Word: morshead
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cleanup in the Rear. No one could take more satisfaction from this success than General Morshead himself. He had come to the Borneo command from the torturous, far from finished battle of New Guinea, one of the rear-area wars where the Aussies are still busy at the grim cleanup...
Their most important and spectacular campaign was against an estimated 30,000 enemy troops on Borneo. It was also their most successful. Under the Corps command of dapper, dashing Lieut. General Sir Leslie ("Holy Terror") Morshead, onetime schoolmaster and hero of the siege of Tobruk, the 7th Division had secured the vital Balikpapan area within three weeks of its invasion. Last week the 7th beat down bitter resistance to take another first-rate military prize: the Sambodja oil field, 28 miles northeast of Balikpapan and one of the three major producing areas of eastern Borneo...
...could concentrate on a much richer field-Samarinda, 36 miles away. With his 9th Division's firm hold on Tarakan and Brunei in the north (TIME, July 9), Morshead and his men, strategically at least, had secured Borneo for the Allies...
Ahead lay coastal Tutong, 25 miles away, then the Seria-Miri oilfields, a rich prize 25 miles further. But beetle-browed Lieut. General Sir Leslie Morshead, tactical commander, was not deceived by the easy beginning. Ahead lay rivers, mountains, swamps and lurking Japanese. Predicted Morshead: "A tedious and arduous campaign-the real fighting is yet to come...
...last pillboxes with hand grenades and swarmed over their stronghold. Few Japs were taken prisoners. Some fled into the jungle with hard-bitten Diggers on their heels. The Japs fought fiercely but, according to the men of the 9th, not as formidably as the Germans. The 9th ("Morshead's Marines") should know. They helped crack Rommel's line at El Alamein...