HEAVY TOLL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 January 1943, Page 2

HEAVY TOLL

OF VETERAN AUSTRALIAN TROOPS TAKEN IN ISLAND CAMPAIGNS RAVAGES OF TROPICAL DISEASE. — POSSIBLE CHANGE IN STRATEGY DISCUSSED. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, January 8. • “The hardships and illnesses suffered by troops in the New Guinea area are stated to have appalled Mr Curtin. For the next few months Australia’s manpower resources will be preoccupied witli feeding' fresh and fit men to these campaigns so that those broken in health may have some respite.” This statement by a Sydney “Daily Telegraph’’ writer reinforces the view that the fighting in Papua has been the most costly and arduous campaign in which Australian * troops have fought in this war. The opinion is that of veteran A.I.F. troops back from the Middle East. Today Australian war observers are concerned whether the high casualties of tropical island warfare are to be permitted to become a mounting total or whether another strategy should be devised to conserve manpower. BIG FORCES ENGAGED. A studied contribution to the consideration of this problem is made by Gavin Long, “Sydney Morning Herald” defence correspondent. “The cost of the Papuan campaign is not to be estimated alone by the casualty list totals,” says Long, “but by considering that most' of the losses have fallen on veteran units to which Australia must look for her outstanding young fighting leaders. The Allies are having the best of it in the South-West Pacific so far as the air and sea wars are concerned. But the fact must be faced that on land the forces that Australia’s 7,000,000 people can provide, plus the forces that America has so far released for this theatre, are ranged against one of the largest and most. experienced armies in the world. Comments from New York and London praising the heroism and stamina of the Tittle band’ of Allied troops around Gona and Buna show that in some places the size of the forces involved in the New Guinea campaign has been under-esti-mated. The forces involved in the whole area from the main Japanese base of Rabaul across to the Allied base of Port Moresby are comparable with those employed in most non-European campaigns in this war. Battalions of veterans—the most widely-experienced soldiers of any British army today—have been worn down by sickness and casualties.” I PROBLEMS OF SUPPLY. Discussing the difficulties of supply and the nature of the fighting which helped to make the New Guinea campaign exacting and expensive, Long says it is doubtful if any other force of equal size has ever been supplied by air for so long a period. To fight such a campaign using aircraft as the principal means of supporting men with supplies was an imposing undertaking. There were times when the units were down to their last tins of rations because the supply aircraft could not get through. “Jungle fighting, too, offers few opportunities for inexpensive victories of the kind so often won in open warfare,” declares Long.. “In this kind of country senior commanders can do little more than keep their troops supplied and hope for the best. Manoeuvre, in the sense in which the word is used of campaigns in Europe or the desert, is seldom possible. Where the Japanese have lost more heavily than Australian or American troops in New Guinea it has been because individual soldiers have been shrewder and more resourceful than the men they have been fighting. Careful battle planning, the use of surprise and rapid decisions by senior commanders, such as won spectacular successes at small cost in the North African campaigns, will seldom be reproduced in the Solomons or New Guinea. Battle casualties will generally not represent the only big loss. A large number of the men who are put out of action will be victims of tropical diseases. ALTERNATIVES FACED. “A decision which must be made in the coming campaigns is whether to relieve units that have suffered heavily and rest them in a temperate climate where they can put on lost weight and build up resistance again, or whether to accept it as inevitable that a large number of soldiers serving in this climate must always be suffering intermittently from malaria, dysentery and skin infections. “The coming year offers a prospect of increasingly heavy demands on Australian manpower—to reinforce our brigades which are carrying out fighting Or garrison roles in malaria-ridden country. The major decision which has to be made is whether Allied land forces are to continue attacking Japanese strongpoints in the islands without naval superiority, or whether they should play a defensive role . and hang on till we have naval and air superiority so decisive that Japanese outposts can be isolated from seaborne supplies. It can be argued in favour of this latter policy that, unless it is adopted, our available army may be worn so thin that a series of setbacks to the American and Australian air force which is at present the only effective defence against the renewal of the Japanese southward drive, might leave Australia with wholly inadequate protection against determined attack.”