NOW IN LONDON

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 74, 29 March 1943, Page 3

NOW IN LONDON

FROM TRIPOLI FRONT

Newly-appointed N.Z. Minister Makes Air Trip N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent LONDON, Mar. 28. The news of the appointment made on March 3 of Major C. F. Skinner, M.C., M.P., to a seat in the New Zealand Cabinet, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. ■Langstone, was conveyed to that officer in the field near Tripoli. At that time Major Skinner was supervising the building of a road round a bridge which had been destroyed on the Tarhuna-Castel Benito Road, near Tripoli. He received an order to report to Lieuten-ant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg. When he reported he learned of his appointment to the Cabinet. He was asked to proceed to England to give a series of speeches for the Ministry of Information on New Zealand's war effort before returning to the Dominion. Major Skinner flew to London in a Liberator bomber. He expects to meet the Minister of Information, Mr. Brendan Bracken, on Tuesday, and will probably remain in Britain for several months.

Major Skinner has a distinguished war record. He joined up as a sapEer in 1940 and was commissioned efore leaving for Egypt. He was mentioned in dispatches in the first Libyan campaign and won the Military Cross at El Alamein. Major Skinner, who is 43, saw his first fighting at Bardia in January, 1941, and went on to Tobruk. He then attended a course at a school of military engineering before going to Greece, where he took part in. the building of ordnance dumps and protective works around Athens before the Germans attacked Greece. Rejoining the Fifth Field Park Company, Major Skinner was in Larissa when the Germans made a heavy bombing attack. - He finally left Greece in a caique and. boarded a transport. ■■ During General Auchinleck's campaign half of Major Skinner's company was captured at Sidi Aziz, in November, 1941. He saw the famous battle at Minqar Qaim, where the New Zealand Expeditionary Force held up Rommel's forces, and then, after being surrounded, fought a way out through a hell of fire. At El Alamein Major Skinner was with the Seventh Field Company in the assault against Meteiriya Ridge. With the engineers he went up behind an- intensive barrage, lifting mines and clearing lanes to allow tanks and anti-tank guns to go forward to support, the infantry. He carried out much reconnaissance work and destroyed many booby traps. He carried on throughout the advance.