ODDS IN ENEMY'S FAVOUR
"With the men they had and their tremendous weight of equipment, the Germans should have blown •us olean out of the desert," declared an Auckland soldier who has returned "from the Middle East and who was in the forefront of the battle for Sidi Rezegh. He said the main attack was entrusted to the New Zealanders and the South Africans mainly, with some of the Indians-, while the British and Canadian troops manned the tanks. "Just to give you an idea of the number of men we had opposed to us, the casualties of the Germans were estimated as being about one and a half times the strength of our total attacking force, which was about 80,000 men," he addded. "In addition to that we took 27,000 prisoners. Believe me, we gave them a heli of a time." The approaches to Sidi Rezegh were guarded by pill boxes for a distance of 13,000 yards, and the attacking New Zealanders suffered heavily. At one stage of the battle fifteen tanks attacked, and in an hour and a halfthere was not one left.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 50, 28 February 1942, Page 10
Word Count
185ODDS IN ENEMY'S FAVOUR Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 50, 28 February 1942, Page 10
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