WITH NEW ZEALANDERS IN OFFENSIVE

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 51, 24 November 1941, Page 8

WITH NEW ZEALANDERS IN OFFENSIVE

Entry Into Libya Celebrated With Football

MOVEMENT INTO THE BATTLE

Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, November 22.

Toward dust-reddened sunsets, whose fiery glory seemed to hold portents of war, and through long starlit nights we have been .riding into battle in the greatest land armada! the desert has known. History was made when the full New Zealand field force began to roll across the stony western plains in a simultaneous movement for the first time —thousands of vehicles in a 1941 style phalanx which covered nearly 40 square miles.

Any day may begin the thrilling stories of action, but already a dramatic one has been unfolded in all these weeks of long-range preparation and all the eventful days since airy talk of ‘‘divisional exercises” first 'began to circulate. Probably never before in this war have our general staffs been able to prepare in such liberal detail for a campaign, as big as this promises to be. Almost every noteworthy activity I have seen or heard of in the last two or three months seems to fit into the day’s picture. Its broader outlines were formed as troops, guns, tanks and planes poured into the Western Desert in unprecedented number. Its background was filled by night air-bombing and daylight sweeps from one end of Libya to the other and back along the vital enemy supply lines from Italy, and by our brilliant naval successes in the Mediterranean. And then its finer details were drawn by air reconnaissance and ground intelligence experts, by the tacticians in the three services and by the wizards of supply organization.

The New Zealanders have played a part in all of these preliminary phases -—to a limited extent by sea and air, but on a yet unrealized scale on land. Miracle of Transport.

Coupled with these achievements is a constantly recurring miracle of transport and the supply of food, petrol and ammunition, in which our Army Service Corps units have earned a name to be remembered. Many weeks ago they took up their desert transport jobs where they had left off before Greece, and the truck mileages ran up into hundreds and thousands as they carted everything from fuel for the British tanks to live sheep for the Indian cookhouses. ’

A- new wonder story emerged from among them when a brand new transport company was formed and was operating within two weeks. Its maiden desert voyage was the delivery of the second New Zealand general hospital to a site near Mersa Matruh, and there again was history in the making, for when I last saw it tents were being erected to accommodate the first New Zealand nurses to serve in the Western Desert. Feelings of Men. Feelings like none we have experienced before, possess us as the wheels roll westward. We are moving deliberately to war. We feel as if the opening shots in the big battle will be fired with precalculated timeliness, as if someone will blow- a whistle and. the battle will begin like a football match, with everyone excited but nobody surprised. More than five days out from the old positions, we are now within striking distance of the enemy, yet the sensations still persist. It is not like the last big push, when the first body blow the Italians suffered was their own surprise—this time they must know we are up to something. It is not like Greece and Crete, where we had to wait for the enemy to make the first move—this time the initiative so far is ours. They told us days ago -that we were going on exercises. and it still seems so, even though we daily expect attack and possibly opposition, on the ground itself. No matter how much the enemy knows or suspects, we are still thinking in terms of a successful attack. Rightly or wrongly, it is good for us to think that way, for I have never seen our troops so high-spirited and eager for the sound of that mythical whistle.

The steady westward movement of the great land force of which we form a part has been wonderfully smooth on the whole. Our mobility and supply organizations may yet prove to be our surprise weapon. The New Zealanders have practised desert moves hardly less assiduously than desert batteries. and this day to day diary tells how the practice was put to the test. 100-Mile Column.

FIRST DAY: For the third successive day vehicles hearing New Zealand insignia have crowded Westward on the coastal highway from morning till dark, each column nearly 100 miles long —lOO miles of clanking armoured vehicles, rumbling lorries, bouncing gun wheels and roaring motor-cycles not very long off the assembly lines in American and British factories. Today they seem inspired by the mood of the men aboard. It is hard to say why the New Zealand troops have seemed the happiest on the way to battle, but men I am with are reacting as they should if they were heading homeward. Perhaps it is because every new campaign may mean a step toward the.family fireside. Maybe it is explained in a typical slogan I heard: “Benghazi, Brindisi, Berlin, then back ’ome.” Whatever the reason, these men are happy today, and a sure sign is the way close friends are calling one another by unprintable names shouted from truck to truck. There have been some heartburnings. Parties had to be left behind as immediate replacements and most of these seemed to feel they were born under an unlucky star. Our force is completely awheel, for even infantry nowadays rides most of the way to battle on heavy-duty tyres. The vehicles are laden with all the materials of desert warfare. We have jettisoned the bush furniture with which we had made our dugouts homely, since from now onward we are down to essentials. We have moved to strict time-tables and by flag signals through assembly areas and past checking points. Like Ship Convoy.

