FIGHTING IN THE JUNGLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 47, 24 February 1945, Page 11

FIGHTING IN THE JUNGLE

NO GLAMOUR FOR AUSTRALIAN

PATROL

"There are no ruined towns in the wake of the Australians' advance to make world headlines. There are only knoll fortresses of log pillboxes, razorback strong-posts and foul swamps. Once the Japanese held them and fought for them with the tenacity of the Germans defending their towns, arsenals, and highways. Here it is not tanks, but 'foot-sloggers,' men whose muscles in greenclad wiry bodies carry the war into morass and mountain where ever the enemy can be found."

"The daily" knoll fights make another Gallipoli, the swamp duels another Buna, and Tsimba another Shaggy Ridge, taken after three weeks of heavy fighting," continues Mr. Houldicott, the "Sydney Sun" correspondent on Bougainville.

j "Just after dawn a section descends from the company perimeter to clear its booby-traps on the slopes *and the tin rattles across approaches. There are fewer grenades than were set with trip-wires the previous night. Some are in shrapnel fragments in the company position, for the Jap has discovered there is a safety margin of [four seconds for throwing after the I trigger lever clicks. "A patrol of twenty steals out in single file. It is last seen wading knee-deep in the fast-running creek on the right of our position. The rear man gives a last wave to the knoll as the patrol is swallowed by the jungle. There are no liberated people to cheer them on to further conquests. Theirs is a cold-blooded, lonely task. "The leading scout hacks a narrow lane through the packed undergrowth with his machete. Behind him the patrol fans out slightly. LETS THEM STEAL BY. "Toe down and heel following, the patrol moves with the stiff slowness of automatons. Now and again the scout poises in a listening attitude. The patrol stops, too—bodies rigidly tensed like pointers on the scent—a crosstrack. bHe raises his hand to halt the patrol as a low jabbering and swishing of scrub is heard fifty yards away on the right. "During the next five minutes three other parties pass the crouching patrol. They are heading towards the company's position, but the patrol does not fire. It has orders to find a jungle road somewhere out beyond the swamps just ahead. "A lighter green in the foliage ahead indicates a stream or a swamp. If it is a dip, there is a rise beyond, and possibly a pill-box. On the previous day one platoon lost their scout and carried home two wounded from a similar position. He must be careful. It is his responsibility to detect an ambush, and he will be the first victim if he fails. It is pouring rain now, and steam rises from the humid ground to hover in filmy clouds beneath the treetops. "This scout has changed since I first saw him at Torokina five weeks ago. Then he looked his 20 years. Now yellow with atebrin and lean-featured, he is a veteran of 11 patrols, 11 ordeals that have made him a man beyond his years. He is taciturn, too, except for the night in the company perimeter when he gave a description of the jungle with a realism that no botanist could impart with high-sounding titles for the maze of growth. "I tried to see fear in his face, but there was only a matter-of-factness. He described in detail the various climbing vines and festoons of creepers, likened to green abscesses protruding from trunk and branch. He hated them most because they were ideal hideouts for snipers. "In the shadows of those hundred feet monstrosities, there was a greener l maze of huge leafy shrubs pressing

down on the heads of the smaller fry. Bright green lizards darted long tongues at insects. Six-inch spiders snared their prey on great silken webs. Sluggard eight-inch millipedes with grey-black armoured backs; slim ringed snakes and flat-sided tree-climbing reptiles green as the foliage that hid them, added to his eerie word picture.

"There were the same sago-lined swamps of stagnant foul-smelling water—the hide-out of the crocodiles. It was different to the rolling farm lands that made European battlefields.

"When the patrol had been out seven hours without anything to indicate what was happening, anxiety grew in the company perimeter. Just on dusk came the sound of fighting 2000 yards out. Ears tuned to the sound of combat distinguished the' quick blur of the Owen gun, the crack of the enemies' rifles, the slow and regular fire of the Jap 'woodpecker,' and the louder booms of grenades. It lasted half an hour. Then came silence. ''Darkness enveloped everything. The patrol would not attempt to return in darkness. Nobody mentioned it in the perimeter. Mates kept their thoughts and fears to themselves. Already eyes from listening posts watched. Trigger fingers were ready to shoot anything that moved inside the wire. "At 10 p.m. the sounds of combat were renewed. It broke out afresh at dawn from the same position. Late that afternoon, 48 hours after the patrol had disappeared with rations for two meals, a runner staggered in with news that the patrol had cleared and was holding a Japanese battalion position. It flanked an important strategical road—one of few in the island. RESULT OF THE BATTLE. "When we reached the position occupied by the patrol, through swamps where crocodiles basked, past enemy foxholes by-passed by the patrol, along muddy tracks almost overgrown by jungle, we found them dug in amid the conquered pill-boxes. "On the fringe of the position were tin rattles which had failed to warn] the enemy and two aprons of barbed wire through which the patrol had cut a lane to attack the first pill-boxes whence came the jabber of enemy occupants." | "There were spent cartridge cases everywhere, and bodies lay grotesque-1 ly twisted throughout the defence. Wounded Australians lay on a ground sheet in the hut. Weapon pits hastily dug by the patrol contained water up to the ground level. "Faces bristling with a two-days beard and lined with strain looked I with reddened eyeballs from beneath the misshapen slouch hats. The oncegreen uniforms were dyed a muddy brown, and weapons were already showing the first signs of rust. "All night the patrol had crouched in the water-logged holes. A few had slept uneasily for half-hour periods with only their heads showing above the water. They told of the first fight and the long hours of waiting for the inevitable counter-attack; of how the Japs had infiltrated into the lower end of the perimeter because there were not enough Australians to garrison all points. "Then the third fight at dawn and the flnal consolidation. The patrol had won through.