GRIM WAR SCENES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20958, 4 December 1942, Page 3

GRIM WAR SCENES

JUNGLE POST AT NIGHT BRINGING IN WOUNDED SYDNEY, Dec. 1. It is night, and our troops are resting behind the front lines after bitter fighting in the Soputa area, reports Tom Fairhall in a despatch from die New Guinea front to the Sydney Daily Telegraph. The Australians are tossing restlessly in their sleep. To-morrow, before dawn, they will attack again. For two months they have been fighting in this awful jungle war. In a crude native hut thatched with tatted Kunai grass two American doctors stripped to the waist are operating on an American private wounded onlv half an hour before. All around the tropic night is split by the noise of war. Deepest note is the thunder of big 80mm. American mortars, interspersed with the chatter of American Brownings and the crack of Australian Brens.. It is the Americans’ turn to-night, their patrols are working into the jungle on an infiltrating job. In the bright moonlight, a party of wild-haired natives staggers to the clearing, bearing a crude 1 litter ol saplings and grass on which reclines a wounded Australian. The natives are daubed with mud to the waist and they look tired. But they lower their burden gently near the crude shelter, where American volunteers are helping Australian doctors with the stream of wounded coming in from Gona and the Soputa track. In the cither hut the two American’ doctors are talking. / By the side of the rough operating table, made by the natives, water boils in the camp dixie that is the steriliser. Men stand around with torches to give enough light for the operation. Every time the full moon comes i from behind the clouds the Japanese open up with wild fire. The doctors calmly go on with their work. I Another party of mud-caked 1 natives comes in with a stretcher.

One day the people of Australia might be able to repay these simple, honest, faithful natives, who are saving many Australian lives in this dreadful wilderness.

The sleeping Australians toss restlessly. Tomorrow they will be fighting again.