BACK FROM DEAD

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21400, 10 May 1944, Page 3

BACK FROM DEAD

WOUNDED FIJIAN THREE NIGHTS IN JUNGLE BAYONETTED BY JAP. (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent.) (Noon.) BOUGAINVILLE, May G. Thought by his fellow soldiers to have been killed in action witn the Japanese, Esivorosi Kete, of the Fijian military forces, lay two days and three nights seriously wounded in the Bougainville jungle. Now, a month later, he is fast recovering in the New Zealand hospital in the Solomons. ■ In the last days of March Kete, who was on patrol, was hit by a Japanese bullet, which entered behind his ear and tore through his head, coming out by the side of the nose. Kete lay unconscious where he fell and his patrol, which was fighting in a moving battle at the time, assumed him dead. It was impossible to recover his body. Hours later, after dark, Kete was aroused by the blast of Allied shells falling in his area. He recovered sufficiently to roll laboriously into a shallow foxhole, where he lay throughout the night and all the following day. Two Japanese patrolling removed his boots and emergency chocolate ration. Kete could not move, nor could the Fijians get near where he had fallen. Through the second night and into the second day he was subject to further artillery shelling and was again found by passing Japanese who bayonetted him in each breast and in the arm. In the last stages of weakness but still conscious, Kete was found by two Fijians on the third day and brought to an American hospital. The attention of three specialists of whose untiring efforts on Kete and many other Fijians, officers of the Fijian forces speak in unstinted praise, resulted in such a splendid recovery that within three weeks Kete was walking to his meals in hospital and attending picture shows at night. He was then evacuated to a New Zealand hospital.