How One Australian Soldier Sees the Equipment

I'll Take The American War

How One Australian Soldier Sees the Equipment Question (See Page 41 this Issue

AUSTRALIAN politicians and other interested parties are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the Australian public and befog the issue

{See also Page 41 this Issue )

when they take the present equip ment controversy to mean a soldier’s personal equipment. There is nothing wrong with the personal equipment of the Australian soldier in New Guinea, and nothing wrong with the Australian soldier as a jungle fighter.

Under the same conditions and in the same country I doubt if the American soldier would do nearly as well.

I belong to an amphibious unijb; I am attached to an Australian ship which was converted from a mer chantman in 1943, in order to carry barges and other mechanical equip ment for island landings. We care for, load and unload that equipment as required, and we have been attached to the Americans. We were the only Australian representatives in all their major landings—Hollandia, Aitape, Morotai, Lingayen Gulf, etc.

In this capacity I have had ample opportunity to observe the Americans and their methods. Before the war I was a motor engineer and feel that I am a fair judge of mechanical equip ment. Taking these things into con sideration, I am of the firm' opinion that it is the bulldozer that is winning the war in the Pacific. That, and the American way of using it.

AS a preliminary to all American landings there is a naval bom bardment through which, in my opinion, it is scarcely possible to live.

The Japs react to this in only one way—they leave for the bush without any preliminaries.

The landing-craft carrying the bull

dozers then go ashore. The bulldozers are proofed against water and can land in any depth so long as the driver can keep his head above water.

They then set about levelling the beach so that barges can pull right in to shore; or, if the beach is naturally suited to that purpose, they begin at once to construct roads on which the following jeeps and lorries can run.

The infantry then establish them selves by pushing out to the pre determined perimeter, or by taking the desired objective. They complete this set job, then erect their pill boxes every fifty yards or so, linking the lot with barbed-wire. Guns are set up in the pill-boxes and ’the Japs can then return to the attack at their peril.

Most beach-head fighting is over within a day or two. The Americans then just sit pretty, inside the peri meter, and all mopping-up operations are left until someone else can get around to it. In the case of New Guinea it was left to the Australians; in the Philippines it is being done, to a large extent, by Filipinos.

That is the beach-head technique as I saw it. In the Lingayen Gulf it was somewhat different; but there the Yanks advanced down a road as good as the Hume Highway.

THE Americans think nothing of using thousands of bulldozers to get a job done; their other specia lised equipment is used on a similar scale. In the matter of unloading ships, where our men fool around with surf boats, the Americans bring their pontoon wharves with them, and build them, not from the shore to the ship, but from the ship to the shore.

The ship is brought in as close as possible. Piles are driven in close to the ship’s side; and, from there, the pontoons are unloaded and fitted together. In a matter of hours, equip ment and supplies are being motored off.

As an example of the speed at which these Americans work, I quote Morotai. There the objective was a

landing-strip.

The first wave went ashore at high tide—9.3o in the morning. Such Japs as had been defending the area had taken to the bush in the pre-landing bombardment, and there was prac tically no opposition. I went ashore shortly after noon. Already four miles or road were constructed and jeeps and lorries were running on it. Later, eight landing-fields were built there in the same speedy manner.

In contrast to this was the work being done by our own Australians on the New Guinea coast. We were sent to Madang for two weeks’ spell. Our fellows were working on a road be tween there and Alexishafen. They were doing every foot of that road with picks and shovels —there was not one bulldozer in the whole area.

Whatever excuse Australian poli ticians might have for this state of affairs, there seems to be no good reason, to my mind, why Australian manpower should be wasted on pick and-shovel work when a few bull

dozers could be utilised to do the work of hundreds of men. As far as heavy war equipment is concerned, Australia is back in the bow-and-arrow stage.

IT can be said, of course, that some one has to do mopping-up work; that the American beach-head tech nique, although fine in its way, does not finalise the problem of wiping out the tenacious Jap.

Heavy equipment, although it would not have solved all the mopping-up problems' would have made the task infinitely easier in the initial stages, would have cut the Japs into still smaller groups, and in many cases would have cut off their escape altogether. Thus it would have made mopping-up itself easier and speedier.

The Australian is still unsurpassed as a fighter; and it is fair enough that the Australians should be given the job of clearing their own terri tories of the enemy. What is unfair is that these fine soldiers should be kept slogging along in a long-drawn out campaign, using valuable man power which could be replaced by machines, and losing valuable lives which Australia can ill spare.

I have seen both the Australian and the American way of making war. And I’ll take the American.

On April 20, in Sydney, Mr. E. H.

Sanders, of Rabaul and Madang, was granted a divorce from his wife (formerly Miss Mona Freeman, of the British Solomon Islands) on the grounds of desertion. He said he filed suit against his wife in 1942, on the ground of her adultery with Henry (Jim) Muggleton, of Rabaul, but his main witness was lost in the invasion, and he could not proceed with that action.

Captain Robert M. Major, son of Mrs.

Olive Major, of Suva, Fiji, married Miss E, Marks, US • Army Nursing Sister, in Hawaii recently.