So Bitter, So Bloody

The Battle for Buna, which many observers had thought would be a pushover, was developing last week into a major struggle for control of New Guinea. It was being fought as fiercely as any battle on Guadalcanal. Allied casualties, mostly wounded, mounted steadily and piles of Jap corpses rotted in the jungles, in the swamps and on the beaches.

Buna village had been taken, but Buna Mission, one mile to the west, had not fallen. Nor had the center of the snake-like line between captured Buna and captured Gona. The Japs were so well supplied and had dug in so strongly that they had to be dug out almost man by man. As one correspondent put it: "Destroy your opinions of this as a little side show. The numbers of men involved and the strategic importance of the objectives are relative things anyhow. Nowhere in the world today are American soldiers engaged in fighting so desperate, so merciless, so bitter, or so bloody."

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