CAUGHT BY BARRAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 152, 26 December 1944, Page 5

CAUGHT BY BARRAGE

NEW ZEALAND INFANTRY (Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.) FAENZA, December 21. Caught in an enemy artillery concentration just as they were beginning their attack, two New Zealanders were killed and about 20 wounded two nights ago while crossing a space of 150 yards. This incident occurred in a farmyard not far from Faenza, where the shellpitted ground and the buildings, scarred by flying metal splinters, provide convincing evidence of the intensity of the German shelling. Our own artillery barrage supporting the attack had just begun. It was falling 100 yards ahead of the farmhouse and of the infantry in a position to move off. Realising an attack was coming, the enemy began shelling just behind our barrage, where the advancing infantry would be, and on this occasion his tactics paid dividends —in this area, anyway. Those \vho could sheltered in the farmhouse,' a substantial two-storeyed stone building, where in one room— that used as a battalion command post —there was crowded, in addition to the normal complement, some 20 men wounded in various degrees of seriousness, two who had died, and as many others as could manage to get in. The scene was described by an officer there at the time as unbelievable. Shells were still crashing around, I direct hits were scored on the house, an emergency operation was being performed on a man wounded in the buttock by a shell splinter, and till the enemy blitz subsided the place was pretty much of a shambles. It is very much to the credit of the! infantry that after such an unfortun- j ate start they should later go forward and achieve their objectives in good time and in thorough fashion.