RUTHLESS SPEED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24896, 21 April 1942, Page 6

RUTHLESS SPEED

JAPANESE IN BURMA CAMPAIGN OF TERROR The havoc which their supremacy in the air has enabled the Japanese to create among both the civilian population and the defending forces in Burma is described in this graphic story cabled by the Sydney Morning Herald's war correspondent from the Irrawaddy front on April 6. While bombers and fighters race ahead, Japanese and an ever-growing army of Burmese mercenaries in bullock carts, on bicycles, and on foot are pressing towards the oilfields in a determined bid to conquer all the lowlands of Burma before the wet season, beginning in May. Not once have the invaders paused to consolidate newly-won positions. The Japanese war lords have sacrificed their countrymen and their Burmese allies ruthlessly to achieve the speed of movement which has been one of the keystones of their success in this almost roadless country of paddy fields and jungles. More even than in the trackless desert swift changes have mingled friends and foes, leaving them time after time to find or fight a way back to the safety of their own lines. Signals Officer's Escape

I have just talked with a signals officer who at dusk blithely drove a station wagon down the road far into the Japanese lines. A convoy of bullock carts barred his way. Indignantly he stopped, jumped out of the wagon, and shook a man who was sleeping at the roadside near the first bullock cart. "I thought he was a Burmese," he told me, " but as he sat up sleepily and rubber his eyes I saw to my horror that he was a Japanese officer, and that the bullock carts were filled with sleeping Japanese." The signals officer acted promptly. With a terrific uppercut he stunned the Japanese officer, raced to his wagon and drove off. with a hail of bullets whistling around him. The Japanese air offensive has risen to new heights of ferocity and terror in the last week in a determined bid to wipe out every town of size in Upper Burma. Day after day now, Japanese bomber pilots begin to raid shortly after sunrise, and keep it up until 'just before the sun sinks. Behind them as they have returned to their bases they have left a trail of death and destruction. Railway Towns Attacked In a three-day tour of towns I was caught up in the Japanese blitz almost continuously, but with good luck remained a spectator instead of becoming a victim. , The Japanese are making a bee-line for railway towns. Their intention is not only to cut communications between the front-line British and Chinese forces, but to bewilder and frighten Indians and loyal Burmese from their jobs and dislocate services essential to war. These towns are mostly of bamboo and timber dried in a timber yard by a year's hot sun, and a child playing carelessly with a box of matches could cause almost as much fire damage as the Japanese air 'offensive. Yet the Japanese unload tons of high-explosive bombs and many incendiary bombs to burn out villages. For extra measure, they are using a vast number of "anti-personnel bombs designed to kill and maim anyone caught above ground level. These bombs explode immediately on striking even the softest earth, and never penetrate more than an inch or two. They throw out a shower of splinters that cut along the ground. Now. having burned and blown up towns, Japanese fighters and reconnaissance aircraft are consistently machine-gunning.

" Cat and Mouse " Tactics

One of their more refined tactics is to send a flight of bombers over a town and keep them hovering low, stunting and mock-attacking, in order to strike terror among the natives. Yesterday, a town in which I stayed, had three alerts before breakfast, but not one bomb was dropped, although a cloud of enemy aircraft was overhead. I narrowly missed a machine-gun attack on a mountain town by a few seconds, and missed being bombed in a railway town when a train was hit in a low-level attack. The next miss was at a point where the Prome and Pegu roads reunite in the north. I was driving a " jeep " and was unable to hear anything above the noise of the engine, when I saw 27 Japanese bombers flying in perfect formation a few thousand feet up. I braked and ran for the jungle, and simultaneously the first cannonade of bombs exploded. There was an almost constant roar of exploding bombs, and soon columns of black smoke began to rise. In that raid nearly 30 civilians perished

Screaming Women

At the railway town of Pyinmana, north of Toungoo, I was caught in two arms of flame and smoke when the Japanese launched a new attack on the railroad. Indian women raced screaming from the fire to a small lake in the centre of the town, carrying babies and young children. Behind raced more children, shrieking with fear. Men of a cavalry unit gallantly faced almost certain death to free their horses and salvage ammunition •as the Are raced wildly down on them. Yamethin railway station was attacked, also, and the members of the station staff were among-"the heavy casualties. Mandalay experienced the biggest shock. Pillars of smoke above the town were visible for miles as I drove towards it. Along roadsides the bodies of men, women and children, and carcasses of oxen, horses and goats testified to the ferocity of the Japanese attack. Incendiary bombs had started a blaze which swept through the town. Warning of the raid on Mandalay was not received by the local A.R.P. until the first bomb fell.