Diggers to the Bloody Rear

Said the Australian soldier: "It is all very well to say the Japanese in the Solomons and New Guinea are withering on the vine, but they take a bloody lot of withering." Many a "Digger" will swear that the fanatical, agricultural, fecund Jap, cultivating vegetable gardens in inaccessible jungle clearings, not only is waxing fat and happy but is intermarrying with natives to raise a new race of Bushido boys.

By last week it appeared that the battle-tried A.I.F. (Australian Imperial Force) was going to have time to go after such battle-stranded Japs. Having been shipped home in 1942 from the Middle East, the A.I.F. had been routed to the New Guinea jungles. When MacArthur went to the Philippines three weeks ago, they were left behind, some in New Guinea and many more in Australia where there were furloughs to be had.

While the A.I.F. is resting it can look forward to "hard and bitter fighting" to root an estimated 90,000 Japs out of the jungles, said the Australian Army commander, General Sir Thomas Blamey, last week. Army Minister Francis Forde announced Australia's casualties since 1939: 83,976* including 16,639 killed, 5,976 missing. When the time comes to root Japs out of other bypassed areas, such as Java and Malaya, observers do not doubt that the Diggers will be doing that rooting, too. The Diggers' rear-area assignment would not be the hardest life they had seen, but it would be no vacation tour.

*U.S. casualties, proportioned to population, would be 1,600,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.