AT BARDIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 36, 12 February 1941, Page 8

AT BARDIA

NEW ZEALAND EXPLOIT

AHEAD OF MAIN ATTACK

PUMPING STATION TAKEN

In the great Libyan advance by the Middle East Forces the important tasks allotted members of the N.Z.E.F. have placed some of these men in the forefront of the big offensive. It is revealed in recent advices from that front that some New Zealanders were amongst the first of the attacking troops to enter Bardia.

The Navy having given the attention of its guns to the town for two days before the final attack by the troops, the Australians made their attack on

Friday, and the last guns in Bardia were silenced at about half-past three on Saturday afternoon, an n.c.o. of the New Zealand Engineers (Sergeant H. E. McVeagtf) states in a letter to relatives in Wellington. That was by far the greatest victory in the campaign up to that stage. "I think I can safely say that my O.C. and I can call it a tie in being the first New Zealanders to enter Bardia," the sergeant states in giving his firsthand account of the entry. "We went through the wire defences at about half-past seven on the moaning of the day she fell, and zoomed through the Via Benito Mussolini (the main street of Bardia) in a powerful staff car at about eight. "EERIE EXPERIENCE." "We had to go under the Australian artillery barrage to get there, and several of the 'Itai1 batteries were still holding out, as well as some of the machine-gun posts and stray snipers. However, we had an extremely important job to do —take the big water pumping station before they could wreck it. We were very lucky, as the attendants had fled before we got there and had not even tried to put it out of action. ; "After a very hasty search for timebombs, which we thought they might have left as a legacy, we settled down to holding the place until the 'Aussies' arrived. Personally, I was quite pleased to see them when they even- I tually turned up at about three o'clock in the afternoon and took over. It had been a pretty eerie job waiting there in an Italian town which had not yet fallen." AMAZING ADVANCE. Some indication of the rapidity of movement by the Forces in that theatre of war is given in Sergeant McVeagh's interesting letter. "You must not expect to hear from me at all regularly for a while," he writes, "because my company has advanced so far during the last few weeks that such amenities of civilisation as field post, offices have been left hundreds of miles behind, and the only chance we have of sending mail is whenever a truck happens to be going back to Matruh for supplies. This is not very often, as we are living pretty well on captured Italian stuff just now."

Pointing out that his company (5 Little Field Park) has been in the offensive ever since it started and, in fact, had been up to its ears in it for a week or more before the push began, Sergeant McVeagh states: "I don't think I have missed a thing so far—El Maktila, Nebeiwa, Sidi Barrani, Bug Bug, Fort Capuzzo, and (at time of