GALLANT EXPLOIT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 November 1943, Page 4

GALLANT EXPLOIT

AMERICAN PARATROOPS ON CHOISEUL successful Diversion AT ODDS OF FIVE TO ONE ■ (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.35 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Outnumbered by five to one, several hundred United States paratroops on Choiseul Island, in the Solomons, had to cut their way through the Japanese lines to reach the beach, where escape barges were waiting. These paratroops, used as commandos, landed on Choiseul on October 28 and for a week carried cut a series of guerilla attacks, creating a diversion for the main Allied landing on Bougainville Island (20 miles north-west of Choiseul) on November 1.

The paratroops killed at least 143 Japanese for the loss of ten dead and 16 wounded. They also destroyed several hundred tons of Japanese stores. Establishing a mountain hideout, the paratroops, under their 30-year-old commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Krulak, made two main strikes. The first was against the enemy base at Sangigai and the second was at Choiseul Bay. Then, when the Japanese garrison realised that they outnumbered the raiders five to one, they began a systematic hunt, but the Americans, aided by fighter planes and patrol torpedoboats, finally fought their way out on November 3. The returned men told war correspondents in the Solomons that they had encountered Japanese marines, well fed and well armed. Their combat experience showed that the Japanese would always escape unless trapped, when they would fight to the bitter end. Enemy snipers caused nine of the ten American fatalities, the Americans, retaliating, used razor blades to trap snipers. At prepared ambush spots, the paratroops stuck blades ten feet up in the bark of trees. When the Japanese troops filed into ambush, the paratroops made a noise, so that enemy snipers were sent up the trees to fire against therh. These snipers quickly scrambled down the trees when they encountered the razor blades, and as they examined their lacerated hands and legs, were picked off by the paratroops.