COMMANDO LEADER

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 134, 4 December 1944, Page 4

COMMANDO LEADER

A WELLINGTON OFFICER

(Official War Correspondent N.2.E F) ATHENS, November'2B. 'Mountains, mules, marching and lice" is how Captain D. J. Stellin M C Wellington, described ten weeks he spent recently in command of a patrol operating on the flank of the retreating German forces in Albania. Captain Stellin, whom I last met on Lyall -Bay beach before the war when he was a junior member of the Maranui Surf Club, went to England in 1938. After training with the R.A.F. arid Fleet Air Arm, he enlisted in the British Army, and was subsequently com^: missioned.

Arriving in the. Middle East, .he sought a transfer to the New Zealand Division' and finally reached a Wellington Battalion just after the battles of Sidz Rezegh, when the division had commenced a long priod of training and re-equipping. A few months later he volunteered for service with a special force. Men of this formation, commanded by Colonel Earl Jellicoe, are trained as super commandos. ' . Captain Stellin was, • with special force units in the Dodecanese, where he won the M.C. His unit was first into the Dodecanese and last out. " .■■■; Three months ago his patrol was part of a small formation which parachuted with all supplies and equipment into the interior of Albania. :. . V :-