CAMPAIGN IN NEW GUINEA

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24445, 20 December 1944, Page 3

CAMPAIGN IN NEW GUINEA

♦- ■ AUSTRALIAN TROOPS WIN IMPORTANT VICTORIES (Rec. 6.5 p.m.) MELBOURNE. Dec. 19. “Australian troops have smashed Japanese power in New Guinea in the last 12 months and by their successes have made possibl. the recent Allied victories in the south-west Pacific,’’ said an Australian Army spokesman. He was commenting on a speech by Judge Ellis at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, in which he expressed regret that "through no fault of their own Australian soldiers had been allowed to participate in little fighting during that period.” Judge Ellis spoke during a service arranged by the Gallipoli Legion of Anzacs in commemoration of the twenty-ninth anniversary of the evacuation of Gallipoli. Apparently, said the Army spokesman, Judge Ellis was not aware that 11 months ago the 7th Australian Division fought on Shaggy Ridge one of the major battles in the New Guinea campaign, and that up to last June Australian troops had captured Bogadjim, Madang, Alexishafen, and Hansa Bay. In recent months Australian patrols had exterminated the Japanese from strongholds which they had occupied since comparatively early days in' 1942. Australian troops, for most ol the three years since Japan entered the war, had carried the bulk of the fighting in the southwest Pacific area, and none of the Australian victories had been made without cost. Men, battle weary and sick from tropical diseases, physically exhausted, and sadly depleted in numbers, should not be denied an opportunity to rehabililate themselves.