AMAZING EXPLOITS IN LIBYAN DESERT

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 121, 15 February 1941, Page 11

AMAZING EXPLOITS IN LIBYAN DESERT

Disclosure Of Operations Of Men From N.Z.E.F.

GUERRILLA WARFARE W>FI«H IMPORTANT RESULTS i l-Toin the I Ifficial War Correspondent with the N.ZlE?<F*in the Middle East.) CAIRO, February 13. Across thousands of miles of little-known and often unmapped enemy territory. New Zealanders tor seven months have been helping to write a most amazing chapter of the story of the war in North Africa. Officers and men specially chosen from cavalry and machine-gun units formed the nucleus of motorized patrols which have been swooping and darting in swift trucks throughout the length and breadth of 1 .ibya like modern outlaws, and whose work had an extremely important bearing on the success of the British advance along the coastal belt. Long before this main push began the Italian forces at wells, forts and aerodromes in the Libyan interior were rudely but mysteriously shaken from their sense of’ security by the first daring raids of our desert pirates. Only today is the story revealed how for months past the enemy have been kept on the alert and made to expend petrol for aircraft and transport in protecting their desert garrisons, and how our phantom motor columns have fallen on supply columns, shelled and captured isolated forts, blown up dumps, and burnt aircraft on the ground.

The activities of these patrols, which form an organization called tbe “long 1 - range desert group." gave New Zealanders in the Middle East a first real opportunity to prove themselves in warfare. While their fellow-members of the expeditionary force vainly waited a taste of buttle, the New Zealand ollicers and men in this long-range desert group were meeting action aplenty.

Often through sand storms aud extremes of beat and cold the patrols to which they belonged covered half a million truck miles iu pioneering the new form of military operation. Guided by the navigating genius and experience" of three Englishmen over 'desert wastes that are marked on the maps as impassable or are not marked at all. they appeared in one place and then another or at several points.at once, sometimes near the Egyptian frontier and sometimes 1900 utiles away in the west. Baffled the Enemy.

They struck swift blows aud vanished ix'fore the baffled enemy could assess their striking force, and they touched the Chad Territory and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan as they ranged far and "wide. Patrols were twice caught in tlte open desert and bombed for more than an hour by three aircraft, but skilful manoeuvring of the trucks helped them to escape unharmed. In lite first main expedition three columns of trucks crawled through 200 miles of towering sand dunes in September as the first military force ever to cross the "Great Sand Sea.” "The New Zealanders rapidly adapted themselves to the weird dune country, though on the first day their trucks floundered helplessly axle-deep in almost liquid sand. One or two of the trucks, when the drivers were confused by the blinding yellow glare, fell over the brink of a huge dune, rolling over and over for 100 feet, but without harm being done. Soon the drivers were able to tackle any obstacle confidently. The next defensive weapon which the desert thrust against them was a muffling blanket of blinding sand. For three days the temperature rose so high that more than one man became delirious, and the ground was strewn With dead and dying birds. Separated on 1000-mile reconnaissances, the patrols were given up as lost owing to a garbled wireless message, but after an absence of a month the three bands of bearded and unwashed but exultant young ruffians reached Cairo with a batch of Italian prisoners and several bags of documents.

Brilliant Coups Made.

While examining the northern roads leading to Kufra oasis area in southeastern Libya, one patrol had careered down one thoroughfare in broad daylight aud held up a column ot lorries in the style of highwaymen. The haul included official mail giving all the enemy dispositions in the inner desert area.' The second patrol had contacted Free French outposts in the Chad territory, and the third had destroyed an enemy bomber and a large petrol and bomb dump at Uwcinat, near rhe Sudan border. During ihe other expeditions in the autumn of last year a patrol returning from a mine-laying trip appeared suddenly before the gate of Augila, a fort in northern Libya, and seized a sentry before he had completed his Fascist salute. Three shells at point-blank range drove the astonished garrison out of the back door, enabling, the armaments to be removed at leisure. Then the raiders disappeared into ihe desert.

Simultaneously. 600 miles farther south another patrol drove the Uweinat garrison up a mountainside, leaving a dozen enemy casualties. With the tide of battle in full Hood in the north as the Imperial forces pressed along the coastline, one New Zealand patrol and another of English guardsmen set out on Christmas Lio on one of the strangest, wartime journeys ever undertaken, the object being to' cross Libya from end to end and raid posts 1200 miles from their base, maintaining secrecy by avoiding all wells and navigating a route through unexplored country all the way. They made a rendezvous among the wild northern foothills of the Tibesti Mountains on the ChadLibya border with a dozen French troops, and the combined raiding party took a long northward detour to south-western Libya. Alarzuk, tlie most important town in ihe area, was taken completely by surprise. A few Italian soldiers who were passed on (he outskirts raised their hands in the Fascist salute, while a group of troops who were called to attention at the gate of the groat, mud fort were quickly disposed of. While guardsmen of the patrol sot the fort ablaze, the New Zealanders and French attacked and occupied the landing ground. The force then proceeded io tne neighbouring town of Traglien. whose inhabitants marched out in a body to surrender with drums beating and banners flying. Two more oases were attacked. ami casualties were inflicted on the enemy before the patrols turned toward French territory and home. Casualties Remarkably Light.

Every man chosen in the long-range desert group is jealous of his privilege and would not change places “with any man in any army." Many have distinguished themselves by their courage ami initiative, ami so far two cavalrymen. Sutherland and M illeox, as recently announced, have won military decorations which were the first awarded in the N.Z.E.F

The casualties have been remarkably light. The achievements of the patrols have been all the more astounding because of the extraordinary difficult country over which they operated. The “real desert” begins only 200 miles south of the Libyan coastline. No rain falls in decades, and the oases are hundreds of miles apart. The intervening country is as lifeless as the moon, with tilted plateaus and thousand-foot cliffs alternating with limitless plains and depressions, while in places the parallel rows of dune reaching 400 feet high run from horizon to horizon, forming vast and almost impenetratable seas of yellow sand. Such a dunefield is the "Great Sand Sea.” SOO miles long and 150 miles wide, lying along the Egyptian frontier like a natural barrier. Its presence, together with the Italian barbed wire and fortifications, and the protection afforded by the enormous distances, the absence of water and the fierce summer heat, made the enemy garrisons seem secure .against attack. Defeated Important Menace. Utt the other hand, the British saw a distinct menace both on land and in the air to Upper Egypt and the communications with the Sudan, so they decided they must know what was happening behind the sand barrier. General Wavell called together three Englishmen who formerly had made a hobby of exploring in the Libyan desert, and within six weeks the officers and men had been drawn from the New Zealand force and the Royal Armoured Corps to form patrols, each of which, with its own mapping, navigation, i medical, supply and repair facilities, was an army in miniature. Then for weeks at a time they disappeared over the western horizon on their swift, mysterious forays and reconnaissances. The effect on the enemy is now known, to have been considerable, for i they stopped all normal traffic along ' the" desert routes after the first raid and allowed no movement from oasis I to oasis without an escort of guns and ! aircraft. AH garrisons in the Libyan interior were heavily reinforced in men and materials, while daily air patrols were organized over a vast area. Tlte prolonged uncertainty, moreover, put the nerves-of the enemy garrisons on edge. By December the main purpose of the patrols in eastern Libya had been achieved, in that the attention of tlte enemy had been appreciably distracted from the decisive battle area in the north. It was therefore decided to stir up the sleepy garrisons far away in south-western Libya, where, sim-e the French armistice, the enemy had undoubtedly felt secure. They co-oper- . ated there with the Free French forces. ■ whose successes were announced lately.