Yanks in New Guinea

Last month the U.S. Army let it be known that some of the military-secret-number of U.S.-Australian ground troops had been transferred to New Guinea. Among them were some American Negroes, mostly engineers, who build bridges, make roads, dig ditches. (A large proportion of all U.S. troops in Australia are service troops, e.g., quartermasters.)

The colored troops promptly taught the natives (some of them are cannibals) their favorite game, got licked (see cut, p. 45). The natives, like many before them, were entranced by a jeep (see cut, p. 45).

From TIME'S Correspondent Robert Sherrod last week came a fresh picture of U.S. Army life in New Guinea.

To most of the U. S. troops now here, New Guinea was just a forgotten name in a geography book. Probably one in a hundred remembered that New Guinea is the second largest island in the world (after Greenland).

When American troops appeared in New Guinea, they found natives ("Boongs") with the world's bushiest hair, which sometimes ringed heads with a solid twelve inches of felt-like fuzz (in which they love to pin flowers). They also found seven-toed cats-and a lizard called Gecko which sings, and a bird whose six-noted whistle sounds like "Did he do it?" Pause. "No, oh." U.S. pursuit pilots shot down by daring Japanese Zeroes found themselves parachuting into a leech-infested jungle so thick the earth never feels sunshine-hard, though the sun may try to broil its way through. Incidentally, the percentage of shot-down pilots who managed to find their way back through the jungles is phenomenally high. They often must swim down rivers to the sea, risking crocodiles. If shot down over the sea they risk being eaten by sharks 30 feet long and more.

Good Health. Despite natural hardships, American troops in New Guinea are generally in good health. Scratches don't heal easily as they do in better climates, sometimes linger as little sores for weeks, then turn into ulcers. The Medical Corps thanks its stars for sulfanilamide powder.

Port Moresby's 71 air raids have been singularly ineffective. Outside of the Air Corps not one American has been killed or wounded by Jap bombers or strafers--in fact, the only non-Air Corps grave in the American section of the military cemetery is that of a soldier killed in a truck accident. There have been some close calls. On two occasions slit trenches containing American anti-aircraft troops have had direct hits, but the bombs happened to fall in a non-inhabited part of the V-shaped trench.

Good Luck. But ordinary escapades no longer bear relating. An Air Corps lieutenant still flies whose chute failed to open at two hundred feet until his plane exploding just beneath him sent up a great blast of gas and flame--enough to blow the chute open, but not quite enough to set it afire, though the inside of it was blackened like cork. Another lieutenant swimming down a river had to fight his way through crocodiles, slashing at them with his heavy jungle knife. He escaped with a couple of nasty tooth marks in his shoulders. So far as is known, no American flyers have yet encountered the inland headquarters of the cannibals, although no news from cannibals' guests is not necessarily good news.

Though New Guinea is now in the dead of winter--if any land three to eleven degrees from the Equator can be said to have dead of winter--it's steaming hot. A large percentage of U.S. troops in New Guinea are from the Deep South, but they all agree they never saw the sun shine so hard in Georgia or Mississippi.

Nights, however, are pleasantly cool-- one-blanket weather. Food is passable: almost all of it comes from cans. There is no food obtainable in New Guinea beyond a few paw paws, bananas and coconuts. Supply officers still laugh grimly over the suggestion from headquarters that they supplement rations by buying in the open market. The food problem is aggravated because the soldiers won't eat mutton. "These boys simply won't touch sheep," says the exasperated mess officer who watches supplies of mutton pile up.

For men only. There are no civilians left in New Guinea. Papua's white population was never more than 2,000. Those who were not taken into the Australian army, chiefly for such jobs as required dealing with natives, were evacuated six months ago and more. There are no women. Even native women have been sent back into the hills. Native men are brought in from their villages for two-month turns at simple, light labor. They wear dirty skirts called ramis and spend their idle moments combing their hair with four-pronged metal forks.

Since there is no call for modesty, most shower baths are located alongside the public highway. Late in the afternoon one can drive along the road and see hundreds of men--whites here, blacks there-- standing under a shower, washing off a half-inch accumulation of the day's grime. Soldiers love to pick quaint names for their camps: Virgin Lane, Luna(tic) Park, Scroungers' Rest, Hog Willow, and One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street.

Morale is quite good--always seems to improve in proportion to the nearness of actual danger. U.S. soldiers stand up very well under almost constant bombings. It would be useless to pretend all are heroes. But after a few days most of them turn up okay. They take particular pride in one anti-aircraft unit. Last week it shot down five bombers. An American colonel commanding the Moresby anti-aircraft unit was so pleased he gave five pounds donation towards beer for the anti-aircraftsmen--when & if beer arrives.

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