JUNGLE WARFARE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25384, 16 November 1943, Page 5

JUNGLE WARFARE

BATTLE FOR BOUGAINVILLE WORST POSSIBLE CONDITIONS (Rec. 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, Nov. 15. “ The battle for Bougainville is being fought under perhaps the worst conditions the American troops have encountered anywhere,” says Mr Frank Tremaine, the United Press war correspqndent in the Northern Solomons. “ Veterans of the initial Solomons landings that the Japanese opposition is tougher and the fighting and living conditions worse than at Guadalcanal - .” He adds: “ I have not had a single dry. moment since I landed. The ground is a spongy mess where it has not been turned into a veritable quagmire by the churning wheels of trucks and jeeps. Marines fought for several days in water ankle deep or deeper, and stretcher bearers frequently wade waist deep in muddy water. The jungle stinks with a dead, musty odour which is even worse in the forward area, where slaughtered Japanese lie unburied.” Mr Tremaine tells how a handful of marines and hospital attendants on the island were organised into a fighting unit and repulsed an eight-hour Japanese attack against a* - American field hospital, while doctors, crouching behind hastily-constructed sandbag defences, operated on 30 dangerouslywounded marines. The doctors refused to move the patients for fear they died unless they were operated on quickly.

BETTER THAN SCHEDULE

(Rec. 1 a.m.) NEW YORK, Nov. 15. “The campaign is going much better than scheduled, but I refuse to gaze into the crystal ball,” said Admiral William Halsey at a press conference during a visit to Bougainville. “We expect the Japanese to try almost anything, and we are never disappointed when they do. The situation here is not the same as at Guadalcanal We have got the stuff now and the Japanese haven’t.”