Imperial Valley press., 1943-03-17

We called on the officer in COM
mand to surrender his forces.
"He marched out with what we
thought was a white flag. We were
greatly interested because it would
have been the first instance in the
whole New Guinea campaign of
such a formal surrender.
But halfway between his lines
and Ours he stopped, and clapped
his hands. An orderly appeared be-
hind him bearing canteen of wa
ter The officer tremendously
washed his hands, then dried them
with the flag" which turned out to
be a towel
TOLD TO SURRENDER
I'VE watched a few moments but
VIC had a war to fight, SO we told
him we would give him a count of
ten to come forward and Surrend-
CT. He folded his arms. We count
cd nine.
Before VIC could count ten he
said, in English
"Out!' (The JapS are great
baseball fanS)
I'VE fired and he died
He had left his men ON their
own.
There has never yet in this
campaign been a japanese unit sur
render as such. The largest num-
Der / saw surrender in group
was so or go over at Buna, and they
turned out to be about 10 per cent
Korean labor troops. Yesterday we
took 81 prisoners near here, but
again only four were JapS."
Shave tells you that material out
ranks men in the eyes of the Jap
aneSc leaders,
USE SUICIDE UNITS
"In their retreat down the Ko-
koda track and elsewhere in this
area" he said, they thought Moth
ing of leaving suicide rear-guardS
behind them to be killed or starved
to death. We leave rear-guards,
too, to protect retreat when we
have to, but we always try to pro-
vide some laSt-minute means of eS-
cape for them. Not SO our enemy.
The rear-gGard is written off the
minute it's posted.
Up at the front you get another
insight into the makeup of the
enemy. You get it from Lieut.. Gen.
Richard l.. Eichelberger, former Su-
perintendent of West Point. who
commands all Allied advance forces
in New Guinea. His gentle man
ncr gives no indication of what a
tough fighter he is here in the
junglcS.
Eichclbcrger known here as I'm
Gle Ike is casting up the score of
days fighting and making out
his repart to Gen. Douglas MacAr-
thur when you meet him. You
ask him about the quality of the
Japanese soldier.
TERRIBLE CONDITION
Those Japs we're in truly terri
Bic condition." he tells you. I'VE
weighed in a captured prisoner to-
day. Fitty-tWo pounds, and still
alive
why do they hang on. The little
animals. and make this war unneC-
CS3arilY bloody? BECAUSE they had
30 instructions TO the contrary. /
presume, and had been Schooled not
to use their own brains or initia-
tive. Their position was hopeless
and we killed every man Jack of
them at Higgins today, as you saw.
Tomorrow we will have to do the
same thing to their two remaining
positions,
Our men will have to stay all
day long tomorrow in the rotten
jungle water surrounding those po-
sitionS. | dorbt that ever before
have American troops fought un-
der such handicaps. But by night
fall We will have killed all the laps
and those positions will be out of
the way"
CAMPAIGN WON
You are interested to observe
that by nightfall the next day,
exactly as Uncle Ike had said, the
Jap positions were in possession of
the Americans and the Australians,
and the Papuan campaign had been
won because all the JapS were dead
or dying
This unShakeable determination
to hang on contrasts strangely with
the occasional and seemingly ca
pricious orders of the command to
yield territory and troops.
Despite savage local resistance,
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Imperial Valley Press