JUNGLE WARFARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 August 1943, Page 4

JUNGLE WARFARE

ALLIED TACTICS IN NEW GUINEA SLOW ADVANCE ON SALAMAUA. JAPANESE NOW THROWN BACK ON INNER DEFENCES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Receiveci This Day, 10.0 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. The Japanese forces defending their northern New Guinea base of Salarnaua have been compelled to abandon their outer perimeter defences and to fall back to* an inner defence line. A general advance of almost ten miles has been made by American and Australian forces in the past month’s land fighting. These gains have been made by Allied troops in numbers which at first appear to be utterly inadequate to the task.

Discussing the formless nature of this New Guinea land fighting, an Australian war correspondent says: “The warfare in this area is not a matter of fixed and planned frontal attacks, but a series of seemingly minor patrol actions, knitted in a pattern which does not become clear except by what is in the long run achieved. The object of every patrol is to find a weak spot in the enemy’s line to infiltrate and then take and hold it and to proceed to the next weak spot and deal with it in the same manner. When the shooting begins. it is all at close range. We do not know where the Japanese defences are, perhaps, until we are within five yards of them. The whole secret of the steady Allied advance is the control of communications and tracks. Cut the enemy’s track and he must fall back.”

Supplies are all-important in this type of warfare. Those for the Allied ground forces are .parachuted from planes on to special dropping grounds and transported from these to the front by carriers. The Allied air forces at the same time maintain a relentless pounding of the enemy’s supply lines, concentrating on his barge transport system and dumps. Success in these operations has been an important contributory. factor to the Allied gains of the past month.