SPECIAL TRAINING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 February 1943, Page 4

SPECIAL TRAINING

IN JUNGLE WARFARE FOR NEW ZEALAND TROOPS IN PACIFIC. IMPORTANCE OF EXPERT PATROLLING. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 12. New Zealand soldiers now training for Pacific warefare against Jananese can learn one supreme lesson from the campaigns of Guadalcanal and Papua. It is that expertness in patrolling, the highpoint of the infantryman’s training, is vitally more important in the jungles of the Pacific islands than on the deserts of the Middle East or the cultivated fields of Europe. “It was the difficulty of locating the Japanese and of assessing accurately their strength of firepower in given positions that made the Papuan campaign so protracted and wearing,” writes the Melbourne “Herald” war correspondent from New Guinea. “Repeatedly Americans and Australians found themselves fired on from ranges as short as ten yards by Japanese whose presence they had not suspected whoes presence they had not suspected. When the Japanese were lying low in the jungle and holding their fire from concealed positions there was only one way to gauge their strength—and that was to send men in. Sometimes it was discovered, at sharp cost, that what had been set down tentatively as one machine-gun, was a nest of four or five in mutually supporting sites, and that a suspected single pillbox became a series of connected defensive posts." COSTLY EXPERIENCE. This high cost of gaining knowledge can only be reduced, therefore, by training, developing patrols with skill to outmatch the capacity for concealment of the wily Japanese. The marked success of Australian offensive patrols in the past fortnight’s fighting around Wau proves that such skill has been won by some Commonwealth troops. Important, too, are tactics to combat the übiquious Japanese sniper, whose harrassing efforts are as source of aggravation as well as of casualties. Frequently he remains hidden in a tree long after his ground troops in the area have been wiped out. Australian units have organised special anti-sniping squads, which have helped to abate the nuisance. But there is a strong feeling in the Allied armies that the sniper menace is exaggerated, and that in Papua a tendency developed to ascribe every stray shot to some purposeful Japanese marksman posted in a tree top and armed with a high velocity rifle. Senior officers here believe the Japanese sniper should be partly countered —and partly ignored. Training for jungle warefare is offering the Allied commanders many problems for consideration—but one may be unexpected. It is the pitch of fitness to which . troops should be brought before embarking on a jungle campaign. Members of the Australian unit, noted for its standard of fitness, expressed regret that they had been brought to the Papuan front trained so fine, when the climate, food and inescapable rigours of the campaign quickly began to pull them down. Illness has been admitted as the cause of a greater loss of manpower than battle casualties, and it is accepted that men in the islands cannot be left too long in action. They must be relieved and rested at intervals much more frequent than in other theatres of war. REALISTIC METHODS. Troops toughened by combat experience even ih the open warfare of the Middle East, were found to fare much better in jungle fighting than those who were previously untried. Some Australian authorities believe this fact strengthens the case for more realistic training, with greater use of noise and live ammunition in battle exercises. War correspondents also emphasise that to fight the Japanese' our troops must have an understanding of the enemy’s mind, tending to encourage subtlety and patience in addition to nerve. “But no realist will suggest our men attain the Japanese mentalial stomach’s capacity to withstand revulsion,” comments the Melbourne “Herald’s” correspondent. The sights and stenches among which the Japanese lived as the Allied armies closed about them in Papua would surely have driven white troops out of their minds. In the end at Sanananda they .left their sick and wounded to do what they could to cover the withdrawal of the fit—and most of them perished miserably among their long since dead.” For those who must stay on the home front the head of the British Army liaison staff in Australia, Major-Gen-eral R. H. Dewing, has preferred some sound advice. He had deplored the British spirit ‘that can gallantly face disaster and yet relax when the threat of immediate danger has passed.” “What we British need,” he said, “is a spirit of fanaticism such as is possessed by and possesses the Poles and Czechs. We all hope the war will end this year. Hoping may do no harm—but it does not win wars.”