COMRADES OF ANZAC

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 11, 13 July 1943, Page 5

COMRADES OF ANZAC

TRIBUTE BY FREYBERG

Rec. 9 a.m. MELBOURNE, July 12. General Freyberg arrived on a brief visit to Melbourne today and was welcomed by high-ranking Australian officers. He was accompanied by Mr. Carl Berendsen. General Freyberg, in an interview, spoke of the Australian and New Zealand comradeship which, he said, began at Gallipoli. The spirit that made Australia and New Zealand one at Anzac was renewed m another generation today. "I would emphasise this: that they fight side by side today, not merely as allies of sister Dominions, but as brothers," he said. "We never looked on General Sir Iven Mackay or General Sir Leslie Morshead as exclusively your leaders. We made them ours, and any New Zealander would have been as proud to serve under them as they were to have the Ninth Division alongside whenever tough fighting was to be done." In a leader on General Freyberg's visit, the Melbourne "Herald" said: "New Zealand gave willingly of her few, and whatever wider strategical considerations there may have been she demonstrated the profound depth of her faith by holding her finest troops in the Middle East while confronted with an imminent menace at home.

"Australians who fought beside the New Zealanders in the desert envied them the opportunity of thrusting on to Tunisia with the Eighth Army while the fortune of war sent the A.I.F. into the jungles of New Guinea. "But they and the New Zealand people can rejoice in the well-won honours of the New Zealanders whose brave leader symbolises their fighting qualities."