澳洲报刊有关桂系报导选(10)

澳洲报刊有关桂系报导选(10)

1945年夏，国军在广西的反攻，以及在其它地方的节节胜利，再再反映了抗战即将结束，不仅中国人，西方盟军阵营也处于一片兴奋之中。下面是1945年6月中国的战局情形，其中有关广西的战局，是其介绍的一个重点。

CHINESE PRESSURE AGAINST JAPS
Enemy's Precarious Hold In S. China

From GEORGE H. JOHNSTON

Kunming

While Chinese troops in the Nanning breakthrough area of South China are still vainly seeking for the Japanese army which has disappeared, sharp fighting continues at the northern end of our line, which is being driven eastward, and which now runs the length of Kwangsi province. In the last four days the town of Ishan, westward defence bastion of the vital City of Liuchow, has changed hands three times.

After several months in Japanese hands, Ishan was recaptured by Chinese armies pushing eastward on Sunday after heavy enemy resistance. The following day the Japanese counterattacked strongly, taking nine-tenths of the town and pushing savagely against the Chinese still resisting in the remaining portion. The Chinese, massing an additional force, smashed into the Japanese defenders, reoccupied the town, and drove enemy remnants four kilometres down the road toward Tatang, 40 miles away.

With our forces which reoccupied Nanning pushing northward along the Liuchow-Nanning corridor, the position of these Japanese forces is now precarious, and it is feasible to assume that the enemy counter- attack on Monday was made largely for the purpose of covering a general withdrawal.

SHARP CLASHES

Although in isolated areas there is a series of sharp clashes between Chinese and Japanese columns, there is no evidence to refute earlier contentions that the Japanese were probably contemplating a large scale withdrawal from South-East China. Yesterday in Japanese-held Hunan province there was a fierce counterattack by the enemy troops against Chinese positions north-west of Hsinning, but it was only a limited engagement; the Chinese held the thrusts and finally beat the Japanese back to their original lines. The present plight of the Japanese in this vital corridor area gives additional grounds for optimism when one realises that as yet the cream of China's armies-the best trained, best supplied, and best equipped divisions of the Generalissimo's forces-have not yet been employed against the enemy.

Chinese military and political leaders here have expressed great delight with the overwhelming success of the Australian attack on North Borneo, which will bring Malaya, Indo-China, the South-East China coast, and Hainan Island within comparatively easy striking distance, and will bring the end of Japan all the closer.

In the Chinese Press considerable space is given to stories of the Borneo operations, together with many tributes to the fighting qualities of Australia's AIP divisions.

The French, too, are delighted by the implications of a Borneo conquest. Each day in China the tide of optimism runs higher, particularly as the round-the-clock bombing of Japan gets into its stride. Air experts here are now talking of the possibility of unloading 20,000 tons of bombs daily on enemy holdings in and around the Japanese islands in a few months. They say that, if Cologne could be pulverised into rubble with 42,000 tons of bomb, the fate of Japan, with more vulnerable major cities, becomes increasingly obvious.

With the recent announcement that the Pioneer Super-Fortress force of the 20th Bomber Command, formerly in India, is now operating from the Marianas-and Tokyo Radio's claim that already large elements of Liberator and Flying Fortress groups from the European theatre had reached the huge Allied airfield chain on Okinawa-a vast massing of aerial strength for the final hammer blows against Nippon's empire is now held to be possible. Immense forces of light and medium bombers and fighters and Navy-based planes also must be included in the Japan picture of things to come.

The home waters of Japan and the South and East China Seas are now completely dominated by island based air forces, which have released the 14th Air Force for more concentrated operations against Japanese ground forces and supply lines on the Continental battleground.

SMASHING SMALL CRAFT

More or less freed from the task of blockading enemy shipping in the South China Sea, our Flying Tigers have turned their attention to small craft running war supplies for Japan on the vast system of inland water- ways. In April our planes sank, probably sank, or damaged 1,988 river or lake craft. Last month the figure reached 2,441. Enemy losses should be even heavier this month. In the same two month period Flying Tigers destroyed 105 ocean going ships, 300 bridges, 41 locomotives, 584 trucks, 72 aircraft, and 5,468 horses, thus interdicting and smashing every means of supply available to enemy forces in South and Central China.

In the same period occurred the great Chinese victory over an enemy army at Chihkiang. Possibly half of the Japanese casualties of 17,989 were inflicted by bombers, fighters, and rocket planes of the 14th Air Force.

Over China the Japanese air force has now been almost completely swept from the sky; and Japanese ground forces, with their elements scattered and lines of communication strung out over vast distances, cannot much longer stand the strain of unrelenting air attack, coupled with the pressure exerted from the west by advancing Chinese armies.

The Argus, Wednesday 20 June 1945, p.16.