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to endeavour to open the LOC with tps from Bn HQ’.149 This was duly achieved.Elements of the 61st Battalion also escorted the tanks forward on both 31 Marchand 5 April and assisted with the battlefield clearance at Slater’s Knoll on theafternoon of 5 April. The war diaries of both the 9th and 61st Battalions reportednumerous minor contacts around this time.This period was not easy for the 61st Battalion. Field wrote in his diary on27 March:Lt Col Dexter and his Bn HQ got in this afternoon – looking pretty tired and very thin.Also looked very worried. I told him to get as much rest as possible and to arrange therotation of his Coys from along the main track back to the beach areas.150Given the unfolding events this was rather optimistic advice. On 7 April Dexterwas medically evacuated and wrote to Field five days later:My complaint has … been diagnosed as arthritis of the neck causing neuritis of theshoulder and arm … I feel ashamed and distressed to realise that my health gave awayat a critical time; but I am certain now that I would have been useless if I had remainedtho it was very hard leaving. This is the first time my health has let me down during acampaign and I feel very strongly about it.151Field had already made his own assessment, writing on the day of Dexter’sevacuation:I feel he has infected the whole of his Bn with a tired and defeatist attitude so thateveryone is now convincing himself that he is tired and ‘has had it’. As a CO he hasproved unequal to pulling his Bn together and how much of his complaint is real andhow much is psychopathic remains to be seen.152149 ‘25 Aust Inf Bn Report on Operations in South Bougainville 16 January to 14 April1945’, p. 22, 25 Infantry Battalion War Diary, January–April 1945, AWM 52, Item8/3/63.150 Field’s diary, 27 March 1945, AWM 3DRL6937, Item 7.151 Letter from Dexter to Field, 12 April 1945, AWM 3DRL6937, Item 32, sub folder ‘W.R.Dexter’.152 Field’s diary, 7 April 1945, AWM 3DRL6937, Item 7.A tale of three battalions — 31