HARD FIGHTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1943, Page 4

HARD FIGHTING

IN ATTACK ON MUNDA AMERICANS USING LIGHT TANKS. JAPANESE GARRISON TIGHTLY ENCLOSED. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. “United States troops are slashing forward from several directions in their drive against Munda, but the Japanese apparently are determined to fight to the last 4 man,” a naval spokesman at South Pacific headquarters told a war correspondent. He indicated that the Japanese, probably by employing small barges at night, had> succeeded in reinforcing Munda. However the number of reinforcements was not large.

The American advance against the airfields defences had been made with the aid of light tanks, wherever the jungle terrain allowed. Our troops were finding it necessary to seek out and kill every Japanese soldier, since there was no surrendering. The spokesman added that the capture of the Munda airfield would not necessarily mean the end of all Japanese resistance in New Georgia, since remnants of the garrison might escape to the hills. Most of the 5,000 defenders of the Japanese air base have now been compressed into' a square mile of territory around the airstrips and the Lambeti plantation. Fierce fighting continues as the Americans increase their pressure against the enemy’s outer ring of machine-gun and mortar posts. The newest 500-yard advance is the biggest gain made since July 19, when, ns a preliminary to full-scale assaults, the Americans expanded their beachhead at Lilio, east of Munda.