World: Outworn Welcome

Slowly the Australians from the southwest and the Americans from the southeast pressed the Japs in New Guinea back to the sea. Airpower, artillery and sound planning were winning the campaign for the Allies. For the Japs, it was New Guinea’s jungle, tougher and hungrier than any they had seen before, which was losing it. This time the Japs underestimated the jungle and wore out its welcome.

Fifty-six days after they landed in New Guinea last August, the Japanese were only 32 air miles from Port Moresby. But they had advanced too fast. They were weakened by starvation and dysentery.

When the reinforced Australians began their counteroffensive, the Japs raced back along the slimy jungle trails. But the Australians refused to fall into the trap. The Diggers advanced cautiously, setting up supply dumps as they moved forward, establishing elaborate latrine systems to combat the scourge of dysentery.

The Aussie’s advance proved the wisdom of their caution. All along the terrible track eastward they found reminders of overzealous progress—emaciated, unwounded Jap corpses littering the jungle, dead whose stomachs contained poisonous fruits, undigested.

Last week the Diggers prodded the enemy backwards from Oivi to Gorari to Ilinow to Wairopi, only 40 miles from Buna. They also outflanked the Japs, prying them out with belly-ripping steel, then cutting off retreat. Probing northward, American patrols joined the Aussies at Wairopi, drew their first Jap blood.

The Japs fought until they died, still using the mountain gun they had toted by hand all across the Owen Stanley mountains and all the way back again. But weary, bilg-bitten Aussies prophesied: “We’ve got the game sewed up.”