SAVED FROM SEA

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXII, Issue 16, 28 February 1941, Page 6

SAVED FROM SEA

NEW ZEALANDERS RESCUE

ITALIANS

A LIBYAN EPISODE

Soaked .to the skin by rollers surging repeatedly over them, engineers of the New Zealand Army Troops Company spent six arduous hours «in pitch darkness early this month when they assisted the rescue of 500 Italian prisoners of war, with their guards and the crew, from a small ship grounded on a rocky stretch of the Mediterranean coast. The New Zealanders worked like trojans to drag the survivors out of the sea and hoist them up a perpendicular face to safety. Members of the company, which was camped at the time on .the shore, made out in the failing light of early evening the dim shape of a ship heading towards land. Uncertain whether the vessel was

friend or foe, the troops were called out armed and hastened along the coast. They found the ship stranded in a heavy swell on a ledge jutting out from the foot of a steep cliff.

Rescue plans were shouted across the intervening surf, and a prisoner, wearing a lifebelt, brought a light line ashore, arriving in a state of collapse from which he failed to revive. A ship's fireman who swam in . with a second line was hauled up the cliff by the New Zealanders with a rope made from rifle slings fastened together. A sergeant used the same rope to descend and recover the body of the Italian, who died shortly after he had been pulled out of the surf.

"We dragged hawsers ashore with the lines from the boat and anchored them ,to a heavy truck on top of the cliff," members of the company related. "Then a party of us went down into the aurf to grab the survivors as they hauled themselves in through .the breakers." Walking out along the ledge as far as they could, the rescuers were often engulfed by waves. An officer recalled how he saw one of

his men keep disappearing, except for his bald pate, only to bob up again as the swirl of surf receded. "We relieved them every two hours, for the sea was bitterly cold*" he added. "They did a wonderful job, bringing 500 prisoners ashore in this way. Then we ferried the wounded and other survivors in on a raft which the vessel carried."

Other members of the company stood at the top of the cliff and hoisted the rescued men to dry land. The difficulties of the whole operation were increased by the necessity of using only carefully shielded lights, and the work was not completed until about one o'clock in the morning. The survivors were taken to the New Zealanders' camp to be dried out, fed and put to bed. It is believed that a few prisoners lost their lives when they were swept from the hawsers after leaving .the ship. The unrestrained joy shown by the survivors at having saved ftheir lives was typified by one Italian who planted an admiring kiss on the face of a New Zealander.