Evening star., 1943-07-20
By IRA WOLFERT.

GIA, July Is Delayed. The
fight for Laiana beach today was
like this: Our tanks went down
the line as the Japanese pill
boxes were discovered. There
were men on each side of each
tank. They fired at the pill
boxes with automatic rifles and
the tanks followed with their fire
from guns which the men using
them call sweet baby cannon" :"
After them our infantry, inching
along under fire from snipers in the
trees. sometimes crawling, sometimes
running in crouch from cover and
leaving other infantrymen coming up
from the lear to kill the sripers,
went toward the pillboxes with
grenades and fixed bayonets to make
sure every Jap in them was dead.
The fight was small but of great
The success of it gave us beach,
head only 2 miles from the Jap air
port at Munda, and also preached
the outer line of the last Jap de-
fenses in New Georgia Most i'm
portant, however, was securing the
new beachhead which cuts our sup
ply lines by more than two-thirds.
Supply Problem Acute.
I'VE had been using many of our
combat troops here to carry supplies
on their backs because of the clut-
tered nature of the terrain. Now
most of these men can be released
to fight the enemy instead of the
mud and jungles.
The fight was interesting, too. be-
cause this was the first time tanks
had been used successfully in the
thick jungle. The Japs tried to at
tack with IA tanks in the Guadal-
canal jungle last October, lost 13 of
them and never used tanks again
When I left the front lines this
afternoon, with the attack well over,
we had not lost single tank.
And for the troops here the fight
will-o'-the-w -wisp nightmare of the
last II days. The enemy had stop
ped his rear-guard action and was
making stand at last, evidently
because it was impossible for him to
retreat further without imperiling
his position here.
The fact that there was, at last.
an enemy whose throat could be
taken in the two hands and
strangled gave us, watching from the
back areas. sense of relief so great
it amounted to JOY, and the feeling
extended In some measure even to
the front lines.
The advance Yesterday had
caught the enemy in an arc. This
arc ran generally from the south
to the northwest, with the enemy
in it anchored strongly to the beach
and holdind a ridge while we held
ravine beneath it. This morning
troops on top of the loop of the
arc began working south toward the
beach while the rest of the arc
moved toward the west.
A half hour heavy artillery bar
rage and bombing preceded our
attack, but the "softening up pro-
cess" had not dented the enemys
crust. The artillery in World War
I would destroy deeply imbedded
positions only with the greatest
difficulty and even when they could
see them plainly. The task here.
where positions are not only deeply
imbedded, but invisible 30 yards
away, is practically impossible.
Troops and Marine tanks, led by
1t. Blake, began moving about q
o'clock. They encountered their
first sniper fire soon after, but
hardly bothered with it. However
that was the first sound of battle,
the angry, yelping little crack of the
Jap rifles.
One sniper action I watched
centered around very tall coconut
tree. Two of our men worked over
the tree from behind, and before
long that three trunk was cut in
! two by their shellfire. The .sniper
shot frantically and often. but was
poor marksman and that cost him
his life.
| Uncovered Sniper.
But the poor marksman seemed
to know it would. for the more
he shot the wilder his shots got.
Our men moved up carefully, their
faces blank as they squinted through
their sights. They aimed at the
palm leaves and shot them off one
by one, peeling the cover off the
sniper.
The sniper twisted and squirmed
from side to side, but, f1nlaly ex-
posed, he was killed and fell crash
ing through the boughs of the sur
rounding trees. shower Of leaves
twirling slowly and silently down.
ward for some time after his dead
body had landed on the ground.
The sniper was very young boy.
The first Jap pill box contained
heavy machineguns. The Japs let
the first tank pass, but opened up