Tip of the Horn

For the past month General Douglas MacArthur has been waging a naval and air war.

Last week his ground forces, who have been fighting for the tip of horn-shaped New Britain, won a victory and added some bloody ground to Allied holdings.

Troops of the U.S. Sixth Army who landed at Arawe Dec. 15 fought their way at last around the horn's tip to join forces with Marines who were hacking a way from their beachhead at Cape Gloucester.

In the Sixth were men of the southwest U.S., Indians from 20 Arizona and New Mexico tribes. The Marines were the valiant 1st Division, veterans of Guadalcanal.

Their commander: lanky, bald, mustachioed Major General William H. Rupertus, who commanded a Marine landing on Tulagi in August, 1942. For his deeds then 54-year-old Rupertus was awarded the Navy Cross.

During two months of conflict in the malaria-ridden New Britain jungles, when the enemy tried frantically to push Mac-Arthur's men back into the sea, 7,000 Japs had been slain. U.S. casualties were not revealed.

The territory secured was small and of no great positive value to MacArthur. But flanking the coast of New Guinea as it did, it was a good place to deny the enemy who had used the area for staging land and air forays on New Guinea positions.

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