DESERT PATROLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 39, 15 February 1941, Page 11

DESERT PATROLS

ASTOUNDING FEATS

NEW ZEALANDERS'

PART

ITALIANS BLUFFED

(From Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F., Middle East.)

CAIRO, February 13.

, Across thousands of mi^es of littleknown and often unmapped enemy territory- New Zealanders have for seven months been helping to write the most amazing chapter of the story of the war in North Africa. Officers and men specially chosen from cavalry and machine-gun units formed ;he nucleus of motorised patrols which have been swooping and darting in swift trucks throughout the length and breadth of Libya like modern outlaws, and whose work has had an extremely important bearing on the success of the British advance along the coastal belt. Long

before this main push began, 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 of how for months past the enemy has been kept

on the alert and made to expend petrol, aircraft, and transport in protecting the desert garrisons, and how phantom motor columns hdve fallen on supply columns, shelled and captured isolated forts, blown up dumps, and burned air-craft on the ground.

The activities of these patrols, which ' form an organisation called the long- > raige desert group, gave New Zea- > landers in the Middle East their first real opportunity to prove themselves ,in warfare. While their fellow-mem-bers of the Expeditionary Force vainly • waited for a taste of battle, New Zea- • land officers and men in this longrange desert group were meeting action in plenty. Often through sand- ; storms and extremes of heat and cold, i the patrols to which they -belonged . covered half a millidn truck miles in ' pioneering a new form of military 1 operation.' 1 THE GREAT SAND SEA. Guided by the navigating genius and experience of three Englishmen, over ' desert wastes marked on the maps as , impassable, or not marked at all, they i appeared in one place and then an- , other, or at. several points at once, ' sometimes near the Egyptian frontier, 1 sometimes a> thousand miles away in the west. They struck swift blows and vanished before the baffled enemy could assess their striking force, and | they -touched Chad and Sudan as [ they ranged far and wide. Patrols were twice caught in the open desert and bombed for over an hour by three aircraft, bu-t the skilful manoeuvring of the trucks helped them to escape ' unharmed. In the first main expedition, three ; columns of trucks crawled through two hundred miles of towering sand dunes in September, as the first mili- ■ tary force ever to cross the "great 1 sand sea." 1 The New Zealanders rapidly adapted themselves to the » weird dune ■ country, although on the first day the trucks floundered helplessly, axle deep in the 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 . a hundred feet, but were unharmed. 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. VALUABLE CAPTURES. Separating on thousand-mile reconnaissances, patrols were given up as lost, owing to a garbled wireless message, but after an absence of a month three bands of bearded, unwashed, but exultant young ruffians reached Cairo with a batch of Italian prisoners and several bags of documents. While examining the northern roads leading to Kufra, one patrol had careered down a thoroughfare in broad daylight and held up a column of lories*in the style of highwaymen. The haul included official mail, giving all the enemy dispositions in the inner desert area. A second patrol had made contact with Free French outposts in Chad. A third destroyed an enemy bomber and a large petrol and bomb dump at Uweinat, near the Sudan border. During other expeditions in the autumn of 1940, a patrol returning from a mine-laying trip appeared suddenly before the gate of the Augila fort, in northern Libya, and seized the sentry before he had completed the Fascist salute. Three point-blank shells drove the astonished garrison out of the back door, enabling the armaments to be removed at leisure. Then the raiders disappeared into the desert. -Simultaneously, six . hundred miles further south, another patrol drove the Uweinat garrison up the mountainside, leaving a dozen enemy casualties. LIBYA FROM END TO END. With the tide of battle in full flood in the north, as the Imperial Forces pressed along the coastline, one New Zealand patrol and another of English guardsmen set out on Christmas Eve on one of the strangest wartime journeys ever undertaken. Their object was to cross Libya from end to end, and raid posts twelve hundred miles from. the 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 Chad-Libya border, with a dozen French troops, and the combined raiding party took a long northward detour to south-western Libya. Murzuk, the most important town in the area, was taken completely by surprise. A few Italian soldiers who were passed on the outskirts raised their hands in the Fascist salute, while a group of troops, called to attention at the gate of the great mud fort, were quickly disposed of. While the guardsmen patrol set the fort on fire, the New Zealanders and French attacked and occupied the landing ground. The force proceeded to the neighbouring town of Traghen, whose inhabitants marched out in a body to surrender, with drums beating and banners flying. Two more oases were attacked, and casualties were inflicted on'the enemy, before the patrols turned towards French territory and home. MEN PROUD OF DUTY. ' Every man chosen for the long-range desert group is jealous of the privilege, and would not change places "with any man in any army." Many have distinguished themselves by courage and initiative, and so far two cavalrymen, Sutherland and Willcox, as recently announced, have won military decorations, which were the first awarded to the N.Z.E.F. The casualties have\ been remarkably light. . The achievements of the patrols are all the more astounding because of the extraordinarily difficult country over which they operated. The "real desert" only begins-two hundred miles south of the Libyan coastline. No rain "falls in decades, and the oases are hundreds of miles apart. The country is as life-' lesg as the moon; tilted plateaus and.: I thousand-foot cliffs alternate with limit- ;

less plains and depressions, • while in places parallel rows of dunes reaching four hundred feet high run . from, horizon 'to horizon, forming vast and. almost impenetrable seas of yellowsand. Such a dunefield fs the "great sand sea" 800 miles long and 150 miles wide, lying along the Egyptian irontier like a natural barrier. Its presence, together with Italian barbed wire and fortifications, and the pro^ tection afforded by enormous distances, absence of water,' and fierce summen heat, made the enemy garrisons seem, secure against attack. VALUABLE RESULTS. On the other hand, the British saw la distinct menace by both land and. I air to Upper Egypt and to the communications with the Sudan,* so they decided that they must know what was happening behind the sand barrier. General Wavell called together* three Englishmen who had formerly made a hobby of exploring the Libyan desert, and within six weeks officers and men. had been drawn from the New Zealand Force and the Royal Armoured Corps to forni patrols, each of which, with its own mapping, navigation, and medical supply, and repair facilities, was. art army in miniature. Then for weeks at a time they disappeared over the western horizon on swift, mysterious forays and reconnaissances. * : The effect on the enemy is now known to have been considerable, for they stopped all norriial traffic along" the desert routes after the first raid and allowed no movement from oasis to oasis without an escort of guns and aircraft. All the garrisons in the Libyan interior were heavily reinforced in men and materials, while daily air " patrols were organised over -a vast area. The prolonged uncertainty, more- . over, 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 the enemy had been appreciably distracted from the decisive battle area in the north. . It was therefore decided to stir up the sleepy garrisons in faraway south-western Libya, where, since the French armistice, the enemy undoubtedly felt secure. They co-operated there with the Free French Forces, whose successes were announced lately.