WAR IN THE DESERT

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 121, 15 February 1941, Page 12

WAR IN THE DESERT

Italians’ Distaste For Fighting

YOUNG AND HUNGRY

Dominion Special Service

AUCKLAND, February 14

Interesting sidelights on the adtanco i.if the British forces against the I talians in Libya are given in letters front Driver It. B. Aickin, of lite Dit isional Ammunition. Company, 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, to his mother, Mrs. L. Aickin, Auckland. -1 have been uP the line many times now," states one letter, written shortly after the advance started. “At first ihe gunfire used to fascinate us, but now we take no notice of it. A ery seldom do we hear enemy aeroplanes, but our own machines must be giving the Italians hell; backward and forward they pass over us, hundreds of them, loaded with tons of bombs. There are so many of them they are like cars on a busy road. ■•I was talking to some of the boys from the front line,” the letter continues. “Their only complaint is that the Italians won’t fight. That’s how everybody feels over here —get into it and get it finished.” Speaking of souvenir-hunting, Driver Aickin says that at first all sorts of Italian gear was taken home, but now the craze is “only for things such as daggers, revolvers, and things we can use.” In a letter dated January 6, and marked “This 'day a year ago we sailed out of Wellington Harbour,” Driver Aickin writes: “The Italian prisoners are a sickly-looking mob. Many of the poor devils are not more than about 1G or 17 years old, and they were so hungry that it is little wonder that they showed little fight when our attack caught them unawares. The countryside is a mass of captured gear —thousands of rilles and cases of ammunition, machine-guns, Held guns, tanks, lorries, clothing and even a few road-rollers.

Driver Aicken also refers to the friendliness of the Italian prisoners, “lie wa,s very bitter toward ATitsso,”

be says, speaking of one prisoner. ■•You have only to «ee the poor devils to understand their feelings. -Many of them were without food for two and three 'days. Can you wonder at them being hitler and not wanting to light? "Many of them show us their photographs of their wives and families. They never need guards. They are only too "pleased to get to our side of the lines. Two thousand of the,in were taken to the train the other day witli an escort of six. That just shows how much fight they have in them.”