War in the Papuan Jungles

From the banks of the wide, swiftly flowing Gerua River in north Papua I can overlook the four fronts of the battle for Buna. But the only visible signs are two flat-topped pillars of smoke rising, one from Buna and one from Gona, and the Flying Fortresses weaving across the top of Buna through sooty puffs of ack-ack fire which are ragged now from repeated bombing. There is nothing else to see but the cloud-spattered tropic sky above the vast bowl of sun-drenched, emerald-green jungle, which is interspersed with patches of yellow, man-high kunai grass. In this incredibly tangled mass of rank vegetation and evil smelling swamps, thousands of men, Americans, Australians and Japanese, are engaged in one of the most merciless and most primeval battles of the war.

The Wounded. Of this battle you can see exactly nothing. But when you leave the banks of the river the ground war suddenly becomes very grim drama. Down muddy, green-walled tracks stagger wounded men, the blood still running from beneath grimy bandages, their green uniforms stained grey with mud, their faces lined, insect-bitten, haggard, sometimes fever-yellowed. Men with torn limbs lie, eyes closed, on crude log stretchers, borne on the muscled shoulders of kindly, perpetually plodding, splayfooted natives. A native walks beside each man, holding a huge green banana leaf to keep the burning sun from the head of the soldier, who has found that the war learned at the Louisiana maneuvers is a very different thing from the war learned in the jungles of Papua.

Down the tracks occasionally come a few Jap prisoners. A litter-borne Japanese captain, with bloody shoulder wounds swathed in bandages and with his ornate ceremonial sword still buckled to his belt, jolts by. Americans and Australians look curiously, the natives with hatred, at the captured. Japs. Once an American sergeant gave a canteen of water to a native carrier to a take over to a scraggy Jap. The native looked contemptuously at the prisoner, threw the canteen on the ground and spat: "Me no give water Japanese."

At Cape Endaiadere, at Gona, at Buna Mission, on the flanks of the Buna airstrip, on the track from Soputa to Cape Sanananda, everywhere the enemy has picked his own positions. He has established concrete gun-pits and dug grenade-proof, mortar-proof nests beneath the roots of the giant jungle trees. He has put keeneyed snipers in hundreds of treetops. He has mown down the grass and jungles to give lanes of sweeping fire to his guns. From such positions companies can hold up battalions, and battalions can resist divisions.

The Tools For Killing. Today I spoke with one wounded infantryman from Milwaukee. "I never knew there were so many goddam machine guns in all the world," he said. These pockets cannot be bypassed because of the neck-deep swamps and sucking mud; they must be assaulted, at whatever cost, and destroyed one by one. The artillery is helping, including American 105-mm. howitzers which were flown into action. But many of the Japanese foxholes are too deep and too cleverly contrived to be wiped out even by the terrific barrages which pour in tons of high explosives each day & night.

The war has been boiled down to simple essentials, simple tools for killing. It has become a war of primitive fights, sometimes hand to hand, between a man and his enemy. Littered along the railroad tracks is much elaborate gear, for in this war you fight light or you don't fight long.

The Three Armies. In actual fighting there are two armies opposed to the Japs, with two distinct ways of fighting. The Australians, undoubtedly the most experienced jungle fighters in the United Nations forces, have the knowledge to beat the Jap but have been fighting bitterly now for three months, twice across the Owen Stanley Mountains, and are tired and battered in everything but spirit. The Americans are comparatively fresh, probably much fresher than the Japs, but this is their baptism by fire, and no tougher baptism could be imagined.

Against these two armies is ranged an enemy who probably knows he must die and intends to take as many of the Allies with him as he can. The Americans want to take their positions with a minimum number of casualties, not from fear but because of a desire to finish the job with a strong force still in hand. The Australians want to get the job over. The majority of Australian objectives have been gained with bayonet charges. Both methods are achieving their purpose, and the slow grip of strangulation tightens round Japan's last Papuan garrison. It is a tougher fight than anyone expected, and it is a longer job. The soldiers, American and Australian, now know they are not playing for marbles.

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