EXHAUSTED TROOPS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 234, 3 October 1942, Page 4

EXHAUSTED TROOPS

ORDEAL IN NEW GUINEA (0.C.) SYDNEY, September 28. South Australian troops, missing 13 days in the jungle, marched into an Australian outpost as if they were returning from a training march, writes Tom Fairhall to the Daily Telegraph from Somewhere in New Guinea. The party had been cut off by the Japanese advance in the Efogi area, 44 miles by air from Moresby. Though almost exhausted from lack of food and rest, the troops formed threes when they saw the Red Cross of a regimental aid post a mile ahead. As they emerged from a jungle mule pad, they quickened their slow, unsteady walk to marching pace until trucks came out to meet them. The party brought 14 wounded with them on stretchers through some of the most difficult country in the ranges. Three of the wounded died on the journey. Hacked Trails The troops were twice forced to by-pass strong Japanese forces astride jungle trails. Once, when they encountered a Japanese sniper patrol, a soldier was shot. They were without food for the first six daj's of the journey, and were always short of ammunition. They lost an average of two and a half stone. Transport of wounded retarded the troops' progress so much that, at times, they travelled less than a mile and a half in a day's march. In the last week they travelled only five miles. To avoid the Japanese, they had to hack their own trails through the jungle. One night they camped so close to the Japanese that they were kept awake by catcalls and cries from Japanese troops. The Japanese also sounded bugles until late at night. Often they saw low-flying friendly aircraft, but the jungle was so thick that efforts to signal with mirrors were not observed. Once a party carrying a wounded man on a stretcher was balked by a steep 1500-yard incline to a mountain top. Sergeant Paul Robertson, of Unley, a South Australia inter-State footballer, hoised the wounded man to his back and crawled up the slope on hands and knees. If he had slipped, both would have crashed to death on rocks below. Narrow Escapes I watched the troops lining up for a chocolate and cigarette issue at the regimental aid post. Several men showed me steel helmets dented and punctured by bullets from Japanese snipers. One soldier had a neat hole in the lobe of his left ear, caused by a bullet from a sniper. Describing his long trek as he bathed his feet at the post, a young officer said: "There were times when we thought it would be curtains and slow music. "We reached a native village the first day, but just as we were sitting down to supper on emergency rations, the Japanese opened fire on us. "We pushed on to the next village, but found the Japanese in possession. "On the sixth day we came to an abandoned village, where we found yams and nuts. "We filled our haversacks next day with three days' supp?y of yams. A tew days later we met Australians on patrol. They gave us their chocolate and rations." The officer said that the party trudged most of the time in clothes drenched by constant rains.