JUNGLE ORDEAL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 194, 18 August 1942, Page 4

JUNGLE ORDEAL

AUSTRALIAN RAIDERS

ATTACK ON JAPANESE (0.C.) SYDNEY, August 15. Australians who made surprise attacks on the Japs, on the north coast of New Guinea had to force their way through swamps of thick, black, foul-smelling mud, into which they frequently plunged up to their armpits. "We felt like flies on sticky paper," said a N.S.W. gunner in a mortar crew which blew an enemy strongpost to smithereens. "The swamps, from which thick clouds of mosquitoes rose, seemed to be without end. Often we would step on to what appeared firm ground, only to have it give way and to be sucked down into the black, sticky mess, until mates pulled >us out. Camps were set in jungle so thick that the sun was seldom seen. Everything was wet or damp, and the men almost forgot the feeling of dry clothes."

Some of the tracks covered by the party in this most perilous battleground in the world were blandly described as "very difficult." On one so marked the men had to crawl along the edge of a raging river, clinging by the fingertips and toes to the slightest holds.