IT'S TOUGH IN NEW GUINEA!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 187, 22 January 1943, Page 8

IT'S TOUGH IN NEW GUINEA!

Australian War Correspondent Tells Us Why HANKS to the films and romantic fiction, many people must have got the idea that a war correspondent’s job is both enviable and glamorous. And it is, of course, a more exciting and eventful job than the average. But there is not much of the kind of thing that people usually mean when they talk about glamour if the test is the day-by-day experiences of a war correspondent in the Pacific. "The Listener" had the opportunity recently to interview Osmar White, who has spent several months in the battle area of New Guinea as correspondent for a group of Australian papers, and he gave us an account of what it is like to collect news and get it out of that "very tough country." Here, selected from many others, are three facts which show the dangers and hardships involved: Of the 17 members of the Press hut at Port Moresby, four have now been killed, and five seriously wounded. In four and a-half months, White travelled more than 700 miles on foot, and more than 1,000 miles in small craft, such as canoes. Thirdly, to the Japanese, newspapermen are all spies! But when we saw him, White looked none the worse for his experiences.

HE Pacific war, says Osmar White, is giving newsmen one of the toughest problems of reporting in this century. So primitive and remote are the areas in which many important phases of the campaign are being decided, that even "eye-witness" accounts do not suffice to build an accurate picture of what is really happening. The only way is to go in and see for oneself. "Among recent exploits by Pacific war correspondents, the visit made by Bill Marien, Australian Broadcasting Commission correspondent, and Damien Parer, Department of Information newsreel photographer, to Japanese-occupied Timor, is the classic," he told us. "Marien and Parer, using an undisclosed means of transport, made contact with the Australian guerillas who are still harrying the Japanese garrisons on the island from their secret hilt bases, and inflicting 50 casualties on the enemy for every man they themselves lose." "The broadcaster and the newsreel man lived and fought with the commandos for many weeks and got back with some of the most remarkable documentary film and probably the most sensational and romantic story of the Pacific war." Commandos in New Guinea White himself was. probably the first correspondent of any nationality to live and travel with a commando force. In June last he obtained permission from the Allied command at Port Moresby to organise an expedition to make contact ‘with the Australian independent companies ard scout corps operating in the savage mountains behind Lae and Salamaua. He was joined by Parer, then just returned from the Middle East, where he had filmed the first and second battles in the Western Desert, the Greek campaign, the Crete tragedy, and the British advance into Syria. The two men set off with a retinue of native carriers to cross the island on foot from the south to the north coast, a journey that had been accomplished in peace-time by fewer than half a dozen white men. They chose a route that involved 160 miles of travel by lugger, an 80-miles journey by paddle canoe up an unexplored river, and a trek of nearly 200 miles through the west end of the Owen Stanley Range, where the peaks rise to 13,000 feet and the passes are at between 9,000 and 19,000 feet. Bs : Salt for the Cannibals This route-an ancient native hunting trail-led through the fringes of the notorious Baum country, where the savage little Kukukuku cannibals have

murdered many white prospectors and patrol officers. White remarked mildly that he found the Kukus extremely shy and friendly and very grateful for the two packets of salt he had brought as a present. They ate it greedily in double handfuls! Early in July the correspondents found the first commando post. Some months before the force had been taken by air to a secret airfield in the interior and was now thoroughly familiar with the country and Japanese methods. "Helped by the New Guinea scouts -a magnificent band of men recruited from miners and prospectors who knew every inch of the country-those youngsters had the Japanese jungle fighters absolutely flat footed,’ White said. "We were with them for the classic Salamaua raid when 80 commandos killed more than 200 Japanese, burned the town of Salamaua itself, destroyed valuable dumps, and withdrew without a single casualty." The scouts particularly roused White’s enthusiasm. "When their story is told fully," he declared, "they'll make Buffalo Bill look like a sissy! Forty miles a day on foot through the roughest country in the world is nothing to them. They can move as silently as panthers -and their fighting qualities are as deadly. Most of them have cultivated long patriarchal beards as a protection again bush mites and mosquitoes. "They’re the finest company in the world, but truly dreadful men to walk behind!" Back to Port Moresby The news of the Buna landing trickled through just in time to stop White and Parer setting off to follow the Owen Stanley Range 200 miles south-east to Kokoda. They would have had a Japanese reception committee to meet them had their schedule been set two days earlier. White left Parer to complete his films, sitting in a tree two hundred yards from the Japanese-occupied aerodrome at Alamaua, and made a dash to the secret air-field where he heard a plane was due. He wanted to get back in time to report the battle for the Owen Stanley mountains. He made an 80-mile trip in two days and arrived with an hour or two to spare. The hardest part of the whole ‘adventure, he said, was sitting. still in ‘an unarmed transport plane gaining height to cross the mountains within seven minutes’ flying time of a Jap fighter base. esd Disastrous Air Raid Back at Moresby, he sought permission to accompany the first force to trek (Continued on next page)

WAR CORRESPONDENT (Continued from previous page)

overland to meet the Japs at Kokoda and Isurava. While waiting, he saw the disastrous Japanese raid of August 19 when many Allied transport planes were destroyed on the ground, and the forces out in the hills were threatened with starvation. "Twenty-seven Japanese heavy bombers caught us entirely by surprise and played absolute hell with the field," he said. "That was a primary reason for the rapid defeat of our advance forces by the Japanese. Our preparations were delayed more than a week." Meanwhile Parer got back from the wilds, and the two again linked up for the second Owen Stanley crossing. This time a third man, Chester Wilmot of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, joined them. The three were privileged to be the only correspondents to see the fifst big land battle of the war in the South West Pacific. "We lost at Isurava," White declares, "because the troops we employed had — been in New Guinea only a few weeks | and were exhausted by forced marching through incredibly appalling mountain jungles. The country beat our men-not — the Japs. | "Beat the Country First" "Our people must learn to beat the country first, and consider the Japs second. We made every mistake that could be made. Men went down in droves with malaria and infected sores-with scrub itch and pneumonia and dysentery and tinia. For every man the enemy got New Guinea got ten. "The few weeks I spént with the army of the Owen Stanleys was the grimmest and most terrifying adventure of my life. I don’t want another like it, thanks." When the Australian force was broken and had to retire, White and Wilmot made a dash back to Moresby with the first account, of what had actually happened, running the gauntlet of Jap infiltration patrols. White was suffering from malignant malaria and pneumonia and was invalided south. Parer, though malarial himself, again stayed behind to complete his films. Native carriers were needed for the wounded, and for a week more Parer wandered among the disorganised remnants of the Australian force getting the shots which made that newsreel classic "Road to Kokoda."