ENEMY REINFORCED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 24, 28 July 1943, Page 5

ENEMY REINFORCED

WAR OF EXTERMINATION (Special P.A. Correspondent.) Rec. 1 p.m. SYDNEY, July 27. A naval spokesman at South Pacific headquarters told war correspondents that the Japanese, probably by employing small barges at night, had succeeded in reinforcing Munda. , However, the number of reinforcements was not large. The American advance against the airfields and defences had been made with the aid of light tanks, wherever the jungle terrain allowed. Our troops were finding it necessary to seek out and kill every ■Japanese soldier, since there was no surrendering. He added that the capture of Munda airfield would not necessarily mean the end of all Japanese resistance in New Georgia, because remnants of the garrison might escape to the hills. Most of the 5000 defenders of the Japanese air base had now been compressed into a square mile of territory around the air strips and the Lambeti plantation. Fierce fighting continues as the Americans increase the pressure against the enemy's outer ring of machine-gun and mortar posts. The new advance of 500 yards is the biggest gain the Americans have made since July 19, when as a preliminary to full-scale assaults they expanded their beachhead at Lilio, east of Munda.