ADMIRED & PRAISED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 November 1943, Page 3

ADMIRED & PRAISED

NEW ZEALAND & FIJIAN SCOUTS SERVING IN SOUTH PACIFIC. MANY NOTABLE EXPLOITS ■ IN JUNGLE. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 19. American troops fighting in the Solomons have a fervent admiration for the South Pacific scouts—New Zealand and Fijian commandos who are so often their eyes and ears. Specially trained for jungle fighting and reconnaissance, these men have brought back valuable military information. They have also swift guerilla sorties at selected poiA, invariably inflicting heavy casualties on the Japanese at small cost to themselves. “These steady, cool New Zealand officers and men with their Fijian comrades have done their job without a fanfare, without recognition —except from those who serve,” writes a United States army official correspondent in the Solomons. “In the final stages of the battle for Munda airfield, New Georgia, the scouts were attached to the American 37 th Division, whose commander, Ma-jor-General Robert Beighler, was so impressed that he commended them in an official letter from his headquarters.” The scouts were trained in Fiji, and American soldiers credit them with possessing the faculty of being able actually to smell out the Japanese. They arrived in the Solomons in time to participate in the extermination of the Japanese on ' Guadalcanal. Here they made sorties against the enemy’s rear, infiltrating into his positions at night, destroying guns and equipment and demoralising his forces, thus paving the way for the American drive along the coast. . When the American troops occupied the Russell Islands, the scouts headed the invasion forces, but their first major role came in the New Georgia campaign. Since then they have been

prominent in every Allied move in the Solomons. The commander of the scouts is Major Charles Tripp, described by a United States Army correspondent as a “sandy-haired, taciturn, pleasant Scot who was a Canterbury farmer—a rancher —from that double island country down under.” The second in command is Captain David Williams, a “curlyhaired farmer rancher” from Hawke’s Bay. Both Tripp and Williams performed many notable exploits of jungle fighting, but the correspondent says he had to find out about their deeds from the men who served under them. The two officers were voluble only in praise of their troops. >