Word: sumatra
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Bali Down. The dream faded fast. At Java's western tip, beyond the Sunda Strait, the Japanese clinched their hold on southern Sumatra, its oil, its tin, and its vantage for assault on Java. To the east, Japanese planes performed their usual preparatory ritual: bombs on Dutch and Portuguese Timor, more bombs on oft-bombed Surabaya's naval base; bombs on Bali; and, to the rear, where Australia juts toward Java, bomb after heavy bomb on the tiny, tinny port of Darwin...
...took his losses, secured his landings on Bali and Timor. With Bali, he won a foothold at Java's very edge on the east, to match his Sumatra springboard on the west. With Timor, he won another eastern approach and control of an essential waypoint on the route by which sorely needed fighter planes were flown from Australia to Java. And now he was probably near enough to Surabaya to immobilize that last, vital naval base even before he sent his troops against...
...gave up the struggle and turned back to the island to wait. ... If the night on the island was miserable, the one aboard the launch was indescribable. Waves rolled over the deck where we were sprawled wet and shivering, but we were still hoping we'd make Sumatra before dawn brought Japanese bombers...
They did. Across 400 miles of Sumatran jungles the weary party straggled in trucks. From northwest Sumatra to a port of embarkation for Batavia they traveled in pony carts, spurred on by native tomtoms pounding out an air-raid warning. At the port Yates McDaniel saw "the most beautiful sight I ever expect to see a British destroyer hull down on the horizon, steaming full speed toward the harbor." The destroyer carried them to Batavia, where, for the first time in eleven days, Yates McDaniel could file his story, then crawl into...
...Palembang. True, it was a ruined Palembang, where he would have at least six months of restoration to do before he could get oil. But he was winning southern Sumatra. Very soon he would be at Java...