Airfield, Hospital Ready For Use

Northern Advocate, 26 April 1944, Page 5

Airfield, Hospital Ready For Use

SYDNEY. This. Day. Allied war and transport planes have already landed on Tadji airfield at Aitape, New Guinea. Aitape is one oC the three points where General MacArthur's invasion troops landed last Saturday morning. R.A.A.F. works units which accompanied the landing force had the battered Tadji airfield ready- for use 42 hours after it had been captured. They worked from 2 o’clock on Saturday afternoon—with only one respite. This came at 5 o'clock cn Sunday morning when Japanese bullets kept the working parties under cover for 90 mnutes. Three hours after they landed on Aitape, Australian airmen had set up a selfcontained hospital complete with operating theatre and equipped with refrigerators, sterilising plant,. X-ray, power plant and kitchen. Originally designed for quick transfer on Douglas transports the hospital weighs 35 tens and can accommodate 80 patients. Leaving Madang?

Because of the new landings at Aitape and in Dutch New Guinea, the Japanese are believed to be withdrawing from Madang, 280 miles south-west of Aitape. Australian troops driving northwards along the New Guinea coast, advanced within a few miles of Madang without encountering opposition. These Australians in Madang area .and Americans in Hollandia—Aitapeg-rea, form a pincers, between the jaws of which fiC.OOO Japanese are trapped. Dutch officers and officials of the Netherlands Indies civil administration went ashore with invasion troops at Hollandia—the first Dutch territory to be recaptured. Police boys who accompanied the officials will round up native villagers and try to communicate with Dutch residents believed to have fled to the mountains when the Japanese seized the area two years ago. Duce Meets Fuehrer

(Rec. 1 p.m.) LONDON, April 25. Hitler and Mussolini have had another meeting at Hitler's headquarters. According to the German News Agency they talked in the spirit of old friendship. “Political, military and economic problems concerning the two countries and their common aims were discussed. The Duce informed the Fuehrer of the decision of the Republican Fascist Government, which is the only representative of the entire Italian people, further to activate the war effort by the side of adherents to the Tripartite Pact. ' The determination of the Tripartite Powers to finish the war victoriously against the Bolsheviks in the East and Jews and plutocrats in the West, and to guarantee to the nations a life based on a new and just order were expressed in a statement by the Fuehrer about deployment of forces and the straining of all resources for the coming decision.” Narrow Escaue

According to the Italian underground newspaper "Resistenze,” Mussolini escaped injury when a bomb thrown at his car on the outskirts of Verona, exploded 12 yards away, reports the Berne correspondent of the British United Press. 'The bombthrower was arrested almost immediately and executed. A tribunal of Italian patriots previously sentenced Mussolini to death.