GREEN-CLAD JAPS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 64, 12 September 1942, Page 8

GREEN-CLAD JAPS

TACTICS IN NEW GUINEA

WAR IN THE JUNGLE

j[By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) ' <Rec. 2 p.m.) SYDNEY, Sept. 12. If the Japanese reach Sogeri they will be in New Guinea's rubber country, thus threatening one of the last resources of raw rubber remaining to the: United Nations. This is pointed out by Edward Angly. "Chicago Sun" correspondent in the South Pacific. Sogeri lies at the northern foothills of the Owen Stanley Ranges, only 25 miles by road from Port Moresby. "With skill and hardihood the greenclad, sandalled Japanese infantrymen have scaled mountains, not by following and fighting along the white man's trail, but by avoiding it and slipping through supposedly " impenetrable jungle," writes Angly. "Their aptitude and toughness, both of body and fighting spirit, have cut a path through the almost imoassable mountains of New Guinea, just as those same qualities had impregnated .the impregnable Singapore. ~„ . "They scaled the unscalable cliffs of Batan and made tracks through the trackless jungles of Malaya and Burma." . Australians engaged in the recent fighting against the advancing Japanese say it is impossible to see the green-uniformed enemy against the jungle background. "We ambushed them, but the most we could do was to act as nuisance patrols," said one wounded soldier. "They seemed to come up in hundreds. As fast as we cut them down more took their places. The Allied Air Force has strafed the enemy from tree-top height, and has also wrought havoc with his supply lines. From now on the battle will develop as one of supply. Angly points out that after Sogeri the country is "more suitable to the type of open warfare, familiar in both the classroom and manoeuvres, than : to jthe stealthy man-hunt which enables the Japanese to cross the Owen Stanley Ranges. In the lowlands the invader is likely to find much more formidable fire-power than "the weary mountain troops could use m the vjungle heights, where there are no roads for either beasts or motors to haul the guns or the white man's ' Heavier commissariat." The "Sydney \ Morning Herald's" military correspondent points out that General Rowell is "a war-proven leader whose command, must inspire confidence among the public as well as in the fighting . ranks." At 47 he is the youngest Lieutenant-General the Australian Army has ever had. •The: same "Herald" writer supports the view that "the greatest danger in the present situation is that the Japanese may attempt a converging movement by sea as well as by land, and the major threat to Port Moresby must still be envisaged as coming from seawardsj" American comment continues to stress the desirability of a unified command in the South Pacific. The "New York Herald-Tribune," in an editorial, poims out that the value of the positions at Tulagi and Milne Bay and Port Moresby can be immensely enhanced by closer co-ordination, and 0* their value can be destroyed or the positions lost piecemeal if they are operated in a piecemeal fashion, yet the „ Solomons and most of the naval forces are under a command distinct from that of General Mac Arthur."