AUSTRALIAN TROOPS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25796, 17 March 1945, Page 8

AUSTRALIAN TROOPS

KEEN TO GO ON TO TOKIO FUTURE OPERATIONS SYDNEY, Mar. 15. Australian troops were very keen to go on to Tokio, General Sir Thomas Blarney told American war correspondents at Manila. Australia even now, he said, had more divisions in the operations against the Japanese than at any other time during the war. Australia’s contribution now, he added, proportionately in the number of divisions, was as great as that of any other Allied nation. The strength of the country’s armed forces had been adjusted from time to time according to the demands of the war effort. Asked if he contemplated using Australian troops north of the equator, General Blarney said the control of all operations was centred in the combined chiefs of staff, and all broad strategic plans went through them. “ I could not tell you what the next phases are going to be,” he added. The Australians, he said, were under the Scuth-west Pacific Command, and were available as General MacArthur required them. General Blarney said heavy toll was being taken of the Japanese in New Guinea, New Britain, and the Solomons, where the bulk of the Australian active forces were at present engaged. The fighting in those areas would continue until the enemy had been destroyed. “The operations cover a pretty big area,” he said. “It is not a warfare of heavy attacks on se t t defences by large forces, but of steady penetration and destruction of the Japanese wherever they are met. The Japanese have tremendous supply depots, particularly at Rabaul, and so far the Australians have seen no shortage in their equipment.”