A.I.F. COMMANDO

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 1, 2 January 1943, Page 3

A.I.F. COMMANDO

AGAINST JAPANESE IN TIMOR UNCEASING OPERATIONS Sydney, Dec. 31. In the mountain wildensesses of Portuguese Timor, less than 450 miles from Australia’s north-west coastline, an A.I.F. commando force, together with Dutch guerrillas, is to-day pinning down a big Japanese force, denying it the conquest of the island, and making hazardous any attempt to invade Australia from that 'base. The story of the Australians left in Timor, one of the most colourful of the Pacific war, is told to-day by an official war correspondent, Mr. W. Marten, who recently visited the island. i Against odds of a hundred to one, he says, Allied troops are killing Japanese at a rate of much more than a hundred for every Australian and Dutchman lost in action. They are ambushing the enemy in the mountains, and raiding in their camps, and have even carried the fight right down the main street of Japanese-held Dilli. In five months the enemy have lost at least 30 officers and 500 men. The Australias have lost only three lives. In fifty-nine days, during which they were without even wireless contact with Australia, they rejected two Japanese demands to surrender. They have been rejecting them ever since. They did not know whether Australia was still at war, but the ingenuity of a young Tasmanian signaller converted scraps of wire, solder, and old tins into a radio transmitter, which in April spluttered out dots and dashes, telling Australia that the A.I.F. commandos were fighting on in Timor. Theory and Practice

These commandos established their own training school almost witnin range of Japanese machine-gun fire. The training was tar from theoretical. Every now and then the aapan&e would interrupt the course, and the trainees would apply with rifle and machine-gun tire tne lessons they were learning. These men are still fighting an inhuman, unequal, nervetorturing type of battle. They are hedged in on three sides by the Japanese. Night and day they are patrolling. Any twist of the track may bring them smack into a superior Japanese force. Death may come from the spear of a native who pretends to be friendly. Malaria wracks many of them, and vile-tasting buffalo meat and monotonously sticky rice are no invalid diet. Their most graceful tribute has been paid to them by the enemy—" You alone do not surrender to us."

Commenting on Mr. Marien’s story, the Sydney Telegraph to-day says editorially: "Mr. Curtin had these hardy fighters in mind when he told the Australian Labour Party conference that it was stupid that men should be sent to Darwin where they could be bombed, yet not to Timor, where they could prevent Darwin from being bombed. How soon we will be able to launch a counter-offensive and so make use of the time these men have gained for us by their gallant defence in Timor depends, among other things, upon how soon the Government frees the militia to go to the aid of their comrades."