Evening star., 1942-12-15
Coma Was Jap Dunkirk With No Evacuation Writer Saws
(Coq61Rued From First Page !,

one, pointing at mound. One man
! was scraping wet earth from a short
shovel, another was fitting in a new
clip to his gun.
Six American fighters, moaning
family against the woolly wet clouds
passed overhead.
! The heat in Papua is oppression it.
self. When the sun is out you feel as
though your body were an anvil being
hammered. When it disappears be-
hind the low monsoon clouds your
whole torso bursts out with a thick
f1lm OF perspiration. Sweat seeps
into your eyes, singing them, and
your nose and naked shoulders are
, streaming. You wipe your body with
the plane mechanics baseball can
and replace it on his head to dry the
! dank saturation.
Mission Buildings Shelled.
Here lies, on the sable veil of the
peach, big, startling yellow blob of
canvas. 1t is the life raft for an air.
plane, very new and unused looking
Its trade mark says it was made in
ECl1fton, N. j. Now it is half debated
and misshapen. And this beach was
Japanese.
Your kinky, native carrier, with
his forehead, sweatband, black grass
armlets and frayed girdle with BUSH
knife, Is hunting around the beach.
Amidst all this baggage of warfare,
worth thousands of dollars, all he
wants is blackened sausepan. And
coconuts. Smashed trees have been
razed by the filter of fire and every
where, in gunpits, lie tawny COCO
nuts. Coconuts and heads of the
dead.
The Coma mission, which is all
there was to the beach of death
before war came, consists of two
small buildings on stills, with steel,
tall, Nuremburg-style roofs of brown
grass. Shells went straight through
both OF the big grassy arches, leav-
ing hole big enough for the ptero-
dactyls to nest in the entrance.
Before both buildings, which are
located about 100 yards from the
booy-lttered beach, are round era
ters the size Of swimming pools and
nlled with water. Water is everv-
where just under foot and turns
everything deeper than foot into
an earthern basin. These craters,
which are (Flying) Fortress bomb
prints. lie among the rended topless
palms like some macabre effort at
iandscaping. Any platoon of SOL
dlers could swim there, but none
does Tor a reason unnecessary to
explain.
Here is tiny way through the
marshes. hardly the 7-foot wide path
through which the Australians first
fought their way to the beach. On
the right is a wild marsh with 100
foot trees, on the left more MOSQUITO
filled marshes abutting on a small,
stagnant creek.
Where this tropical, black creek
meets the sea the tailskid of a fallen
plane could be seen projecting sea-
ward. 1t is about 100 feet beyond
this where the tommy guns are now
being heard.
For these now nauseating dead
who hours ago were quick with life,
there was a single means of nourish-
ment and entrenchment. It was big,
woven raffia bags of japanese rice
scattered along the black sand and
tugged into position under fire.
Neither rain, sun, nor shellfre, spoils
Jap Army rice. which is a mixture
OF nourishing whole grains and our
kind OF polished grains. They ate
from bags that the Australians bull
lets and the American bombers had
split and shattered.
The Japs fought among the bodies
OF their dead, some of whom were
found in condition nearly skele-
tonized.
"See how they lay right down
among their first corpses," said one
tommy gunner puzzledly, pointing
with his rillzzle. THE Japs are diff
ferent from u.s.
Burial may mean little to a Jap
but form means much. Little bags
of hair cuttings and nail parings
were found In several places, which
the soldiers took from the fallen
and planned to send to relatives in
Japan.
They're opposite to us In every
way. They save what we throw
away"
Now grenades are bursting on the
left up the beach, but farther away.
American guns to the right are
silent. Several broken-down Amer
ican-built trucks with Dunlop tires
lie near by, blown in on the sides
by the conclusion of bombs, and
there is one officers car, probably
brought from Java, rusty and down
to the hubs in morass and as full
OF holes as a colander.
Fighting Suited to Anglo Saxons.
Coma fell because the Japs could
not stand $50 25-pound shells thrown
into a position about 300 yards long
and so yards wide They made a
burst for escape both east and west
along the black sand strip on which
they were already hemmed in. They
were henmed in because four big,
low, squatty trees something like
American river willows are ranged
along the beach at intervals of so
yards. Their enormous trunk roots
turn the beach sand to black turf
where the royal palms stand. The
trunks are at least IL feet in diam
eter and the roots and lowest
branches can be formed into wall
with rice bags.
Among these thick, squatty trees,
the thick squatty Japs made their
last stand They had plenty of
ammunition, food and water and
also possessed shells for rs gun
but no gun. Their uniforms were
clean, strong and new.
Meanwhile, the Australians, tall,
mud -drenched. bearded and latter
demalion, closed in on them crawling
from one water filled foxhole to the
next while their 25-pounders threw
shells over their heads at almost
point-blank range. This was open
country and the fighting was well
suited to the Anglo-Saxons.
After the bombardment. the stencil
of the bodies was so powerful that
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