CHRISTMAS IN THE JUNGLE

TIME Correspondent George Johnston last week cabled this dispatch from New Guinea:

If there were a bottle of beer or a flask of Scotch in the 180,000 square miles of Allied New Guinea, some of the thousands of doughboys now fighting in 98DEG temperature of the north-coast jungles might be able to build up some sort of festive spirit this Christmas. But there isn't.

There will be neither peace nor good will nor much reason for celebration unless it is to celebrate the victory at Buna, for which the Americans and Australians are still furiously fighting as I write this dispatch with Christmas one week away.

Maybe some of the lucky ones will get Christmas hampers dropped from transport planes. Already neatly wrapped packages are arriving--some bearing the names and unit numbers of youngsters now buried in the warm Papuan earth.

Most soldiers, when you question them, say: "There doesn't seem much time to think about Christmas this year, and anyway the setting is all screwy." Which, of course, it is. It is a far cry from carol singers tramping through the snow to the lean, gaunt, green-garbed Americans squirming through drip ping man-high Kunai grass, or sniping Japs from the fronded tops of coconut palms, or flitting like phantoms from tree to tree in the weird firefly-spangled jungle.

In some rear camps and stations Americans will celebrate Christmas of a sort. One bombardment squadron sentry stands armed guard night & day over a scraggly turkey which was found wandering in the jungle three weeks ago and since then has been fattened on cereals and broken Army biscuits.

Christmas has some queer outward manifestations in this crazy godforsaken land of battle: death, injury, disease and the grim terror of loneliness. There is not much peace, not much good will. But the other night the Army field censor was going through the unit's letters and he silently handed me one short note and pointed to the final paragraph. It was from an Ohio private to his wife: "It will be a different Christmas this year. The altar will be a fallen tree in this stinking jungle. All around there will be the stink of sweat, unwashed clothes and the fainter, sweeter smell of death. But as I kneel to pray I know you will be alongside me praying too, and that will make it a Happy Christmas, darling."

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