ISLAND COMMAND

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 40, 17 February 1943, Page 3

ISLAND COMMAND

AMERICAN'S TRIBUTE

DOMINION SERVICEMEN

(0.C.) NOUMEA, February 8. Major-General Rush B. Lincoln praises the co-operation of MajorGeneral H. E. Barrowclough and his New Zealanders. "They have gone out of their way to fit themselves into our scheme of things and any kind of a call we make on them is immediately met," he said, adding: "I hope they feel just the same way about us."

This is General Lincoln's fortieth year in Uncle Sam's army, which he joined as an enlisted man in 1903. In 1917 he transferred from the infantry to the air force, doing wartime duty at Washington and working in airships of the rigid type, larger in size than those used today for coastal patrol work and to guard the assembly of convoys. It was the time when the Germans still hoped that Zeppelins could destroy London and Paris. General Lincoln's long experience with aviation proved invaluable when Australia was threatened by Japan's drive south. From February to October last, as Chief of the Air Services, he was everywhere between Adelaide, Brisbane and Darwin selecting and directing airfield construction at the greatest possible speed, establishing maintenance units with the limited man-power then available and making the tactical work effective by securing necessary supplies and equipment.

"We simply had to grab and use men where we found them arid put evacuees to work as they came in," he said. "We might have artillery doing air corps work and the signal corps handling supplies. But there was no help for it. We got through all right and the Australians were more than helpful, both with the necessary local work and by starting new manufacturing for us. We found their engineers most useful." General Lincoln expressed his admiration of Australians and New Zealaners as flyers and fighting men. Before coming to New Caledonia, where he replaced Major-General Alexander M. Patch, as island commander, General Lincoln visited New Zealand.