THE PACIFIC

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 2 October 1944, Page 5

THE PACIFIC

BIG EVENTS PENDING CORRESPONDENT'S IMPRESSIONS (Rec. 9.50 a.m.) New York, Oct. 1. “The stage is rapidly being cleared for big events in the near future,” says the “Christian Science Monitor” correspondent. Gordon Walker, somewhere in the Pacific. “Earlier Pacific campaigns will seem small compared with these military ventures which are likely to set the whole Pacific ablaze. “A year ago I watched preparations for various campaigns in the Solomons and New Guinea. Task force commanders would assemble a mere handful of invasion craft, perhaps one or two divisions of troops and barely sufficient aircraft to meet minimum requirements. The familiar shoe string on which the war out here was run sometimes stretched so thin that it looked like a silk thread. That shoe string has now grown to be a steel cable.

"Touring various South-West Pacific bases one sees thousands of motorised vehicles where there used to be a hundred. Harbours are often so choked with various types of invasion craft that it is almost impossible to move among them. Dozens ol' new airstrips are so clogged with aircraft that it is not uncommon for a single field to land and send off planes daily at (he rate of one every two or three minutes. One or two tanks which used to waddle in single file through the jungle now give way to dozens advancing abreast. Within the past few weeks the Pacific war has shifted into high gear and it will not be long before it assumes importance *~nd significance second to none.”