ENEMY ENCIRCLED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25303, 13 August 1943, Page 5

ENEMY ENCIRCLED

LAST STAND ON NEW GEORGIA FIGHTING DESPERATELY (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) SYDNEY, Aug 12. United States troops have completed the encirclement of the Japanese garrison at Bairoko Harbour, the last enemy position on New Georgia Island. The garrison’s only chance to escape is to attempt a night withdrawal in small boats to Kolombangara Island, 10 miles to the north-west. Encirclement was effected when the American column that had skirted the swamps to approach Bairoko from the right reached the Bairoko River, two miles south-west of the harbour, and joined the advance patrols in the Enogai inlet area, four miles from Bairoko. The Japanese are now fighting desperately to prevent the Americans from cutting off their lane of escape to the sea. The commander of the United States army forces in the Solomons, Majorgeneral Oscar Griswold, sent messages to Admiral Halsey and General Harman expressing great satisfaction at the remarkable co-operation of all navy, army, and marine services at sea, on the land, and in the air. . The Australian war correspondent in the area says the fall of Munda finally came when the dynamited the Japanese from Kokengolo hill, near the airstrip. The hill was honeycombed with tunnels. The enemy forces could not be induced to surrender—so they were dynamited. An enemy explosives store was detonated with such terrific force that some Americans on the far side of the hill were injured by flying coral.

Ample testimony was given of the grim determination of the surviving members of the Japanese garrison at the conclusion of the 36-day campaign. Of three Japanese in one dug-out two had to be killed with grenades, while a third refused to surrender, and it required eight bullets to end his resistance.

One of the features of the battle was when, after he had been fired on from an enemy pillbox, an angry naval workman leapt on to a bulldozer and, calling to the infantry, drove over the pillbox and crushed it. The infantry finished off the occupants with grenades. Conscript Chinese workmen were taken prisoner. They had been forced at the bayonet point on to a ship at Hongkong, shackled, and brought to work at Munda. Giving evidence of the excellence of the American supply system, a correspondent says 15,000 doughnuts and coffee reached the front-line fighters at Munda every day.