"NOW HERE I AM"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 28, 1 August 1942, Page 6

"NOW HERE I AM"

DODGING THE NAZIS

(Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.)

. WESTERN DESERT, July 29. When the German tanks smashed into the headquarters of a large New Zealand force after our night attack last week, a medical orderly, a private in the Wellington Battalion, collected and cared for all the wounded for twenty-hour hours, helped four officers, including a brigadier, to escape, and then escaped himself. He,was lan Max McQuarrie, of Wellington, nephew of a New Zealand gunner colonel of the last war. Sunburnt and smiling; j he sat in a regimental aid post a few, hundred yards from the front line this afternoon and told his story. : i. "A German officer, who seemed un-? happy about things, surrendered to me early in the attack, so I got him to help me carry wounded on a stretcher, in place of the other bearer, who had been wounded earlier. We collected a number of New Zealand and German wounded into an empty gun emplacement, but the German tanks had surrounded the sandy depression which headquarters had reached. Approaching hull-down at dawn, they knocked 9ut all our anti-tank guns, and then came in in two columns of ten teach, with many more behind and with all their guns and machine-guns going, cut off the retreat. Many of our chaps escaped, but I was busy dressing the wounded and carried on when the others had. to surrender. "A young Nazi infantryman ordered me back, so I appealed to a tank commander, who told me I could fix up the wounded and get one unwounded man to help me-with the stretcher. I saw an officer hiding in a trench—l did not know who he was—and,asked him to help me. We collected all the wounded (15) by stretcher, and put them under cover, and then a German salvage unit took away the walking cases. ' We remained with the wounded all day. Our artillery were firing into the depression, trying to get the tanks. The officer, who I found was a brigadier, and three other lightly wounded officers and two wounded men collected gear for an escape, but a German patrol arrived. The others hid, and I tried to mislead the patrol, but they searched the area. They captured two men, missed the officers, and let me stay. At dusk I pretended to look for wounded, and explored the front. I told the officers their way was clear, but that there were German patrols nearby. The officers went, and that left eight wounded and myself. "About midnight a captured British truck loaded with ammunition arrived, and the German driver said, after delivering the ammunition, he would return and pick up the wounded. I left, a lightly vvounded man in charge, and then hid in a.slit trench nearby. I saw the truck return and start loading, then another patrol arrived, so I dug up a compass and binoculars I had buried earlier, and made off to the south-east. I passed a German patrol with a dog which barked furiously but did not find me. At dawn I reached the New Zealand lines. Now here I am."