Buna is Like This

Lieut. Paul Schwartz had only 13 men at his command, but he manipulated them with the tactical care of a field marshal. His patrol in jungle-matted New Guinea was working through to the coast beyond Buna. Near the grass-thatched village of Tarakena a Jap machine gun fired on them. Japs in foxholes and trenches held the village. Young Schwartz, seeing his patrol outnumbered, deployed two men to pin down the machine gun, two others as snipers on the village's sea flank. The remaining nine men and Schwartz charged the village firing. Surprised Japanese, apparently believing themselves outnumbered, retreated into the snipers' line of fire, fell like tenpins. The advance machine gun was knocked out by the two men detailed to it. Schwartz and his men cleaned out the village, held it until the Japs collected their wits and began an enveloping counterattack.

Said Schwartz: "I didn't have much defense in depth, so I decided we would have to pull out." Score: about 20 Japs killed, many more wounded; U.S. casualties, none. His charge was a minute action, but in the mosaic of New Guinea warfare it was typical of the bitter inch-by-inch, day-by-day battle to throw out the Japs.

Between Gona and Buna, both in U.S.Australian hands, Japs were still entrenched. General Douglas MacArthur called the Jap plight desperate, announced that "the last line" of Jap fortifications had been breached, indicated that it was only a matter of time before the U.S.Australian forces, now aided by light tanks, had the entire Buna area firmly in hand.

Tanks had turned the tide. Until they were brought into action Dec. 8, the jungle battle had been at an impasse. Then 13-ton General Stuarts, U.S.-made, Australian-manned, blasted Jap bunkers that previously had been impregnable. Infantry followed into the maze of connecting trenches with grenades, machine guns and bayonets. Bunker by bunker, as at Stalingrad, the process went on.

Slowly victory neared at Buna, but the nature of victory was as ominous as it was painfully slow. More important Japanese bases still were at Lae and Salamaua, about 150 miles farther north in New Guinea. And Lae and Salamaua, in turn, were outposts of Rabaul. Behind Rabaul were scores of Jap island bases. Buna was teaching how long and bitter would be the road to final victory in the South Pacific islands.

Feathered Guerrillas

Pilots back from Guadalcanal last week told a tall bird story. A marine, they said, captured a wild parrot and taught it to shout: "Hello, Joe!" as greeting to any Jap. He took the parrot to the front lines, where it shouted the greeting all day. Other parrots, free in the jungle, learned the greeting. Soon the jungle behind the Jap lines resounded with nerve-racking U.S. accents: "Hello, Joe! ... Hello, Joe! . . . Hello, Joe! . . ."

And Then There Were None

On 13 successive days bombers from Guadalcanal flew 150 miles northward to the New Georgia Islands and bombed the Japs' advanced air base at Munda. Usually, in the first days, Zeros soared up from the battered runways. On the 13th no Zero appeared. In the skies around them and among the smoking hangars of Munda, the flyers from Guadalcanal saw no sign of Japanese life.

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