GALLANT FEAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 January 1944, Page 5

GALLANT FEAT

CAPTURE OF JAPANESE GUNS ON MONO. NEW ZEALAND OFFICER WINS MILITARY CROSS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) SOUTH PACIFIC. In the opinion of the men of his platoon, no New Zealand recipient of an award for bravery in the Solomons engagement earned it more than Sec-orid-Lieutenant L. T. G. Booth. Booth received the Military Cross for his achiements on Mono Island during its occupation of October and November. He led a platoon which in the late afternoon of October 27 attacked and annihilated enemy mountain, guns and mortar posts well outside the New Zealand perimeter. Later on the same day, he took a party of engineers to the guns to supervise their destruction, and on the fololwing day covered and recovered the same ground several times though Japanese were still known to be in the vicinity and might at any time have launched a strong counterattack.

“Our officer did a ’grand job of work,” said two men of the platoon who were wounded during the morning engagement. “He split the platoon after we had the. first gun out of action, left a small party behind, and moved forward up a difficult ridge to where a mortar post had been observed. ‘■Though the ground we had to cover was in fair view of Ihe enemy, Booth led us round a small abutment and charged the enemy position. He was first in with grenades and tommy-gun bursts, and we would have been lost without his leadership.” Strangely enough, Booth’s patrols were thmeselves “annihilated,” according to a scribbled message written by a Japanese who was later killed. This soldier recorded that three New Zealand patrols each of five men had been wiped out on their way up the ridge, but whether he was suffering from hallucinations or was counting the humbers of his own casualties, the fact remains that the New Zealanders went in, did the job, cairie out again and were almost intact. The Japanese who wrote the note on a ,slip of dirty paper unconsciously raised a hearty . laugh among the men who later read their own obituary notice. ,

Booth’s platoon gathered in A good store of booty from this raid —iriountain guns, rifles, machine-guns, a radio set, clothing, blankets, anti-gas gear, ammunition, rations and grenades.

In the ensuing days this same band of men changed its locality and in the Malsi and Soanutalu areas, on the east and north coasts of Mono, patrolled deeply into the island s interior. They made few contacts, but were able later to report the area reasonably clear of Japanese. Booth, fresh from his experiences in the north, is now instructing a jungle training school for New Zealanders behind the front lines.