END IN SIGHT

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22470, 4 January 1943, Page 5

END IN SIGHT

PAPUAN CAMPAIGN

Final Assault At Buna Mission Z P A.—Special Australian CorresnondPi. (9 p.m.) SYDNEY, January 3. Japanese positions in the Buna Mission-Giropa Point area have been shattered, and remnants of the enemy forces there are now being destroyed. This important Allied success in the attenuated Papuan campaign is announced in General MacArthur’s communique to-day. Tanks and artillery supported our infantry in the final assault which broke the back of the Japanese resistance. Before the enemy was finally routed a second wedge to the sea was driven through his defences near Buna Mission. This split the Japanese forces in the Buna area into three. The fighting was described as “fierce and desperate.” Full details of the extent of the action are still awaited, but it is believed that only mopping up operations now remain to be completed in the Buna Mission and Buna airfield area, and that the Allied forces may soon be concentrated for an attack on the Japanese strong points at Sanananda, which is the core of the enemy’s beach-head fortress. Further hard fighting must be expected before Sanananda falls. It is now more than six weeks since it was announced that General MacArthur, Sir Thomas Blarney and Major General Kenney were “conducting the campaign from the field as Allied troops press in on Buna.” On November 20, General MacArthur’s communique stated: “Our ground forces, now pin the enemy down to the narrow’ coastal strip from Gona to Buna.” The approaching end for the Japanese in the divided Buna sector was signalled on Thursday when General MacArthur’s communique stated: “In tireless local assaults ground troops are forcing the enemy into an even narrower area.” No indication has been given as to the number of casualties in the fighting of the past few days, but it is clear that the Japanese maintained a suicide stand to the bitter end.

The Sydney “Sun” war correspondent describes the slow and bitter fighting as a “delousing” operation, but it had to be done. He adds: “Pothole by pothole, tree by tree, the way was bloody and hard like picking hundreds of splinters out of your hand with a pocketknife.”