SHARP SKIRMISHING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 June 1943, Page 3

SHARP SKIRMISHING

IN NORTHERN NEW GUINEA LOSS RATIO MUCH AGAINST feNEMY. AIR RAID ON SALAMAUA. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 25. Only desultory fighting is now occurring between the Japanese and Australian ground forces around Mubo. Four days of sharp skirmishing cost the enemy more than 200 men killed or wounded. The Australian casualties are described as “very light by comparison.” The Australians have moved up artillery, and both sides have been using mertars. A new point in the Mubo battle area, Woody Island, figures in the latest reports of the fighting. This is an “island” in the centre of a dry creek bed just north of the Mubo village. While the land forces were engaged around Mubo, General MacArthur’s attack planes on ’Thursday hit hard against Salamaua, the coastal terminal of the enemy’s forward supply line. With the exception of a Beaufighter raid on an enemy aerodrome on Selaru Island, in the Tenimber Group. 300 miles north of Darwin, where two Japanese bombers were destroyed on the ground, tliis is the sole air activity reported in General MacArthur's latest communique.

“DAMNED AMERICANS” JAPANESE BITTERLY RESENT DEFEAT. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, June 25. Broadcasting a description of the New Guinea fighting, the Tokio radio admitted that the Allies control the air in that sector. The broadcast gave an eyewitness account of a Japanese defeat by "damned American soldiers” in the Kumusi River area, in which the Yazawa unit suffered almost total loss. “Boeing planes pressed on our soldiers, and the savage, beastlj' Americans showered bombs,” said the eyewitness. “Enemy planes constantly raided our line. The noise of their motors made it seem as though the heavens were upside down."