NAVY OFFICER'S HOLIDAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 127, 31 May 1944, Page 5

NAVY OFFICER'S HOLIDAY

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

LIRI VALLEY, May 29.

Hitch-hiking his way over 300 miles in the last three days, Sub-Lieutenant Jock Norrie, R.N.Z.N.V.R., of Christchurch, achieved the odd distinction of being the first New Zealand naval officer who has seen the ruins of Cassino and crossed the Gustav and Hitler Lines on both the Eighth and the Fifth Army fronts. Only a few days after he was reading in newspapers at a naval base in England about the attacks on the Italian front he has visited the battlefields and seen the New Zealand tanks going into action in the Liri Valley. He was awaiting posting to a destroyer in the Mediterranean when a chance meeting in Naples with a Christchurch officer returning to the New Zealand Division after short leave began his tour of the battle-ironts. They arrived at the New Zealand Armoured Brigade headquarters jsut as the brigadier was leaving with his forward tanks. Within two hours Lieutenant Norris had seen the Cassino battlefield and was beyond the Hitler Line defences watching the New Zealand tanks shelling a village which, with the Indian infantry, they were about to attack. On the following day he hitch-hiked along the Appian 'Way to Itri, then close to the Fifth Army front. Another visit to forward New Zealand tanks and the return journey to Naples completed his three-day tour. "I have been two and a half years chasing the division," he said, "and when I reached Italy I did not intend to miss seeing some of them." An hour after he reached Naples he was on his way to join his ship at Malta.