JOY COMES TO THE FILIPINOS ON LUZON

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 29, 3 February 1945, Page 4

JOY COMES TO THE FILIPINOS ON LUZON

LUZON (Philippines), Jan. 24. ■yOU can hit an easy 55 miles an * hour with perfect safety on the concrete highway behind the lines, where the American Sixth Army is halfway to Manila. Not all the roads are like that one, but generally the main highways are of concrete or bitumen. Secondary roads are allweather routes and rock-surfaced.

When your jeep purrs along so swiftly you begin to realise what this network of road communication means to an invading army. It explains why the Americans were able to make their swift 60 miles thrust from Lingayen Gulf in a fortnight. An Australian Army officer attached to the Public Relations staff at General Headquarters covered 160 miles in 10 hours while collecting war correspondents' copy on scattered fronts. This despite many traffic hold-ups and waiting time at various centres.

It is a mobile war and the Yanks are geared for it. Their engineers have done a marvellous job working right up to the front line. Numerous rivers have had to be crossed by this mechanised army, and where present facilities were inadequate the engineers made them adequate with their bridging equipment. The Japanese made a smart job of destruction at Villasis, where they wrecked the bridge across the Agno River, but cur advance was not held up. A strong pontoon structure replaced the bridge almost overnight. Railways Also Used Our capture of Urdaneta, on the main north-south road (Highway Three) was the key to the present situation. It put our supply lines on to this fine highway, whereas previously we had had to rely upen secondary roads. Nothing has stopped us since then except the usual consolidation of ground overrun and the protection of our flanks, as our flying columns ate up mile after mile. We have, too, the use of railway lines in captured territory, a valuable supply medium. First of these supply trains left its loading base to the cheers of American railway units which had arrived with the early fighting troops. A general and two colonels took a short ride on the locomotive as it pulled its freight out cf the station. They shook hands with the crew, and watched it disappear round a bend in the track. On both sides of the highway a broad plain is under intensive and orderly cultivation. Filipinos areback in their fields, ploughing and planting crops. Were it not for the army supplies cluttering the highway it would be difficult to imagine that' the front line is only a few short miles away. Densely Populated Many Filipinos live in these parts, for the central plains of Luzon are the most densely populated countrysides in the Philippines. Traffic passes by towns and scores of villages lining the highway. There is no doubting the new joy that has come into the lives of the people. They have hundreds of American flags which they had secreted for three years. They are now wearing clothes that also had been hidden from the Japanese.

Openly on the roads, the Filipinos carry sacks of rice, a share of their harvest that the Japanese had not seen. They know that this new army will not take it from them. Across the highway are two huge cane arches which the farming community set up when their deliverers came.

By M. C. WARREN—Special to The Auckland Star

i> They display signs like "Welcome To Our Glorious Liberators" and "Welcome To The U.S. Army." Even if all these signs of local jubilation escape your notice, you must be impressed by another sight. The Filipinos are grouped along a road where the asphalt had caved in from lack of maintenance over a period of years and from use by the convoys of the invading force. They are filling in the holes with dirt and noting with satisfaction how their efforts are speeding our supply columns.

To escape from shellfire as the American approached, the inhabitants of towns and villages nearer the front fled into the fields and off the highways when the Japanese were withdrawing. Now one sees an amazing transformation. The communities have returned to their towns and villages and are milling round in their hundreds.

More civilians still are coming in, bringing with them bundles of prized possessions. Some stagger under pieces of furniture that they had concealed during the Japanese occupation for fear that the Japanese would confiscate them. An occasional horse or caribao-drawn cart shows up, piled high with the possessions of several families. A City In Ruins Dozens of wrecked Japanese trucks and cars are evidence of the effectiveness of the Allied aerial attack. The Japanese withdrawal must have been far from orderly. We see at Tarlac how a ruthless enemy has left devastation in his wake.

This city had a pre-war population of 50,000. To-day it is in ruins. It is, or was, the largest city in the Philippines we have yet entered. I say "was" because many homes, three hotels, four large schools and the provincial capitol building are burnt-out shells. The Japanese troops had applied the torch thoroughly to civilian and public buildings, as well as to military stores and other installations.

We do not like to think of the possibility of such wanton destruction to cities still in enemy hands.