Price

They Paid The

Australia Gathers 10,000 War Dead Into NG Cemeteries

HOW many people know the price which Australia, fighting beside the United States, paid for protection in the Pacific War, and for clearing the Japanese out of the Australian islands?

There are three great war cemeteries in Papua and New Guinea, where the graves of Australia’s dead servicemen are carefully tended. Here they are:— Port Moresby .. .. 4,000 graves Lae 3,200 graves Rabaul (Bita Paka) 2,200 graves That accounts for nearly 10,000 graves, but that is not the complete total of dead and missing. Between 1942 and 1945, in all those islands, there was mer ciless jungle-fighting in country so broken and inaccessible that it beggars description: and again, and again, Aus tralian soldiers were buried, singly and in masses, in places which could not afterwards be located.

A recent survey by officers of the War Graves Commission indicated that a num ber of mass war graves have been found, in the last year or two; and, this month, an Army search party left Australia for New Guinea, to examine these places, carry out any work of identification that is possible, and arrange the transfer of the remains to the established war ce meteries.

There also are Australian war cemeteries in North Africa and in many East Indies and other islands between New Guinea and Japan.