WESTWARD AGAIN!

Evening Star, Issue 24005, 2 October 1941, Page 6

WESTWARD AGAIN!

OUR BOYS IN THE DESERT LONG COLUMNS SWING ACROSS SAND AND SCRUB BIGGER RESOURCES FOR LIBYAN DRIVE (From the Official War Correspondent with the N'.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, October 1. ‘‘ Somewhere in the Western Resort ” is once more to-day tho business address of the New Zealand fighting troops, and other field units, and for many of them, meantime at least, digging is again their business. In the past few weeks long road columns and crowded troop trains have swung westwards across the broad stretches of sand and scrub, carrying the New Zealanders away from tho training camps which have held them since the return from Crete.

Another formation has been busy preparing new strongholds as part of tho network of defences which make the approach to the Nile Valley a harder nut to crack than it has ever been. Laden with food and war supplies, the New Zealand Army Service Corps trucks—tho covered wagons of “ the Colonial Carrying Companies,” which made their name famous in last winter’s big drive—are rumbling again along tho desert highways, and our engineers are back on some of the jobs in which they gained similarly fmo reputations during the first term here. The Western Desert is new ground, of course, to hundreds of our troops, but there arc still hundreds more to whom this move meant “ coming homo ” from the Balkan adventures. Most of these desert rats, or boys from tho blue, as they have been variously called, would tell you that they are not sorry to be back again.

Among a handful of soldiers the desert has even older associations—one of these is a brigadier who served here last war when a small New Zealand force was used against Seuussi troops beyond Mersa Matruli.

The biggest change in the desert since we left last is the increase in strength,of its defences and potential resources for the second and final drive through Libya. I have never seen so many men on the ground and planes in the air. In the journey from the Nile, I passed areas which once had been empty wastes, but were now businesslike aerodromes or bustling military camps, and overtook two more great convoys of fighting troops bound for the desert. Fast fighters and bombers, many of them American built, fly over us continually. More is being done this time to keep up touch with civilisation. For instance, a Cairo daily newspaper inaugurated a (special Western Desert edition, which arrives by air a few hours after publication. In addition, the N.Z.E.F.’s own newspaper brings home news weekly, while tho Y.M.C.A. mobile cinema unit is at present touring the regiments with motion picture shows.