JUNGLE FIGHTERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 April 1943, Page 4

JUNGLE FIGHTERS

FIJIAN COMMANDO UNITS ADMIRABLE RECORD. POTENTIAL MATERIAL AGAINST JAPANESE. (Official War Correspondent in Pacific) SOUTH PACIFIC BASE. The best-trained jungle fighters ih the South Pacific are still, after as many as three years of strenuous preparation, living for the day when they may go north to meet the Japanese. They are the combatant units of the Fiji Military Force, and they consist of New Zealanders, local British and Fijians. Both during training and on the actual field ol battle they have shown that they are potentially some of the best fighting material available to pit against the Japanese. Already a special party of guerilla fighters from one of the Fijian Commando units has been sent to the Solomons, and it has established an admirable record in action on Guadalcanal. What I have seen of them on their home ground lately convinces me that they are capable of building a reputation comparable with that won by the Maoris in the Middle East.

The New Zealanders, together with the local British, form the backbone of the Fiji forces. The commanding officer is Brigadier J. G. C. Wales, who served on Gallipoli and in France in the last war and later in India, and whom New Zealanders perhaps know best as a leading x Auckland Rugby football referee. His commissioned and non-commissioned officers, together with the rank and file of some units such as coastal and anti-aircraft artillery, are mostly New Zealanders. The native Fijians, however, form the bulk of the infantry battalions and Commando Units to which they have also contributed some outstanding officers and N.C.O’s. Indian transport units and native labour battalions are also included.

With the threat of an enemy invasion of Fiji now well in the background, the force is training with an eye on the possibility of fighting the Japanese in distant jungles rather than in defence of its own shores. No political obstacles stand in the way of its serving overseas, and the officers and men themselves are more than willing to do so. Their morale, in fact, has been given a new lease of life by the mere possibility of overseas action.

LOVE OF CEREMONIAL. The traditional love of the Fijians for ceremonial makes their paradeground drill and movements a joy to watch, but some sceptics have believed that that was about as far as their military prowess would go. Whether they would stand up to land and air bombardment and the other rigours of even semi-static warfare was a different matter. The full answer can still be found only in the test of actual battle, but already scepticism has turned towards satisfaction and high hopes because of the performance of the “sample force” on Guadalcanal and experience on the training grounds.

In mock attacks under live artillery and machine-gun fire the Fijian has shown himself to be more “nerveless” than the average white man. Officers told me how they had watched native troops stand up unflinchingly to the crack of six-inch guns—a shock sufficient to give almost any European an involuntary start; how they had seen them crawl ever closer to the shellbursts of a barrage rather than lie where they were. In one exercise, when engineers secretly blew up a bamboo bridge, a member of the attacking force nearly went up with it. He might have been excused for retiring in alarm, but instead he merely dropped to the ground as he had been trained to do, and then crawled forward to investigate. To him, the battle was real.

ENDURANCE STAGGERING. The endurance of this little army is staggering. I visited one battalion which had just completed a 100-mile trek under battle conditions in six days. Entirely on foot, and carrying all their food, personal weapons, Vickers guns, mortars and ammunition, the troops marchea for five days through rugged, bush-clad country —along rough tracks, across streams and over a succession of ridges rising as high as 1100 feet. They fought a series of actions along this strenuous 80-mile course, and on the sixth day they marched a further 20 miles by road. Finally they insisted on a ceremonial parade for the brigadier, and marched past him in review order, with such splendid precision that it seemed they had never left the parade ground. Only one man had fallen out by choice during the ardous trek, and he was scorned by his comrades. I saw native troops ranging from raw recruits to soldiers who had had three years’ training. I saw them putting all their hearts and strength into bayonet practice, and their skill into the firing of Vickers guns, rifles and tommy-guns. Everywhere I was impressed by their bearing, their discipline, their eagerness and quickness to learn. These attributes, together with their unquestionable endurance, are admittedly not indisputable evidence of their fitness for any kind of modern warfare . Real action is the final test. IN GOOD HANDS.

Faith in the prowess of the Fiji forces may most logically be centred in one kind of warfare which the Japanese have brought to the Pacific —the battle in the jungle, the battle in i which stealth and bush sense and the quickness of the hand and the eyes ere stronger immediate weapons than the plane and the big gun. These things are an inborn part of the Fijian, and they give him a sure advantage over the Japanese. But the training of the force has by no means been limited to this semiguerilla type of jungle warfare. Its leaders are confident that it could successfully be used, like the United States marines, in all forms of island campaigning, beginning with the assault from the sea and the establishment of bridgeheads. Discipline, leadership and knowledge of weapons and tactics have been passed on to the Fijians by the New Zealanders, and in their turn the New Zealanders have learned jungle sense and endurance from the natives. The New Zealanders have made ideal leaders ahd instructors; having seen what they have achieved, and remembering that they are blood brothers of the men we have in the Middle East, I know, that the Fijians could not be in better hands. )