strong Japanese positions.” A war correspondent, accompanying the Allied forces who have now crushed the enemy resistance at Gona, pays this high tribute to the victorious troops. He adds: “One Australian unit drove forward 700 yards in 45 minutes bayoneting, shooting and hand grenading the Japanese in trenches, lying behind logs or perched high in treetops.” The Japanese losses are considered to have been much higher than those of the Allies, though enemy sniping has taken a heavy toll, and direct assaults against machine-gun emplacements have been costly. The battle in the fortress area again has been a familiar story of an unseen enemy, whose positions in the green jungle were often revealed only by gun smoke. The “Sydney Sun” correspondent suggests that as important as the strategic land gains, has been the winning by the Allied troops of the complete devotion of the New Guinea natives. Never will they accept the Japanese propaganda that the Pacific war is a crusade to release all coloured people from white domination. The courage, fair dealing and friendliness | of the soldiers towards the natives has ensured that Japan’s specious creed for conquest always must be unwelcome in New Guinea.

Wounded returned men say Japanese stocks have slumped with the natives, because the enemy's stubborn resistance would not stand the ultimate test of'bayonet fighting. A clear indication of where the native. sympathies lay was their imitation of the manners and modes of the Allied soldiers. Carriers sometimes affected fierce handle-bar, moustaches and smoked pipes. The height of their ambition was to wear Allied shorts and boots. Nowhere did the natives wear Japanese clothing. Trade relations with New Guinea natives have been stabilised by the issue of a regulation price list for goods and services, and an uncompromising adherence to bargains struck. It is a new experience for the natives, who earlier had been systematically cheated as well as ill-treated by the Japanese. “I have seen native carriers who, although suffering from pneumonia or bush typhus, have refused to seek medical aid,” said one wounded soldier now back in Australia. “They continued carrying our wounded until they collapsed.and had themselves to be rushed to hospital.”