SECOND DAY: We are somewhere along the road from Mersa Matruh to Siwa. The Mediterranean is out of sight, but thinking of the limited water ration, we promise ourselves to meet it soon again on the Libyan beaches. Spreading over 40 square miles, the whole New Zealand force is congregated here. Nearly 200 miles of gently undulating country-waste stretches before us to the frontier. Between two chilly nights we rest in the open while the next, log of the journey is reconnoitred. I notice “Whisky,'’ ilie black ami white dog mascot evacuated from Greece, is with his brigade, and happy too. THIRD DAY: Thousands of vehicles moved off as one this morning

as the New Zealand force headed westward in desert formation. The whole desert is our highway, and our front is miles wide. There is no more apt description of this spectacle than a comparison with a huge wartime convoy of ships at sea.

Compass bearings keep us on our course. Mobile A.A. guns and field artillery are counterparts of the escorting destroyers, and fighters keep watch above. But never was a sea convoy as big as this. Our desert ships extend to the horizon’s flat rim and far beyond. Further in sight are ant-like specks, and only dust clouds suggest the location of those beyond vision. We halt in the darkness, but there is hot stew waiting —-prepared at breakfast time and kept warm in hot boxes. We live on preserved food now, and water is precious, though ample. Half a mugful must do for a shave and wash, if at all. Near Frontier. FOURTH AND FIFTH DAYS: We move only at night now, as the frontier draws steadily nearer. By day we shroud the vehicles in camouflage nets and doze in shallow trenches. Cold, dusty winds blow, and we are glad to be in battle dress. Except the office staffs, signallers, supply wagon drivers and reconnaissance parties, we are at a standstill till dusk. Last night we thought for a moment a battle had burst over our heads. Blinding flashes filled the cloudy western sky as a tropical thunderstorm spent its fury somewhere in the distance. Like the effects of a Hollywood film they split the dusty blackness throughout our journey. It was the eeriest night ride in my life, and desert travel in the darkness is impressive enough under any circumstances. The convoy closes in at nighttali again, like ships at sea-. AU you see are the black hulks of the vehicles ahead and around you, and the noise is like the thunder of a heavy surf on the rocky coast. You climb escarpments, drop into hollows with the mo tion of- a ship bucking a choppy tide. You hear the driver fling purple curses at a neighbour who sings too close. But you get there in the end, arid the enemy is much nearer. Across the Frontier. INSIDE LIBYA, November 19. New Zealand sappers gaily tore huge hunks out of Italy’s one-time eastern frontier wire to let our motor columns stream into Libya last night. As I write this we are still roaming, unmolested across the broad shingle plains of the former no man’s land. With the kind of Fascist extravagance that runs to the erection of impressive monuments to doubtful glories, Italy long ago marked her border with Egypt not by an imaginary line, but by a thick and costly wall of tangled barbed-wire. Like, a super rabbit fence, it stretches sand-choked and rusty from Solium across the plateaux up hill and down dale far into the south. In the face of our historic trek, it was the most minor of inconveniences. Our engineers severed the tangled meshes in several places, dragged the wire away behind lorries, and left a gap hundreds of yards wide through which we rumbled in the dead of night. At last we were within earshot of the war. Big guns were thundering across the frontier last night, and today we saw our first enemy planes—only a brace, which our A.A. guns sent squirming between white shell-puffs in the blue sky as they fled homeward across us. ■ But we lost count of the British planes flying back and forth over us all 'day after their numbers had reached at least 100.

Today is worth remembering. First, here we are in Libya, starting our second foreign expedition, and starting it on the right foot. Secondly, here in black and white is the first realization of our most optimistic hopes for air and land support—planes in the sky. and tanks on the ground. Today we were able to switch our eyes from a swarm of Hurricanes to five heavy tanks, and we know where there are .more —lots more. Already the air offensive we expected has opened with thrilling figures for the enemy planes destroyed in the air and aground. Interrupted Football, November 20. As we enter the second day in enemy territory, I cannot help emphasizing again the unique nature of lhe circumstances and the outlook of the men round me. I have never before sensed such a confident—almost exuberant — atmosphere. These juay be grim days immediately before us, but just now, as we enter the battleground and the enemy lines, we feel as the German soldiers must have felt entering Greece. Even if this almost unreal sense of security were to end tomorrow, it has had a wonderful moral effect on the New Zealanders. Their trigger fingers grow itchier every day. Can you guess how the men round me passed the time early this morning before the cooks yelled “come an'd get it.” They played football. In battle'dress and greatcoats, they scrummed, tackled and kicked till the cold and stiffness had left their limbs. Their shouts and laughter reminded me of a suburban sports ground on a Saturday afternoon, but the noise was punctuated by the boom of field guns. Suddenly the footballs rolled to a standstill, and Hie men became barrackers on the sidelines of a grimmer arena. A lone German plane had come droning overhead ; then 20 British fighters appeared, flying westward. Our hopes of seeing a combat were so strong that they burst into words.

Men pointed excitedly, yelling to the distant British planes, “Get that Jerry! He’s just above you.” As if they really did hear, four fighters broke away and chased the now retreating German into the 'distance.