WORSE THAN SYRIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 41, 19 February 1943, Page 3

WORSE THAN SYRIA

FIGHTING INI PAPUA . Sydney, Jan. 22. “Tough” as the campaign in Syria was against hard-fighting adversaries, including the French Foreign Legion, it could not be compared with the Papua campaign, an infantry lieutenant, who served for 18 months in the Middle East and for six months in Papua, stated in Sydney. When his unit arrived in New Guinea, he said, Allied equipment had begun to arrive in large quantities, and already Allied air superiority had been established. There were some raids by Japanese bombers, but the unit knew what to do, and lost no time in doing it. It had had experience of bombing in the Middle East, on “Black Friday the 13th,” when a German bomber had straddled the unit’s camp and caused numerous casualties. When the Japanese came over, every man was soon in a slit trench, and the bombs hurt, nobody. The battalion first met the Japanese at Efogi, in verv bad country. The unit was encircled, and had davs of grim fighting to get out of the jungle, carrying the stretcher cases and all possible supplies. There were no tracks through the dense jungle, the Japanese were close, and the steen hills and deep gullies made progress difficult, and sometimes impossible.