BOOBY TRAPS IN HOSPITAL

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22486, 22 January 1943, Page 5

BOOBY TRAPS IN HOSPITAL

Grenades Under Corpses Utter Despicability Of Japanese By Telegraph—N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright <9.45 p.m.) SYDNEY. Jan. 21. Before evacuating a field hospital in Sanananda the Japanese hid grenade booby traps under the bodies of their own dead. The firing pins had been removed so that the grenades would explode when the corpses covering them were moved. Seriously ill patients who were left in hospital had knives as well as grenades with which to fight. Some Japanese lay amid rotting dead waiting for a chance to shoot United States troops who captured the hospital. “I would never have believed such things possible,” declared an American major. “I still find it hard to believe they are true.” This hospital seemed designed to kill patients rather than to cure them, states the war correspondent of the “Sun.” It illustrated again the animalesque fatalism of the Japanese. The wards were ramshackle shelters and the convalescents lived in tiny cubicles protected from the torrential tropical rains only by flimsy banana leaves.

Good progress with the mopping-up operations is reported in General MacArthur’s communique to-day. The two main pockets of enemy resistance are on either side of Sanananda Point. Here the Australians are attacking while the inland pocket is being stormed by Americans. The Japanese are fighting from stoutly constructed dugouts and pillboxes, and the volume of their fire and their fighting tenacity indicate that at least some strong points still have adequate supplies. Nevertheless the extermination of these forces is being accomplished rapidly, according to the headquarters spokesman to-day. Ceaseless attacks were crumpling the Japanese positions. The rapid Allied gains during the last few days have made it impossible to calculate the number of enemy dead, which is estimated by war correspondents at several hundreds. Escape to Jungle Scores of enemy refugees from the shattered defences are reported to be hiding in the jungles and swamps. Most of them are badly under-nourish-ed and ill-equipped. But with their insatiable lust for killing they might easily become dangerous bands. A close watch is being kept over all food dumps and many Japanese have been killed in such areas. The largest enemy party so far reported numbers about 40. Allied patrols are hunting down these Japanese remnants. Recently enemy barges at night landed rice for the starving garrison at Sanananda Point. Two barges are believed to have put supplies ashore and others were driven off. At least three barges were sunk. Allied artillery fire also destroyed all except a few bags of the rice which was landed. Leave for Troops Units which have been serving in New Guinea will be withdrawn to the mainland and given leave wherever possible. This was announced to-day by the Minister for the Army (Mr F. M. Forde). The Minister said that the speed at which the scheme could function would depend entirely on the strategic situation. A schedule had been drawn up providing for regular replacement of troops in New Guinea and the Northern Territory. This had worked satisfactorily so far as the Northern Territory was concerned, but military operations had upset its functioning in New Guinea.