JUNGLE LIVING

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22789, 13 January 1944, Page 2

JUNGLE LIVING

Trials For Soldiers

Misdemeanours Of Nature

It is one thing to capture territory in New Guinea and another thing to live in it when it is captured, as Geoffrey Hutton, “Melbourne Argus war correspondent found at Lae and Finschhafen. Seen from a landing craft on a sunny day, the rich vwidian of the jungle, flecked with scarlet creeper, and backed by the rugged crests of the Rawlinson Range, looks like a cross-section of the Garden of Eden. Along Finschhafen way the mountains are lower and smoother, but they break down more sharply to the sea in open pasturelands. High cliffs are overhung with trailing vines and broken by little coves of clear green water, where palm trees lean negligently over the sand, writes Mr Hutton. So far the travel agent. When you abandon the comparative comfort of a landing barge, and try to move through this Shangri La and pitch a camp in it you find out the other side of the picture. Nightmarish Insects Tire pleasant green is a fetid and swampy jungle, all laced with vines and alive with nightmarish insects, some with a thousand legs, some with whiskers like a cat, some with heads in the wrong place and upholstery on their backs, but all alike in their venom and their dislike of Intruders. The smooth sweeps of pasture turn into foul ground covered with 10ft of kunai grass, which harbours the heat, and the mosquitoes, and must be slashed through with a knife. The pleasant hills turn into muscle-tearing razorbacks, and the neat little villages are deserted, tumble-down, smelly, and verminous. , ~ . In peacetime it would not be that bad. There are neglected plantations near the coast, and native gardens densely overgrown, where good husbandry could make a tolerable dwelling place; but the natives and the planters have been elsewhere for the last year. Lighting and water are laid on in the new residential area at Finschhafen. Every night the black of the trees is lit by great flashes of sheet lightning. For half an hour the thunder will rumble, and then the rain comes. It comes in drops as big as pigeon’s eggs, hammering on waterproofs, swirling over the ground, filling creekbeds and holes, bending trees, pouring into groundsheets, dripping through tarpaulins and tent covers, and churning every track into a treadmill of soft mud. Grasshoppers and Frogs Why the insects are not all drowned is beyond my understanding. But as soon as the rain eases off grasshoppers and frogs open up their chorus, millions of fireflies begin to glint among the trees, flying foxes eerily beat their wings together, and land crabs, millipedes and scorpions resume the hunt for human victims. Among forward units there is not much protection against these misdemeanours of Nature. There are no tents or shelters, and every man carries his house on his back like a snail. His first problem is to keep out of the wet—or enough of it to save some of his gear. He usually carries a ground sheet and a blanket. To make the best of this bad job the men have very quickly learned the lesson offered by the natives They cut the thick, rope-like vines and split them Into cords. With these they rig up a roof, using a ground sheet.