What Happened To Our

Bottle-Tops

IN the good old days of peace, the stewards of one of the boats which ran regularly to Rabaul from Aus tralia saved up the metal tops of their beer botles and sold them to the Japan ese. It was not uncommon for 8,000 bottles of beer to be drunk on one trip of an Islands liner.

An interesting sequel was seen in Rabaul, early in January, when the Jap anese began to drop bombs around the place. Some of the bombs were des cribed as “daisy-cutters”. That means that they were filled with such pleasant things as old nails, scrap iron, used razor blades and. most noticeably, old beer-bottle tops which bore Australian trade marks. These bombs exploded laterally and cut down everything stand ing within many yards. Injuries suffered by natives showed that they could inflict ghastly wounds.

Many an old and regular traveller on the BP boats to New Guinea will won der . how many of his old bottle-tops went to slay the daisies in Rabaul in the early days of January.