EXCITING YEARS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 63, 15 March 1944, Page 6

EXCITING YEARS

WITH THE PARTISANS

JACK DENVER'S STORY

Further details are given by a 8.8.C. correspondent of the story of Jack Denver, the New Zealand sergeant, who twice escaped from the Germans, and joined up with the Yugoslavs, becoming one of the Partisan leaders during the two years in which he fought with them. Denver was three times wounaeu while on service in Yugoslavia, ana has just left a hospital in Cairo where he has been treated for an arm wound.

He went to Greece as a private with the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, the correspondent states, and was captured after the evacuation. Escaping, he finally reached the capital of Slovenia, where he was given the choice of being assisted out of the country or joining the Partisans. He chose the latter, and was accepted as a machine-gunner taking part m attacks on ammunition dumps and Italian supply lines.

The New Zealander praised the way the Partisans met the "Mussolini offensive" organised against them at the end of 1942, when they came back stronger than ever.

"In one big attack on a town, Denver, who had by then risen to the command of a battalion, was given the job of preventing reinforcements arriving," continued the correspondent. "He blew up a bridge, derailed a train, killing several Germans, and then blew up a tank. From the tank he took the gun, mounted it on a wagon and used it as' artillery."

A month later, during a largescale operation against the Germans, he received his third wound, a badly slashed arm. He carried on for a time, but eventually was persuaded to take the chance of getting out, making the journey through liberated country to the coast.