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Show JAP SOLDIER LOSING' ENTHUSIASM TO DIE, SAYS GILLETTE "There is considerable evidence" declares Colonel Douglas M. Gillette, Gil-lette, "that the Individual Japanese Japa-nese soldier is losing his enthusiasm enthus-iasm to die for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." The Colonel has just returned from nine months of war in the Solomons where he came in contact con-tact with the enemy In heavy jungle jun-gle fighting. While the Japanese are supposed to be masters of jungle fighting, Colonel Gillette says that, man for man, our boys are more than a match for the best troops the Japanese Jap-anese have produced up to this time. He insists that they met the best Imperial soldiers and "beat them at their own game." The Army veteran stressed the difficulties of jungle fighting where everything looks like everything every-thing else" and where it is possible for the enemy "to dig In among and coral pillboxes, after being exposed ex-posed to the weather and covered the roots of the huge web-footed trees." Even the cocoanut logs with moss, "look like something that belong there as if they might have been there twenty years." Colonel Gillette stresses "the rapid and effective handling of the wounded on the battlefield," says that the majority of cases are in a good, clean hospital within 24 hours. He reports few malaria incidents in-cidents and that infected wounds were the exception. The Colonel reports that he was questioned about our air battles in the Solomons, in view of the fact that the Japs lose so many more planes than we lose. He says that "if anything, we are under-estimating our superiority." He also termed the operations on Munda "as complete and successful a coordination co-ordination of sea, land and air forces as anything the Axis has claimed to have done." |
